Be careful when reading long and informative articles! ASO optimization experience: Tips for APP keyword optimization

For your product, choosing the right keywords for your app can play a crucial role in its success. However, up to now, there has not been a tool that frees developers from the boring and cumbersome investigation.

In the AppStore, we can already see 1.5 million software applications, and new software is constantly being added. Therefore, developers must pay special attention to app store optimization ( ASO ), especially keyword optimization. This article will detail how to optimize app store searches by choosing the right keywords.

1. Relevance: The relevance between a specific keyword and your app and target users. Irrelevant keywords are unlikely to generate effective conversion rates.

2. Difficulty : The degree of competition for a particular keyword. The higher the value, the harder it is to rank in the top.

3. Traffic : The popularity of a specific keyword. The higher the number of times it is searched, the higher this value will be.

1. Determine relevant keywords

Remember to use keywords that are highly relevant to your app and users. Some keywords may seem to have a ranking advantage, but they are meaningless for your product. For example, you are developing a math game, but you define the keyword as "swimming". Although swimming has excellent traffic and intermediate difficulty, it has nothing to do with your product.

At this time, if a player wants to find some swimming games or swimming learning books, your math game product does appear in the top ten searches, but will they download it? Almost no one would, right? Because only relevant keywords can generate effective conversion rates.

2. Analyze your competitors’ keywords

We can determine which keywords are relevant by analyzing our competitors.

First, you need to understand who your potential users and competitors are. You can find your competitors in the Appstore rankings. Of course, there is a little trick here. You don’t have to browse different popular apps one by one. Just use the Top Apps tool of App Figures, which can easily show you the popular ranking apps in up to three categories. In addition to this, you can also check out Appnique’s “Recommended Competitors” list and Sensor Tower’s “Track Your Competitors” tool.

OK, now that you have found your competitors, you can use Sensor Tower’s Keywod Spy to discover your competitors’ keywords. In addition to allowing you to discover your competitors’ keywords, this tool also allows you to see the overlap between your product’s keywords and theirs.

At this stage, your main goal is to create a broad library of potentially relevant keywords. Different ASO tools may provide you with different keywords, and your job is to manually filter out the keywords that can be used in the end.

3. Other ways to determine keywords

1. Software Name

Many applications actually contain some important keywords in their names, so the name is a good entry point. Generally speaking, you should add some high-traffic and high-difficulty keywords to your application.

2. Software Description

Take a closer look at your competitors’ app descriptions. Some apps are likely to contain potential keywords in their descriptions, but it’s worth noting that the Appstore algorithm may not consider the text in the app description as a ranking factor.

3. Software Evaluation

Sometimes there are potential keywords in the high-scoring reviews of competitors’ products. Start looking from the five-star reviews because the five-star reviews are the most intuitive in terms of players’ needs.

4. Google Trends

1. Get keyword data

Now that you have a keyword vocabulary, you must then get specific app store data. Many ASO tools will show you keyword traffic and keyword difficulty. This step is critical. After that, you need to obtain the traffic and difficulty of each keyword. This is very important because before entering the second step, you need to clear all the keywords with zero traffic in the keyword library (or put them in a pending area, because some keywords are likely to gain traffic again in the future. Who would have thought that Flappy Bird would suddenly become popular?). Depending on your game type, and the information you collected using the ASO tool, average the scores for iPhone and iPad to get an aggregate difficulty/traffic number.

2. Choose your keywords wisely

The Appstore limits the length of keyword lists to 100 characters. Within this limited length, we need to decide which keywords to use. The ultimate goal of all these actions is to select appropriate keywords from the keyword library, which will bring effective downloads. First, we must remember:

High relevance + appropriate difficulty + average traffic = increased downloads

Appropriate difficulty: We need some keywords that are not too difficult to rank for, because our product itself is basically unknown on the Appstore. We are not Angry Birds.

Some traffic: We need keywords with a certain amount of search volume, otherwise we will waste 100 characters of space and no traffic will bring no downloads.

At this stage, we usually have two choices, either choose keywords with high traffic or choose difficult keywords. Which one should I choose? Maybe your answer could be to choose keywords with high traffic.

3. Difficulty of choosing keywords

Assuming this is your first app, it is recommended that you start thinking about keyword scoring from now on, ranking all your keywords with traffic, and grading their difficulty. The following algorithms will affect your software ranking:

1. Total downloads (current and previous versions)

2. Download momentum (download acceleration)

3. Number of comments (positive, negative and historical comments)

4. Player activity (how often the app is opened)

5. Abandonment rate (ratio of apps deleted)

6. Click-to-download rate (how many downloads come from search downloads)

Generally speaking, hitting the top ten most trafficked keywords in our app requires a lot of testing and evaluation, so don’t expect to nail the keywords you want in one go. ASO optimization takes time and requires constant monitoring and tweaking. It’s an evolving process.

In addition, the Appstore frequently changes their algorithms, so we need to be able to respond and modify quickly. Choosing a highly relevant, low difficulty keyword with at least some search volume is your best bet. Each time you update your keyword list you will gain more results, so give up after your first submission and keep filtering.

4. Difficulty Level

If your software is already online, now is the time to break down your keyword ranking list. Ideally, you should keep an eye on the impact of keywords on downloads. This information is valuable because it will help you make good guidance for subsequent decisions. Knowing your keyword ranking is also important for you to determine the difficulty level later. We have ranked the difficulty levels below. Sorting out difficulty levels can help you quickly narrow down your list of potential keywords.

1. Target keyword: (difficulty less than 2, and ranking less than 10), this is your first choice, this keyword gives you the opportunity to appear in the top ten search results;

2. Alternative keywords: (Difficulty between 2-4, and ranking between 10-30) These are your alternatives. If you can’t identify enough target difficulty keywords, then you can fill your list with these keywords.

3. Exclude keywords: (difficulty greater than 4, ranking greater than 30): These are the keywords you need to exclude. These keywords have little chance of getting you any downloads.

Ideally, you should have enough target keywords to choose from. If you don’t have enough alternative keywords, it is recommended to re-read the first article. The real beginning is when the game is put on the shelves. From the moment the game is put on the shelves, you should always track and pay attention to your keyword rankings, pay attention to comments, rankings, downloads and other elements, and determine which keywords you really need.

5. Traffic is king

So far, we have been talking about difficulty and relevance most of the time. In fact, traffic is definitely very important. Without traffic, there is nothing. It’s just that when there is a certain amount of traffic, we will pay more attention to difficulty and relevance. For example, you only have one keyword to fill in, but you have three potential keywords to choose from. If they are all highly relevant and the same difficulty, then you should naturally choose the keyword with high traffic.