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Best App Store Optimization Tools 2017: Case Study Part 1

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App Masters19:52Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Mobile Action gives the most accurate keyword difficulty data of the three iOS tools tested, right about 60% of the time. Picking low-competition keywords with good traffic lifts downloads sharply, so check difficulty in two tools.

Key takeaways

  • Changing only the app name and keywords can raise downloads a lot. 4:25
    • A game gained 50% in a couple of weeks, with no other changes and no black hat tactics.
    • A lifestyle app gained 371% and a kids app gained 420%.
  • The best keywords combine decent traffic with low difficulty, so the difficulty score is the number to trust. 5:11
    • Search volume can always be checked against Apple's own Search Ads tool.
    • A relevant keyword with good traffic and low competition goes in the app name. Low-volume ones go in the keyword field.
  • Mobile Action's low-difficulty keywords were right most often. 14:56
    • Across three apps, 32 of its 53 low-difficulty keywords reached the top ten, about 60%.
    • App Tweak was right about 58% (18 of 31) and Sensor Tower about 41%.
  • Sensor Tower calls too many keywords easy and App Tweak too few. 15:26
    • Sensor Tower flagged 70 low-difficulty keywords and App Tweak only 31, while Mobile Action landed in the middle at 53.
    • On the kids app, Sensor Tower was right only about 28% of the time.
  • No single tool should decide your keywords, and these results cover only three tools on iOS. 8:28
    • One keyword was rated low difficulty by Sensor Tower but hard by Mobile Action and App Tweak. The app still ranked number one for it.
    • Sensor Tower's tendency to show many easy keywords flips on Google Play, which is not covered yet.

I don't like it when a keyword tool tells me there's low competition for a keyword and I can't rank well at all for this, because that is what I'm looking for, low competition keywords.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Same test, three tools

A fair comparison needs the same real client data and the same cutoff for "easy" in every tool.

  • The test pits Sensor Tower, App Tweak and Mobile Action against real client results. 1:09
    • Only three tools are covered, so this is part one of a series.
    • The three apps come from different categories: a game, a lifestyle app and a kids app.
    • The data comes straight from an optimization done for a client.
    • The app and keywords are hidden so nobody can identify them, but the ranks are real.
    • One person runs the tests, so every tool can't be covered at once.
  • Difficulty is the number that separates the tools, because search volume matches Apple's data. 2:07
    • App Tweak and Mobile Action show nearly the same volume, since both pull from Apple.
    • Each tool's easy cutoff is Sensor Tower under 3, App Tweak 30 or lower, and Mobile Action's chance score 70 or higher.
    • Volume differences can be settled in Apple's Search Ads tool.
    • The cutoffs are Steve's own picks, shown in green and bold on the sheet.
    • Red rows mark the keywords already ranking in the top 10.

4:22 App one: a game

On the game, Mobile Action's easy keywords came true most often and App Tweak's least.

  • Mobile Action's easy keywords reached the top 10 most often. 6:39
    • Mobile Action flagged 18 easy keywords and 14 reached the top 10, or 77%.
    • Sensor Tower flagged 22 and 14 made it, about 64%. App Tweak flagged 10 and 5 made it, 50%.
    • The game ended with 15 keywords in the top 10.
    • Sensor Tower's list was probably the same as Mobile Action's, plus a few extra.
  • The top-six check widens the gap. 7:39
    • Mobile Action predicted 14 of the 15 top-six keywords, 93%.
    • App Tweak predicted only 5, about 33%.
    • Steve judges tools by difficulty, since volume can be checked with Apple.
    • The final slide sums up all the categories.
  • App Tweak's easy keywords sometimes were not easy at all. 8:50
    • Some App Tweak picks looked hard to the other two tools, and the app did not rank for them at all.
    • They are probably a big competitor's keywords.
    • For one keyword, Sensor Tower and App Tweak both said easy, around 40, while Mobile Action called it competitive. The scores were close.
    • Some keywords sit in the US name and some in the Mexico Spanish name, which adds variation.

9:56 Lifestyle app: how often each tool was right

On the lifestyle app, App Tweak and Mobile Action hit far more often than Sensor Tower, but they flagged fewer keywords.

  • Sensor Tower had the weakest hit rate on this app. 10:30
    • It flagged 27 keywords as low difficulty, and 13 reached the top ten, about 50%.
    • App Tweak flagged 10 and 8 hit, 80%. Mobile Action flagged 16 and 12 hit, 75%.
    • In total, 18 keywords reached the top ten for this app.
    • Of those 18, Sensor Tower had called 13 (72%), Mobile Action 12 (67%) and App Tweak 8 (44%).
    • App Tweak scores low on that view because it shows more competition than there really is.

11:50 Kids app: few top rankings, still a big lift

On the kids app, flagging many easy keywords hurt every tool's hit rate except App Tweak's, which flagged few.

  • Only six keywords reached the top six, yet downloads still jumped. 12:00
    • The wins came from keywords with good traffic and low competition.
    • Sensor Tower flagged 21 low-difficulty keywords and all six wins were among them, so its hit rate was about 28%.
  • Sorting by difficulty, with enough search volume, is how the target keywords get picked. 13:13
    • Mobile Action flagged 19 low-difficulty keywords and about six ranked well, roughly 31%.
    • App Tweak flagged few, and 5 of its keywords made the top six, 50%.
    • One keyword that barely reached number six looked very competitive in one tool. The other two said it was winnable.
    • I need the competition score, that's what I really rely on.

14:01 Why the hit rate depends on how many keywords a tool flags

A tool that flags more keywords as easy gets a higher share of the rankings but a lower hit rate, so the percentages need reading with care.

  • Hit rate and coverage pull against each other. 16:40
    • The tallies are a rough check, not a formal statistical study.
    • App Tweak sits at the bottom because it names too few low-difficulty keywords.
    • The per-app tables measure two things: how many ranked keywords a tool called easy, and how many of its easy calls were right.

17:02 Verdict and how the tools are used in practice

Mobile Action gives the most balanced difficulty data, and a mix of tools works better than any single one.

  • The comparison is independent, and Mobile Action comes out ahead. 17:15
    • He is not tied to any of the tools. Some gave him access.
    • Mobile Action sits between the two extremes: not too many easy keywords, not too few.
    • He has always used Mobile Action.
  • He optimizes with App Tweak and Mobile Action and uses Sensor Tower only as a cross-check. 17:40
    • He left Sensor Tower because its search score seemed off.
    • He compares the three tools on current client apps as well.
    • He plans to try other tools if their makers give him access.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency. Compares the keyword difficulty data in Sensor Tower, AppTweak and Mobile Action against real iOS ASO results for three client apps (a game, a lifestyle app and a kids app). Mobile Action's low difficulty calls were right most often, and name and keyword changes alone lifted downloads 50%, 371% and 420%.

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

Transcript512 lines
0:01

coming up you'll discover which ASO tool has the most accurate data to help you increase downloads for your app I'm going to share real results from clients so you'll know that there won't be any theoretical BS just hardcore results stay tuned what is up at nation is Steve P young founder of at masters Co the place the YouTube channel the blog the podcast you go when you want non theoretical fluffy high-level BS but when you want down into the weeds detailed at marketing strategies that will help you increase downloads cost-effectively we have an agency so if you're interested in working with us check us out but this video will show you which ASO tool has the most accurate data now I want to preface this by saying we are analyzing just three tools right now I'm a one-man show I can't analyze all the tools I will add on more so I'll say this is part one and we're going to do more case studies on this because I think this is

1:24

a great topic because I believe in ASO and we've got the results to show you but I also want to preface it by saying we'll only analyzing three so the three that we're going to be looking at let's go to the slideshow actually two other presentations see what we're going to be analyzing okay all right so the three that we're looking at is sensor tower app tweak and mobile action and here is what I've lined up now this is all real data that I've pulled for our client I literally pull this from an optimization that we did ok and I'm going to go over it's just some of the data because there's a lot of columns here and if you're listening to this on the podcast I'd recommend checking out the video as well so the I'll just go through some of the columns and then go into some of the details of which tool is the most accurate let's look at since a tower for example traffic that is the amount of traffic that a keyword has so pretty

2:18

pretty self-explanatory the higher the better now what I don't like about sensor tower is that Apple had started to expose the traffic numbers now you can see app tweak and mobile action there search for and volume all mean the same thing they're pretty similar so they're very similar to what Apple is already showing now if there's are some discrepancies like these keywords you can always look into the Apple search ads tool to really verify if the 39 or 14 which tool is more correct so I don't really pay attention to that as much the search volume because I can always correct it and for the most part mobile action after week are very similar because they're pulling from the same data source Apple okay now the difficulty and why they're highlighted so if you see them highlighted all these numbers highlighted in green and bolded that just means this is what I deemed I Steve Young has personally deemed to be

3:13

low competition so for sensor tower is anything under 3 for apt week is anything under 30 30 and under and for mobile action the chance score the higher the better it's anything 70 above so I'm using the same type of barometer for all three different platforms okay in a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 in mobile actions case so as you can see if you just tell and then the ranking why it's red these are all the keywords that we've been manage to help them in the top 10 so you can see there's about 15 keywords that are in top 6 now let's go through the different apps and I've picked out three apps in different categories to really try to find a to make sure that you know it's not just one one is good for games and one is good for lifestyle ones good for kids try to show three different apps in three different categories for you okay so also I'm hiding the app the app itself because obviously I'm sharing a

4:08

lot of data you can screenshot this and you can figure this out and also hiding the keywords okay so if you're listening to this know that those are not in sixes in a book not on the spreadsheet but the ranks are real ranks and real data okay so app number one it's a game we actually increase downloads by 50% okay within a couple of weeks after updating the app with our suggested app name and keywords we increase downloads for 50% okay the thing that I want to get at you can kind of tell if you're watching this is when it's red you see that mobile actions pretty green too and so is sense of tower whereas app tweak is not so you can kind of get a sense of which one's the most accurate now when I do my ASO I pull together a huge list of keywords that I could potentially target then what I also do is put these keywords in all these different tools and then look at the data now to figure out where to

5:05

put certain keywords where like in the app name or should they be in the keyword field okay and here's what the keywords that we really want to find this this is a beautiful one I'm going to tell you which keyword or number one for now what you see is good traffic you know 25 cents not huge but it's decent and there's a low difficulty and a high chance I mean we're going to rank really well for that keyword now I think this keyword is actually in the app name and we're ranking number one so when I find something like that that's very relevant to our one that's relevant to our app and to has good traffic below competition I'm going to try to optimize it for it in the app name okay if it has a low search volume like this one right here this first one I might put that in the US keyword field or the Mexico Spanish keyword field to double it up okay you're just watching me with first time I was just going back into some of

5:54

our ASL videos and really checking those out all right so doubt now that explain this I'm going to go through the big part that you should be pay attention to which is right here okay so let's go through this this is a game we've got total keywords in the top 10 we've got 15 we were able to get 15 keywords into the top ten really the top six here okay and we increase downloads by 50% alright so because we're able to find these little gems we're good traffic score low competition we're really able to rank high for we're able to increase download effectively percent because we're doing nothing else or changing the app name and the keywords purely white hats Allah no black hat stuff okay don't want to be associated with just only black hat strategies at all okay so total keywords we did top it top ten was what I turn fifteen keywords now here's what here's how I'm going to break down the stats mobile action told us that 18

6:48

keywords were low difficulty meaning 70% and higher and of those 18 we were able to get top 10 14 keywords so they're correct rate what I call it is 77 percent sensor tower said there is 22 keywords and 14 of those keywords happen to be in a top 10 they're probably the same keywords that mobile action I said except one all right this one or since as four point six mobile action said 92% were number four but they were about 64% correct on this and then app tweak is about 50% they say there's only going to be ten low competition keywords and of those ten where five are in the top or we're in the top ten or okay that makes it go I'm asking questions like you can answer me or I can even hear you the next thing I want to look at too is the keywords in the top six okay so which keywords did mobile actions say that we're going to be in the top six that would ended up being the top six four okay

7:48

so right now 15 keywords in the top six mobile action said 14 such at ours at 14 I've tweaks at five of those 93% correct for mobile actions such as our 93 and then app tweak about 33% okay so I've tweaked what they're showing you what i s the net-net will go through in the final slide I'll give you the summary of all these things all those different categories and give you a final summary of what I think is happening here but just know that this is happening right now seems like mobile action is the most accurate in terms of difficulty and that's what I really look at because the search score you can always verify from Apple I look at difficulty and what here we could play around this right this one you can see that's why I always recommend using two tools is this said sensor tower said this is low difficulty this keyword and mobile action in apps we both said that it's not it's pretty difficult with keyword but we're number

8:40

one for this particular keyword while the volume is it the search volume isn't high or number one so that's why I always recommend using two particular tools and then if you look at here like app tweak you can see that some of these low competition keywords that they've pulled out Center tower and mobile actions that they're pretty difficult and we're not ranking well for it and I think the key here is we're not ranking at all for this particular keyword it's probably a big competitor of ours but you can tell like that's a big flag for me like I don't like it when a keyword tool tells me there's low competition for a keyword and I can't rank that wall at all for this because that is what I'm looking for is local competition keywords and you can play around this as well with center tower so again these both said low competition apt week and such tower said low competition board number forty in the modal action

9:38

said hey you know seems pretty competitive almost very much that's very close so just know that also on what I'm not revealing is where they're the keywords are are they in the us app name or the Spanish Mexico app name so I'll get some variation on there all right now let's look at the second app lifestyle here we did again maybe low bar no optimization whatsoever but we did three hundred seventy-one percent increase in downloads that's why believe ASO is such a valuable tool and something that we can control to because now we can optimize some keywords and try to get this number eight ranking to number one with different tactics but as you can see just simple changes to the app name in the keywords we're able to dramatically increase that baseline so if you're averaging you know just a few hundred downloads a day just by a few tweaks you can really dramatically increase the downloads for your apps I'm not going to

10:30

go through some of the data I'm just go through some of the highlights so sensor tower said there's 27 apps actually we're low difficulty right and of those only 13 we ended up being in the top 10 so they got about a 50% hit right again mobile action our I'm sorry F takes at 10 and 8 so they got an 80% hit rate right here mobile actions at 16 and said 12 which is 75% so 18 keywords in total we were able to rank in the top 10 for and right here really puppet so of those keywords this is the next one of the key words that were ranking in the top 8 for which tool said that they were low difficulty keywords that would end up being correct okay so since at our 13 of the 18 mobile action 12 of the 18 and actually eight of the 18 because actually didn't say that there were that many keywords that were loads of culty right so that that picked out what it may be right now it's in chat our correct 72% of times mobile action about

11:32

67% of those keywords and then apt week 44 so again after you can on the bottom of this that's just because they're not showing that there's a lot of they're showing that there's more competition than there there might really be okay so I'm not summarize all this I know there's a lot of data the lab date of our beautiful let's look at the last app it's a kidnap we did four hundred twenty percent increase in downloads like a dramatic dramatic increase in downloads and look we're not even ranking that many keywords in the top six in this case when we have six keywords ranking in the top six but we're able to find some with good traffic volume and low competition so essentially our again has the most keywords with no difficulty that's 21 all of those 21 all six ended up being right like you had six in there so low hit right there like they're not as low difficulty at sensit are saying they are

12:27

so they had about a twenty eight percent correct rate apt week ends up being the lowest again in terms of difficulty five of those keywords were in the top six they got a fifty percent and here I will show this for you as well you can tell these ten and here's the big one I think that will actually let let's do this for it but right so here's a big one right number six that we barely made it on I have two quick things really really competitive whereas insert our mobile action we're saying you know we could probably rank well for this and they are the right we're ranking number six for this and then mobile action if you do low difficulty and all sort this by chance you can end up dicted nineteen keywords we're low difficulty and only about six were able to rank well for that's how I determine you know which keywords to use I just sort it by the difficulty and there's enough search volume but these are the

13:26

keywords that we end up targeting these are valuable information for me like I need the competition score that's what I really rely on a mobile actually did 31 percent correct but you know the data here you know obviously all almost all the keywords had some variation that they were in that they were low competition because because they end up being right are you like such as our other twenty one six six of the six we ended up being top so so forth so they're all correct right here in terms of where do we end up of the six did each tool this is what I'm trying to find out figure out right here is all the keywords that we ended up being in the top ten for which keyword tools told us we would end up there okay and the top section is saying of the keyword tools that you're telling us have low difficulty which end up being correct so the more obviously this is kind of skewed the more key word that

14:18

you tell us are going to be low competition and the way where we end up the higher your rate is going to be and unfortunately app suite just doesn't tell us enough keywords or low difficulty and that's why they're always at the bottom here so let's go back absolutely the lowest one right here the lowest one right here and the lowest one right here in such Tarmo election are saying that they're more accurate and so let's summarize all this because a lot of data all right here's the big summary now combined all the data from the three different categories three different apps and I'm showing presenting you this okay so here's what we've learned mobile actually said 53 keywords across those three apps have low difficulty of those 53 winded up being the top ten really topic we've gotten I am 32 were in the top eight right so that was sixty percent they're correct they said hey these keywords of low competition they

15:15

were right 60 percent of the time app tweaks said 31 keywords have loaded clip the difficulty and eighteen of them we ended up being the top ten they're about 58 percent correct now sensor tower said 70 whoa tons of low difficulty keywords and we ended up leading 33 were in the top 10 so that's 41.1% right so in terms of accuracy of the low difficulty I would say mobile action is probably the best because one Center tower saying there's a lot of keywords that have low difficulty absolute saying there's very little and mobile actions saying probably right in the middle of those two as you can see from the stats that like 30 53 and setting like literally in the middle and most of them end up being accurate 60% tells us most accurate okay now again we got 39 keywords in total in the top eight for all three clients and as you can see the more keywords that you tell us are going to be accurate you're

16:14

probably you're percentage-wise is going to be this so I don't like this that I know why I put this I put this together for just to kind of see not statistician but I would say that this is probably more accurate in terms of how accurate the data is the top part because this one obviously sensor tower is not going to be as accurate because they didn't tell us enough key words we're going to be in the top six right Sentret our total economy words when they're going to be in the top a but and they were right like 80 percent so Center tower mobile action were correct and that they got 92 keywords in the top you know that ended up beat that said they were low difficulty that where we ended up being in the top eight a lot of data to suggest so I apologize it was a little bit confusing but net-net I would say all this combined mobile action probably has the best data that you can use to really determine difficulty search score

17:12

all of it together the one thing that I will record also point out is look I'm not associated with any of these tools some did give me access to some of these tools so I really appreciate that I'm just trying to give you a very objective view on these three tools and I'll I'll try to try out some other ones if you want to give me access to it as I'm doing more client work with ASO and the other thing I'll mention is I've got one client that a couple of clients that we just did ASO on where we use all three different tools to optimize an app here I actually use app tweak and mobile action to optimize the app and through in the sensor tower data just to see how a line up and for the long time I was using such a tower data but I hated that this search score was off and so I moved over to app tweak to try that out I've always used mobile action from for now I feel like mobile action to the most

18:05

accurate the last thing I love mentioned too is just from my experience that's your tower it's funny because you see a lot of low difficulty keyword i OS it's actually the flipside on google play so as we do more google play analysis i'll share that data for you as well this is all iOS comparing the three different tools okay so net net a lot of data what I would say is mobile action probably has the most accurate in terms of being right in the middle of the two other tools in terms of showing the right amount of keywords that have low difficulty and the right number of keywords that have little difficulty all right that's it I hope that was useful you got any questions feel free to email me anytime you want access to this data I don't know if I'm going to give it yet if you just want to see the spreadsheet that we put together but just email me or leave a comment on youtube or on my blog let

18:55

me know if you want access to this data and if enough people enough enough just can't be one I mean like 10 20 people have to ask for it then I make this available for you this spreadsheet but for now it'll live with me because I don't want too many keywords going out because as you can see I found some real gems here and I do not want you to know the app or the keywords because we're doing great work for our client if you're interested in working with us from an ASO perspective reach out to me at masters dot co there's a little work with this button and if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast at masters co splash iTunes and the YouTube channel at masters Co slash you too or if you're already watching this on youtube hit the subscribe button help me out and come on I'm sharing good work this is going to help me push and to know that people are actually watching it subscribing it's going to help you

19:46

create more videos as well alright I'll see you next time bye