The journey of creating a unique and useful app would have been an uphill task for you. But all the hard work seems worth when your app goes live on an app store. Now you must be waiting to get some downloads on your app. But there is just one problem – your app is not discoverable!
As of January 2020, there are over 2.8 million apps available on the Play Store and 2.2 million on the App Store. The competition in these two stores is sky-high.
You will be surprised to know most of the store visitors download apps that appear in the top 5 to 10 search results. So, in order to rank your app in the top search results, you should definitely have a strong ‘Keywords Optimization’ Strategy!
Keyword Optimization is the act of researching, analyzing and selecting the best keywords to target to drive traffic to your mobile app in the form of page-views & installs. Keywords optimization is a branch of the process called ‘App Store Optimization’ - check out this informative blog to know more about ASO.
By choosing the right keywords for your app, you can greatly enhance your app store search & browse ranking and start getting a higher number of downloads. I'm sharing some methods you can try to find the right keywords for your app without even spending a PENNY! Aren’t you already excited?
So here are some free techniques to discover keywords for your mobile app:
- Search suggestions: You might have noticed, whenever you start typing to search for an app, the app store shows you a few suggestions under the search bar. Basically, these suggestions are some of the popular keywords searched by other app store visitors. Try doing this and you’ll be able to discover new keywords for your app. By adding these suggestions to your keyword fields, you can improve your organic ranking.
Search suggestions on the Google Play Store (left) and the Apple App Store (Right)
- Description analysis: Since the description of an android app gets indexed on the Play Store (not on the App Store), the keywords used in the description affect the organic ranking of the app. So, the store presence of an app can be optimized by adding relevant & popular keywords in its description. You may think, what if it was possible to spot these keywords in the description of competitor apps?
Well, by using this tool, you can analyze the description of your competitor apps and look for the important and relevant keywords. After doing this, search for these phrases/words and check if your competitor is ranking on them. If yes, why not implement these keywords in your own app’s description and start ranking on them. Also, it is crucial to maintain the keyword density of important keywords at 2 to 3%, anything more than that would be considered as keyword stuffing and you should avoid doing that.
Look at the highlighted phrase in the image
For instance, I analyzed the description text of the app ‘FAX PLUS’ in the tool mentioned above and I saw that the long tail keyword – sent and received faxes, is repeated thrice in the description. Now, when I search for this keyword on the Play Store, the app ranks at the top.
When searched, the app ranks in the top spot
- Review analysis: The words & phrases in the app reviews are also indexed by the app stores. You can get keyword ideas by doing some review mining. By looking at the reviews, you’ll be able to find features that users would look for in an app. You can use those features as your keywords (only if you have them in your own app).
The highlighted phrase in the comment (left), when searched, ranks the app in the top organic spot (right).
- Competitor’s keyword research: You might be wondering, what could be the keywords on which your competitor app is ranking. Well, it is not very difficult to find. By creating an account on AppAnnie, you can search for any app and check the keywords on which it is ranking. In this process, take some top-ranking keywords and optimize use them in your keyword fields to boost the organic presence of your app.
The dashboard of App Annie shows the list of keywords for which the app – BeautyPlus is ranking in the top.
Keyword optimization is an essential and iterative task. I recommend that you update keywords on a regular basis to make keyword optimization effective. Try out these methods and boost the organic ranking of your app for free!
Let me know if you like this blog and do leave your comments below!