What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?

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.

The Story behind this App Store Optimization Guide

When I launched my first game app in the app stores years ago, I thought the app was so awesome that it would get a lot of downloads.

Then I waited, and waited…

… until I finished all the PlayStation games I could play at that time 🙂

Well, as it turned out, the opposite happened – there were only a few downloads each day.

Frustrated, I turned to paid advertisement campaigns.

But the cost-per-install of an advertising campaign can easily cost you US$1 to US$5. In addition, you need at least 40k installs per day to get to the top 25.

One look at the prices got me like:

However, all is not lost. Through countless hours of hard work and research, I learned many techniques to “get my app off the ground”.

For the sake of brevity, I will mention the strategy that was the most quintessential to my then-future success … app store optimization.

At last, I managed to increase the amount of the app downloads by 1478% in a month!

Free Bonus: Click here to get a free summary checklist of all app store optimization tips in this post (the checklist also includes 2 bonus strategies and additional details not covered in this post).

You may wonder:

“This ASO thing sounds so useful, but how can I do it?”

To help you get started, here are three steps that guide you through the app store optimization process:

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 ASO tools to guide you through the hunt for quality keywords. These tools will provide you many other keywords to consider. And the best part of all – they’re all free!

Remember that your app store keywords must be relevant to your apps. Don’t be tempted to use a popular, but irrelevant keyword to your apps. You want your apps to be found by users who will actually download and enjoy your apps.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: 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. 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.

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 select the best keywords for your app. Here are some app store keyword tools that can help you with this optimization process. These tools provide the popularities (or search traffic) as well as difficulties (or chances) of your app store keywords. In general, carefully select around 25 app store keywords for the next release of your app.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: App Store Keyword Optimization Strategy

For a new app, choose the app store keywords with low difficulty and reasonable popularity. They help your app gain the initial momentum. After gaining the initial momentum, start using app store keywords with higher popularity and reasonable difficulty. They help your app stack up more downloads. Work your way up gradually as your app gets more popular. If you don’t know what difficulty and popularity you should use for your keywords, use this tool that makes the decision for you using AI. 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. 5X Your App Store Keywords

You can multiply the character space to store your app store keywords using this trick. That means you can use up to 500 characters to store your keywords for getting a lot more app store search traffic!

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 app store search results.

According to MobileDevHQ (now renamed to Tune), using keywords in your title can result in up to 10.3% increase of rankings.

Image courtesy of MobileDevHQ via John Rampton on Forbes

Both Google Play and iOS App Store search algorithms scan the app name for keywords when a user performs an app store 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 (ASO) 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. Use this tool to analyze your app name and get the recommendations of best name format and length.

Here are some real examples:



Google Maps – GPS Navigation



Amazon – Shopping made easy





eBay: Buy & Sell – Find Deals





Pandora – Free Music & Radio



The Weather Channel: Forecast

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.

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)

The Google Play Store provides you with a short description field (up to 80 characters) and a long description field (up to 4,000 characters) to describe your app.

More importantly, Google indexes words in both these two description fields to become your app store search keywords. By repeating your most important keywords up to 5 times in your description fields, you tell the Google Play algorithm that your app is most relevant to those keywords.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: There is a major difference in using keywords between the Google Play Store and Apple App Store: In Play Store, you are encouraged to repeat important keywords throughout App Title and Description (Short and Long) up to 5 times. However, in App Store, repeating keywords in App Title, Subtitle and Keyword fields is considered a waste of precious keyword space.

Also, Play Store allows rich formatting (HTML) and emoji in your app description. As in the regular web page SEO, you can use <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> header tags as well as <b>, <i>, and <u> style tags to emphasize the most important keywords to Google.

That said, it’s important to incorporate keywords into the description in natural and sensible sentences. Use bulleted lists and paragraphs to make it 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 (ASO) 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 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, you can change this text anytime without releasing a new version.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: A/B Test on Promotional Text

You can use the promotional text to perform an A/B test of different messages quickly without publishing a version update. Once you’ve found the message that gives you the best conversion rate, you can then input 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 each character count!

Use all 100 characters

Separate every keyword by a comma

Avoid space, articles, and prepositions

Either singular or plural works

Don’t repeat keyword

Use numbers instead of spelled out words

No need to include the words of your company name, app name, and app category names.

App Store Optimization (ASO) 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 informs you on techniques 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’s FIVE TIMES more than before!

g) In-App Purchases

Both Apple and Google index the names of in-app purchases (IAP) 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 app 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 app store 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.

Here 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-catching. Do not cram the small space with many items or words. You want people to remember the icon after the first impression, so simple designs without much noise is best. 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 backgrounds.

To get inspiration for designs, 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 the addition of a frame can also help.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: Branded vs Functional Icon

If your app is a functional app, use one object to describe your app. If your app has an established brand, use the logo to make your brand and your future products recognizable. Color Scheme

Use the science of colors in designing your icon. The color scheme should align with the message that you want your brand to convey.



b) Screenshots

According to StoreMaven, 60% of users won’t swipe past your first two screenshot images. Using your two best screenshots can increase your conversions by 25%!

To produce better screenshots, make sure each screenshot is telling a single message about your app. Display your strongest messages in the first two screenshots. Add a short caption text on a clean background into your screenshots and impress 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 (ASO) Tips: Screenshot Orientation

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 Screenshot Dimension (iOS only)

Not so long ago app publishers had to upload screenshots of various sizes matching different iPhone models. Now it’s possible to upload screenshots for the screen of iPhone 7 Plus (1242 x 2208 pixels) and iOS App Store will adjust screenshots to sizes of all other iPhone generations automatically. Optimize Your App Screenshots

To optimize your app screenshots, use this tool to checks your screenshots’ dimensions, count, orientations, and their compatibility with various iOS devices, and lets you know how to improve in the screenshot department.

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 as to whether your visitors would watch your video.

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: App Marketing Video

Here are some of the essential elements of an effective app marketing video, as 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. It’s imperative you keep it concise and to the point. Avoid any fade-in and “welcome” type of message at the beginning of your video.

d) Ratings & Reviews

Ratings and reviews have a great impact on your app downloads. Check out this infographic:

App Store Optimization (ASO) Tips: User Review Sentiment

Use this tool to get a user sentiment analysis of your app. It applies Artificial Intelligence on your user reviews to find out what your users like and don’t like about your app.

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 has an astounding 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 utilizing 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 (ASO) Tips: The Right Paths To A Review

Direct only positive reviews to App Store, and negative reviews to support.

Plus, remember to reply to 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 the 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 (ASO) 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 200MB for iOS app, or 100MB for Google Play app. It is because users cannot download apps that are bigger than these sizes 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.

You don’t think 200MB is enough for your app? Take a look at Clash of Clans. Its iOS version is just 85.3 MB.

App Store Optimization (ASO) 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 indicate 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.

How often should you update your app? Check out this chart first:

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 (ASO) 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 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 any conversion improvements occur.

App Store Optimization (ASO) 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 Core Spotlight and NSUserActivity for your app. They 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. See the official documentation here.

j) A/B Testing

A/B test each app store fields for continually improving your conversion rates. This type of hypothesis testing helps you make the most out of all your ASO effort above. The good news is: Google Firebase has a free A/B testing tool for both iOS apps and Google Play apps.

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. The target is to make all your app store keyword rankings reach at least 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’s roughly 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 requires 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!

Now it’s time to apply what you’ve learned.

The first step?

Click here to get a free summary checklist of all app store optimization tips in this post, and apply them to your app.

The checklist also includes 2 bonus strategies and additional details that I didn’t have room to include in this post.



[Get the ASO Checklist]

Sources: