When a promotion operator takes over an App, how should he formulate an optimization plan?

ASO has theoretical content related to its optimization principles, as well as practical operation methods that are specific to every detail. But the connection between the two is not direct and clear. It is easy to read a lot of articles about App Store algorithms and look at a lot of optimization cases, but still don’t know how to put the principles into practice. This article will no longer talk about theory or step-by-step operation procedures, but will talk about how to connect the theory and practice of ASO - the methodology of ASO optimization.

1. Perfect ASO Optimization Results

People often ask questions in the background, such as whether the more coverage the better, whether the more popular the covered words the better, and whether the higher the search ranking the better.

The answer is simple, yes! But the three dimensions are not independent and divided. For example, an App may have a coverage of 10,000+ words, but if these words are either too unpopular (no one searches for them) or too low in ranking (cannot be seen after searching), this coverage is actually useless and will not bring any traffic or downloads. The number of 10,000+ is just there to fool newbies.

So a perfect ASO optimization result is like this:

Covering 10,000+ keywords with a popularity of more than 8,000, and all ranked first in the search results^_^

But this is impossible (of course, it’s fun just to think about it). Considering the budget and competition, it is necessary to screen keyword optimization - that is, to develop an optimization plan. When an ASOer takes over the optimization work of an App, making a suitable optimization plan is not just about simulating a 100-character keyword setting according to the strategy of screening and grouping keywords, but also about comprehensively judging the optimization expectations and current optimization status of the App.

2. Optimize Expected Value

The expected value of optimization is the effect that we hope this app will achieve through optimization, and it should be reflected in observable and calculable data. These data will become our optimization goals.

1. Optimization goals

As shown in the figure above:

• The ultimate goal of ASO is to get more downloads in the App Store;
• Increasing the App's exposure in the App Store (i.e., exposure traffic) and optimizing conversion rates are means to increase downloads;
• The two indicators of keyword coverage and keyword search ranking can help ASOers monitor and optimize search traffic at the data level;
• Keyword popularity, search result number, top search results and hot search records assist in the formulation of ASO optimization plans;

Additionally, increased downloads will lead to higher chart rankings, which in turn can provide additional sources of downloads.

Therefore, before optimizing, you should not only understand what these data dimensions mean, but also use these data to have an expected goal for the optimization results of each step, such as "increase the coverage to 4000+ in the first optimization" or "optimize keyword X to No. 2 this week."

2. How to set optimization goals

Every product is unique, so there are many things to consider when setting your own product optimization goals.

a. Product industry

Different industries have different optimization goals. Taking keyword coverage as an example, the target coverage of apps in popular industries and vertical niches is different. This is because the number of words in different industries is different. After being filtered by search engines, popular industries may have tens of thousands of search keywords, while small industries may only have a few thousand industry keywords.

b. Download volume requirements

Although the ultimate goal of optimization is download volume, products have different requirements for download volume. Some require long-term and stable downloads, which requires optimization to focus more on cost-effectiveness; some products have marketing or promotion through other channels in the near future and need a short-term but large number of new users, which requires a lot of exposure in the App Store to quickly improve the search rankings of various hot words.

c. Product importance

For example, a company has multiple apps, product A is a blockbuster game promoted during the summer vacation, and product B is another assistant app. In this way, the former is important, and its optimization goal is directly directed to downloads, while the latter is secondary or auxiliary, and its optimization goal is more inclined to protect the brand.

d. Budget

ASO optimization involves simulating search downloads to improve rankings, which requires a certain budget to support. How many words you optimize for (and how difficult those words are to optimize for), what rank you optimize to, and how long you rank for all affect the budget you need.

e. Others

There are many other aspects that limit or affect ASO optimization. For example, if the title needs to match the recent activities, it will not be possible to cover the target keywords and perform subsequent optimization (but it will help the conversion rate). Another example is the optimization experience of ASOers.

3. Optimize the current situation

When an ASOer takes over the optimization work of an app (or even multiple apps), he must first understand the current optimization stage of the product, and then formulate an optimization plan based on the current optimization status and the relevant content of the previous part "How to set optimization goals". Here are the three stages that app optimization may go through:

1. No optimization basis

That is, starting ASO from scratch, such as when the coverage is very low. First of all, we need to know that it is difficult to optimize an App from scratch to the ideal state in one step (but professional and experienced optimizers will greatly shorten this step). This requires ASOers to adjust the coverage and optimization plans many times - the word "optimization" is actually a process of continuous testing and selection. Especially after Apple accelerated its review , high-frequency optimization has become easier to achieve.

2. Have a certain optimization foundation

The app may have entered a stage with obvious benefits, or it may have reached a bottleneck during optimization, and the optimization effect may still be somewhat different from expectations. The optimization effect always fluctuates out of control and encounters various problems:

• A certain word has a large volume but is also costly. How should I make a choice?
• Why did the ranking of a certain word(s) suddenly drop a lot?
• What should I do if my own brand words are taken away from my ranking by competitors?
• …

At this time, ASOers need to use more skills in the ASO knowledge base, not just basic content such as how to expand coverage and improve rankings.

3. Gradually entering a stable state

The product's ASO has been done very well. The good here does not mean that the download volume is particularly large, but that it has basically reached the optimization ceiling at the current stage (such as the budget, policy, algorithm, etc. remain unchanged). Variables that affect optimization results basically do not appear internally, so ASOers need to do more to “maintain”; but they also need to pay attention to possible external factors:

App Store changes, such as abnormal rankings, long-term ranking locks, algorithm updates, etc.;

For hot words that have appeared recently (or are expected to appear), you can consider covering them to increase traffic;

Whether there are any policy changes (refer to the new game review policy at the end of June);

Budget. When budget support changes, the optimization results will also be affected.

But I still can’t help but say that since the optimization effect is already very good and stable, we can even strive for a higher budget!