Improve Your Mobile App Visibility in App Store with App Store Optimization
App stores are becoming a battlefield for app developers. Fight is to improve the visibility of the app and getting maximum downloads to build the popularity of the apps. On an average , we have more then 1000 app submissions in itunes app store daily. 65% users download apps from app store search results. So it has become very challenging to get our apps ranked on top in app store search results.
As a Digital Marketing Expert, i get several requests from my clients who want to get their apps optimized for app store search results. This has pushed me to learn and share more about app store optimization.
To be specific regarding the goals of ASO,
1. To be found easily by users in top search results of app store
2. Getting ranked higher in search results for targeted keywords
3. Getting ranked higher from competitors in App Store.
Now ASO is not just a game of keywords i.e selecting best possible keywords, ranking for those keywords and then getting downloads for the app. It involves efficient use of meta data, icons and screenshots to convince users about the importance of the mobile app.
We have several properties which influence the ranking of our app in App Store.
1) Title of the App - Character Length 255 for itunes and maximum 55 for Google Play. In iTunes, search page app title will be 35 characters long and on product page it will be 70 characters long.
2) Publisher Name of the App
3) Keywords of the App. - Character Limit: 100
5) Icons and screenshots:
Value of Title and Keywords field is very high, so it is very much required to optimize them properly for targeted keywords. These three fields should be targeted to build the visibility and discoverability of the mobile app. On the other hand, meta description text don't influence the ranking of app in app store, so we can design our description in a way to get maximum conversions.Â
The keywords field in itunes is limited to 100 characters and you can't do stemming. i.e if you want to target two keywords player and players, you will have to add them individually. This makes the life of app developers difficult.
Reviews and downloads for a specific app also influence the ranking of App in App store. Keep updating your website with latest ios and Android updates. Ask your app customers to leave positive reviews for your app. One more thing which influence app rankings is how many times it was deleted. So make your mobile app, useful and interactive. Use proper keywords in the title, i.e specific keywords,so that the app is visible to targeted users. Never stuff app title with irrelevant keywords. Avoid use of special characters in title. Title is added in the url of your app. So keep title clean and strong.
Icons and screenshots also play a vital role in getting the best out of your application. Apps stores allows us to add upto 5 screenshots of our application. So it is advisable to use maximum 5 screen captures and use proper image alt tags.
Here are some Top Free and Paid Keywords Research tool for App Store Optimization:
Google Trends and Google Keyword Plannar Tool: This tool don't give you the search count or the traffic on a specific keyword in the app store, but gives you the option to search for the keywords which are in trend and people are searching for them in the news and on web. Google Trends results are updated hourly and thus gives you latest results.
Appcode.es: It is a more dedicated tool designed and built for ASO purpose. It has two propoerties, one which helps you find out best possible keywords for your app and second which tells you about the rankings your app can achieve in app store depending upon the use of those keywords by competitors. As the apple and google app store don't release apps keywords data publicly, so Appcode.es picks up the data from a database of 4,50,000 apps and 1,50,000 keywords.
MobileDevHQ: It is a complete tool, which provides various modules required for ASO. It gives analysis of keyword rankings and the keywords our competitors are ranking for. This is a paid tool with different packages.
Sensor Tower:Â Another high rated tool for app store optimization, sensor tower helps in competitors analysis, review analysis and finding out intelligence, importance of your app depending upon the downloads and reviews generated. Also you can check the latest trends and updates which influence the rankings of your app.
Search man: This is another paid tool with free trial version available for app store optimization. Clear and easy to use interface makes it popular among frequent app publishers.Â
In the end of this post, i would suggest play with the keywords. Use different research and marketing tools and do proper research about market before building a mobile app.