App Store Optimization — Tips & Tricks
If you’re brand new to App Store Optimisation(ASO), you’d probably be wondering what it is. Essentially, what it means is Search Engine Optimisation for the App Store.
We at HelloMeets recently invited Steve P. Young, Founder at appmasters.co (App marketing consultants specializing in app store optimization, influencer marketing, app store features, content marketing and PR)to share his insights about ASO through an FB Live session with our Community.
Here are some excerpts from the video!
Simplifying ASO
Think of App Store Optimisation, just like you would think about Google in terms of your website, your web page title and the content on it. Your App name is like the title for your Google. You’re just trying to optimise for what you think is going to be the most valuable (in terms of traffic) keywords in your app name and in the keyword fields.
Don’t just think about keywords — It is important, but you’ve got to have a good App because even though there are different hacks out there to rank well for certain keywords if you’re app doesn’t hold up, then it’s not going to sustain that high ranking. Make sure you have that balance.
Once you have that balance ready to go, then your app name is going to be the highest weight that you have. And for that, you want the most valuable keywords in your app name.
Our Community asked lots of questions to Steve. Sharing them with you all here —
Q. What keyword tools do you use for keyword research on App Store and Google Play?
A. After having used a bunch of them, my favorites so far are SensorTower & Mobile Action. You can look at App Annie as well if you want to learn about your competitors. It reveals keywords that competitors are ranking well for.
Tip: The traffic scores on SensorTower are probably more correct and more accurate than on MobileAction but the difficulty scores on MobileAction are probably more correct. So, if you can pay for both, then you should definitely use both.
You might find this useful: 7 Advance App Store Optimization Strategies by Steve Young
Some keyword Tips & Tricks
- Spanish Mexico trick: If you’re focused on the US Store, the US App Store indexes the Spanish-Mexican localization. So if you put English keywords in that localization, different app name, different sub title, different keywords, than your US localization, you can double the number of keywords that you’re targeting
- With iOS 11 coming up, the app name is getting shorter to 30 characters so make sure you’re abiding with those and repeat whatever keyword you want to target into the sub title
Q. How long should a description be?
A. On the Apple side, it’s not indexed so far but with iOS 11 it might be indexed.
For an Android App, you have 4,000 characters. You should probably play around with all of them as much as possible. Concentrate on select impactful keywords.
Tip: On iOS Steve goes for a lot of keywords say 50 keywords and phrases but for Google Play shrink that to 10–15.
Steve says: “What I’ve seen at AppMasters while helping some of our clients who were already at #3 reach #1 for keyword on Google Play is that short description, long description and the first few characters of the description are really important. So, I tend to repeat whatever keyword I’m targeting in the App Name, the short description and the first sentences of the long description”.
Q. How to do competition research? Some apps in the niche have 5 million downloads and they were launched just 3 months back, how do we reverse engineer their ASO strategy?
A. If you see an app suddenly take off then it could mean that they’ve thrown in a lot of money at the app. So unless you have a big budget, the best way to do market research is to download the app & look through the reviews.
Tip: You could go through App Annie to see which keywords they’re targeting.
Know that if any App just jumps from nowhere like the Sarahah App, then usually they’re throwing a lot of money at it and it could be anywhere from 50 to 100 thousand dollars a day to get into the top chart.
Q. How does Google decide ranks in play store?
A. Google is doing a lot because they’re so smart and they come from within the search world. They’re focused on figuring out retention & uninstalled rates and their algorithm is a lot more sophisticated than the iOS.
Q. Can you shed some light on the App Store Algorithms? What are the main ranking signals?
A. There are a couple of different variables:
- App name
- Keywords that you’re using
- Your attention
- Reviews that you have
- Length of time the app has been on the app store
Tip: In terms of the algorithms, the heaviest weight is going to be on the app name.
For example: At AppMasters, on an average, they increased downloads for their clients from 50% to almost 400%. The biggest way to do it is to have the keywords that you’re targeting in the app name itself.
Q. Would frequently updating the app screenshots help in increasing app rank?
A. Yes, it would. You should do A/B testing on Google Play with your screenshots and then figure out which one converts better.
We did that for a client and found out that their icon needs to be updated and after that, their downloads increased by 50% — By just changing the icon!!
These little things come into play and you need to figure out what works. But don’t change too many things at once because then you won’t know what exactly is driving the growth.
Q. Which all growth hacking strategies can we adopt to increase app downloads on a budget?
Steve’s favorite is Paid to Free Strategy but unfortunately, it doesn’t work on Android. It works for both paid and free apps on iOS.
How it works…
Essentially if you have a paid app you make it free for a day. Make sure you pitch on AppAdvise and BGR (Boy Genius Report.com). That drives tremendous amounts of downloads. Then on the next day, make your app paid again. AppMasters did this for a client and we got 33,000 downloads for their 12$ paid app and an additional 1,000$ revenue. The day it was free, it drove all those downloads and then because it spiked in the rankings, we were able to get an additional 1,000$.
For your free app, you can make one of your in-app purchases (non-consumables like a remove ad, additional levels feature) free for a day.
You might find these interesting: How to Growth Hack a Paid App & How to Generate 100K Downloads With An Apps Gone Free Campaign -By Steve Young
Q.Would you recommend relaunching an existing app?
A. Downloads are one thing, but it depends on how many users you have. If you do not have many users, then it might be better to relaunch the app as a new app. That way you can try to get an Apple feature or you could do a brand new ASO on it as well. That’s the pros. The cons would be losing out on the reviews that you’ve already got along with the amount of time you’ve already been on the app store.
Tip: If it’s a non-game app then keep that version only but if it’s a game app then you should probably relaunch as a brand new app as it’s easier for a new game to get featured by Apple compared to an updated game.
Don’t forget to clap if you liked reading this!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Thank you to Steve P. Young for sharing his insights with us!!
Stay tuned to HelloMeets’ upcoming events here: www.hellomeets.com
