Become Reviewer Joe Hoang
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Guide to App Store Optimization (ASO) in 2018 – Part 1
Hello friends! Today, I have written a Blog to post on our site to share some knowledge about Guide to App Store Optimization that I learned when I made my application posted on Google Play Store app and Apple Store. I hope the knowledge I share will be helpful to you, especially in your application development and Startup.
There are nearly 3 million apps on the app stores (Apple App Store and Google Play Store). For application developers, making their applications more popular on the application store is a extremely difficult task. People use the term ‘ASO’ to refer to the application optimization to boost rankings on the app stores like Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The higher the searching ranking of an application, the more people approach it and as a result, you gain a large number of potential users. ASO helps the developer’s app increase the number of visitors and users.
In the ASO, the elements that can be controlled include: App name and Keywords. Uncontrollable elements are the number of app intalls, reviews and users’ ratings.
The main keyword from the app’s name is used in the application searching algorithm of Apple App Store and Google Play Store. For Apple App Store, the algorithm also retrieves keywords from the keyword field on iTunes Connect to rank the searching.
According to statistics, more than 65% of users downloaded applications through searching. To increasing searching ranking, we need to know which keyword is the most appropriate and most frequently used. The remaining elements such as downloads, settings, ratings, and reviews of users are retrieved to rank if the applications have the same keywords. The application name is the first thing users see behind the app icon and it is limited to the number of characters.
The application name should be less than 30 characters Now, Apple has limited to 30 characters in App name. Apple droped 255 characters to 30 characters in App name because programmers often put a lot of keywords into the application name. For Google Play Store, programmers also cram as many keywords as possible in app name and app description to boost search rankings.
The following example shows the keyword spam “Subway surfers” in an app on Google Play Store:
Keywords in the app name reach the highest search point: The keyword in the application name drops from 255 characters to 30 characters, making the keyword in the app name stronger.
Our reports indicate that the keywords in the titles ranked highly are two times better than the keywords in the keyword list. Keywords in the keyword field are not only individual keywords but also associate with keywords in the application name.
For example, the name of the application in the image above can combine with the keywords in the keyword list into new pairs like “men workout” and “fitness mate”.
An app name change with the keywords resulted in an average improvement of 67% in the category compare to the previous app title without the keywords, and making the application can occupy top position in countries where it never has attained before. For the Pink Cloud app, they used the AppTweak keyword to boost the ranking of the keyword from # 23 to # 3 in a single day by moving it from the keyword field to the app name.
Real examples have shown that keywords placed in the app title have more weight than keywords in the keyword field, so keep this in mind when setting your keywords. Ekaterina Petrakova from Rocket Internet also shared some interesting results on this issue. One of the company’s activities has increased by 40% in conversion rates (the percentage of users who see your application and install. If 10 people see and 2 people install it, the ratio is 20%) through moving a keyword from the keyword field to the application name. This change was made in two different countries: Singapore, where the app has an increased ranking for the specific keyword from # 165 to # 64; And Indonesia, the ranking increased from # 10 to # 1 for that keyword. In addition, the application has seen a strong growth in its catalogue, rising from # 149 to # 52 in one country and # 65 to # 57 in another.
Optimize app name:
The name of your app should be easy to understand and unique. The goal is to communicate the application to users through the application name, application icon, screenshots that approach the users first when searching.
As the application below, users can immediately see what the application content is.
It is important that you always find out, analyze, evaluate your competitors. There are a lot of paid services that help you analyze thoroughly your competitors in terms of downloads, comments, rating scores, or even your competitors’ keywords, profits but the monthly fee is quite high.
The following example uses SensorTower to analyze the 3 Ball Billiards application:
When the number of characters used in the app name is limited, you should use the strongest and most relevant keywords for your app’s name. I will show you how to do that.
Keyword placements in the app name: There are many experts who believe the keyword set at the top of the app name is greater than the last. Keywords used properly in the app name also greatly improved the search results.
It has also been found that using the correct keywords for titles when searching will improve the ranking by up to 109%. In this example, we use the search results “meditation” for a series of applications with the same keyword and as a result this application ranks first when searching.
However, when using the longer keyword “relaxing meditation”, the result for the first position is the seventh ranking application while searching with the keyword “meditation”.
Besides controllable elements above, there are now some services that help developers improve factors like downloads, app settings, reviews & ratings for iOS apps, MacOS Apps and Android apps. You can also use our service provided by the iOS App Reviews, Android App Reviews and MacOS App Reviews that is very safe and effective.
Summary
In this section, I have introduced to you about Guide to App Store Optimization:
