It’s good that you have been fantasized by your idea and viewing the global market trends of mobile apps, you took the plunge and went ahead developing an app, but without proper exposure and acceptance, the app stands valueless.

As a business owner and the driver of your organization, you need to be aware of what it takes to turn your app market-ready.

Ok, so you have done all your homework!

• Had an excellent idea ✔
• Connected with a development company ✔
• Drafted and planned on the development phases ✔
• Have the app model ready ✔
• Tested, verified and approved by potential users ✔
• App ready to be launched on the play store ✔

All ✔, next to what? Until now everything has been great and your app launch-ready, but how are you planning on marketing and advertising your app?

Haven’t thought of it yet??

So here is where ASO comes into the picture.

App Store Optimization – Defining The Term

As the marketers say: ASO or App Store Optimization is the process of optimizing and enhancing the visibility of an app on the play store to attain better ranks on app store top app charts. To put it this way, ASO is a marketing technique that helps leverage the app visibility on the play store. Needless to state, better the visibility, higher is the download and rest follow.

Why Do You Need ASO?

A million-dollar question!!

Why do you exactly need to employ ASO tools and techniques?

Given research done by statista, there are merely 2.6 billion apps live on the play store. The number just kept growing from 16k in 2009 to 2.6+ billion in early 2019. No doubt, the world has been actively marching on the trend of app development and so do you. But being on the play store and being downloaded is two different things. No matter what the figure speaks, not all apps receive the same amount of traction, let alone a decent a number.

To deal with the above and strike a position in the ever-growing market, it becomes imperative to ideate on strategies that are proven to help developers rank their app better. No matter what your business is or which domain your app focuses on, adhering to the norms of marketing and getting your app receives minimum traffic is must, acknowledging that you aren’t just planning to launch an app and forget about the revenue.

And, ASO is something you need to shift your focus on. This works pretty much like the SEO we do to marketize content on the web. The only thing that differs here is ASO is meant solely for the play store and the methods are undertaken to improvise the engagement of the app, again only on the play store.

Hoping that by now you have got the idea of what ASO is and why do you need the same, let’s move forward describing the different tools and tactics undertaken to upgrade your apps online visibility.

Top ASO Tools & Techniques

Perform An In-depth Research

Before you head on and start with implementing the different techniques to optimize your app on the play store, it is important that you do a research or a short survey on what the customers search for when looking for a service as provided by your app. Knowing about the likes, dislikes, the preferences and the expectations of the potential customer would help you in the planning phase.

Next, you need to study the competition. Meaning that just by knowing who are customers are and what they seek to attain won’t serve you alone. You need to know how the market is behaving at the current time and who is your competitor’s. What are they doing to get through the customers and how can you leverage ASO to remain one step ahead of them. From the app description to the language used, the keywords stuffed or the marketing strategy, knowing what has been done allows marketers to find gaps and then hit the industry hard.

Draft The Top Searched Keywords

Once you are done with the research, it’s your job to get going. And the first thing that you need to do is lookup for keywords. Google keyword planner is an effective tool that gives marketers the ease to search for keywords, know about the ranks, the download frequency, etc. Based on the above, you can now segment all the keywords and sort them in an order that falls from the highest to the lowest traffic. It is important that you think from the point of view of the customer and then based on the keywords search frequency use them in and across your app.

Apart from Google keywords planner, you can also make use of different ASO tools that are stuffed with the most frequently searched Keywords in the play store. The fact that all of these tools are free to use, marketers find it pretty easy to get along. One thing that you need to be sure of is the choice of keywords. No matter how high is the frequency of a keyword, until and unless the keyword appears relevant to your app, you need not use it.

One way to get hold of different keywords as searched by the users is in-app reviews. As a matter of fact, review mining is an excellent method to get into the minds of the customer’s. It has been seen that the keywords used by the customers while posting reviews are actually the top keywords that users type in the play store. There exist several marketing tools which can be used to assess and analyze keywords from app review. The recent ones make use of Artificial intelligence to do the same. So, you too can drive benefits by looking out for keywords using these tools.

Optimizing The Keywords

Now that you have got hold of all the keywords that users search for, it’s time that you now optimize them so as to make the most out of them. Just having a block of keywords isn’t enough and you need to filter out the best from the lot so that all of your ASO stuff actually works. There again are plenty of tools which help you with the optimization process.

Things to keep in mind are:

• Choosing a keyword that has higher popularity and ranks low in difficulty: It is always desirable that you start slow. Meaning that to start with the keywords that have significant popularity and not much difficult and once you get through the initial phases of app launching, you can then start drifting towards keywords that have greater popularity and considerable difficulty. This in a way helps you target all kinds of users, the basic ones first and then the organized and the much more strategic ones.
• Use Long-Tail Keywords More Than Short Tail Ones: It is, as agreed by a consensus that long Tail keywords drive more traffic in comparison to the shorter ones. For the ones that aren’t pretty sure on what do the terms mean, long Tail keywords include more than two words whereas shorter ones are restricted to a one or two word. For example: “Development Company” Would be a short keyword where’s “Mobile App Development Company in Dubai” would be the long tail and as you can see, it is much more specific. So, on a whole using long Tail keywords enhance the likelihood of outranking in the competitive world.
• Redesign The Existing Keyword Bracket: No matter if you have already launched your app and getting sound traffic, ASO doesn’t halt. You still need to keep track of the keywords used and retire the poor ones, replacing them with stronger and better keywords. The idea is to keep your app rolling in the market and this is not a one time job. To keep your traffic count rising, you need to adhere to the trends and newer techniques, keywords, in general, to remain in the competition and sustain your position.

Once done, you are now ready to use these keywords in the right place and in the right manner to take forward the idea of enhancing app store visibility. Remember, getting keywords and optimizing them is just the half work done and you need to time them right, in order to use it to your benefit.

Ideating The Name Of Your App

This is the first and the most important things when we talk about ASO. The name of your app is responsible for voicing your services, meaning that it is the name of your app which tells the user what exactly your app is and how does it benefit the user. According to research, it is seen that using keywords within the app name enhances the app rankings by 10.3%.

Now given all the competition and market trends, even one percent matters, 10.3 sounds huge. Further, it is a known fact that both Apple and the Google search algorithms prioritize app name when looking for keywords. The names that have keywords are more likely to be fetched. So, adding keywords within your app name is a good idea but here again, do not commit the mistake of blindly stuffing the name with keywords. You need to strike a balance between the app name and the keyword used. Not to forget that both Google and Apple limit the app name to 50 and 30 characters, respectively. For instance, you can keep the brand name short and back it by a short keyword specific phrase with colon or a dash.

App Subtitle

For iOS users, precisely the iOS 11, every app name is followed by a subtitle that appears just beneath the name. It is restricted to 30 characters and it is advisable that you use keywords plant the same. The contents of the subtitle no doubt are indexed and so, using it with keywords would be an excellent idea for driving traffic towards your app.

App Description

Next in line is how you describe the app. ranging from 80 to 400 characters, the play store gives you the freedom to describe your app in the best possible way. As a matter of fact, all that you write in these fields are indexed by Google. So, here again, you have a chance to fit keywords in the most significant way so that the next time a user enters a keyword, your app pops up on the forefront. So, if you use an important and crucial keyword for at least five times, Google would know that your app is as relevant as others. Be mindful in how to plan this as Google and Apple have different algorithms. For Google, repeating keywords would add more traffic but in Apple play store, it is just a matter of wasting time and words.

App Icon

According to research, a well-designed icon is capable of leveraging traffic by 560%. Now, this huge and you would not want to miss this opportunity to get above in the ranking charts. Right?

So, be very specific about your design. Do not add much content. Keep it crystal clear so that the first impression definitely makes it worth downloading. Also, see to it that the design does not suffer from quality and appearance when reduced to size. Lastly, keep your app icon design different from your competitors.

Screenshots

Here again, you might add tons of them but chances are that users never swipe for more than two. So use the best two at the start, giving users the idea of what your app is and how can they use it. Choose one that is self-explanatory and users need not to search much after seeing the same. You can add a short caption within the screenshot to give a better idea. It is proven that a better screenshot can enhance the conversion rate by 25%.

Only For IOS Users

App Store Keyword Field

IOS allows the developers to separately fill in the metadata with keywords. Be cautious and follow the rules while doing so and you just happened to increase your app visibility (only if you time the keywords right)

Rules:

• Use all the allotted 100 characters
• Use a comma to separate each keyword
• Avoid articles, space, and prepositions
• Either singular or plural works, never use both
• Never repeat a keyword
• Try using numbers and not spelled out words
• You need not add the name of the app or the company or even the category of the app within the metadata.

App Store Promotional Text

Similar to the app subtitle, app store promotional text is a feature added in the Apple play store for iOS 11 users. This is a short field above the app description and restricted to 170 characters. Even though the context is not indexed you can use them to perform A/B testing.

Wrapping Up

In a nutshell, ASO as a term might seem small but in features and functionalities, it has loads of it and when used effectively, can help get your app right on the upfront. From elevating the visibility of your app to adding to the success, timing your strategies right would keep you one step ahead of your competitors and gain a cutting edge in the ever-growing market.