The ranking of your app will depend a lot on the selection of the keywords. This is true for Apple Store and Google Play.
We would recommend you to really take the time for this step because the most common mistake is to directly select keywords that generate most of the traffic and only focus on those. While this keywords are also targeted by thousands of applications. This has an impact on the probability to rank high in the app stores for those specific queries especially if you have a quite new app without any ranking historical data.
The approach we recommend you consist in making a ponderation of three factors:
- La difficulty for your app to be ranked in the store with regards to those keywords (Chance Score). This metric is an estimation of the probability for your app to be ranked in the top 10 with regards to that query. This score is measured on a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 as an indicator of the easiness to be ranked for that query. So if you have a score of 95 it means you have a high chance to be ranked on that query because not a lot of apps use it.
- The score of the keyword (Search Score). This score is an estimation of the volume of search for that specific keyword. It is also measured on a scale of 0 to 100. If a keyword has a score of 100 it means users a lot this terminology.
- The number of applications that target this keyword.
In the example hereunder, we are hesitating between three keywords (x,y,z). For each keyword, we have each element mentioned above (chance score, search score and the number of applications targeting that keyword). By taking the ponderation into consideration, the keyword X should be used to improve ranking in Apple store while for Google Play it is keyword Z
You are probably thinking “thanks for all those definitions but where do I start, which tool? Which keywords to test first?”
I would recommend you to start with keywords/queries at your disposal. If you have a Google Search Console or Google Analytics, you can start with keywords that generate of click with a good click-through rate. In case your Google Search Console is linked to Google Analytics, you can even go a step further by selecting keywords based pages/session. If you really do not have access to those tools, do not worry, you can start with other tools such as Mobile App Action. The tool allows to find keywords and included the three parameters we mentioned above. In addition, it allows you to monitor your competition and the icing on the cake is that there is a free version of the tool.
Other tools that could help you analysing the traffic generated by specific queries :
- Appkeywords (for the selection of keywords)
- App Annie (allows you to analyse keywords and monitor competitors)
- Overpass (help you to find keywords on App store, & Google Play with the possibility to select the goal: awareness, score, suggestion)
In summary, you need to take time to select keywords that will be used in you ASO strategy since based on the type (iOS, Android) of the app the segment to optimize, you will be limited in terms of characters ( as discussed in the article 1 1 & Article 2 of this series). Moreover, this helps you to maximize your potential to rank high in stores.
Placide Mugenzi
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