ASO – App Store Optimization (SEO)

Here are a few quick and easy tips for ASO – App Store Optimization (or App store SEO).

 
One of the biggest challenges of mobile apps developers is getting their app found by users. Obviously the first mission of the app developer is to create a great app that users will love to use and create an organic user base by word of mouth and app invitations.

 
The second natural thing to do is app marketing by PPC campaigns and social media activities. Last and not least is ASO (App Store Optimization – app store SEO). ASO can be done by a few simple actions in both Apple app store & Google Play.

 
ASO is divided to two key factors:

 

 1.     Category ranking.

 

 2.     In store search results

Category ranking is your app location in the category page on the app store or Google Play. Your locations will differed by geographic locations. For example, your app can be in the top 20 apps in the USA, but not even in the top 100 in the UK. The reason for that (mainly on Google Play) is that the ranking is determined by a few factors like downloads, uninstalls, relevancy for the category etc. this means that the app will rank higher in the regions that has more users of it.

In store search results is the apps list a user gets while searching for a certain keyword in the app store search box. The search results will be affected by the app name and the keywords in the app description.

While choosing the app name, a developer should consider the relevancy of the name for the actual app offers. For example, if it’s a chat app, it might be wise to add the word chat to the app name.

A key factor for ranking higher on the search results is pushing keywords in the description. Before writing the app description you should make a list of keywords that you want your app to appear on those searches. You can also check what the most popular searches on the app stores are and integrate the relevant keywords to your app in your description.

After choosing the most important and relevant keywords, you should integrate them into the description. The integration should be done carefully and wisely. Don’t push the keywords too many times or it will look like you just tried to push keywords without making any sense in the description.

App store SEO is still not a major tool to get a significant amount of app downloads and usage, but in a few short and easy steps you can increase the percentages of your organic downloads and improve your total ROI of the app distribution.