App Store Optimization in 2021 - ASO Factors (Part 2/6)

What is up app nation? It is Steve P young founder about masters. That, um, the place you'd go when you want action packed content related to growing your app downloads and your revenue. And in part two of our free ASO training, we're going to talk about all the different factors that go in to your keyword rankings. Now, in part one, you learn all about what the heck is it? So how it impacts your long-term growth and in this one, We really want to dissect all the things that you can optimize to help increase your organic downloads.

So let's get started and number one, and it's the most important factor in your keyword rankings. It's going to be your app. Title now on my screen, I have Yelp as an example. Now I love their app. I'm just picking on them because they're a huge company. And a lot of people know them and they started to optimize their app store listing. So here let's take a look at the differences. Here's iOS with Apple, and here is.

Google now you can see the title and what they might be trying to go after is food. I don't know why there's a comma here, but food delivery and services. Now it's not the most optimized app title, but that's really going to impact your keyword rankings. You want the most important keywords in your title. Number two. And I would say this is a secondary factor in how high you can get your keyword rankings. It's going to be your subtitle now on iOS.

Here's the subtitle nearby restaurants in takeout. Two really good. I like this title subtitle here for Yelp. The short description on Google plane. That's what it's all called here. You see, discover which restaurants are now open for reservations. Take out. Or delivery again? I like the actual short description here to better optimize it. I might put reservations, takeout and delivery first because on Google, as you guys might know with the SEO days, the keywords that happened to the left, the beginning of the sentence.

Are more important than the ones that happened to the right. So you want your most important keywords to the left of it. Now I get this question all the time, especially from iOS clients who want to use a subtitle for their branding. And I would say, do not do it. Don't do it. It's more important to have your branding in your first few screenshots, because I know on iOS, they appear in the search results rather than your subtitle, because you want important keywords.

In your subtitle, not some branded keywords in your subtitle here. And Gilt has done a pretty good job in sort of not being branded because, you know, here's our branding discover top rated spots, but nobody's searching for that. And so they put nearby restaurants and take out number three, three is going to be your keywords and long description. So keywords. Okay. You can't see it by looking in the app store, listing on iOS, but there are, there is a keywords field within app store connect that you should optimize.

And so keywords that you already have in your title and your subtitle, you don't need to repeat them in your actual keyword field. And frankly, if you have a different developer ID, you likely don't need to include that. So back in the day, people used to have developer IDs. Developer names called fun games, LLC. Right? So they put that in here, they help rank for keywords and so forth. You don't need to do that. So if you're using restaurants here like Yelp is doing or food and delivery, you don't need those in your keyword field.

Now the biggest mistake that I see beginners make with D with optimizing the keyword field is having a space between the comma. So within the keyword field, you want to put food, comma delivery, not food, comma space delivery. You only have a hundred characters to play with in that keyword field. So you really want to maximize it. And having that space in there counts as a character. Now, if you want to target phrases such as food delivery.

What I typically do is put food, comma delivery, rather than food space delivery comma. Now it's up to you. I've tried different ways. It doesn't seem to matter as much. I personally like to do food comet delivery. It'll index all the same now on Google play. There is no keyword field. So it is about optimizing your long description. Here's what Yelp is done. Now. Keyword density is way more important than the length of characters that use that you use here.

You can see Yelp is using a lot of different, it's a long, pretty long description. Now, what I typically like to do is use H two tags. So just like. On SEO where H two tags are extremely important long with the H one tags you want to utilize H two tags in your long description. On like Apple, Google in your description, you can have rich HTML. And so if you know, a little bit of HTML, it's just B for bold and each two for the H two tags.

You want to have them in these little sub headlines. So if you think about a good blog post, like we have here from HubSpot, you can see that what they do is. Have this H one tag right here. This is going to be an H one tag, how to write a blog, post a step-by-step guide, and then they're going to write and they have, these are H two tags. So just the same. You want to do that on Google play. Now, going back to the Yelp example.

These are great candidates to be H two tags. And what you also want to do is have good keywords in there. So nobody's probably searching for review, discover and add photos, right. But they are searching for find restaurants and food delivery near me. So that's a great H two headline, but these. Or not review discover. So you want to have your good keywords in these each two tags. Now, will your keywords suddenly increase in keyword rankings after you add those HQ tags?

Probably not because the most important factors are going to be your title and your subtitle. So the keywords that you have in your title and your app name and your short description on Google play. You want to make sure you have those keywords as bolded or H two tags as well. That's going to really help your keyword rankings. Then number four, we have your screenshots. Now they're more important on iOS because in iOS you have the first three screens showing up on a search result, but on Google play, you don't really see the screenshots until you go into the actual.

App store listing on the search results. You only see the icon, the app name, the reviews, and so forth. And so not as important to optimize on Google play, but super important on iOS and these aren't things that are gonna impact necessarily your keyword rankings, but they will help you impact your conversions. In fact, we had one client double. The amount of downloads they received, we didn't change their keywords or anything else.

We just optimize your screenshots and they doubled their downloads. So we'll create another video talking all about screenshot optimization later on. You want to stay tune when this course of make sure you hit subscribe, but for now, just know that screenshot's extremely important, especially on iOS for converting that. Search user into an actual download. Next up is reviews obviously super important. When your users, your potential customers are thinking about whether your download your app or your competitor's app.

So on both platforms, they show the number of reviews. In the search results. So you want to make sure you're asking your users for reviews within the app stores. Now, the best practice that you can do is be aggressive, not super aggressive, but the iOS there's a review prompt that happens. It's super well integrated. And what you can do is ask users for a review. Where they don't have to leave the app store anymore.

So it doesn't require some development work, but super easy to integrate. And what you want to do is find the right moment. So for me, sometimes it's second open. All right. You have a short window of time. Retention rates are very, very low. You have a short window of time, right? And so usually I'm like, Hey, second open seems like you're enjoying me yet. My app that you're coming back for the second time. Let me ask for the review.

Other times you might want to do it is when they've hit a nice moment within neat. Your app, if it's a to-do list manager and they just finished their first task, you want to ask for the review or it's a game and they just won their first level. You want to ask for the review and we've talked about this in other videos, but I'll tell you guys the best way to implement this, especially on iOS and on Google play is to make sure you're targeting the right people, both to leave a review.

You want the happiest people. So what you can do is say, Hey, would you rate this. App five stars. They hit. Yes. Take them to that review prompt if they hit. No, obviously you can say, Hey, tell us how we can make it a five-star app, whether it's an email or a contact form. So best way reviews really, really helped now in terms of priority. I still think app title, subtitle super important, but reviews are going to play the difference when you're really going after those high traffic high competitive keywords.

The last couple of things I want to mention, they're not super important, but just want you guys to really understand. Is one, the app category. Now we've seen some times changing the app category to something that's less competitive has had an impact in terms of rankings and download velocity. Sometimes it has no impact. So play around with it tests to see if it has an impact for your app. If not. Stick with whatever category you currently have, the best fits your particular apps features.

And lastly, this is important on the Google play side of things. Google play tends to target countries that may not have super high internet speeds. And so your file size, the smaller that you can get it. The better it's going to be, that does impact your keyword rankings, how Google is going to really show your app when you're targeting those different keywords. And so really pay attention, try to get your file size as low as possible.

Those are the seven factors that go into how well you, your app will rank for a particular keyword and how well. You will do in driving organic downloads. Again, you want to AB test as much as possible because these are the factors. And sometimes some things move a lot. Sometimes it doesn't move at all. You really want to make sure you catch our next video because it is the most important part of any ASO strategy. And that is keyword research, making sure you're targeting the most relevant, the most.

Traffic searched on keywords. The biggest mistake that I see people make one big when it comes to ASO is targeting keywords that have absolutely. No traffic volume. So we're going to share the tools and how do you come up with a long list of keywords that then you narrow down into a smaller list based on the data that you see. So you really want to make sure you hit that subscribe button and you don't miss video. Number three, where we do keyword research.

I better see you on that next video until then you can follow me on all the social media platforms. @StevePyoung. And if you want to check out our website, it is masters.com, where you can get a free training where we show you the biggest mistakes the app creators make, and also how you can do market research, define profitable app ideas. All right, till next time, I'll see you on the next video. Thanks for listening to the app masters podcast for show notes and amazing app marketing content.

Check out app masters.com.