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App Store Optimization Guide That Will DOMINATE 2025!

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App Masters17:54Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Small apps win App Store search by targeting six to 10 focused keywords with a search score near 30 and low competition. That much traffic is enough for a six-figure business without a big brand or paid budget.

Key takeaways

  • Keywords with a search score of about 25 to 39 bring enough traffic with less competition. 3:37
    • Broad terms like AI noteaker carry much higher competition, even at a score of 43.
    • Search score is an Apple metric. Filtering a keyword list by score and sorting by complexity surfaces the candidates.
  • Low competition shows up in the live results, not just in a tool's score. 9:17
    • If the top five apps for a keyword have few ratings, the term is easy. Transcribe had results with zero ratings.
    • For misspellings like Chad GPT, check that Apple doesn't autocorrect to the real term. If it does, skip the keyword.
  • A shortlist of six to 10 keywords, worked two at a time, is how an app gets its first rankings. 5:54
    • The aim is to rank number one or two for those two keywords.
    • If the two don't work, swap in another two from the list and test again.
  • The title, subtitle and keyword field should hold only those target keywords. 12:26
    • The keyword field has 100 characters. Leave out off-target words such as dictation, so the word cloud stays dense.
    • Commas between words, like audio, to, text versus audio to text, made no visible difference.
  • Only apps with a big brand can get away with loose keyword targeting. 12:54
    • Otter ranks number one for AI notetaker despite a title and subtitle that aren't fully optimized.
    • Its brand name searches about as much as the generic keyword, and paid channels back it up.

For indies, as long as the search score's around 30, that's enough for a six-figure business.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Start from a competitor's app

Keyword research begins by loading the strongest rival into an ASO tool.

  • Add your biggest competitor first, then do keyword research 1:38
    • The example is Otter, the top result for AI notetaker.
    • Keyword research is the step indie and bootstrapped developers should care about most.
    • The steps work in any ASO tool, not just the one shown.
    • AI notetaker apps are the category the speaker has worked with most lately, so he chose it over his usual meditation example.

1:55 Mine a rival's rankings

A rival's existing rankings and the score filters turn a huge keyword list into a short list.

  • The indexation tab lists every keyword a competitor already ranks for 2:22
    • Otter ranks for a very large number of keywords, which shows what years of ASO are worth.
    • Brand names can outsearch the generic term: Calm and Headspace score higher than meditation.
    • He used to avoid brand names for his own apps, but now says indies should start thinking about a brand.
  • Filter by score range, then sort by complexity to find easy keywords 4:18
    • He filtered scores from 20 to 60 and looked for complexity under four.
    • Candidates were transcription and free note-taking app.
    • Complexity is the tool's own patented difficulty score.
    • Google scores 86 for comparison.

6:31 Competitor tab and keyword finder

Rivals' top-10 rankings and the keyword finder reveal terms nobody has thought to target.

  • Opening a keyword's live results lets you add new competitors and pull in their keywords 6:55
    • The chart for transcribe shows the apps that rank for it.
    • Adding them as competitors fills the tab with keywords they may be ignoring.
    • Apps like speech to text and a slow-down music app came up this way.
    • Sorting by complexity then surfaced terms like transcriptor.
  • The keyword finder sorts keywords by popularity, relevance, long tail and low competition 7:51
    • It suits finding relevant terms with less competition but enough search score.
    • A good complexity cutoff, three or four, depends on the tool.
    • It takes a moment to load because it scans all keywords.

8:57 Turning keywords into a listing

Once the shortlist exists, the title, subtitle and description are built around it, and each field does a different job.

  • The description matters less on iOS but can still win web search traffic. 10:00
    • Google shows its own app results for queries like transcribe app.
    • Early data suggests Google weighs the app title first, then the number of ratings.
    • So put the main keyword in the title, and write the description to rank for web terms like "transcribe app".
    • It is still a good channel for downloads, just a secondary one.
  • The title and subtitle can be reworked word by word to cover more target keywords. 11:02
    • The ASO creator shows which keywords each word is already covering.
    • Swapping voice notes for minutes recorder adds a second target without losing the first.
    • The final subtitle fits AI notetaker and minutes plus record minutes exactly.
    • He would prefer AI notetaker in the title, but keeps the existing layout for the demo.

12:26 Filling the keyword field

A tight, relevant keyword field builds a dense word cloud that helps apps without a paid budget.

  • Fill the field only with words tied to the target keywords. 12:26
    • The tool highlights each word as it is used, which makes the fit easy to check.
    • Words like speech, transcript and notebook cover the 10 targets.
    • Adding app and free sometimes helps a lot more.
    • He is testing this focused approach now and expects it to matter most for apps with no big paid budget.

14:24 Tracking rankings after launch

After launch, the work is watching the top one and top five rankings and vetting new keywords before chasing them.

  • The dashboard shows which keywords to defend and which to drop. 14:30
    • Otter has 144 keywords in the top one.
    • Voice memos is not worth chasing, since it is an Apple product.
    • Keywords swing between top one and top five after ASO updates.
    • He would put minutes in Otter's listing in place of voice notes.
  • The keyword monitor tracks the terms that matter most. 15:26
    • Reaching number one is hard and holding it is harder.
    • Check ratings with every new update.
    • The goal is to get a couple of keywords, like notetaker and AI notetaker, into the top one.
  • A free plan is enough to vet a new keyword. 16:39
    • See the volume, then open the results with the finder icon to judge difficulty.
    • For AI notetaker, an app sits at number six, but the number two app is Wave, a strong rival run by a past podcast guest.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency. A step-by-step beginner process for app store optimization: pick a small set of keywords with a search score near 30 and low competition, then build the title, subtitle and keyword field tightly around them. Steve says a keyword with a search score around 30 is enough traffic for a six-figure indie business.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript462 lines
0:00

Coming up, I'm going to share with you the complete beginners guide to app store optimization for 2025 and hopefully beyond. Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the app marketing agency and YouTube channel that's going to help you break down complex concepts related to app marketing to help you grow your app downloads and revenues. And today I want to do a step-bystep guide on app store optimization for all you beginners out there. You're going to really understand what it's all about, what it's good for, what it's not, what to pay attention, and what to not pay attention. and one of our partners and a phenomenal ASO tool called asommobile.net. So without further ado, shall we get started? All right, here is the platform asommobile.net and you can save 40% off any of their plans by using the promo code atmasters 40. Atmasters 40. Now I'm going to show you the exact

1:07

process and the steps to follow whether you use asomobile.net or not, okay? so you can follow along. This will still pertain. All right. So, I picked an AI noteaker app because I've always picked meditation, but now one of the most popular category of apps that we've seen and that we've been personally able to work with are AI notetaker apps. So, here in ASO to get started, if you just have an app idea, you can pick a application that is one of your biggest competitors. All right, pick that and put that into here. And so what I did here was I just picked on Otter. They are the number one app that shows up when I search for AI notetaker in the app store right now. Okay. So first thing you want to do add your app.

1:53

Obviously check done. Next thing you want to do and it's really really important is keyword research. Especially if you're an indie developer or someone who's bootstrapping their app business, you really want to pay attention to this most important step and that is keyword research. And luckily enough, ASOM Mobile makes it really easy for us to do just that. So, I'm going to show you how to do that right now. All right. First off, when you have a competitor in here or even your own apps, you can go to app keywords. Now, the indexation tab shows you all the keywords that you're already rank for. So, pretty cool tool to kind of figure out and then you can see how many keywords that Otter already ranks for. It's a lot and it's really nice.

2:36

And you can see the value of ASO, especially if you've been around for a long time. The value of ASO right here, cuz you can see they rank really well. Their brand, which you know, for you indies out there, I've always stayed away from calling my app with a brand name because in the beginning, who cares? In the beginning, you might still feel that way, but overall, you should start thinking about a brand because, as you can see with Otter, the search traffic right here, 43 of Otter is pretty much the same as AI Noteaker. And so, the fact that you have a big brand and your brand out searches your most generic keyword, that means you've done a phenomenal job building that app business, right? You can see meditation space, calm and headsp space have higher search scores than meditation in general. Now, for those who are not familiar with search score, it's an Apple term that they put together. And

3:34

from my data, all you have to do is try to find keywords around 30. Okay, that sweet spot is around 30 like 25 to let's say 39 because those tend to be enough traffic for you to start seeing dramatic results but they tend to have lower competition whereas AI noteaker for in this case might have really high competition here. So that's how you want to start looking at it here and then the other thing is you want to try to identify. So, what I'll do is sort by search ads. And as you can see, Google as a comparison has 86. So, I'm just looking down and I'm trying to really find the keywords around 30. Now, what you can also do is filter it and have different search scores. So, I can say, let's say I want to do 20 all the way to 70. No, let's go 60. Right. And then I can hit go and filter off that. And now it's already filtered off of this.

4:39

And then I can see by complexity, which is ASO's own patented score of how difficult or competitive this keyword is. So we're trying to find, you know, for me, I try to find anything around under four if I can, right? Depending on which tool you use. So here are the keywords. No tus, you know, might be interesting. Let's see. I'm trying to find some Chad GPT. I don't know what's going to show up for that. Right. We can take take a look at this. Hit that eye icon. And you can see chat GPT comes up. So maybe some people are accidentally putting Chad GPT. All right. That's another way to check here. So you're just trying to find new keywords around this, right?

5:22

And trying to figure out, all right, what has traffic, what has low competition that I might be able to go after, right? So for this case, it might be transcription. It might be free note-taking app. Those are the keywords that I want to target. Now let's say those are the keywords you want to target. So I've check markked these right right now. And then I'm going to add them here for me to monitor. So I can do without a group or I can add my own group. Right? So without a group is fine because ultimately what you're trying to do is find six to 10 keywords that have that search score around 30 so that you can try to really optimize for those keywords. And then with six to 10 you can focus two at a time and then rotate to figure out there's enough in there to rotate and try to find the two that you can rank really well for and hopefully one to two, right? You want to rank number one or number two for those

6:16

two keywords. And that's how we've been able to really kickstart apps is like just focusing on the 10 and within that 10 focusing on the two. And if those two don't work, we'll switch them out for another two and try to figure out which one is going to work as well. Next, while sticking to this app keyword side of things, I want to go into competitors a bit. So, here are the competitors, and these are the keywords for which competitors are ranked in the top 10.

6:41

And you can add your own competitors, too. But before you do that, I want to show you something really cool. All right. So here, let's just say I want to try to find keywords around 30 again. So I'm going to sort by this and I'm going to say transcribe as an example, right? So I can click this little chart and then this chart will show me the results for transcribe. Now you can easily start to then add these as competitors, right?

7:07

I'm like, hm, what is this app? Hm, what is this app? Slow down music as a transcribe. That seems interesting. Maybe I'll find some interesting keywords. speech to text. This is definitely something that I want to look. So, I can start adding these as competitors. And this will help populate even more keywords in this competitor tab. And now you can sort by complexity and try to find some interesting keywords that have enough traffic like this transcriptor that you might be able to rank for. Because just using this little chart and to see the live results, you can find some interesting keywords. As long as they have traffic, you're like, "Oh, I never even thought about it." So, it's a way to really use your competitors and find different keywords that they might be ignoring.

7:49

Sticking to the app keyword side of things, the keyword research phase, I want to show off one other section is the keyword finder right here. It may take a little bit of load. That's because ASOM Mobile is going through all the keywords. It loaded and then now I can sort by all keywords, by popular, relevant, longtail, low competitiveness, and so forth. Right? It's another great way to find the keywords that are relevant to your particular app that have a little bit less competition but enough search score, right? Competition under four or three, you're going to have to figure that out cuz every ASO tool has a different competitive score.

8:26

What I generally like to look at is the live search results. And so going back to this keyword, Chad GBT, is really looking through a keyword and then figuring out the top five or so results and seeing how many reviews they have. Now, with a misspelling like Chad GPT, you want to be careful and really look at the live results cuz sometimes Apple, so use your iPhone in this case, sometimes Apple will autocorrect Chad GPT and show results for chat GPT, right? and that if they do that then it is not a good keyword for you to go after because it's really chat GPT that is going to be the keyword that you should be targeting. So this gives me an indication of whether I should go after this keyword or not. Well, let's put transcribe here while we're at it because I you know we did see that that was a pretty interesting keyword. And so here you can see all right 9.5 4.6 but there's this keyword that has zero

9:22

ratings and zero. So, this is my sort of back of the napkin math that transcribe should be a pretty low competition term, right? It should be based off the search results. So, I'm really looking for the top five and trying to find apps that don't have a lot of ratings. That usually is an indication of low competition. All right. Now that you've done some keyword research and hopefully you found your sweet 6 to 10 and you're really paying attention and monitoring them, you want to really start building out your ASO. That means optimizing your title and your subtitle for those 6 to 10 keywords and then your keyword fields as well as your description. Now, the description doesn't matter as much on iOS as does on Google Play, but description on iOS may help your SEO rankings. There are times when Google, let's say I search for transcribe or better yet transcribe app has volume and within the Google search results, Google

10:21

will show their own using their own algorithm search results for transcribe app as an example. So that might be a case where you might try to optimize your description to make sure you start ranking for transcribe app as an example. For my early data, it feels like Google as long as we'll prioritize the title right of the app. So hopefully transcribes in the title and then it usually is the number of ratings that determines Google's search results for apps that they show on their mobile web or desktop web search results. All right, but it is still a good channel to drive downloads. All right, let's put together our ASO. ASO makes it easy. Go to ASO creator right here. All right.

11:06

When you're in ASO creator, the cool thing is the different keywords that we're targeting. Right for now, I have these keywords. ASO mobile will show me where they're being used. So, Otter Transcribe voice notes. If I really wanted to go after AI noteaker for Otter, they have it here, which helps, right? So, this is where there's value in running ads and building up this brand because even despite a not fully optimized title and subtitle, Otter is ranking really well for AI notetaker, right? Which has really good traffic.

11:41

It's a 43 and they're number one. So, let's say I wanted to go after minutes, too. Then I might just change this to minutes recorder. And now I have a combination of AI because it's in the subtitle and minutes here, too. Now I'm two keywords over. So I might just call this AI noteaker, right? And then minutes record. Or maybe I I just call it transcribe minutes. Nope. Minutes. Maybe I go AI noteaker and minutes and record minutes. Boom. Fits perfectly there. You could also, you kind of want to put AI noteaker up here, but I'm going to stick with what they have here. All right, now let's move on to your keyword section. And this is for, and this makes it really easy, right? If you have all the six to 10 keywords that you're targeting, the main thing you want to do, and I just learned this recently, is try to stay as focused as possible with your keywords, right?

12:39

So right here, I'm going to go after AI noteaker, maybe transcribe and record minutes, but I want to stay away from dictation as an example, right? So I want to get as focused for keywords. Now, if you have a big brand like Otter, again, it won't matter. As you can see, mediocre ASO will do well when you have a brand and you have other paid marketing channels. But for us indies and bootstrap app founders, you really want to stay as focused as possible. So, I'm running some tests right now where I'm just going to pick the 10 that I'm targeting right here. So, for example, right here, I want to put audio to text.

13:18

I've get this question a lot. Should I put audio comma to comma text or audio to text, I don't think it makes a difference. I haven't seen any big changes because of that one change. Okay, so play around with it and decide what you want to do. I'm going to put transcript in here, too, because that covers it. And you can see once I start using the word ASO mobile starts highlighting it which makes my life so much easier right so speech I want there sometimes having app and free does help out a lot more and then I'm put notebook and this is what I mean by being as targeted as possible now I'm only targeting the 10 keywords as you can see I had 100 characters I can fill it out if there were other keywords that were relevant to this AI note-taking space but I really want to make sure it's as targeted and relevant. Like if the word cloud, think of a word cloud with me. I want that word cloud to be as dense as

14:14

possible. All right, I think that's what's going to make the difference for ASO in the future, especially when you do not have a big paid marketing budget. All right, the last piece of it now that you're launched, you really just want to go and pay attention to your dashboard. Here it is. ASO dashboard right here. This is where you would go in to really pay attention to the keywords that you're dominating. You can see here 144 in the top one for Otter.

14:40

Congratulations, man. So, you want to really pay attention to that. Sometimes with these ASO updates, we'll see a lot of keywords move back and forth between the two. Obviously, these two columns, top one and top five, are the keywords that you should be focusing on. And then here, you can see the different types of keywords that are ranking well for this app, right? the ones that have the most traffic and where they're ranking for.

15:04

So, it's another way to discover new keywords or really pay attention to the keywords that you have to most pay attention to, right? This is why I would give up voice memos cuz, you know, it's an Apple product and you're probably never going to rank for it. All right, minutes is definitely one that I want to go after. So, if I were optimizing Otter, I might put minutes in there instead of voice notes as an example. All right, so that's a great way to do it. The other thing that I want to focus in on is the keyword monitor side of things. And these are the most important keywords, right? And these are the ones that I usually try to pay the most attention to because getting to number one is hard and trying to maintain number one is even harder too. So you really want to pay attention to these rankings and make sure any new update you're paying attention to the ratings.

15:49

But just getting two into the top one. So, for example, here, Noteaker and AI Noteaker for indies, as long as the search scores around 30, that's enough for a six-figure business. That's it, guys. The complete beginners's guide to app store optimization, better known, if you want to be a cool kid, as ASO. Once again, thank you to our partners, ASOM.net for helping me kind of guide you through the entire ASO journey and using their tool as well. And if you want to check out their tool and all the different features they have to help you with your ASO, use the promo code appmasters 40 atmasters 40 in the checkout and you'll save 40% off any of their plans. And they have some free plans too if you just want to do some keyword monitoring, get some keyword traffic volume. So you can use that little hack that I showed you as long as that keyword has 30 and you feel like, "Hey, I've never heard of

16:44

this keyword." do that search like you do right here keyword monitor or here this thing is what I'm talking about when you click this little that little finders icon you can see AI noteaker as an example and you could see which apps show up in the top charts so not maybe this one's not bad right you see number six AI noteaker not bad you might be able to go after it but the number two app which has a notetaker is wave and you want to be careful because they have 7.5 and he's a past podcast guest of mine so you can get started for free because you can see at least the keyword volume and then look at the search results to see what the complexity might be. But check out the indie. And if again, if you want to save 40% off any of these plans, use the promo code atmasters 40. All right. If you got any questions related to ASO, just leave a comment below. And if you're enjoying these videos, well, make sure you hit

17:34

that thumbs up and subscribe because we go live every Friday, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, and we really break down what's working in the app space, whether it's a podcast guest or we share some of our strategies. All right, until next time. I'll see you on the next video.