Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Expose your App in the App Store

Find Me if you can!


ASO is App Store Optimization

Apple App Store 

What you want is to rank high when someone searches keywords in the App Store.  Well that's pretty obvious. But to do this, you need to understand the search engine algorithm. This is important because when someone is searching keywords, the first 5 Apps found are downloaded 70% of the time; the first two Apps found get 55% of the downloads.  And if you are found below the top 30, you will not likely get downloaded at all.

So how do you get found first? You can hire an ASO expert, but it's kind of important that you understand this search engine algorithm stuff yourself if you are an App developer or in marketing.

Let's look at an App I'm reviewing in the IOS App Store. This is a nice App and deserves to be found, but it would receive a F for App Store Optimization.  So let's examine the keywords they are using circled in red. What could they do to improve their ASO?



First of all, you only have 120 characters for your keywords, so do NOT put a space between the comma separator and the next keyword like you see here. They wasted enough space for another keyword.

Ok, next they are using the keyword "greeting cards". But the algorithm automatically creates all possible combinations and pluralities. So "greeting,card" would be more effective.

No live testing So you cannot alter your keywords in a live App. Apple only authorizes keyword changes when you update. So you want to get these right before you publish.

So you need to find good keywords and possibly a new way of marketing. Apple has a new service called Search Ads.  When someone searches for an App, it's possible for your Ad to show up, like this one


You can set your own budget and decide when to activate your Search Ad, if ever. But there is a nice tool with this service. They have a way to evaluate the popularity of keywords. Not kidding. You can try any keyword and Apple lets you know how popular the keyword is. So this is useful for setting up a potential Search Ad, but is also great for your App Store ASO search keywords. 

Here are some popular keywords I found, using this Search Ads tool, to replace this poor Apps useless keywords. But for the App we would use photo,editor and greeting,cards because the popular variation we see will be generated by the search engine. 


So just head over to https://searchads.apple.com/ 
Login with your Apple ID and play around with this service. This service can be especially useful for new
Apps that have no metrics or users yet so placing some ads can't hurt.  

Intro Video to Spike your App Store rating

I discovered that Apple rates your App in the store based on how long someone spends in the App. So
when you get a new user you want to keep them in your App for awhile. Well wouldn't it be great if you
helped get the new user started and also improve your App Store ranking?  I noticed that this Rain Cards App
has a nice 30 second preview video. What you can do as a developer, is embed your video and let the user 
play the intro inside the App. If you need to download initial content or otherwise setup your App, play
play the video at the same time.

Reverse Dictionary for keyword research

There are reverse dictionaries on the Web to help you with your keyword search research.  www.onelook.com
is a good example. A reverse dictionary is great for finding variations for a keyword idea. Take those
words and try them on Search Ads to see how popular they are.  I should mention that there are other ways
to test your keywords with paid services such as https://sensortower.com and https://www.appannie.com/en/

Good luck with your new ASO knowledge





















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