How To Increase The Search Visibility of Your App
If you don’t have a large budget for paid ads, increasing the search visibility for your app is crucial. Starting with strong keyword research sets your app up for success with ranking and increasing visibility.
How To Increase The Search Visibility of Your App
If you don’t have a large budget for paid ads, increasing the search visibility for your app is crucial.
This is especially true given there are over 6 million apps on the App Store and Google Play Store.
Many of these apps are developed by major brands with large marketing budgets.
Luckily for us, there are ways for smaller developers to level the playing field.
Keyword Optimization (KWO) is one of the easiest ways to increase your app’s visibility.
To get started with KWO, we first need to understand how people search for apps.
Ask yourself if your app solves a specific problem or need.
If your niche is not well-defined, you need to avoid specific keywords and opt for generic ones instead.
Examples of well-known categories could include “keto diet” or “yoga coach.”
On the other hand, a “hotel employee shift scheduling” app should instead use short-tail generic keywords like “employee” and “scheduling”.
With that out of the way, let’s dive deeper.
Search algorithms are heavily influenced by metadata.
This includes your app title, subtitle, keyword field, short description, etc.
Even user reviews are a relevant metadata source. This is why it helps to ask friends and family to specifically mention relevant keywords when leaving your app a strong review.
For the App Store, you want to use both the singular and plural versions.
When you first launch on the App Store, you’ll enjoy a one-week artificial boost.
This means you want to make a lot of noise and intensify your marketing efforts during this first week to maximize its impact.
The more reviews, downloads, etc., you can get during the first week, the more likely Apple is to boost you.
Apple is essentially testing whether your app deserves to live or die by analyzing your retention and conversion rates. The boost will mean you place artificially high in the search results for the keywords in your metadata.
In this graph, we can see an initial boost in keyword ranking during the first week. Source: Ido Schoonen, ASO Expert at Lab Cave Games.
In this graph, the impact of the first week post-launch on app unit volume is clear. Source: Ido Schoonen, ASO Expert at Lab Cave Games.
App downloads are king.
For both stores, the number of times your app is downloaded has the strongest impact on visibility. Particularly, the number of downloads based on a certain search term.
When you’re starting as a smaller app, the best approach is to target lower competition keywords. This is because you can gain traction and use that to progressively target more competitive keywords.
The reason for this is that the App Store will boost the ranking of popular apps, if they include new keywords in their metadata.
For instance, if a high-volume meditation app added “yoga” to its metadata, the App Store would give the app a strong ranking for that search term.
This brings us to the next important reason for targeting less competitive niche keywords.
Conversion rates are important for long-term success.
Both stores want to show apps that have a strong likelihood of being downloaded and delighting users.
This is obvious because they want users to be happy with the store experience.
But the issue for many developers is that they’re unaware that if you’re appearing in search for certain keywords without getting downloaded, it will be very hard to rank in the future.
It pays to get as many friends and family to search for your chosen keywords and download your app during the first week.
This is especially effective if your friends and family are mostly based in one country, since downloads from one country don’t impact rankings in another country.
Retention rates are crucial.
Google’s Android team has specifically mentioned retention rates as an important ranking signal.
This means you want to do everything in your power to keep users happy and returning.
You should consider setting up a Discord channel and building a sense of community.
Respond to user queries, solve any bugs that arise, and remain responsive.
More importantly, try to build a movement or community around your app. This works well if you’re solving a significant problem or are building something related to health and wellbeing.
In the future, we’ll be covering app marketing and community building in more detail. Stay tuned.