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ASO for Diner Dash Type Game

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App Masters19:59Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Pick app name keywords that are relevant, low in competition, and already near the top for the app. That cements number one spots and opens new searches without fighting giants.

Key takeaways

  • Two keyword tools together show where an app can rank high. 3:07
    • Under 3 on Sensor Tower and above 70 on Mobile Action both mean low competition. When both agree, the app can usually rank very high.
    • The keyword list starts from Apple's auto-suggest for seed words like cake and coffee shop, plus the free Appitty ASO tab, which shows the app's current ranks.
  • Name keywords should be ones the app already ranks well for and that match the app. 6:55
    • Coffee shop and coffee games sit at number two and have touched number one. Restaurant games never went above five in 30 days.
    • The top five for restaurant games each have hundreds of thousands of reviews, so taking that spot is unlikely.
  • Niche phrases beyond the obvious terms add easy rankings. 11:20
    • Cake swap is a Zynga match-three game, so searchers there are not locked in with diner and restaurant games.
    • Baking magazines like Baked from Scratch have good traffic and low competition because few apps target them.
  • Different names in the US and Spanish Mexico localizations nearly double the keywords. 1:25
    • The app repeats the same name in both, which wastes the second one. Different names, subtitles and keywords on each rank higher.
    • To stress a phrase, split it across the US keyword field and the Spanish Mexico name, such as coffee games.
  • Screenshots should convert the visitors that rankings bring. 15:09
    • Drop the auto-play video, since it fills the whole screen, and A/B test it. Lead the first screenshot with the best games of 2016 badge from Apple.
    • Swap vague words like tasty recipes and customize for what players care about, like run your own coffee shop and decorate.

Think through the words, the verbs that your core audience is using rather than just say customize.

Steve Young, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 A strong app that needs fine tuning

The app already ranks well, so the advice is about small changes, not a rebuild.

  • My Cafe: Recipes and Stories is already doing phenomenally well, so the goal is the next step. 0:40
    • An audience member asked what to change to grow further.
    • The advice is based on public data only, so some calls could be wrong.
    • Steve normally charges for this review and agreed to do it free in exchange for publishing it.
    • He can't see the full list of keywords the team targets, only what the ASO tools show.

2:07 Building the keyword data

A big keyword list with traffic, difficulty and rank data shows which terms earn their place in the name.

  • Every candidate keyword goes into one sheet with ranks, traffic and difficulty. 2:53
    • Green cells mark low competition, so the best terms stand out at a glance.
    • Broad head terms such as bakery, baking, cafe, cake and chef games are unclear, because nobody knows what the searcher means.
    • The scores are not always accurate, but sorting by rank shows the app does rank well for its terms.
    • Cafe games, my cafe and cafe are all already number one.
  • Words in the current name that don't rank are wasted space. 5:01
    • The app sits at 87 for recipe stories and 89 for recipes.
    • Steve sees no ranking for anything tied to stories or recipes.
    • Phrases using those words could still be targeted, but the data gives no sign of it.
    • He doesn't know why the name includes them and says he should ask.

5:41 Rewriting the name around what already ranks

The new names push the terms the app nearly owns, add easy cake phrases and keep the rankings it already has.

  • Baking is a better bet than bakery. 6:09
    • Baking games has more traffic than bakery.
    • The app is already number two for baking and 21 for baking games.
    • The traffic scores of these terms are close, so the swap loses little.
    • The aim is to lift baking games much higher.
  • High traffic is not a reason to chase a term the app can't win. 6:43
    • Cooking games and restaurant games have the most traffic.
    • Coffee shop and coffee games match the app directly, since it is called My Cafe.
    • Coffee games held number one for the longest time, slipped, then returned.
    • Coffee shop swung between one and two, so number one is within reach.
  • Cake terms and Cake Boss add low-competition phrases. 8:38
    • Cake has good traffic, and many cake phrases have low competition.
    • Cake Boss, a baking show, has decent traffic and low competition, so top five is likely.
    • The new US name is My Cafe: Cake Baking Boss, Coffee Shop Story in World.
    • The Spanish Mexico name is My Cafe Coffee Games, with the subtitle Baking Games to Swap Cake.
  • Story and world stay in the name to protect rankings. 9:48
    • The app is number three for world and number three for cafe story.
    • Steve didn't want to lose those positions while reshuffling the name.
    • Baking stays in the name so number two can become number one.

10:00 Cake swap and duplicating terms

Low-competition phrases beat crowded restaurant terms, and a target phrase can be repeated across fields.

  • Easy phrases show up as gaps in the spreadsheet. 10:05
    • Sorting by cake swap and cake pay shows the app not ranking for either.
    • Both tools score them as low competition.
    • Cake pay mostly brings up a Cheesecake Factory app.
    • Cake swap seems to be only a keyword, not a product name.
    • The app sits at number nine for restaurant games, so that term is de-emphasized.
  • An aggressive keyword goes in several fields at once. 12:05
    • Use the phrase in the US keywords and in the Spanish Mexico name.
    • Write swap cake rather than copying the rival's exact name.
    • Coffee shop games has more traffic than coffee games, so it is the likelier name.
    • Mixing and matching the words is how duplicates are done.

13:31 Thinking outside the box

Terms your audience reads outside the app store make cheap, relevant keywords.

  • Searching Google for what the audience follows turns up keywords rivals ignore. 13:31
    • Popular baking magazines may score high on traffic yet low on competition.
    • Competitors only think of terms like bakery games.
    • Baked Mag is a second example beside Baked from Scratch.
    • Cake Boss is another term that would help the app rank for cake in general.
    • The more targeted keywords the app is relevant to, the better it ranks for each.

14:57 Screenshot changes

The listing should show players what they get, in the words they use.

  • Removing the video lets screenshots do the selling. 15:09
    • In a search for cake games, most results have no video.
    • The video fills the screen, so only one screen is visible.
    • The first change should be to take it down in the next update and compare results.
    • The hunch is that downloads and conversions will rise.
  • Benefit text should echo what players actually say. 15:51
    • The first screenshot says only a cozy cafe, which doesn't call the app a game.
    • Tasty recipes is no real benefit, since players run a cafe rather than learn to cook.
    • Run your own cafe makes the game clear.
    • Decorate beats customize, because decorating is what players enjoy. Steve cites his wife as an example.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing and ASO agency. A live ASO audit of a cafe management game shows how to pick app name keywords by combining traffic and competition scores with the app's current rankings. The suggested changes target keywords where the app already ranks number two, and drop terms it has never ranked well for.

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

Transcript513 lines
0:00

coming up I'm gonna do an ASO analysis for a diner - type of game you'll discover our thought process for keyword research and how to select the right keywords for your app name stay tuned

0:24

what is up nation it is the pee young founder of AB masters Co the place you go when you want action fat content in the app business because I bring you detailed action-packed content to help you grow your downloads and today I had a person in the audience reach out to me said hey Steve I got this app I looked at the app was like holy cow they're doing phenomenally well on here so but they wanted my feedback on what I would do if I had to take it to the next step and so I said okay I'm willing to do that for you but I'd normally charge for this but if you let me record it and publish this on youtube and on my podcast I'm happy to do that for you so they said yes go ahead and do that so that's the app we're gonna be looking at today now let's go into the screenshot and I'll make it a little bit more screen share alright so here's the app it is called my cafe recipes and stories and I'm gonna show you this first here's

1:20

the app all right the first recommendation that I would make is the US and the Spanish Mexico localization as you can see it's in Spanish here they have the same app name so have different app names for the different localizations because you only have your English here and if you put different app names here in the Spanish Mexico app name you're gonna be able to pretty much double the keywords you're going after because you don't need to have the same app name repeated twice we've been able to rank really high for certain keywords when we put in Spanish Mexico happening and so there's no need to repeat it on the US and Spanish Mexico side we usually have different map names and different subtitles and different keywords on both localizations so pay attention to that that's a first recommendation I would make now I put together this long list of keywords for them so these are just the ones I've

2:14

targeted so generally what we do is we put together a long list of keywords I go more for our clients but here I wanted to get a sense of you know what they are you currently rank for or maybe just a few other Auto suggested terms so what I did was I picked like cake and I see what I saw what Auto what Apple Auto suggested in the app store so let me come on and show you this too so I did cake so this is the AppStore I do cake and then I looked at where Auto Apple auto suggests and I put those keywords into here and I did that for I think coffee shop or other thing other keywords too and I built this long list of keywords what we definitely do after that was we throw them into Center tower mobile action to get all the data and then we can see all the ranks the number of keywords the traffic scores from sense of tower difficulty so everything that you see that's highlighted in green that means that it's a low competition

3:09

for them for that keyword now just what I've deemed to be low competition and found that anything under three on sensor tower tends to be we can highly ranked for them and then anything on mobile action that's above 70 we can rank well for them and then they're not always accurate because obviously here if I did a little rank sort you'll see that you know they're the rank it really well for their keywords all right so that's what I did I pulled all the data and any time that you have you see keywords where both platforms are telling you low competition like these these are generally mean from our experience that they can rank really high for those keywords okay so the they're doing really well as you can see you know cafe games are number one my cafe they're number one obviously cafe itself they're number one they're doing really well from an ASO perspective but here the subtle changes that I would

4:01

make so what I did let me go back to this and also let me show you this real quick so you can go under a panty this is all free I put the app in there and you could do this for a country or competitors and I went to the ASO tab and I saw all the keywords of ranking well for right so that's what I've done here and that that helped me build up this list too all right this is my patented spreadsheet that I use for our ASO clients so let me go through here and why I decided to make some of these changes so I looked at the the popular terms you know the the very generic terms I would say or the head terms I would say like bakery baking baking games cafe cake cake games chef's games so these are like very you know broad head terms say like cafes very broad you don't know exactly what people mean yet so and I wanted to see one what the traffic scores look like for these terms and to where the the app is currently ranking

4:58

now you'll notice that the app name says my cafe recipes and stories now I don't know why they have recipes and stories I should ask them I don't know so I did pull up or you know recipes and stories and they don't rank really well for them so here it is this is a screenshot that shows this right there are 87 for recipe stories and 89 for recipes now they could be going after some phrases with stories and recipes but I think it's a waste because I just don't see them ranking really well for anything related to stories or recipes now again I could be completely wrong because I don't know all the keywords that they're targeting all I can base my decisions off of is what I currently see in a patty and everything else okay so let me show you why I decided to rename this app the way I did so I've actually renamed it my cafe cake baked cake baking boss coffee shop story in world right this is my new

5:53

US app name suggested that US subtitle here's some keywords I threw in there and stuff right here this is my suggest I'm gonna go into the more detail but what I saw here was coffee games a number two coffee shop there number two baking there number two so I really wanted to focus more on those terms because if you look at the traffic scores between the differences then you'll see that it's not much different so baking versus bakery and baking games actually has more traffic than bakery so I'm going more aggressive on the baking side of things and they're already making number two for baking already right so and they're 21 for baking games so it's a few subtle changes I want to make so that I can get them above for you know really high try cry well for baking games because theme and then the other thing was restaurant games obviously if you look at all this cooking games and restaurant games have

6:47

the most traffic but although they rank pretty well for restaurant games I would say they've never gone up so here let me show you this real quick as I was think through this restaurant game so this these three keywords restaurant games this in red and then coffee games there is in green and then coffee shop is in blue okay so I'm gonna follow along but as you can see restaurant games is a red line they haven't gone above five in the last 30 days right but coffee shop they've hit number one a few times now they settled in to number two and in there back to number one for a little bit back down to number two and one so there's a really good shot that they can end up being number one right and same thing with coffee games they were number one for the longest time they've dropped a little bit then we're back to number one so there's a really good opportunity for them to be in the top one or two for

7:37

these keywords they're already number two but they can be in the top one for these keywords with these subtle changes whereas restaurant games you know like you've never gone above five so why even bother in terms of targeting and I the other way I think about this too is coffee shop and coffee games that's directly related to the app it's my cafe right it's about that app so it's more relevant and to you actually one here what's more relevant to you actually have really good rankings so let's get you to number one let's get you to stay number one for these keywords and so that's why I changed the app name from my cafe recipes and stories to my cafe cake-baking boss coffee shop story in world ok now I'll tell you why I decided to do that too and then the Spanish Mexico app name is now called my cafe coffee games and then the subtitle is baking games to swap cake alright and I'll tell you

8:36

exactly why I decided to name those keywords so if you look at the data here these are terms related to cake right I notice again here that cake had good traffic scores right and I noticed that there were a lot of keywords with cake phrases that have low competition so cake baking is another keyword that I don't think I put in here but is another keyword now put boss there because cake boss which is a show about baking stuff a good amount of traffic and low competition meaning if I put it like this I can pretty much rank in the top five probably most likely I can end up in the top five for this so that's why I rearranged it that way Iori rank well for baking so I have baking in there because I want dairy number two so I want them to be number one for baking so that's why I threw that in there too and then cake baking was another phrase that was in there so I threw that cake too because I also

9:33

want to rank well for phrases around cake that's why it so I wanted cake in there and Cake Boss okay so that's why we've reorganized that cake baking boss okay and then the coffee shop obviously you know they're number two for coffee shop so I want to get them to number one and then story in world if you look at all our keywords you see that they're Warnock number three for world and then there's cafe story they're number three so on I didn't want to lose those rankings and I don't know what they currently have so I put that story in world in there let me stick with this spreadsheet right now so this is the big spreadsheet that I normally put together and then I just put in swapping page just to highlight the fact that these guys swap and pay have really low competition so I just sorted by chance swap right here and pay and they're not ranking at all for them and there's both when both like I said but get there

10:25

before when both platforms so I mean it's low competition I can generally rank well for them so cake pay is a something from the Cheesecake Factory there's an app for that and then kick swap is I think it's just a key word because I don't think anything is cake swap Linda let me look at it real quick - I'll pull it for you guys so here's another reason why I mean as I've got this up why I decided not to focus so much on restaurant games too is if you look at this they're number nine they're right here and if you look at all the reviews let's say the top five C then the hundreds of thousands of reviews right and so I just don't think we'll be able to take over that spot and so that's why I've de-emphasize restaurant games all right so let's go cake swap that's the keyword that we're targeting yeah yeah here I remember now cake swap is a match-three type of game from Zynga so the reason why I like this

11:25

keyword is right now obviously the platform's are telling me good data right like good scores everything else and to the it's a different type of game so it's a match three game I'm not competing directly with other like diner - restaurant type of games I'm competing more with match three games which people are looking for cake swap they could potentially be looking for a because cake is in there a game that's more related to running a bakery and so forth so that's why I have kick swap as a keyword here and you know I didn't want to go after directly after that name so I put swap cake but it should work the same way and normally the the other thing I want to highlight here is when I'm going aggressive after a keyword so I have cake here and I've swap here right I'll generally have it in the Spanish or the US keywords and also the Spanish Mexico app name so here I would probably put you know I already have

12:23

coffee in the subtitle I'll just put games here to highlight the fact that it's both in the US keyword field coffee games that phrases in the US keyword field but it's also in the Spanish Mexico happening right now wanted coffee games because where you bring pretty well for it and just with having this in the app name I want this to be cemented into this top spot so that's why I decided to put that into this the number one so you could also mess around with this and call like coffee shop games too if you wanted or you can just leave it coffee games and I might put a coffee shop games because coffee shop has more key word or more traffic volume then coffee games so this is the way I probably would do it coffee shop games but we already have coffee shop here but if you wanted to emphasize it this is how i duplicate stuff if I am gonna duplicate it I miss max matte match it like that right that's it that's how I

13:18

do it I would have gone in more details for clients and fill out the whole thing but this is just to show you our thought process how we come up with different terms and how we decide which term actually use in the app name and the last thing I will say is a little hack that I'll share with you guys too because I want to bring you the best stuff is think the room like what else you can think about so what I did was I googled baking magazines and I wanted to see which ones were the popular results so the ones I found was baked from scratch right here and also baked mag now generally some of these you'll find that they might have so if they're very popular they might have really high traffic scores but generally what you'll find is they have low competition because nobody's really thinking about that because everybody's thinking like crooked games bakery games things like that and I'm buddy thinking outside the

14:17

box so things through like what else would your core demographic be searching for that has a lot of volume that they can potentially stumble upon and especially if it's like baked from scratch or baked magazine you're gonna be more relevant so the more keywords that you are relevant to the the really targeted keywords you have the better you're gonna rank for those particular keywords I hope that makes sense so like having big magazine or maybe it's like Cake Boss for example is a great one right like having those in there would help you rank better for a legit cake in general because you're going after all these terms and ranking well for the phrases from that main term alright hope that was helpful oh the last thing is the the ask for some screen shot advice so let's look at the screen shots now what you don't see because I'm pulling this on the web is in the App Store there's actually a

15:06

video that plays now I would probably get rid of the video okay I'd probably get rid of the video because if I search for let's say cake games cake games you see that most people are not having the video so the video if you use a video it just takes up everything now forget how it's gonna look in iOS at 11 but it takes up whole the whole screen so you only see one one screen right so I would a be test that and go no no video so I might not change anything but I might just take down the video in the next update and see what Bin's and my hunch says that you'll probably increase downloads and conversions because people are more likely to convert right and the other thing I would change in the the text is call this a game right make this a game like so it just says a cozy cafe right now in the screenshot that's a first screenshot I would put you know run your own cafe right or something that they

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even said are here my cafe has been recognized as one of the best games of 2016 by the App Store so why not use that right so I'm gonna how do I get rid of this show less oops okay let me pull this up okay good so why not use that social proof and add it into your first screenshot one of the best games of 2006 by the App Store this would be my first thing that would be the first screenshot so if I take away the video I can then highlight one of the social proofs that I already have which is one of the best games of the App Store these aren't real benefits these are just saying tasty recipes what do I care about tasty recipes when I'm not you're not teaching me how to cook I'm running my own cafe so why do I care about tasting recipes you know think about what people must are really saying about the app right and then use that in your language gripping stories customized not really that important it

17:07

could be like you know decorate your so think through like what your core demographic is thinking about right decorate your own coffee shop cuz women I know my wife is like this she loves to decorate stuff so let's decorate your own stuff rather than customized so think through the words the verbs that your core audience is using rather than just say customize that's so like boring nobody cares about customization really they care about decorating so that's the the changes I would make remove the video put best game 2016 by Apple as in the text rather than a cozy cafe and then be like run your own coffee shop you know something like that or something more than just tasty recipes and these words that's it all right hope that was helpful if you want to see more of this then I would say go to at masters Academy sign up for our new app masters Academy course here let me pull that up for you guys so you guys can see it but

18:11

essentially he's my my future my vision for at masters especially in 2016 and beyond is to provide you with these really action-packed courses that means mini courses that help you do this one thing really well I think I don't think a lot of people need a whole full-on course so we already have that you can get access to our ASO masters course you can get access to how we get featured by Apple that's coming up soon our paid a favorite paid a free campaign some of our older webinars that we can't publish anywhere else you're gonna have access to all that so if you miss the webinar and they're not available you can access that throughout masters Academy and the cool thing is if you really are unhappy you think my stuff stinks then I'm happy to give you your money back but you got to let us know soon cuz you know like can't wait like a year and like all the stats this stuff stinks Steve so but if

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you're like you sign up and within that first month you're like no this is not good happy to give you that refund anytime and you can cancel anytime but we're gonna be adding more and more stuff and then when I do some of these audits I'm probably gonna limit it to the people within app masters Academy and only do it for them and just publish it for them that's the thing like hey I'm willing to put in time for you if you can let me share it with the rest of the community but most of this stuff the things that I just did right now are probably gonna be specifically for those in the app masters Academy community so or you got people signed up for this which I'm really excited about we're officially launching this where it's officially launched by the time you hear theirs but it is app masters Academy com this time at masters Academy com it's also in the link below in the description of the video alright guys

19:55

I'll see you next time bye