Improve App Results App Store Optimization or ASO is the best way to ensure your app appears in app store search results and rises to the top of the search results page, but how can an e-marketer improve their app’s appearance in the app store?
Definition of improving application results
App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process of improving the visibility of your app within an app store and increasing app download rates. The main app stores are the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android.
App optimization helps your app rank and appear better in app store search results and increases your click-through rate (CTR). This means you need to convince people to actually click on your app in the app store once they find it. You can do this by:
- Optimize your app name.
- Improve your app description and title.
- Application icon.
- Screenshots from the app.
- App evaluation.
Once people click on your app’s app store page, you need to make sure they download it or make a purchase. This piece of ASO is known as “transformation rate streamlining” (CRO).
.
Ways to improve application results
To help you boost your app marketing strategy and improve your app store ranking, we’ve put together a list of 10 tips and tricks to improve your app ASO, many of which are related to the well-known SEO strategies that marketers know and love.
1. Understand your customer and your competition.
How well do you know your customers and competitors? An ASO strategy relies on understanding how your customers use your app, along with a deep insight into competing apps. To get started, ask yourself:
- What language do my customers naturally use?
- How would they describe my app?
- What are the most important reasons to download and use my app?
- What is our competitive advantage?
- What keywords are my competitors targeting?
- How easy is it to compete against these apps for the same keywords?
- Should I target obvious keywords or less obvious (and less trafficked) keywords?
Your ASO technique begins with imagining your client’s perspective.
Your goal is to improve your app’s visibility in app store searches and target those keywords that bring in the most traffic. The best way to identify these optimal keywords is to conduct user research and see what search terms made your app appear to competitors and the language they use to describe it.
It’s important to research your competitors to determine which keywords are being targeted by apps similar to yours. You can then decide if it makes sense to target these same keywords or a separate set of valuable keywords. You also need to decide if it makes more sense to rank in the top 10 for a few highly competitive keywords or to rank #1 for keywords with lower search volume.
2. Choose the correct name for the application.
Choosing a unique name for your app isn’t just a branding thing; it helps you get the best results with ASO. Including relevant keywords in your title (app name) can dramatically improve your app’s search results on the App Store. In fact, our friends at TUNE recently studied the top 25 ranking positions on the App Store and found that apps with a relevant keyword in their title ranked 10.3% higher than apps without a keyword in the title.
Titles in the App Store can be up to 255 characters long, which allows for a lot of keywords or related words. However, don’t take this as an opportunity to cram every keyword you can think of into your title; after all, your app name is, after all, the first thing a user will see on the App Store. However, titles will typically be truncated after character 23 in the App Store and character 30 in Google Play (including spaces). App titles for apps pinned to your phone’s navigation menu or home screen are truncated after 11 characters in the App Store and 14 characters in Google Play.
To ensure that users can clearly identify your app, try to keep your app name short and easy to pronounce. You can enhance this short title by using non-essential keywords after the name, which is usually preceded by a dash or vertical bar, to associate your app with specific keywords.
3. Choose your keywords well
Although app search engine optimization strategies apply to all stores, when it comes to different app stores, the App Store and Google Play Store have completely different approaches when it comes to ASO keywords.
App Store
The App Store has a 100-character keyword field. It uses your title and any keywords or keyword phrases you include in those 100 characters exclusively to determine the search terms your app will appear for. It’s important to use all of the characters and carefully research your keywords to maximize your store visibility and increase user engagement from Organic Traffic.
Google Play
On the other hand, Google Play Store takes a more modern SEO approach. Google analyzes your app description to extract relevant keywords. In this scenario, you are given 4,000 characters to describe it in your desired language. This is your chance to use keywords that are relevant to your app’s niche, but don’t over-replicate keywords; instead, distribute keywords evenly throughout the description.
4. Writing a compelling description
We recommend focusing most of your writing energy on the first three lines of your description to grab the reader’s attention as soon as they click on your app. With the increasing number of apps on the market, customers will likely have a few—if not several—options to consider when evaluating your apps. You can make their decision easy by describing your app in an engaging and useful way and highlighting the most important reasons and features of your app and why they should use it.
5. Shine with a distinctive app icon
When designing your app icon, it’s important to note that the App Store and Google Play differ in their approach to app icons and presentation. Both stores have different standards for the ideal size, geometry, and color scheme for app icons designed to blend in with the rest of the OS.
No matter what operating system you’re designing your app icon for, you need an icon that can stand out from the competition. The icon should be clear enough to convey to the user what your app does, even in its miniature form in the app drawer. As such, don’t overdo your icon design with unnecessary words or logos that take extra time for the user to understand.
6. Include screenshots and videos
You can upload up to five screenshots for your iOS app and up to eight screenshots for your Android app, but be aware that the first 2-3 screenshots will appear in the gallery on the app download page, so you should choose these screenshots carefully to highlight the maximum benefits of your app to the user and be powerful enough to convince the user to browse additional screenshots and download it.
7. Determine the target country for your app
Both the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store allow you to specify the target country for your app to make it easier for users in specific countries to discover it. This way, you can increase both visibility, conversions, and click-through rates, as more customers will find your app using keywords in their language and you’ll see up to 767% more downloads after seeing a welcome page in their language.
8. Increase traffic with external promotion
App indexing allows you to increase downloads and visibility on the app store directly from the search engine results page. Based on the experience of many publishers, they have proven that App Indexing is the most effective strategy to drive traffic to the app page.
Although a relatively new concept, app indexing is the process of making your app appear when a user searches for it using Android or iOS via the App Store or any mobile search engine. This enables customers who see you in the search result to click on your link and share it on social media platforms or on their website. Therefore, indexing helps in re-sharing and promoting your content in new channels.
9. Update frequently
After analyzing the top searched and most visible apps on the App Store (500 apps), we found that they update their app on a consistent basis, every 30-40 days. However, keep in mind that every time you update your iOS app, your ratings are reset – however, your rank is temporarily lowered. As a result, frequently updated iOS apps experience slightly higher fluctuations in their App Store rankings, while frequently updated Android apps experience lower fluctuations.
10. Encourage evaluations and feedback
Apps with the highest ratings keep their customers engaged and solicit feedback from app users to determine how to update the app in the future.
What is the difference between SEO and ASO?
ASO is also known as App Store Optimization, both terms have in common keyword optimization, backlinking, and conversion optimization. The main differences between ASO and SEO are that ASO is used for mobile apps while SEO is for websites.
Web browser SEO factors, such as Google Search, include over 200 aspects, and the list continues to expand. While the list of ASO ranking factors is much shorter, many people are still unsure of which factors play a role in improving app results!
Reasons to care about improving application results
There are over 5 million apps available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It’s very likely that your app will face a lot of strong competition.
The main goal of app optimization is to increase downloads and loyal users. The first step to increasing your downloads is to make them easily discoverable by the right users. But how do you do that?
To understand how to boost your search visibility, you first need to understand how people search for and find apps.
Benefits of ASO:
1. Improve your visibility in app stores
Individuals can’t download and utilize your application in the event that they can’t track down it. So no matter how great your app is, if it’s not easy to discover, you won’t achieve the app success you deserve. You need to start improving your app results.
2. Continuous discovery by users interested in your app
It’s not enough for your app to be found, it needs to be seen by the right users who are searching for an app like yours. App Search Engine Optimization (ASO) ensures that you show up and reach more potential users who are looking to download your app when they search for relevant keywords that people will use to find your app.
3. Continuously increase organic app downloads.
When you use a good ASO strategy, it will undoubtedly boost and ensure your app’s visibility in the app store in the long run. This is because when people search for keywords related to your app, they will always find your app. With constant monitoring and updating of your app and continuing to use a strong ASO strategy, you can be sure of the success of your app.
4. Reduce advertising costs and enjoy continued growth.
Instead of spending money on advertising, you can lower your user acquisition costs by focusing on organic traffic growth with ASO. Improving your app results not only saves you money, but also ensures continued growth.
5. Increase app revenue and conversion rates
There are different ways to monetize your app including in-app ads, in-app purchases, and subscription models. As a result, many of you may decide to run ads to bring in more users and hence, more revenue.
But if your app doesn’t show up on the first page of the app store, and if it doesn’t convince users to actually download your app, your ad spend is wasted. Remember, app optimization helps improve your conversion rate and get users to click through to download.
How people find and download apps
People often search for specific apps in app stores like Google Play Store and Apple App Store. 70% of mobile users use search to find new apps. What’s more, 65% of all downloads happen directly after a search. App Store search is clearly the most popular way to discover new apps.
An app’s search ranking position is directly related to the number of downloads; the higher your app ranks in search results, the more relevant it appears to users. Higher positioned applications additionally get more downloads on the grounds that clients regularly don’t look at each item and ordinarily take a gander at the initial 5 applications.
This is the main reason why achieving a top rank is so important to the success of your app. Without Application Store Streamlining, you’re passing up the greatest showcasing channel for versatile applications and games.
Learning ASO and investing your time to understand and master it will be your secret weapon to excel in the application. It achieves long-term results in a sustainable manner.
How App Search Engines Work
Once you have developed your app and learned the basics of app marketing, you need to decide where to publish your mobile app or game. Most developers choose the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. You may publish on both if you decide to develop your app for both platforms.
Let’s take a look at two of the major app stores.
The difference between Google Play and App Store and the different ranking factors between them
Both stores have the same purpose: they provide a platform for users to search for and download apps or games. But that doesn’t mean they work the same way. Now you need to know the main differences and algorithms that set them apart.
Key contrasts between Application Store and Google Play:
One of the main differences between the store and Google Play involves the publishing aspect.
Both Apple and Google have carried out an application audit cycle to guarantee that they have great applications in their stores. However, Apple’s app review process takes longer than Google’s and you should always keep in mind that the app is cached for 3 days when a new app or update is released. Once your app is approved, it will be live in the stores within 24 hours.
Although keywords are essential for ASO on both stores, they are evaluated differently. The ordering system for Google Play works in basically the same manner to that of Google Search.
This means that Google takes into account all text elements when indexing your app’s keywords. You will also need to repeat the keywords 3-5 times across all areas within the app in order to rank.
On the other hand, Apple App Store provides a specific field for your keywords, unlike Google Play where you cannot repeat keywords across any fields for iOS apps.
The most important tools and sites to know your application’s ranking and start improving it
There are many ASO tools that can help you improve your app results. Some of them focus on a specific aspect of app performance improvement like app performance or A/B testing while others combine both and provide a tool to plan how to work on improving results. Let’s take a look at a few of the best ASO tools on the market.
1. App Radar
App Radar is an ASO tool for Android and iOS apps. One of the main strengths of App Radar is that it helps you optimize all the factors that influence the optimization process of your apps.
This app is a complete ASO tool that covers all the steps necessary to work on improving app results organically: from analysis, optimization, publishing to monitoring and monetization. The tool is powered by artificial intelligence, and the easy interface saves you features and time and helps you rank your app in the store.
2. Appsflyer
Appsflyer is a portable attribution and promoting investigation stage.
It is an SDK (Software Development Kit) available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone apps. Once installed, it provides comprehensive conversion data for your app including retention campaigns and user acquisition. This allows you to see where your app is getting downloads and which sources are most profitable. Based on this information, you can make decisions to optimize your marketing strategy and optimize your advertising costs.
3. Split Metrics
Split Metrics is a tool that focuses on A/B testing and conversion optimization. The idea behind it is to increase conversions from your app by optimizing screenshots, icons, and other data. It also allows you to identify what works for your target audience and make necessary improvements. A/B testing is another useful way to track user engagement with your app and increase installs.
How to find out the keywords for the application
It can be a daunting task trying to identify all the different keywords that users search for in the App Store. To use when trying to improve your app results. Not only are keywords important for helping your app show up for relevant searches in the App Store, keywords are also important for explaining what your app is about to people when they look at the description in as few words as possible.
1. App Store Searches
Whether you’re searching for iOS or Android, you can simply use a search for a keyword you’ve already defined in the App Store to find new keywords and phrases. This is done by autofilling or searching for related keywords.
Autofill search results is a popular way to see what users are searching for based on the characters or words you’ve already typed.
Keep in mind that you will come across many autofill keywords and irrelevant keywords. You should analyze the keywords through the suggestions to pull out the ones that are relevant.
2. Competitor applications
Looking at related competing apps will give you an idea of the keywords being used in searches, it’s an easy way to research and choose keywords to target.
3. ASO Tools
Naturally, the most useful place to do keyword research is with ASO tools where you can see data on competitor apps and start figuring out which keywords to target. However, most tools cost around $50 or more per month to track around 100 keywords. Here are some of our favorite ASO tools:
AppTweak
It is a great tool for discovering keywords and pulling keywords from user searches, related keywords and keywords used for Apple ads. AppTweak also compares keywords of different competitors side by side.
It is also very useful for tracking keyword performance, showing the ranking of your chosen keywords in the app search engines for each competitor, allowing you to download daily ranking data for each keyword and giving you the ability to optimize your keyword mix across your app title and mobile OS keyword space to get the best return on character count.
Mobile Action
Among the many features of this useful tool, Mobile Action has a new feature that shows keyword performance over time, showing the worst, best, and average rankings for up to 100 keywords where your app automatically appears when users search in app stores.
Steps to improve your app ranking in Google Play & App Store
Now that you know where you want to publish your app it’s time to start improving your app’s visibility using App Search Optimization, follow these steps:
1. Create a clear App Store Optimization strategy
Research your competitors and learn about the competitive market. It is essential to understand your users so that you can use this research when preparing your app information. What keywords do they use when searching for apps similar to yours? What language do they use? When you have this data, you can continue on toward the subsequent stage.
2. Choose the right name for your app.
Your app name is what every user sees first. That’s why it’s important to choose your app name wisely and make sure your app title is relevant, easy to read, and unique. If the title is catchy, people will remember it, giving your app a higher value. While picking the right name, remember to think about the quantity of characters.
When choosing an application name or title, you must consider the following:
- The name should be relevant to your application.
- readable.
- unique.
- 50 characters on Google Play.
- 30 characters on the App Store.
3. Know how to search for keywords for the application
The goal here is to create a set of keywords that are relevant to your app and that users are searching for. Remember, a keyword is a word or phrase that people use to search for apps in the App Store and Google Play.
When conducting your keyword research consider the following questions:
- What are the key features of your app or game?
- What are synonyms that describe features?
- What are the names of similar apps?
- What is your app category?
- What terms do people commonly use in this category?
Finding the right keywords is an ongoing process, so don’t overthink your keyword assignment in the beginning.
4. Writing an application description
Writing the article description ( meta tags ) is very important for Google Play because the description is one of the main places where Google finds keywords to rank your app. This does not mean that you can put all the keywords you find in the description but you should use the keywords and related ones in a smooth and consistent manner. Try to integrate your keywords into sentences naturally and this way your description will be easy and attractive to readers and relevant to the algorithm.
Apple won’t index keywords from your iOS app description. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the metadata field. You can still use it as an opportunity to show people more of the benefits and value of your app.
Ideally, your description should be informative, easy to understand, and clearly organized to display features in bullet points as well as emoji. Just remember that descriptions are limited to 4,000 characters in both stores.
Make sure your app description includes:
- Full information about it.
- It is easy for people to understand.
- Clearly organized (bullet lists, emojis).
- Includes keywords specific to Google Play.
- Up to and not exceeding 4000 characters.
5. Design an attractive application icon
An incredible method for testing what truly works for your interest group is A/B testing. The idea behind this is to design more than one icon with distinct differences and see which one gets the most clicks. For example, it might be interesting to test which colors or fonts users prefer. Once you have this information, you can adapt your icon design accordingly.
How to Choose Between App Icons for A/B Testing
- Analysis and brainstorming.
- Create differences.
- Run the experiment.
- Evaluate the results.
- Implement changes.
- Start follow-up trials.
6. Take screenshots and videos from the app
When it comes to screenshots, you can first choose between portrait and landscape layouts. This means you can decide whether you want to have a portrait or landscape screenshot. Screenshots should always show how users use your app.
App screenshots and videos give you the opportunity to showcase the functionality of your mobile app or game and how it is used to show the best parts of your app which encourages users to download the app.
Your screenshots and videos must:
- Shows what your app looks like.
- Highlights its key features.
- Tell a visual and informative story about the app.
- Attention should be paid to layout and size requirements for images and videos.
7. Publish and display the application on the application stores
If you want your app or game to be available to users around the world, you need to make sure that the app is attractive to your target audience and utilize your current metadata, watchwords or screen captures and make an interpretation of them into different dialects.
But if you prefer to target users of a specific country, this is called Localization.
Why is Localization important?
By specifying a specific country for your app, you can improve your app store results and expand your app reach. Basically, you can make your app available to users searching in their native language. While showing your app to everyone around the world can lead to more downloads and revenue, users will see an app in their native language as more trustworthy and therefore, encourage them to download it.
8. App Ratings and Reviews
User ratings and reviews are an integral part of improving app rankings. Both stores take into account the comments and ratings that users leave for your app. The better your rating, the more relevant your app is to the stores and the higher it will rank.
How to get ratings for your app?
Users tend to leave reviews if they really like the app. Notwithstanding, you can likewise urge them to do as such inside the actual application.
If you have a game, a good time to ask for a review is after the user has beaten a level. Yet, be cautious, you can get punished in the event that you push it excessively hard. On iOS, for instance, you can request a survey up to three times each year.
Now, you have learned everything about ASO and its meaning, the steps to improve application results when searching for them, the best tools and the method of extracting keywords for your application, and how to improve application results and rank your application in very easy and smooth steps.
