The What and How of App Store Optimization

Marketing can make a huge difference to how much success an app enjoyed on the app store. ASO (App Store Optimization) is all about making your app more visible on the app stores. It is, in other words, the SEO of the apps on the app store. It is now extremely important to the app-making companies.

An app store is like Google for apps. Just like a search engine, people find apps on the app stores. That is why the activity of making apps more visible on an app store is called app store optimization.

What’s the Point of App Store Optimization?

If you are wondering whether it is actually useful or not, then let me tell you that there are more than 700,000 apps on Google play and App store. There is a terrific competition on app stores; moreover, lots of new apps come in every day. The primary purpose of the app is to maintain the visibility of the app on app stores.

ASO is useful in ranking your apps higher to increase downloads and make it popular among the targeted audience. Interested in knowing how it works?

Here are the tasks you must do for optimizing your app on the app stores.

Title

What is the first thing people see when they come across the kind of apps they need? It is the title of an app. It has to be eye-catchy. It highlights your app and it should create some amount of excitement among the people. It should entice them to go ahead, look at app and make them download it too! You need a title that clearly expresses the purpose of your app, and it should have keywords can land the right visitors on your page.

Keywords

This is one of the most important factors in ASO. There aren’t many tools that let you find the right keywords for optimizing your app on an app store. But you can still apply your logic through analyzing the app store and customer behavior. Make sure the keywords hit the targeted audience and describe what your app is all about.

This way, there won’t be any confusion and visitors get what they actually want. Take the help of Google Adwords or other such tools; however, it will not give you the exact idea, but it will guide you find the better keywords for sure.

Inbound marketing

Do as much Inbound marketing as you can. It is one of the best thing you can do with your app marketing. Inbound marketing on the web has grown immensely and it can also prove extremely beneficial in ASO. You can do it through blogs, white papers, videos, infographics and, of course, through social media.

Promote your app on various social media sites, but make sure you are targeting potential clients and not a general, amorphous audience. Do it on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, etc.

Know your app stores

It is not like one size fits all. Let’s talk about the two major app stores and talk about optimizing your app on it. Each app store has different criteria for app rankings. While doing ASO, keep in mind what app store you are doing it for. For instance, iTunes only lets you change your page every time you update your app, whereas Google play constantly allows you to update your titles, descriptions and categories. Let’s have a look at it.

iTunes

It has certain terms to associate your keyword field with your app. Make sure there is no keyword stuffing. Too many variations or stuffing may cause get you in trouble.

Google play: Associated with with the largest search engine of the world, you can easily understand what kind of algorithm this store would have. What matters the most here is to optimize your app name.

Ratings and reviews

The reviews & ratings that an app gets matters a lot and it is one of the ranking factors on the app store. The more positive and number of reviews you have, the higher your app ranks. This is the tricky one. In order to get good reviews you need to connect with your customers and talk to them as well and on the flip side ask them provide reviews on the app. It needs your time and efforts but reviews and ratings are the crucial aspect of the ASO.

Selecting the right category

Choose your category precisely. People should actually get what they want. They should not feel like they have come across the wrong app searching the right category. I am talking about relevancy here. Always be precise.

However, don’t be afraid of experimenting. You have an enormous scope of doing something innovative and apply your creativity in ASO. Keep exploring the endless world of mobile apps. Do it right and get your app on the top.