5 Beginner App Store Optimization Mistakes

Coming up, I'm going to share five simple ASO tips that you should know before you hire an expert or try to do it on your own. Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P young founder of Appmasters.com The place you go when you want action packed content related. To grow, helping you grow your app downloads and your app revenues today. I want to focus on the five beginner, ASO mistakes that I routinely see. These are the same tips I give day in and day out on my client calls, or when I'm talking to people just entering the.

App store optimization space. So if you want to know the person that you hired on Upwork, or maybe you got ASO done on Fiverr, if you want to make sure they did it right, make sure they aren't making these five simple mistakes. Shall we get to it? Number one, they do not utilize the Spanish Mexico localization. For those who aren't familiar with this trick, the U S app store actually indexes the Spanish, Mexico localization.

So you can double the amount of keywords that you're targeting. Now let's go to the screenshot. I'll show you exactly what I mean. So here's one of my apps and here you definitely want good keywords in your app title and your subtitle, not an old app of mine. And so we. Pack then to subtitle did not exist, but that's why you don't see it, but you definitely want good keywords here in the title and in the subtitle as well.

And here's where you go. I'm in the app store connect and here is where you go into Spanish, Mexico. So you definitely want different app titles here. So if I said fun game here, I might put. Exciting game. These aren't good keywords, but I'm trying to give you an example of where you want it and you want a completely different title, subtitle you're in the Spanish, Mexico localization. So you want to put English keywords here and thereby you can really target the amount of keywords that you're going after.

So let's pretend this was a meditation app, right? And so maybe in the U S I have meditation and the Spanish, Mexico, I might put mindfulness. Here. Right. So that's how you start thinking about doubling up keywords. Because what we found is if you put the keywords in the subtitle, they have more weight. And so keywords that are in the U S keyword field, but in the Spanish, Mexico subtitle as well, they tend to rank better from my experience.

So when I'm going after this keyword optimization, these, this secondary localization, especially the title and subtitle are where I want really important keywords in, in the U S and in the Spanish Mexico. All right. Now, let me show you where the keywords fields go. I'm gonna click here and you need to go the version number. So here's where the English keywords are. You definitely want new ones. Okay. So you definitely don't want to repeat.

And the one thing I'll show up point out too, is I don't have cured comma space, keyword, comma space. Okay. You will have only a hundred characters. So you want to maximize it cause the space counts as a character. And also you don't need to repeat things that are in the title. If it's paintball rush, I don't need to put paintball rush here. Okay. So here is the Spanish Mexico. I'm going to go all the way down here and then you definitely want different keywords.

So if my keywords were four to five color switching, all this things I might want to put Crossy road here. Other keywords here that are all in English. So you've done the research. You want to put it in here all in English. This is for those who don't care so much about the market, but they want to really maximize their efforts in the U S all right. If you want to figure out what other localizations, so let's say you're in the UK.

You can click this little question Mark right here, and you can click this link for some reason it's not working for me right now. It might be a browser issue. But it'll tell you all the different localizations that your particular country will also index. So for the UK, it's Australia as well, and for a lot of different countries like Asian countries, you might have a lot more localizations that you can play with. So for Canada, for instance, there's French Canadian.

And so if let's say you want to go after the USB or the English speaking Canadian market, you want, want to put English keywords in that French Canadian localization as well. Number two. The mistake that I see is targeting mean really high traffic, high competition keywords. Now, if you're an app that's just starting now. You really want to focus on the keywords that have good track, but lower competition. You can use any ASO tool out there to find what the competition is, but you want to find those keywords because part of the algorithm, it takes into account the amount of downloads that you've been getting.

And so if you're not getting any downloads in the very beginning, you want to really focus on the keywords that don't have that much competition. So let me show you screen share here. This is the meditation app. I'm going to pick on them a little bit, cause they haven't been updated in a while, but you can see your first step to meditation. Now they're just starting out. So I know with meditation, maybe other types of mat meditation, you want to focus on, right?

So like Sean CRA or the types of meditation, those tend to have lower traffic than just going after meditation. Cause it's going to be really hard to compete with the comms, the Headspace, the simple habits, the 10% happier of the world. And so you don't really want to look at their ASO and be like, Let's do the same things they are doing because they're already spending a ton of money on advertising and you're never going to catch up to their download velocity.

Okay. So you definitely want to focus on more of the lower competition keywords. Now, the other thing I want to mention is we, as an agency, we give you the data. So we'll give you this spreadsheet that has the data for all these keywords. Whereas most ASO firms won't give you that. They'll just say, here's the new app name is a new subtitle here, then you keywords. So you really want to try to say. Where's the data, like, how are you pulling this optimization?

So ask for it. I don't know any better. Yeah, because I'm like, I want to teach my clients. So we just present you with the data and we kind of tell you, Hey, this is a data driven process and this is why we. Are determining where these keywords should be. So ask for it. If they're going to give it to you. I do know that fun fact that people on Fiverr are using my template. So I take that as a compliment. All right, let's get into number three.

The third mistake is using your title and your subtitle or branding. Let's get back into the screen, share this meditate app. I'll use again, but the title. Is very important. That's where the most keyword priority goes into. So you definitely want your best keyword right here. The meditate app, pretty good. Meditation has more traffic than meditate. So the meditation app might be better, but okay. That's not bad branding.

They don't have any branding here. They're really going after those keywords. So not a huge thing here, but your first step to meditation, that's a Brandy thing. Right. That should be here. Welcome to the meditate app. I don't need this, your first step to meditation here in the screenshots. So you definitely want to put your branding, your taglines, anything that you feel like I need this, we'll put it in your screenshots.

Cause most people are going to read it. You want good keywords here? So this could be, this should rather be meditation. Mindfulness. You know, calm. Those are good keywords to put in those subtitles, highly competitive. So you shouldn't use those keywords, but I'm just trying to give you an example of that. These actually are good keywords. Then your first step, nobody's going to search for your first step. Okay. Number four is.

Optimizing your screenshots. So a lot of times I see this where app creators will just put it literal screens of their app as their screenshots. And that is a complete, no, no. You want to use your app store screenshots as banner ads. Think of them as banner ads. What's going to entice people to want to click into your app and want to eventually download your app. And so really optimizing. Those screenshots as banners.

Okay. And I'm gonna give you an example of Cisco's screen-share here. This is one of our clients and we did, you know, we optimize their screenshot. That's here. Granted, their first screenshots just showed. Screens of the app. So we're like, Hey, this is the way we're going to go. And here's what happened. We saw a 91% increase in downloads. And one of the things I like to do is that first screenshot should always talk about what you do, what makes you different the second and third should kind of.

Regurgitate why your clients are using your app or have some social proof. And so this second screenshot, when I say social media, that could be the number of clients. You have, the publications that you've been featured on for our client here. They've got some big name customers. And so we're using their logos in that second screenshot. And we saw tremendous growth. Look with double their downloads without even touching the keywords.

Just by redoing their screenshots. So again, the template you want to use is first screenshot. What are you? What do you do? Let's be simple and let's be clear. The meditation app. We are your first step to meditation. The second one should be, feel relaxed and calm because we know that's what most people want from a meditation app. Number three, we've been featured by so many things. We've got 300 meditation videos, whatever your social proof numbers are.

Put that in there as well. You're going to see tremendous growth. Like just doing that. So don't make that mistake and just have those screens of your app. Make sure you have them banners, make sure you're highlighting the benefits of your app and not just representing those features. All right. They'll last mistake that I see, maybe not the last, but the fifth one that I'm going to cover in this video is asking for the reviews too late.

Alright, reviews make a huge impact on your keyword rankings. And they also help a customer decide whether they want to download your app. The more positive reviews you have, the more likely the customer is going to download your particular app. So super important. And I Wes and Google as well. Make it super simple for you to ask for the review. Let's go to the screen share real quick. So here's the iOS. One and you can see it's an embedded one.

So iOS allows you to pretty much say, Hey, are you enjoying this app? The before used to be, you just have to leave the app and go to the app store. Now you can easily embed it. So you can ask for the review, right within your app. They don't have to go anywhere. And a clever way to do it is it is saying, Hey, are you enjoying this app? Would you rate us five stars? Yes. Pop them up this review. If they say no. Give them a little contact form, but even if you can't develop that, just ask for the review, usually second or third open, or if they're on the first open, maybe a wind point are the best practices.

So if they'd done something phenomenal within your app or they did something was cool. Ask for the review and or maybe they open it for the sale, then third time ask for the review. And here's why. This is a study done by AppsFlyer on is a 2019 study on the average retention rates. Now it varies by abs, but this is just an overall average retention rate for apps in Q three of 2019. So day one, meaning the next day after I download your app, I open it.

That stays zero. The next day only 28% of people are coming back into your app. You're losing over 70% of the people. They're not coming back. Day one, day seven. It falls to 10% on Android and 11% on iOS day 34 and 4.5 and week eight, 6.5 8.5.

So again, you don't want to wait too long. I talk to clients. And they say, Steve, you know, I usually ask them about the fifth time or they've done something really phenomenal. They wait way too long. You don't have the time. I'm showing you these stats. You don't have the time. People are not going to come back. And so one of my apps I asked on the first one first open. That was a bad thing to do, but lease the second open day one, they're going to come back.

Right. And so you're going to get some people, 28% of the people coming back, ask them then, or ask them as they're going through the onboarding process. Maybe you're a calendar app and they hit syncing with your calendar or they add in an event. Do you want to ask them then? So you really want to take advantage of the small window of opportunity. You have to ask for those reviews, they're going to make a huge difference for you.

Alright guys, that's it. Five simple ASO beginner mistakes that I routinely see. And frankly, I'm sick of telling everybody on my call. So hopefully you guys watched this before you get on a call with me and you'll go through this and you'll see some major growth for your particular app. That's it. Hope you enjoy the video. Let me know what one mistake that you feel like, Oh, duh, I got to fix right after the video. Leave it in the comments below.

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