ASO Tips from Laurie Galazzo, App Tweak’s Marketing Expert

Laurie is Inbound Marketing Manager at AppTweak. Passionate about new technologies and apps, she loves finding new ideas to spread valuable content on App Store Optimization and App Marketing. She’s in charge of the company’s blog, crafting articles helping users to increase their app downloads and rankings. She’s also at the head of the ASO University, teaching App Store Optimization basics through video tutorials, all available for free on the AppTweak blog.

App Store Optimization (ASO) has become increasingly popular over the last few years, as the amount of mobile apps have kept increasing phenomenally on the stores. Indeed, with over 2 millions apps on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, app developers and marketers have no choice but building a powerful app marketing mix including multiple channels and techniques to make their apps stand out.

Users driven by ASO are high-quality users who are most likely going to stick with the app (as long as it is offering a great experience and has a strong retention strategy). This dimension is extremely important since retention and engagement have proven to be determinant of an app’s success nowadays.

In today’s highly competitive world of apps, it is crucial to dedicate enough efforts to ASO which is now one of the most cost-effective solution to increase installs and sales.

– What advice do you feel is most important for app companies getting started with ASO?

One of the most important aspects to understand is that ASO is an ongoing process requiring continuous and regular efforts.

ASO is not a one-shot. To be visible and easily found, apps need to have their metadata and keywords updated regularly. However, too many updates would disadvantage app indexing, as it takes about 3–4 weeks for the algorithm to properly index an app on keywords.

We usually recommend updating ASO every month for optimal results. Plus, in between each release, it is important to frequently (daily if possible) monitor the app’s performance in terms of rankings, keywords rankings and ratings/reviews. It is also essential to track competitive apps and app store trends. The point is to detect new opportunities soon enough and to react in the best way possible to app store changes.

This is why I would highly recommend using a tool like AppTweak, offering a complete solution which includes the audit, the optimization and the monitoring of any app’s ASO performance across countries and over time.

– How can optimizing icon and screenshots improve an app install rate?

Visual elements are extremely important in terms of conversion since they are powerful attention-grabber. With the massive flood of apps, users often feel overwhelmed and lost amongst all the available apps. However, high-quality and well-designed visuals can help the app to stand out from the others.

Indeed, both the icon and the screenshots are important visual assets as they can easily and effectively encourage app users to download the app. The app icon conveys one of the app’s first impression and can be helpful to understand what the app is about, especially once combined with the app title. The screenshots offer additional and concrete information on the app’s purpose and can seduce app store browsers who would want to see more or to try the app.

Since these elements are highly important, it is recommended to A/B test each of these in order to select the most effective version.

– What strategy do you think is best for choosing App Store keywords for ASO?

App keywords are without any doubts the most challenging aspect of ASO. Not only it can be tricky to find the best keywords, finding their right place is also crucial and should be carefully thought.

Keywords are very important on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store but they are not treated the exact same way by the algorithms. If both the stores take keywords from app titles into account for app indexing, they differ for the rest. Indeed, Google Play’s algorithm takes the keywords from the app description into account while the Apple App Store offers a specific keyword field (100 characters max.).

A good keyword would be a popular keyword amongst searches (high volume) with a low competition (the lowest number of app results possible). At the same time, the keyword should be relevant and linked to the app’s concept and purpose.

AppTweak Keyword Tool provides with the Volume (popularity), Competition and KEI (Keywords Efficiency Index) indicators enabling users to find and select the most effective keywords for their apps. Plus, many other available keywords insights and data are provided such as the organic downloads share per keyword; the total number of app results for any keyword; app keywords rankings comparison with competitors; keywords ranking history and much more.

We advise to try ranking on the same keywords as competitive and similar apps and to replace keywords for which the app is targeting but not showing any positive results. Also, it is always better to have a high rank on less popular keywords than a low ranking on highly popular terms.

Our experience at AppTweak has shown us that the strongest keywords should be placed at the beginning of the app name. For the iTunes Connect keyword field, it is better to use single terms, separated by commas without any space. For Google Play, it is recommended to target about 10 keywords and to repeat them in the app description 4–5 times each, combined with other interesting keywords.

– How does one identify which keywords are driving the most traffic. When doing keyword optimization, it tends to feel that each change you make is difficult to measure with the except of overall impressions, views and downloads. It seems that if you are only changing a keyword, that it is challenging to understand the net effect of that change. Do you have any recommendations on how to execute and measure the changing of keywords?

Indeed, it can be challenging to identify and measure keywords performance. However, there exist a few effective ways but these all require the usage of a specific tool offering specific insights, like AppTweak for instance.

First of all, AppTweak offers the distribution of the most organic downloads driven by keywords. This helps to understand which keywords bring the most traffic to the app.

Plus, AppTweak also offers a list of the Top and Worst 10 keywords ranking progression. This enables to see which keywords are having the best ranking progression since the last day, week or month. At the same time, it shows the keywords for which the app is losing ranks and should be replaced.

Of course, it is important to keep track of the app’s total impressions, views and downloads for each keywords set targeted. From there, it would be useful to find correlations between the app’s general performance and its selected keywords.

– How do you track the performance of App Store Optimization?

Multiple metrics need to be tracked in order to measure an app’s ASO performance. As stated above, it is very important to track keywords performance, since these play a huge role in traffic acquisition.

It is also important to measure app rankings over time and across countries in order to see when and where the app is performing the best and the worst.

Of course, app downloads and revenues monitoring is essential in order to calculate ROI and to determine the app’s success. Conversion rates between impressions, views and downloads are also helpful to measure icon’s, app title, description and screenshots’ strength.

Competition monitoring is also important as it enables to understand one’s own app’s performance. Knowing how competitive apps are doing on the store helps getting a thorough understanding of the market. AppTweak download and revenue estimates can be a great help here.

Finally, reviews and ratings are also important metrics to keep track of. It is recommended to try increasing their amount in order to boost app rankings. Of course, the point is to gather as much positive reviews and 4–5 stars as possible.

– What key metrics of an app do you feel you should pay most attention to?

Regarding App Store Optimization, definitely app keywords rankings.

– How can app page a/b testing on the App Store & Google Play help to reduce the cost of acquisition, and optimize marketing spend?

A/B testing is a great way to optimize marketing spend and reduce the cost of acquisition as it gives the opportunity to test multiple assets versions in order to select the most effective one.

For instance, it helps avoiding using ineffective screenshots that would not bring enough conversions. A/B testing can often bring up surprising results that common sense would not have spotted.

A/B testing helps to maximize the results of app marketing efforts in many ways and it should definitely be used in any strategy.

Sign up at RaiseMetrics today to try A/B testing for free to increase your app install rates on App Store and Google Play. Test different icons, screenshots, videos and more with one of the best app store optimization tool online.

Originally published at raisemetrics.com on December 8, 2016.