A Popular Guide: Beginner’s guide to ASO – Increase your App downloads significantly
Appsjunction.net – your favourite networking, #crowdfunding & freelancers platform, brings to you this really helpful – Beginner’s guide to ASO – Increase your App Downloads significantly. Thanks to PhoenixGMN.com for allowing us to publish the contents of their original guide here: http://www.slideshare.net/phoenixgmn/ This and more experts insights like this is often shared with audience at popular Appsjunction meetup in London.
In a real world, you will need to hire devs/freelancers for
ASO efforts 🙂
Basic ASO – DIY guide
What is ASO?
How you can apply ASO principles to improve reach and downloads of your app?
Appsjunction Meetup London – 29th Sep 2014
As an App Developer
- You think of a great idea
- You spend months and drink tons of red bull – app is complete 🙂
- You Submit to app store and wait for crowd frenzy to download it
- You wait….. You get few downloads… you wait..
- You wait…. Even fewer downloads every passing day.. You wait..
- You wait… You check charts – top apps are from billion dollar budget companies
- How can a little guy compete? 🙁
What is ASO?
- App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process of improving a mobile app’s visibility within mobile app stores (such as the iOS App Store and Google Play Store) by optimizing the content of the app’s store page for popular, targeted keyword phrases
- The goal of ASO is to make it easier for people to find your app when they search the app store. Since most people discover new apps via the app store charts or search, ASO is one of the most effective and cost-efficient means to gain new users and downloads for your app.
Factors which affect App Ranking in App Stores
- Keyword Usage: The presence of keywords within the app’s name, description and keyword tags gives your app a better chance to rank for coveted search phrases.
- Number of Downloads: Apps with more downloads (and higher download velocity!) tend to rank better than those with fewer downloads.
- Number of Ratings & Reviews: Apps with more ratings and reviews tend to rank better than those with fewer ratings and reviews.
- Quality of Ratings & Reviews: If you have a lot of good, natural user reviews, you will rank better. If you have a lot of bad reviews, it will probably hurt you.
- Engagement: If users spend a lot of time with your apps, it usually means they love it. This is a good indicator for the app stores that the app is of high quality and will rank the app higher as a result.
- Links (Google Play): Like traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the Google Play algorithm is believed to factor in the amount and quality of links pointing to an Android app on the Google Play store.
ASO- Step 1 – Keyword research
- find keywords that are
- Relevant
- High in Search Volume
- Low in Competition
- Several tools available to help research best keywords (tool list provided at the end of guide)
ASO – Step 2 – On-Page Optimization
• App title
- Use most coveted keywords in App Title
- Google Play: 30 Characters
- iOS App Store: 255 Characters (NOTE: only 25 characters are visible in search!)
• App Description
- Throughout your app description, work in your targeted keywords into the copy for maximum impact.
- Google Play: 4,000 Characters
- iOS App Store: 4,000 Characters
ASO – Step 3 – On-Page Optimization
• Keyword Tags (iOS Only):
- Character Limit: 100 Characters
- Pro Tip #1: Don’t use spaces!
- Pro Tip #2: Separate each keyword with a comma
- Pro Tip #3: Don’t reuse keywords that are already in your app title
- Example: For an app called “Marshmallow Fighter: The Ultimate Candy Fighting Game”, an optimized keyword field might look like:fight,battle,sweet,punch,kick,attack,combat,boxing,mma,
- warrior,kill,assault,cool,fun,hard,sugar,hit
ASO – Step 4 – On-Page Optimization
• Category Selection:
- Choose your category wisely!
- Try to find less crowded alternatives
- Ones which are relevant but has less competition
• App Icon
- app icon is your first impression, so make it count
- Pro Tip #1: Stand out from the crowd! Don’t copy competitor’s themes
- Pro Tip #2: Get with the times. Its the era of iOS 8
- Pro Tip #3: Make sure the focus of your app icon is clearly visible at all sizes.
ASO – Step 5 – On-Page Optimization
• Screenshots
- Don’t waste this real estate.
- Don’t just put screen captures!
- Pro Tip: Tell a story! Use the screenshots to tell the story of your app. Walk a customer through your sales pitch using each screenshot Ones which are relevant but has less competition
- Promo Videos – If an image is worth a thousand words, a professionally made App Explainer video is worth a lot more.
• Localization
- reach large, new audiences
- new revenue opportunities
- other markets often have less competition
ASO – Step 6 – Off-Page Optimization
• App Reviews & Ratings
- Minimize negative reviews on app stores.
- Solicit app reviews within the app itself
- Solicit app reviews via social media channels, email and your website
- Correct any bugs that users report as quickly as possible
- Make it possible within the app for users to contact the developer directly to solve technical issues
• Outreach to App Review Websites
- positive press spur downloads
- Seek high authority links pointing to your Google Play app page
- Pro Tip: Be unique. App review websites receive hundreds of emails a day.
ASO – Step 7 – Off-Page Optimization
• Press Releases:
- Many influential journalists and bloggers browse the press release wires for stories.
- Submit to websites such as PRWeb and PRNewsWire.
- Use professionals to prepare a Press Release.
- well-crafted press release can help your app get noticed
• Social Media:
- Establish a presence on social media and build an engaged audience
- Leverage hashtags and trends to get the word out on your app to your target audiences.
- service such as Hashtagify, uncover the best hashtags
- Pro Tip: Don’t use a one size fits all approach. Understand the platform
- Pro Tip #2: Communicate, don’t market!
- Get a professionally made App explainer video which can go viral.
ASO – Step 8 – In-App Optimization
• In-App Optimization
- Incentivize Social Sharing: Make it easy and rewarding for users to share your app with their social circles.
- Reward users for tweeting or sharing your app by giving them access to locked features or in-app purchases.
- Give users the option to tweet or share their progress from within the app.
- Pro Tip: Make sure that the tweets and messages are formatted to share out the app page, your social media account and a hashtag of your choosing.
ASO Tools
• In order to get the most out of your ASO, you need to use the right tools. The following ASO tools are useful for performing keyword research, competitive researching and mounting your overall ASO strategy:
- SensorTower
- MobileDevHQ
- SearchMan
- App Annie (Analytics)
- Flurry Analytics
Promoting an App – the basics
- To save time and money, Google about app developers with good portfolios in your local city. But if you have made your documents well, then even a remote developer can do a good job. In Internet connected economy, with skype/google hangout and various free screen sharing tools its not difficult to work with remote developers. All big companies do that. Find out the ones which can help you with App Promotion and basic ASO as well like http://PhoenixGMN.com
- Without promotion, your app will be like a needle in a haystack.
- Get a good launch site done with a great App Explainer Video on YouTube. Launch site themes available at http://themeforest.com or try http://strikingly.com or http://designmodo.com/generator/. Checkout two launch sites at http://uinterestme.com and http://poshcrowd.com. two good examples of explainer videos can be found at UX & Video section/menu of http://superhitapps.com
- Attend Apps related events, demo it to peers, get feedback.
- Talk about it on facebook/twitter/Linkedin/Google+ yourself. Ask friends to join. Ask them how many times they use it every week.
- Submit your App Details to app review websites.
- Join Ad networks which provide a tap for a tap. E.g devs cross promote an app in each other’s app adverts.
- Pay for Google or facebook adverts, in-App Adverts.
- Check app store feedback, improve & fix it. upload upgrades regularly.
- Appsjunction Exclusive: 48 top tips & tricks of app promotion on small budget
Recent Posts
