App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process of optimizing mobile apps for the purpose of achieving a higher rank in the app store search results and top charts rankings. Due to its similarities to search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, app store optimization is also referred to as App Store SEO, App Search Optimization, and Mobile App SEO.
(Note: the tips below include the latest updates for iOS 11.)
The Story behind this App Store Optimization Guide
When I launched my first app onto the app stores a few years back, I thought the app was so awesome that it would get a lot of downloads.
Then I waited, and waited…
Well, in actuality, the opposite happened – there were only a few downloads each day.
Frustrated, I turned to paid advertisement campaigns.
Bonus: If you find the tips below useful, remember to check out this App Store SEO Grader. This tool automates the tedious app store optimization process for your app, and tells you how to get more downloads!
How to do App Store Optimization?
Step 1: Find the right app store keywords
One of the biggest aspects of improving your app store search rankings is the choice of keywords. Thus, your app search optimization efforts should start from implementing the right app store keywords.
a) App Store Keyword Ideas
To start, try and come up with at least 50 app store keywords. Here are some great tools to guide you through the hunt for quality keywords. All you need to do is to provide one keyword, then these tools will provide you many other keywords to consider. And the best part of all – they’re all free!
You can also use Google Trends to check how popular a certain keyword is in different countries. This is very useful if you want to launch your app in specific countries.
Remember that your app store keywords must be relevant to your app. Don’t be tempted to use a popular, but irrelevant keyword to your app. You want your app to be found by users who will actually download and enjoy your app.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Time-sensitive App Store Keywords
Let’s illustrate the idea by an example. If you had used the word, “Rio” (the city, not the movie) in conjunction with its related app store keywords during the 2016 Olympics, you would have definitely received greater exposure for your sports app.
App Store Review Keywords Did you know the words in your app user reviews are indexed by the app store search engine?
This is why review mining is a very good method for getting app store keyword ideas. In addition, app reviews are an extension of the users’ minds and the words within the reviews are highly related to the things users would look for in an app. You will be surprised by the amount of keywords you might discover just by observing app reviews!
There are review analysis tools on the market you can use to identify keywords from app reviews, and this one uses Artificial Intelligence on your user reviews to identify what your users like and don’t like about your app.
b) Optimize Your App Store Keywords
Now with your initial set of app store keywords, it’s imperative you develop a strategy to filter and elect the best keywords for your app. Here are some keyword research tools that can help you with this optimization process. These tools provide the difficulties (or chances) as well as traffic of your app store keywords. In general, carefully select around 25 app store keywords for the next release of your app.
App Store Optimization Tips:
App Store Keyword Optimization Strategy
For a new app, choose the app store keywords with low difficulty and reasonable traffic. They help your app gain the initial momentum. After gaining the initial momentum, start using app store keywords with higher traffic and reasonable difficulty. They help your app stack up more downloads. Work your way up gradually as your app gets more popular.
Long-tail App Store Keywords Use longer app store keyword phrases (i.e. long-tail keywords) to outrank the competition. For example, it is hard to outrank Zynga Poker by the competitive keyword “Poker” (high difficulty). However, you would have a better chance to outrank it by utilizing keyword phrases such as, “Poker Casino”. This is because “Poker Casino” is less competitive (lower difficulty).
Retiring Poor App Store Keywords
If you have already released your app with your target app store keywords, check your current app store keyword ranking. Keep those app store keywords that your app ranks within top 10, and replace the rest with new keywords in your next release.
Step 2: Put the app store keywords in the right places
Now that you have chosen and optimized your app store keywords, you are ready for step 2 of app search optimization: putting the app store keywords in the right places.
There are a couple of metadata where you must fill in the text with your app store keywords.
a) App Name
Name your app in a creative and searchable fashion. Not only is it the first piece of the puzzle in telling your potential users what your app is, it also gets your app in the search results.
According to MobileDevHQ (now renamed to Tune), using keywords in your title can result in up to 10.3% increase of rankings.
Both Google Play and iOS App Store search algorithms scan the app name for keywords when a user performs an app store keyword search and give higher priority to apps with names that contain the search input. As such, it is a good idea to include a few keywords in your app name.
However, moderation is key. Don’t stuff every app store keyword you know into your title or your app will look spammy. You need to find a good balance between keywords and branding.
Also, iOS App Store limits the app name to a maximum of 30 characters in iOS 11, while Google Play Store sets the limit at 50 characters. Thus, efficiency and moderation is the name of the game.
App Store Optimization Tips:
App Name Format
Keep the actual brand name short and sweet. You can then append this short brand name with a few keywords, typically preceded by a dash or a semicolon.
Here are some real examples:
Google Maps – Navigation & Transit
Amazon App: shop, scan, compare, and read reviews
eBay: Buy, Sell, Save! Electronics, Fashion & More
Pandora – Free Music & Radio
The Weather Channel: Alerts, Forecast & Radar
It’s also important to use only URL-friendly characters in your title, particularly in the App Store, as the iOS uses the app name to create your app URL. Also, avoid any special characters in your app name, like the trademark or copyright symbol. They will cause iTunes to refer to your app’s numeric ID to scan for relevant app store keywords instead of your app name.
Did you know? In less than 30 seconds, you can get an App Store Optimization Report of your app here. Just enter your app name, and the report will tell you how to increase your app downloads using app store optimization – it’s free!
b) App subtitle (for iOS App Store only)
App subtitles were introduced in iOS 11, available in the Apple App Store only.
This field appears under your app name, and is limited to 30 characters only.
It is ideal to include some keywords in this field to communicate the value of your app. More importantly, the contents of your subtitle will be indexed in app store search, so be sure to make good use of the app subtitle to cover important keywords.
c) App description (for Google Play Store)
Android developers must take care with the app description in the Google Play Store, as Google pulls keywords from your description to be your app store keywords. It’s important to incorporate keywords in the description in natural and sensible sentences.
Note that keywords in the above-the-fold section (the first few lines) carries more weight than the rest of the app description in Google Play Store keyword search algorithm, so remember to put your main keywords in this section.
Also, Play Store allows rich formatting and emoji in your app description. Make good use of these features, as well as spacing, and bulleted lists to make your description stand out and easy-to-read.
d) App description (for iOS App Store)
The iOS App Store does not search for app store keywords in the app description, but that does not mean iOS developers can be lazy with it.
You should mention the unique values – the provided benefits of the app – in the first three lines, so that visitors can catch them easily from the description preview. If possible, list out all the social proofs, awards, and honorable mentions your app has received. Try to compile the list of complete features in the description box for new visitors, and don’t forget to include your app’s social media links.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Short Description Text
According to StoreMaven, only an average of 5% users will click the “read more” button below the short description on Google Play.
This number is even lower on the iOS App Store, clocking in at only 2%.
This means that every character in the short description counts!
On mobile, you only have 252 characters for this short description.
You don’t want to waste any space here. Avoid blank lines and interrupted sentences.
Tell users what makes your app unique and why they will love it. Add a strong call-to-action text to encourage visitors to install your app.
e) App Promotional Text (available only for iOS App Store)
Like the app subtitle field, the app promotional text was also introduced in iOS 11. It is situated at the top of the description and is limited to only 170 characters.
Though the promotional text is NOT indexed in the app store search, the good news is you can change this text anytime without releasing a new version.
App Store Optimization Tips:
A/B Test on Promotional Text You can use this promotional text to do A/B test of different messages quickly without doing a version update. Once you’ve found the message that gives you the best conversion rate, you can then turn the contents of the message into your app store keywords.
f) App Store Keyword field (available only for iOS App Store)
This metadata decides how your app gets discovered. Fill in the keyword metadata with your selected app store keywords. Follow the rules below and make every character counts!
Use all 100 characters
Separate every keyword by a comma
Avoid space, articles and prepositions
Use singular OR plural, the easier one to rank for
Don’t repeat keyword
Use numbers instead of spelled out words
No need to include the words in your company name, app name and app category names.
App Store Optimization Tips:
App Store Keyword Optimizer You can use the App Store SEO Grader to optimize your app store keyword metadata. The tool applies the above rules to your app store keywords and tells you how to improve.
How To 5X Your iOS App Store Keywords Do you want more app store keyword space for your iOS app? You can get up to 500 characters for your iOS app store keywords using this optimization tip. That is FIVE TIMES more!
g) In-App Purchases
In iOS App Store, the names of in-app purchases (IAP) are indexed in the app store search.
And in iOS 11, each IAP has its own display name, promotional image, and description. In-app purchases can also appear in search results and be featured on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs. You can display a maximum of 20 IAPs on your product page.
To maximize your search exposure, be creative and include some app store keywords in the names of your IAP items.
Step 3: Convert visitors to users
After app store keyword optimization, optimizing the app store page is the next core step of ASO.
The first goal of app search optimization is to increase the app installs. To this end, the app detail page has to be persuasive enough to convert the app store page visitors to app users.
There are a few things related to the app store page that developers have to look out for:
a) App Icon
A better icon can increase your downloads up to 560%!
To design a good icon, keep your design simple and eye-catchy. Do not cram the small space with many items or words. You want people to remember the icon after the first impression. Also, make sure your icon will still look good when it is scaled down to the smallest size required by App Store / Google Play. It should also look good against light and dark background.
To get more design inspirations, browse the top-rated apps in your category and Apple/Google’s top picks. Also, make sure your icon is different from your competitor’s to avoid brand confusion. Contrasting colors, different shapes or adding a frame can also help.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Branded vs Functional Icon If your app is a functional app, use one object to describe your app. If your app has a brand, use the logo to make your brand and your future products recognizable.
According to StoreMaven, 60% of users won’t swipe past your first two screenshot images. A better version of your first two screenshots can increase your conversions by 25%!
To make better screenshots, make sure each screenshot is telling a single message about your app. Show your strongest messages in the first two screenshots. Add short caption text on a clean background into your screenshots and create a positive impression in the viewers’ mind.
Avoid login, registrations, purchase forms, ads and even “Welcome” screen in your screenshots. Make the best use of the screenshots to tell your users why they should love your app.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Vertical Screenshots Keep the screenshots vertical. The users can see more screenshots on the narrow screens when the screenshots are vertical.
Vertical screenshots of Clash of Clans
Optimize Your App Screenshots To optimize your app screenshots, use this App Store SEO Grader. The tool checks your screenshots’ dimensions, count, orientations, and their compatibility with various iOS devices, and tells you how to improve.
c) Preview Video
Making a video may be difficult but it can increase install rates by more than 23% according to StoreMaven. Don’t forget to use a good poster frame (iOS) / feature graphic (Google Play). This graphic has a big impact to whether your visitors would watch your video.
App Store Optimization Tips:
App Marketing Video
Here are some of the essential elements of an effective app marketing video. They are recommended by Apptamin, a company well-known for its app videos and trailers:
Use the first 5 seconds to grab the viewer’s attention
Focus on the best features, instead of all features
Your video should make sense even with the sound turned off
Include a call-to-action
Remember, 80% of users don’t watch past first 12 seconds of the video. Do make sure you keep it short and to the point. Avoid any fade-in and “welcome” type of message at the beginning of your video.
iOS 11 notes:
In the search result page of iOS 11, up to three App Preview videos and/or screenshots can appear, rather than just two as in iOS 10. Videos will always be displayed before screenshots and the first video will now play automatically, but sound will be muted by default.
But how can you get more 5-star ratings for your app?
Delay asking for a rating until there’s a likely moment of constructive feedback. For instance, ask when the user completed a reservation, finished a mission in a game, etc. When the time comes, ask nicely, and don’t beg.
What does that mean? Circa News app is a perfect example. It got 90% 5-star ratings for every major version. Here is a flowchart of how it asks users if they would like to provide feedback:
The key is to encourage satisfied users to leave positive reviews and deflect negative reviews by using a “send feedback” option.
For iOS App Developers:
Since the released of iOS 10.3, you can only ask a user for an app rating three times per year.
To make the most of these scarce rating opportunities, you should first identify your app lovers, and then ask them for ratings at the right time.
You may be wondering:
“How can I identify who are my app lovers?”
You can do so by some simple surveys or dialogs.
For example, you can ask this famous “Net Promoter” question on a 10-point scale:
“How likely is it that you would recommend our app to a friend or colleague?”
Those who respond with a score of 9 to 10 are your “Promoters”, or app lovers.
And they are likely to give you 4 to 5-star ratings when you later ask them for app ratings at the right time.
To do this, you can either develop your own version of rating and feedback flow or simply use the tools like Apptentive.
App Store Optimization Tips:
The Right Paths To A Review
Direct only positive reviews to App Store, and negative reviews to support.
Plus, remember to reply the app reviews and feedback! Only the ones who care about your app will spend the time to leave a comment. Show them you care about them as well! This is a great way to let the visitors know that the developer is active too.
For Google Play, there is a “Reply to a review” option in Developer Console for you to do just that.
For iOS App Store, you can also do this since iOS 10.3 release in March 2017.
On iTunes Connect, go to ‘My Apps > Choose your app > Activity > Ratings and Reviews’.
There you can see the “Reply” option in each of the reviews.
App Store Optimization Tips:
How to Reply to Reviews
Try to reply to all feedback immediately following a major release of your app.
If you can’t respond to every review, try prioritizing reviews with the lowest star ratings or those mentioning technical issues with the most current version of your app.
When you release an app update that fixes issues users mentioned in older reviews, consider replying to the relevant reviews to let them know that your update addressed their concerns.
Once a user indicates that your response answered their question or fixed their technical issue, consider asking them to update their rating and review.
You can also foster deeper engagement by asking users for feedback on future app updates as part of your reply.
But what should I do if I already have many bad reviews?
Luckily, from iOS 11 onward, you can decide when to reset the average ratings and start over with a clean slate.
In iOS 10 or before, you can use these tips about how to sweep bad reviews under the rug. He also tells you how to give a positive first impression about your app by making good use of the five-star reviews.
e) App Size
Try to make your app smaller than 100 MB. It is because users cannot download apps that are more than 100 MB using cellular service.
So for example, if a user on a bus or a train can’t download “now”, it is unlikely the user will write down the name and try again X hours later when they’re home.
Need some proof? This post from appfigures shows that ~98% of the top 100 free and ~62% of paid iOS and Android games can be downloaded are under 100 MB.
Do you think 100 MB is not enough for your app? Take a look at Clash of Clans. Its iOS version is just 85.3 MB.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Make Your App Smaller To reduce the app size, consider compressing some of the graphical assets or make some of the contents downloadable after install.
Compare with the Top 100 Apps Do you want to know how your app size compares to that of the top 100 apps? Use this App Store Optimization tool. It tells you whether your app size falls in the reasonable app size range of the top 100 apps.
f) Update Frequency
Statistics show that there is a high correlation between high ratings and app update frequency. In fact, Releasing regular updates has many benefits. It improves user loyalty and keeps an app top of mind because your app will show up in the updates list in the app stores. Apple and Google also like to see app updates because they show you’re committed to the app and that it’s still being maintained.
For these 25 top iOS apps, the average was about 30 days between updates. I’d recommend at least an update a month, and up to once a week.
Of course, you shouldn’t do an update just for the sake of doing an update. Your updates should always improve your app in some ways, either by bug fixings or enhancements.
g) App Localization
App localization gives you a larger audience to download your mobile app. But localizing the whole app to many languages can be a daunting task.
Before doing a full localization of your whole app, consider localizing your app listing first. It means translating your app name, app store keywords, screenshots, etc.
David Janner of MAKE APP Magazine conducted a localization experiment. In his experiment, he only localized the app name, the app store keywords, and sometimes the top line in the app description. After this simple localization, his app received a massive 767%increase in downloads.
Before localization, the downloads were mainly from within the US. After localization, his downloads looked like this:
According to OneSky, only 31% of the world’s total app revenue came from the U.S., while 41% came from Asia, and 23% came from Europe. In particular, China has already surpassed the U.S. by both iOS app download and revenue.
If your app only has an English version for the U.S. market, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
App Store Optimization Tips:
App Localization
Localize your app listing first to see how well your app performs in different countries. You can then decide if you should perform full localization of the whole app for the best performing countries.
Predict Your Next Successful Markets This app analytics tool predicts where your next successful markets are based on LTV (Lifetime User Value), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Conversion Rates, and more. With this information, you can proactively localize your app to grasp the market opportunities.
h) Conversion Rates
Track the number of impressions of your app preview, the number of app page visitors, and app installs. Identify the step where the most people leave.
For example, are there more than 90% users who didn’t make it to the app page after seeing the app preview? Are there more than 50% users who didn’t install your app after seeing the app page?
Once you have identified the step where people leave, make appropriate changes and see if there are any conversion improvements.
App Store Optimization Tips:
Benchmark Your Conversion Rate Use this App Store Optimization tool to benchmark your app’s conversion rate (CR). It compares your download CR with your app category’s median and best CR, and tells you what you should do.
More about Conversion Rates
Find out how to improve your conversion rates in this post about App Store SEO.
i) Apple’s Spotlight Search and Google’s Firebase App Indexing
For iOS App Developers:
Apple’s Spotlight Search allows users to search for their iOS apps installed on their device. This feature helps app developers engage existing users more frequently.
For iOS app developers, enable Spotlight search for your app. It helps improve your user engagement, which in turn improves your iOS app store search ranking.
In fact, 35% of top 20,000 apps on the iOS App Store have Spotlight search enabled. What are you waiting for?
For both iOS & Android App Developers:
Google’s Firebase App Indexing allows users to search the dynamic content in your app, and it works for both Android and iOS devices.
Firebase App Indexing not only helps improve your user engagement, it is also a user acquisition opportunity. It is because it allows users to search for your app contents no matter your app is installed or not.
If you have a content-rich app, you should enable Firebase App Indexing to make to most of these opportunities.
Putting it all together
Here is a cool infographic produced by Y Media Labs. It sums up the most important points about app store optimization.
Also, if you wonder what are the differences between iOS App Store and Google Play on app search optimization, here is a great summary:
After you have published the changes, keep an eye on the app store keyword rankings. The app store keyword rankings change right after you published the new version. Target to make all your app store keyword rankings within top 10. If your new keywords are too hard to rank, you might have to replace them with another set of app store keywords.
Repeat the three steps every three weeks or four because that is when big trends of app store keywords change. Don’t give up if the results of first few optimizations are not turning out well. App marketing takes time and app store optimization needs many observations to master.
Good luck in your journey!
Here’s what to do next…
Congratulations!
You’ve read to the end of this mega post (4,000+ words).
Give yourself a BIG hand!
But did you know you DON’T NEED to do all these app store optimization tasks by yourself?
Tech entrepreneur & father of 3 daughters.
Marcus is the founder of Meatti. He helps mobile app developers with app marketing and app store optimization services. Marcus also helps app developers overcome the business challenges of entering the China’s app market.
Do you want to increase your app downloads for free? Read these 40 App Store SEO tips!
(Note: the tips below include the latest updates for iOS 11.)
You’ve put in a lot of hard work to make a great app, and published it on the app stores.
Hooray!
Now what?
After you launch, it’s time to get people to download and use your app.
After all, if you don’t care about it, who will?
To help you get started, I’ve put together a list of 40 App Store SEO tips to get app downloads.
But wait, what is App Store SEO?
App Store Search Engine Optimization (App Store SEO)
App Store SEO is the process of optimizing mobile apps for the purpose of achieving a higher rank in the app store search results and top charts rankings. Due to its similarities to search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, App Store SEO is also referred to as App Store Optimization (ASO), App Search Optimization, and Mobile App SEO.
You may still be wondering:
“It sounds interesting, but does App Store SEO really work?”
From the 15 case studies here, App Store SEO increased their app downloads by at least 125% and even up to 767%.
You don’t need to spend a penny to do most of these tips!
Bonus: If you find the tips below useful, remember to check out this App Store SEO Grader. The tool automates the tedious app store SEO checking tasks for your app, and tells you how to improve your app to get more downloads!
Name your app in a creative and searchable fashion. Not only it is the first piece of the clue telling your potential users what your app is, but it also gets your app in the search results.
According to research by MobileDevHQ (now renamed Tune), using keywords in your title can result in up to a 10.3% increase in rankings.
Both Google and Apple’s search algorithms scan the app name for keywords when a user performs a keyword search in the app markets. It is a good idea to include a few keywords in your app name as an App Store SEO practice. It is because both platforms give quite high priorities to apps with app names that contain the search input.
But don’t stuff every keyword into your title or your app will look spammy. You need to find a good balance between keywords and branding. But how? Read on!
Keep the actual brand name short and sweet. You can then append this short brand name with a few keywords, typically preceded by a dash or a semicolon.
App Store SEO Tips:
App Name Format Use the format “Brand Name – Keywords” or “Brand Name: Keywords” to include relevant keywords in your name.
Here are some real examples:
Google Maps – Navigation & Transit
Amazon App: shop, scan, compare, and read reviews
eBay: Buy, Sell, Save! Electronics, Fashion & More
Pandora – Free Music & Radio
The Weather Channel: Alerts, Forecast & Radar
It’s also important to use only URL-friendly characters in your title, particularly in the App Store. It is because Apple uses the app name to create your app URL. Also, avoid any special characters in your app name, like the trademark or copyright symbol. They will cause iTunes to refer to your app’s numeric ID to scan for relevant keywords instead of your app name.
Did you know? In less than 30 seconds, you can get an App Store SEO Report of your app here. Just enter your app name, and the report will tell you how to increase your app downloads using app store SEO. And it’s free.
iOS App Store: Apple limits the app name to a maximum of 30 characters in iOS 11. So you have to make good use of every character in your app name.
App Store SEO Tips:
Brand Name: Use 23 characters or less for optimal presentation on every device.
Total Length: To make the most of the 30 character limit, use more than 25 characters to include a few relevant app store keywords after your brand name.
Google Play Store: App name in Google Play Store is limited to 50 characters. Again, use a short and sweet brand name. If you also have an iOS version, use a consistent brand name, and use the remaining space to include a few app store keywords to increase your search exposure.
iOS App Store: This field is introduced in iOS 11 and available in the iOS App Store only.
App subtitle appears under your app name, and is limited to 30 characters only.
It is ideal to include some keywords in this field to communicate the value of your app. More importantly, the keywords in your subtitle will be indexed in app store search. So be sure to make good use of this precious field to cover some important keywords.
iOS App Store: iOS App Store does not search for keywords in the app description, but that does not mean iOS developers can be lazy with it. Read the sections below for more tips about App Description.
Google Play Store: you need to be careful with the app description. It is because Google pulls keywords from your description to be your app’s keywords. Incorporate your app store keywords in the description in natural and sensible sentences. Note that keywords in the above-the-fold section (the first few lines) carries more weight than the rest of the description copy in Google’s ranking algorithm, so remember to put your main keywords in this section. And this leads us to the next tip below…
According to StoreMaven, only an average of 5% users will click the “read more” button below the short description on Google Play.
This number is further down to only 2% on Apple’s App Store.
So every character in the short description counts!
On mobile, you only have 252 characters for this short description.
You don’t want to waste any space here. Make it concise and attention-grabbing. Avoid blank lines and interrupted sentences.
Tell users what makes your app unique and why they will love it. Focus on your app’s values, instead of features. And don’t forget to include a call-to-action text to get the users excited!
Highlight the features of your app here. Use spacing and bulleted lists to make it easy to read. If possible, also list out all the social proofs, awards, and honorable mentions your app has received. Don’t forget to include your app’s social media links too.
Also, Google Play Store allows rich formatting and emoji in your app description. Make good use of these to make your description organized and stand out from the crowd.
Communicate in the tone of your brand. Use terminology your target audience will appreciate and understand.
We analyzed the description length of the top 100 apps in Nov 2016. Here are some findings:
90% of top 100 apps use more than 589 characters
90% of top 100 apps use less than 3385 characters.
Though app description length doesn’t have a very big impact compared to other factors, it is still a good idea to keep your length within this range.
App Store SEO Tips:
Benchmark with the Top 100 Apps Do you want to know the latest statistics of description length? Just use this App Store SEO tool. The tool benchmarks your app with the top 100 apps and tells you how to improve.
iOS App Store: This field is introduced in iOS 11 and available in the iOS App Store only.
Your app’s promotional text appears at the top of the description and is limited to 170 characters.
Though the promotional text is NOT indexed in the app store search, the good news is you can change this text anytime without releasing a new version.
App Store SEO Tips:
A/B Test on Promotional Text You can use this promotional text to do A/B test of different messages quickly without doing a version update. Once you’ve found the message that gives you the best conversion rate, you can then turn the contents of the message into your app store keywords.
A better icon can increase your downloads up to 560%!
To design a good icon, keep your design simple and eye-catchy. Do not cram the small space with many items or words. You want people to remember the icon after the first impression. Also, make sure your icon will still look good when it is scaled down to the smallest size required by App Store / Google Play. It should also look good against light and dark background.
To get more design inspirations, browse the top-rated apps in your category and Apple/Google’s top picks. Also, make sure your icon is different from your competitor’s to avoid brand confusion. Contrasting colors, different shapes or adding a frame can also help.
App Store SEO Tips:
Branded vs Functional Icon If your app has a brand, use the logo to make your brand and your future products recognizable. If your app is a functional app, use one object to describe your app.
To begin with, try and come up with at least 50 keywords. Here are some great tools that help you with the app store keyword ideas. All you need to do is to provide a keyword. These tools will then give you many keyword ideas to consider. And they are all free!
You can also use Google Trends to check how popular a keyword is in different countries. This is very useful if you want to launch your app in specific countries.
Remember that your keywords must be relevant to your app. Don’t be tempted to use a keyword just because it is popular, but not relevant to your app. You want your app to be found by users who will really download and enjoy your app.
App Store SEO Tips:
Time-sensitive Keywords
Let’s illustrate the idea by an example: using “Rio” and its related keywords during the Olympics 2016 would greatly help the exposure of your sports apps. Your app would also have a better chance to get into the app store’s feature lists too.
Review Keywords Did you know the words in your app user reviews are indexed by the app store search engine?
That is why review analysis is a very good way for getting app store keyword ideas. Your app reviews speak your users’ mind. And the words are highly related to how they would search for your app. Just by looking at your review keywords, you will be surprised to find out the keyword ideas that you have never thought of before.
There are some review analysis tools in the market. And this one uses Artificial Intelligence on your user reviews to find out what your users like and don’t like about your app.
With your initial set of app store keywords, you have to pick a strategy on how to optimize the right keywords. There are some keyword research tools that help you with this app store keyword optimization process. They provide the difficulties (or chances) and traffic of your keywords. In any case, choose about 25 keywords carefully for the next release of your app.
App Store SEO Tips:
App Store Keyword Optimization Strategy
For a new app, choose keywords with low difficulty and reasonable traffic. They help your app gain the initial momentum. After gaining the initial momentum, start using keywords with higher traffic and reasonable difficulty. They help your app stack up more downloads. Work your way up gradually as your app gets more popular.
Long-tail App Store Keywords Use longer keyword phrases (aka long-tail keywords) to outrank the competition. For example, it is hard to outrank Zynga Poker by the competitive keyword “Poker” (high difficulty). But you have a better chance to outrank it by the keyword phrase “Poker Casino”. It is because “Poker Casino” is less competitive (lower difficulty).
Retiring Poor App Store Keywords
If you have already released your app with your target keywords, check your current app ranking of these keywords. Keep those keywords that your app ranks within top 10, and replace the rest with new keywords in your next release.
Now that you have chosen the keywords, you are ready to use them for your app.
For iOS developers: Fill in the keyword metadata with your selected app store keywords. This metadata decides how your app gets discovered. Follow the rules below and make every character counts!
Use all 100 characters
Separate every keyword by a comma
Avoid space, articles and prepositions
Use singular OR plural, the easier one to rank for
Don’t repeat keyword
Use numbers instead of spelled out words
No need to include the words in your company name, app name and app category names.
App Store SEO Tips:
App Store Keyword Optimizer You can use the App Store SEO Grader to optimize your app keyword metadata. The tool applies the above rules to your app keywords and tells you how to improve.
How To 5X Your iOS App Store Keywords Do you want more keyword space for your iOS app? You can get up to 500 characters for your iOS app store keywords using this optimization tip. That is FIVE TIMES more!
For Android developers: Google Play doesn’t have the keyword metadata. Instead, Google pulls keywords from your description to be your app store keywords. Incorporate your keywords in the description in natural and sensible sentences. Note that keywords in the above-the-fold section (the first few lines) carries more weight than the rest of the description copy in Google’s ranking algorithm, so remember to put your main app store keywords in this section.
In iOS App Store, the names of in-app purchases (IAP) are indexed in the app store search.
And in iOS 11, each IAP has its own display name, promotional image, and description. In-app purchases can also appear in search results and be featured on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs. You can display a maximum of 20 IAPs on your product page.
To maximize your search exposure, be creative and include some app store keywords in the names of your IAP items.
According to StoreMaven, 60% of users won’t swipe past your first two screenshot images. A better version of your first two screenshots can increase your conversions by 25%!
To make great screenshots, make sure each screenshot is telling a single message about your app. Show your strongest messages in the first two screenshots. The best apps use all five screenshot slots to impress their users, and you should do the same.
Adding short caption texts on your screenshots can help, but make sure they are on a clean background. And try to create a positive impression in the viewers’ mind at all times.
Avoid login, registrations, purchase forms, ads and even “Welcome” screen in your screenshots. Make the best use of the screenshots to tell your users why they should love your app.
App Store SEO Tips:
Vertical Screenshots Keep the screenshots vertical. The users can see more screenshots on the narrow screens when the screenshots are vertical.
Vertical screenshots of Clash of Clans
Vertical screenshots of Uber
App Screenshot Checker To optimize your app screenshots, use this App Store SEO Grader. The tool checks your screenshots’ dimensions, count, orientations, and their compatibility with various iOS devices, and tells you how to improve.
Making a video may be difficult but it can increase install rates by more than 23% according to StoreMaven. Don’t forget to use a good poster frame (iOS) / feature graphic (Google Play). This graphic has a big impact to whether your visitors would watch your video.
App Store SEO Tips:
App Marketing Video
Here are some of the essential elements of an effective app marketing video. They are recommended by Apptamin, a company well-known for its app videos and trailers:
Use the first 5 seconds to grab the viewer’s attention
Focus on the best features, instead of all features
Your video should make sense even with the sound turned off
Include a call-to-action
Remember, 80% of users don’t watch past first 12 seconds of the video. Do make sure you keep it short and to the point. Avoid any fade-in and “welcome” type of message at the beginning of your video.
iOS 11 notes:
In the search result page of iOS 11, up to three App Preview videos and/or screenshots can appear, rather than just two as in iOS 10. Videos will always be displayed before screenshots and the first video will now play automatically, but sound will be muted by default.
Ratings and reviews have a great impact on your app downloads. You need an average rating of 4-stars or above. Or else only less than 50% users are willing to download your app.
How can you get more five-star ratings for your app?
Delay asking for a rating until there’s a likely moment of constructive feedback. For instance, ask when the user completed a reservation, finished a mission in a game, etc. When the time comes, ask nicely, and don’t beg.
What does that mean? Circa News app is a perfect example. It got 90% five-star ratings for every major version. Here is a flowchart of how it asks users if they would like to provide feedback:
The key is to encourage satisfied users to leave positive reviews and deflect negative reviews by using a “send feedback” option.
For iOS Developers:
Since the released of iOS 10.3, you can only ask a user for an app rating three times per year.
To make the most of these scarce rating opportunities, you should first identify your app lovers, and then ask them for ratings at the right time.
You may be wondering:
“How can I identify who are my app lovers?”
You can do so by some simple surveys or dialogs.
For example, you can ask this famous “Net Promoter” question on a 10-point scale:
“How likely is it that you would recommend our app to a friend or colleague?”
Those who respond with a score of 9 to 10 are your “Promoters”, or app lovers.
And they are likely to give you 4 to 5-star ratings when you later ask them for app ratings at the right time.
To do this, you can either develop your own version of rating and feedback flow or simply use the tools like Apptentive.
App Store SEO Tips:
The Right Paths To A Review Direct only positive reviews to App Store, and negative reviews to support.
But what if I already have many bad reviews?
Luckily in iOS 11, you can decide when to reset the average ratings and start over with a clean slate.
In iOS 10 or before, you can use these tips about how to sweep bad reviews under the rug. He also tells you how to give a positive first impression about your app by making good use of the five-star reviews.
Remember to reply the app reviews and feedback! Only the ones who care about your app will spend the time to leave a comment. Show them you care about them as well! This is a great way to let the visitors know that the developer is active too.
For Google Play, there is a “Reply to a review” option in Developer Console for you to do just that.
For Apple App Store, you can also do this since iOS 10.3 release in March 2017.
On iTunes Connect, go to ‘My Apps > Choose your app > Activity > Ratings and Reviews’.
There you can see the “Reply” option in each of the reviews.
App Store SEO Tips:
How to Reply to Reviews
Try to reply to all feedback immediately following a major release of your app.
If you can’t respond to every review, try prioritizing reviews with the lowest star ratings or those mentioning technical issues with the most current version of your app.
When you release an app update that fixes issues users mentioned in older reviews, consider replying to the relevant reviews to let them know that your update addressed their concerns.
Once a user indicates that your response answered their question or fixed their technical issue, consider asking them to update their rating and review.
You can also foster deeper engagement by asking users for feedback on future app updates as part of your reply.
One-star reviews are your friends. Read them all. Try to understand why the users complained your app, and think about what you need to do to turn them into five-star reviews. This thought process helps you improve your app from the user perspective. Also, fix all serious bugs, crashes and performance issues.
In the end getting more and better app reviews comes down to creating a great app users love. Listen, improve your apps and repeat until you are topping the app store ratings.
App localization gives you a larger audience to download your mobile app. But localizing the whole app to many languages can be a daunting task.
Before doing a full localization of your whole app, consider localizing your app listing first. It means translating your app name, keywords, screenshots, etc.
David Janner of MAKE APP Magazine conducted a localization experiment. In his experiment, he only localized the app name, the keywords, and sometimes the top line in the app description. After this simple localization, his app received a massive 767%increase in downloads. Before localization, the downloads were mainly from within the US. After localization, his downloads looked like this:
According to OneSky, only 31% of the world’s total app revenue came from the U.S., while 41% came from Asia, and 23% came from Europe. In particular, China has already surpassed the U.S. by both iOS app download and revenue. If your app only has an English version for the U.S. market, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
App Store SEO Tips:
App Localization Strategy
Localize your app listing first to see how well your app performs in different countries. You can then decide if you should perform full localization of the whole app for the best performing countries.
Icon and Screenshot Localization Different countries have distinct preference of icon colors, screenshot layouts and annotations. Check out these posts about icon colors and screenshot localization for more insights.
Now you know the strategy, but which countries should you start first?
If your app is already available in more than one country, you can use app analytics to find out the top countries by your app downloads. Check the official languages of the top five countries, and localize your app listing if you haven’t done so.
Depending on your priority, you can also do the same using top countries by revenue, ARPU, conversion rate, active devices or retention.
App Store SEO Tips:
Predict Your Next Successful Markets This app analytics tool predicts where your next successful markets are based on LTV (Lifetime User Value), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), Conversion Rates, and more. With this information, you can proactively localize your app to grasp the market opportunities.
Another approach is to localize your app listing for the top countries by downloads and/or revenue in the world. According to App Annie, here are the top countries in Q3 2016.
Again, check the official languages of the top countries, and localize your app listing if you haven’t done so.
Apple’s Spotlight Search allows users to search for their iOS apps installed on their device. This feature helps app developers engage existing users more frequently.
For iOS app developers, enable Spotlight search for your app. It helps improve your user engagement, which in turn improves your iOS app store search ranking.
In fact, 35% of top 20,000 apps on the iOS App Store have Spotlight search enabled. What are you waiting for?
Google’s Firebase App Indexing allows users to search the dynamic content in your app, and it works for both Android and iOS devices.
Firebase App Indexing not only helps improve your user engagement, it is also a user acquisition opportunity. It is because it allows users to search for your app contents no matter your app is installed or not.
If you have a content-rich app, you should enable Firebase App Indexing to make to most of these opportunities.
Download CR = App Units / Product Page Views x 100%
To put things into perspective,
The page view CR is the percentage of people who see your app from search results, rank lists, or featured app lists, and then tap the icon to check out your app.
The download CR is the percentage of people who visits your app page and then downloads your app.
These two CRs can be presented along with impressions, product page views, and app units in a diagram called Conversion Funnel in app marketing.
Why is conversion rate such a big deal?
There are mainly three reasons.
1. CR is a strong quantitative indicator of App Store SEO effectiveness
Keyword ranking and number of downloads are not the best metrics to measure the performance of App Store SEO. There are many external factors that can influence those two metrics. For example, a big competing publisher may publish a hugely popular app and shift the apps in the keyword ranking by a margin (e.g. The impact of Pokemon Go and related apps on the keyword “Pokemon” and “Go”). Or you run App Store SEO and an advertisement campaign at the same time and the number of the downloads become not purely organic.
On the other hand, CRs are independent of market competition nor the source of traffic. They give you the true picture of App Store SEO effectiveness.
2. CR reflects the likelihood of getting ranked
CR is a natural ranking signal in app store search. If lots of people search certain keywords, click on the same search result, and download the same app, Google Play and the App Store should receive a strong message:
“Users want to see this app!”
and place the app in a dominant spot (i.e. rank or featured list).
3. CR saves you money!
It’s just simple math: if you double your CR, you cut your advertising cost by half for the same amount of downloads. For the same reason, if you haven’t optimized your CR, don’t spend big bucks on advertising campaigns! You would be wasting your money.
Just a side story: some ranking manipulation farms even go far and take advantage of this. They offer keyword-rank-manipulation service. They boost the ranking of an app by “searching” the app by specific keywords, tapping the app in the search results and download the app — the exact flow of conversion funnel.
If Page View CR is less than 3%, you should try to improve it.
3%? Really? Yes, 3% sounds very low, but you won’t believe many apps have less than 1% we have seen!
To improve Page View CR, focus on optimizing these metadata:
App name
App icon
First 2 lines of app description
First 2 screenshots (or app preview video)
App ratings
It is because the app search result only shows these pieces of information. That means they are your baits to bring users to your app page. So make good use of them!
Download CR = App Units / Product Page Views x 100%
Folks from SplitMetrics have done a wonderful job on this topic. They gathered the download conversion rates from hundreds of experiments with over 10,000,000 users. Here are the best conversion rates in each app category in their study:
Based on this graph, you should set your download CR target to at least 60% for most categories. For Health & Fitness and Education categories, you may set your target a bit lower to around 40% and 50% respectively.
If your download CR is lower than the target benchmark, you should follow all tips in this article to improve this metric.
App Store SEO Tips:
Benchmark Your Conversion Rate Use this App Store SEO tool to benchmark your app’s conversion rate (CR). It compares your download CR with your app category’s median and best CR, and tells you what you should do.
Try to make your app smaller than 100 MB. It is because users cannot download apps that are more than 100 MB using cellular service.
So for example, if a user on a bus or a train can’t download “now”, it is unlikely the user will write down the name and try again X hours later when they’re home.
Need some proof? This post from appfigures shows that ~98% of the top 100 free and ~62% of paid iOS and Android games are under 100 MB.
Do you think 100 MB is not enough for your app? Take a look at Clash of Clans. Its iOS version is just 85.3 MB.
App Store SEO Tips:
Make Your App Smaller To reduce the app size, consider compressing some of the graphical assets or make some of the contents downloadable after install.
Compare with the Top 100 Apps Do you want to know how your app size compares to that of the top 100 apps? Use this App Store SEO tool. It tells you whether your app size falls in the reasonable app size range of the top 100 apps.
Making your app free can remove the friction for users to download your app. After all, what price is better than free?
If you want to make money from your free app, consider In-App Purchase (IAP) pricing model if that makes sense to your app design. IAP account for 79% of app store revenue.
If you choose to make in-app advertising revenue, try to use native ads. They are created to fit the exact context of the app they appear on. This way, they serve as extra content for the app itself rather than a piece of promotional materials. Check out this post to see more reasons why native ads are better than traditional banner ads.
Use a reasonable price by comparing your app price with your competing apps. Also, take reference of the price range of the top apps in your app categories.
A good starting price point to test the market is $0.99 or $1.99. Anything above $2.99 won’t make you a lot of money. The exception is Minecraft Pocket Edition, which is priced at $6.99.
For iOS apps, supporting iMessage App helps your app grow viral through the user’s phone contacts. You can also gain extra exposure in the App Store for iMessage.
Need ideas of how to use iMessage for your app? Check out how these 10 apps make use of iMessage integration for more ideas.
For iOS apps, supporting Apple Watch improves your app’s customer experience and user loyalty.
But don’t just copy your original app features directly to your Apple Watch app. Make good use of the Apple Watch characteristics to improve your user experience. Need inspirations? Check out these 50 best Apple Watch apps.
For iOS apps, Apple offers the Family Sharing opt-in for app developers. Family Sharing allows up to six family members to share app purchases on the same credit card across devices and parents to supervise their children purchases. Supporting Family Sharing means you can reach more family members and improves user loyalty.
Apple also clarifies that in-app purchases are not transferable through Family Sharing. Family members just the apps themselves. It means Family Sharing gives higher revenue potential for apps with in-app purchases.
Though Game Center app is removed since iOS 10, the Game Center service is still available. If you have an iOS game, you can make use of these Game Center features:
Leaderboard
Achievements
Challenges
Saving Games
Matchmaking for multiplayer games
These features improve your game’s virality and user retention in many ways.
Statistics show that there is a high correlation between high ratings and app update frequency. In fact, releasing regular updates has many benefits. It improves user loyalty and keeps an app top of mind because your app will show up in the updates list in the app stores. Apple and Google also like to see app updates because they show you’re committed to the app and that it’s still being maintained.
For these 25 top iOS apps, the average was about 30 days between updates. I’d recommend at least an update a month, and up to once a week.
Don’t forget to use push notifications to alert users to new app updates. They have a big impact on your update downloads. Ideally, you should only send notifications to the users who haven’t downloaded your latest version. In case you can’t distinguish who have and who haven’t, you should word your message carefully to avoid the confusion.
For examples,
Hey! Have you checked for updates in the App Store recently? Updates! Are all your apps up to date? Check the Updates button in the App Store.
Of course, you shouldn’t do an update just for the sake of doing an update. Your updates should always improve your app in some ways, either by bug fixings or enhancements.
Here is a cool infographic produced by Y Media Labs. It sums up the most important points about App Store SEO.
App Store SEO Tips:
Do you want to learn more about app marketing strategies? Check out The Essential List of 35 App Promotion & Marketing Strategies. It covers many app marketing topics such as PR, brand building, and marketing through social media, community, and other online channels.
After you have published the changes, keep an eye on the keyword rankings. The rankings change right after you published the new version. Target to make your app rank within top 10 of all keywords. If your new keywords are too hard to rank, you might have to replace them with your old keywords.
Review your App Store SEO every three weeks or four because that is when big trends of app ranking change. Don’t give up if the results of first few optimizations are not turning out well. App marketing takes time and App Store SEO needs many observations to master.
Good luck in your journey!
Here’s What To Do Next…
Congratulations!
You’ve read to the end of this mega post (~6,000 words).
Give yourself a BIG hand!
But did you know you DON’T NEED to do all these App Store SEO checking by yourself?
Tech entrepreneur & father of 3 daughters.
Marcus is the founder of Meatti. He helps mobile app developers with app marketing and app store optimization services. Marcus also helps app developers overcome the business challenges of entering the China’s app market.
Did you know you could 5X your iOS App Store keywords to get more traffic?
That means you can use up to 500 characters to store your keywords for getting a lot more app store search traffic!
YES, 5 X 100 = 500 CHARACTERS!
Just follow this app store keyword optimization guide to find out how.
Ready? Let’s jump right into it!
How Do App Store Keywords and Localization Work?
Apple App Store actually indexes multiple app localizations in each App Store market.
Why? It is because App Store users use different languages in each market.
For example, the U.S. App Store indexes BOTH English (U.S.) and Spanish (Mexico) localizations. Because of that, users of the U.S. App Store can search for an app using the keywords in both localizations.
So if you publish your mobile app to the U.S. App Store, you can use the 100 keyword character space in BOTH English (U.S.) and Spanish (Mexico) localizations.
A total of 200 character space. A double up!
In the Spanish localization, you can enter Spanish keywords. Or if you prefer, you can also enter English keywords there too.
Got the idea?
App Store Keyword Optimization Tips:
Multiply Your App Name
You can apply the same localization tactic to the app name field to include more keywords. As mentioned in our App Store SEO Tips and App Store Optimization Tips, keywords in the app name carry more weight than in the keyword field when it comes to app store search ranking. By using this trick, you will have a big advantage over your competition.
And the good news is:
This App Store keyword optimization technique works not just in the U.S. market. It works in all App Store markets in the world.
This way, you can easily double the space available for your App Store keywords in English or any other language you prefer.
All you need to know are the localization languages that are indexed by your target App Store market.
But you may ask:
“How do I know which localizations are indexed by my target App Store markets?”
Remember: once Apple has approved your new app store keywords and localizations, go check your new app store keyword rankings. As a rule of thumb, make sure all your target app store keyword rankings are less than ten.
Here’s What to Do Next…
Did you know you DON’T NEED to do all app store optimization tasks by yourself?
Tech entrepreneur & father of 3 daughters.
Marcus is the founder of Meatti. He helps mobile app developers with app marketing and app store optimization services. Marcus also helps app developers overcome the business challenges of entering the China’s app market.
Step 1: Find the right app store keywords
Step 2: Put the app store keywords in the right places
Image courtesy of MobileDevHQ via John Rampton on Forbes
Step 3: Convert visitors to users
For iOS App Developers:
For both iOS & Android App Developers:
Branded App Icon – facebook
Functional App Icon – Whatsapp Messager
Based on this graph, you should set your download CR target to at least 60% for most categories. For Health & Fitness and Education categories, you may set your target a bit lower to around 40% and 50% respectively.
