Spanish Keywords On The United States App Store

This article was originally published on the WordData blog.

The United States App Store is the biggest there is. The number of downloads you need to reach the top 25 apps in the US store is five times higher than the one needed for the UK App Store and three times higher for the Japanese App Store.

This store is indeed heavy in competition, making marketing your app difficult or expensive. But, it’s also the biggest App Store by downloads. Therefore, it’s essential to do App Store Optimization for the English localization.

After your keyword research, you might have found some very interesting keyphrases to aim for. Sometimes, you won’t be able to place them all in your App Name and Keywords. If your marketing strategy is focused on the US, there’s a way to get more space for keywords in this country — the App Store searches for Spanish keywords on the United States.

Stores and Languages

First things first. Since this method can be a bit confusing, you need to understand the difference between the App Stores for each country and the Localizations you can choose from on iTunes Connect.

Each of the 155 countries Apple supports has an exclusive App Store. These stores act as separate entities — the App Store ranking algorithm just uses data from inside the country’s App Store. Ranking #1 for a country does not affect other countries’ rankings. At least not directly, since being #1 in a country generates enough viral online buzz to make people in other countries download your app, too.

Also, each store has to respect their country’s laws and have exclusive content, be it music, movies, TV series, books, or apps.

One Language, Several Stores

By quickly changing stores on iTunes for PC or Mac, you’ll notice that several stores share languages — exactly like their respective countries. Since citizens from these countries speak the same language, what’s the point of making different app metadata for them?

Good luck uploading five screenshots for five screen sizes for 155 countries. That’s why when publishing your app on the iOS App Store, you find the option to localize per language, not country.

There are some exceptions: when a dialect is spoken by really large communities or the countries sharing the language are very culturally different. One of the most obvious cases is Brazil: the Portuguese language there evolved in such a different way from the European Portuguese that Brazilians won’t consume content in that dialect anymore.

Although it is the same language on paper, it sounds pretty different. Brazilians could feel the publisher is treating them as second class citizens when being fed content in European Portuguese. Besides, several nouns have different meaning, so your Portuguese keywords might have very different metrics (including relevance!) in Brazil.

For these countries, Apple created a localization option especially for them. These are the already mentioned Brazilian Portuguese, Australian English, Canadian English, Canadian French, Mexican Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and UK English. All other countries use one of the existent central languages.

Spanish Keywords On The United States Store

As you might have noticed, there are two Spanish localizations for you to choose from on iTunes Connect: (European) Spanish and Mexican Spanish. The first is used in Spain, and the other in Mexico and Latin America.

In the United States, there are over 40 million native Spanish speakers — people who will consume media in Spanish. To put this into perspective, this means the US is one of the top five countries with native Spanish speaking people in the world.

Apple noticed that, and noticed how likely those people are to search in Spanish. So they decided to link metadata from a Spanish localization to searches made in the United States, i.e. the App Store searches for Spanish keywords on the United States searches. The interesting thing here is that they’ve chosen the Spanish localization, not the Mexican Spanish, the country where most of these American Spanish-speakers come from.

But in this interesting choice lies opportunity for app developers.

The thing is, they don’t search for Spanish words themselves, but for anything you write on the Spanish (searchable) metadata fields. It means that, if you write 100 characters worth of keywords in English, you’ll have more English keywords to rank for in the United States. Which is great considering it’s the most competitive App Store in the world.

Besides, in the App Store, it’s all about concentration, focusing your marketing efforts. Since downloads grow exponentially with the search results positions, it’s better to have a good position in a country with a medium-high lifetime value, like the US, instead of hitting mediocre positions in several countries.

The Limits

Of course, there are downsides to it.

You can’t optimize for Spain anymore

First, and the most obvious, is you kill your optimization for Spain. Therefore, if you plan on advertising in Spain or you have a nice, steady income from this country, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot writing all the metadata in English.

English and Spanish localization keywords won’t be combined to form keyphrases

When deciding which keyword goes anywhere, pay a lot of attention if you’re not separating your keyphrases with the Atlantic Ocean. If you’re aiming for the keywords “amazing red car” and “gorgeous red car,” for example, I seriously recommend leaving “amazing, gorgeous, red, car” in the same localization, be it English or Spanish.

If you don’t and, say, leave “amazing” alone by itself on the Spanish localization, App Store users will never be able to find you with the search query “amazing red car.” You either bring “amazing” to English or repeat “red, car” to the Spanish localization.

Spanish, not Mexican Spanish

I know I’ve already said that, but I can’t stress this point enough. If you don’t get this right and use the Mexican Spanish for English keywords, you will not only not increase exposure in the United States but also destroy your optimization for the dozens of Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.

In fact, that’s why this technique is feasible. Since the United States App Store looks for keywords on the Spanish localization, the worst loss you have is Spain, not 600 million people’s worth of countries.

Conclusion

By now, you must be thinking “gee, this sounds very black-hatty”. Well, I’ve never heard or experienced Apple reviewers complaining about that (and it’s not like they’re not used to blacklist keywords or anything). Maybe that’s because we’re not breaking any rules — since all apps are getting more exposure from the Spanish keywords anyway. Besides, you have lots of downsides to consider before jumping into it.

This method is great if you’re planning an advertising campaign on the US App Store. By focusing all your App Store Optimization to that country, you will increase even more the organic exposure you get from all the paid installs — therefore, greatly decreasing the effective Cost per Install.

So, what about you? Are you considering using Spanish to boost your app in the US? Tell us in the comments below!

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Learn more about App Store Optimization (ASO) on the WordData blog.

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