CaddieOpen in CaddieDownload for Mac

How App Downloads Impact Keyword Rankings for ASO

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters10:08Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Your recent download count is a big part of how app stores rank keywords, so driving more downloads lifts rankings. Match the keywords you chase to your download volume, and optimize the app name first.

Key takeaways

  • Downloads over a recent window are a big part of the keyword ranking algorithm. 0:55
    • Apple and Google have not shared how many days of past downloads count.
    • It is only one input. Retention and how well keywords sit in the app name also count.
  • Apps with few downloads should target keywords with decent traffic and low competition. 1:26
    • Under 100 organic downloads a day, look for traffic of 10 to 40 on Apple Search Ads, and competition of 70 or more on Mobile Action or 3.0 or less on Sensor Tower.
    • Apps with 100 to 1,000 organic downloads plus paid acquisition can chase high-competition, highly relevant keywords.
  • The app name should be optimized first, because it carries more ranking weight than the keyword field. 3:41
    • The name weighs more than the subtitle, and the subtitle weighs more than the keyword field.
    • The update alone probably doubled this client's downloads, before any campaign ran.
  • A pay-to-free campaign that drove over 70,000 downloads sharply raised keyword rankings. 5:09
    • Rankings began climbing on August 18, the day downloads spiked. One keyword went from 17 to 2, another from 12 to 7, and another from 19 to 5.
    • The campaign made one in-app purchase free for a couple of days and got press on AppAdvice.
  • Repeated download pushes keep rankings climbing. 6:23
    • A second bump around the 22nd added to the gains.
    • Facebook ads or any other way to speed up download growth works the same way.

That's what happens when you continually drive downloads running these different campaigns, and you're able to really increase your keyword ranks.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Matching keywords to your download volume

The keywords you chase should fit the downloads you can actually drive.

  • An app with few downloads cannot win competitive keywords. 1:26
    • Without enough downloads, aggressive bids on competitive terms fail.
    • Every keyword must also be relevant.
    • Traffic floors: above 1 on Sensor Tower, above 10 on Mobile Action, 10 on Apple Search Ads.
    • Best finds score 10 to 30 or 40 with low competition.
  • Apps with paid acquisition can chase aggressive keywords. 2:35
    • One client ranks very high on high-competition keywords.
    • He already ranked well and his downloads were strong.
    • A few small tweaks raised those rankings further.
    • Mid to high competition matters little once you have a download engine.
    • He works this way mostly with bigger game clients.
  • Low-download apps should put their best keywords in the app name. 3:46
    • Choose terms with decent traffic and low competition.
    • The name carries more weight than the keyword field.

4:03 The pay-to-free case study

The pay-to-free campaign can pull in far more downloads than usual.

  • Pay-to-free is a favorite campaign because it beats typical download numbers. 4:47
    • The client had a free game.
    • Typical results run around 8,000 to 20,000 downloads.
    • The 70,000 result was well above that range.
    • Earlier case studies explain why the campaign works so well.

5:04 Rankings rise with the download spike

Keyword rankings climbed as soon as downloads did, and downloads were the only thing that changed.

  • The ranking spike lines up with the download spike on the chart. 5:31
    • The data is live, from the day of recording.
    • Each color is one keyword, and the names are blurred for privacy.
    • The keyword that reached 2 touched 1 for a day, then held at 2 for days.
    • Name optimization alone had already lifted that keyword before the campaign.
    • Nothing else was changed, so the gain comes from downloads alone.

7:12 Optimize first, then run campaigns

Name work comes before paid campaigns, so the campaigns show where each keyword lands.

  • Clients get the app name optimized before any search ads or pay-to-free campaign. 7:14
    • A name rewrite alone boosts downloads.
    • It also shows where the keywords fall, which guides the next campaign.
    • Two optimization rounds were done before the campaign ran.
    • The exact lift from the update is not known yet.
    • The campaigns then sped up growth that ASO had started.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency. Downloads feed the keyword ranking algorithm, so the keywords you target should match your current download volume, and a burst of downloads lifts rankings. A pay-to-free campaign that drove over 70,000 downloads moved several tracked keywords from positions like 17, 12 and 19 to 2, 7 and 5.

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

Transcript263 lines
0:00

coming up you're gonna discover how your current downloads the download numbers impact your ESO strategy and I'm gonna share a really cool case study of what happened to keyword rankings after we ran my favorite pay to free campaign and drove over 70,000 downloads stay tuned

0:32

what is up app nation it is the P young founder of masters Co the place you go when you want action-packed content in the app business and today I want to talk about how downloads impact your keyword rankings and impacts your ASO strategies so I got a question from one of my clients we're doing ASL work for him and he said hey Steve how do downloads impact your keyword rankings I said well here's exactly how it works so in short downloads are a part of the keyword rankings alaric algorithm they so algorithm right so your past downloads for X amount of days I don't know what that exact number is I don't think Apple or Google Play to my knowledge has shared exactly what that number is but X amount of days your previous X amount of day downloads impact your current keyword rankings okay so it's a part of it it plays a pretty big part yeah that being said the other thing that would tell you is what

1:28

do you do when you don't have that many downloads let's say you're averaging less than 100 downloads a day organically you're not doing any paid acquisition it's just a hundred less than 100 downloads a day well the strategy that I take when you're at that point is I try to uncover good keywords so I would say anywhere good traffic scores and low competition because I know your current download rate I can't go aggressively after competitive keywords right you just don't have enough downloads for them but what you need to do is find those keywords that have anywhere from I would say if you're on sensor tower anywhere at least above one and if you're on mobile action above a 10 and if you're looking at Apple search ads it would be 10 so I would say try to find some that are 10 to 30 to 40 if you can find them and low competition that's 70 and up on mobile action and then 3.0 and down on sensor tower so

2:27

anything that's at a low competition that's those are the keywords I'm trying to find okay now if I'm and also the last thing I'll obviously make sure they're relevant keywords now if you the bigger clients that we have that are doing paid acquisition that are already do 100 maybe a thousand downloads organically a dame well I tend to go after more aggressive high competition highly relevant keywords and then I don't mid to high competition it doesn't really matter as such I've got a client where we're running a ton of different campaigns on we're able to rank him really high for certain keywords that have really high competition because I can I know that I can go after those keywords because one he's already ranking well for them and so what's a few little tweaks on my end I'm able to increase those rankings and then - he's already got the downloads right his downloads are really well done

3:20

so especially when I'm working with my get bigger game clients I go after more aggressive keywords you can do that when you are when you have a engine or you're already doing paid acquisition you can go after more aggressive keywords all right so I hope that answered your question it is one that downloads always impacts keyword rankings but it's just part of the algorithm so you know the other algorithm would be retention the other thing is how well your keywords are optimized in your app name and the one thing I would say is if you have very little downloads make sure you have the most important the ones that with decent traffic low competition in the actual app name the weight of the app name is more and went out with subtitle than it is just your keywords okay now the next thing I want to do is show you a really cool case study on a client that we just did we just ran a campaign on and also what happened to his his

4:13

keyword rankings so let's get to that alright guys so I don't know if you guys have probably heard about this campaign I've been talking so much about it but it is the pay to free campaign it's one of my favorite campaigns to run I've shared a ton of different case studies on why it's so stinkin cool so definitely look through that but essentially what we did here for our client is he had a free game we made one of his in-app purchases free for a couple of days got pressed for it on app advice and it drove over 70,000 downloads 70,000 downloads now that's probably not Emily thought the right word on average it's around probably anywhere from 8 to 20,000 it's okay but here's what happened so we don't 70 all right there might be some [ __ ] things happening but Woodrow 70,000 downloads for this particular app all right so here's what happened so we drove it on the actual the August 18th so I'm giving you data that's just

5:12

happening right now all right guys the the campaign happened on August 18th and here their keyword rankings for very relevant keywords that were optimizing is happening I've blurred out the keywords just to keep it private but here's the current rankings right now and so you can you're gonna have to pay attention to the colors so we drove it on the 18th and we drove all this downloads and you can see that's where the spike starts going up right when the download numbers start going up that's when his spikes start going up too so here's what happened and I'm gonna compare it with today what's the day of this recording so as you can see blue went from 17 and now II as of today the green it's been hovering at 2 so I would probably say it no change for a day it went up to 1 but it's been really hovering at 2 and then even the past days it's been at 2 all right so that's with just REO maizing the app name that

6:05

were able to get it to to the red we went from 12 to 7 and then the orange we went from 19 to 5 now here's what happened like you can see like it just went way up after we ran this campaign now we actually got another bump around a 22nd I believe and that's why you might see a little bit more a bump but that's what happens when you continually drive downloads running these different campaigns and you're able to really increase your keyword ranks so it speaks into you know what we first said about first optimizing the app name first and foremost which is what we did and which is why we're able to achieve these rankings and then when you run some different campaigns like the pay to free campaign to it or maybes runs of Facebook ads whatever you can do to drive accelerate the downloads growth you can really see the keyword rankings growing and this is doing nothing else other than just growing downloads so a

6:57

really cool case study I was just curious to see what happened to it as I was about to create this video and I wanted to see I knew we drove 70,000 downloads when was it tremendously well but I wanted to see what would l s'what happen to the keyword rankings and I thought this would be a good cool case study to share with you guys as well so really really cool the way I would I always say to my clients is especially when they're like hey I want to do search ads or I want to run this page of free campaign I always say let me optimize the keywords the app name first and foremost and then let's run these other campaigns because one I know just doing the reorganizing app name record and as the keywords will give you a boost in downloads and they don't want to see where those keywords fall into and then we start figuring out what other campaigns we can run in so this we did the optimization we did a couple of

7:43

rounds already and then now we did this paid to free campaign drove over 70,000 downloads I think with just the update alone we probably doubled the downloads I don't know the exact number yet but we did pretty well with just the ASO side of things and now we just accelerated the ASO growth as well because of these campaigns alright hope that was helpful and the last thing I will say as I get back on camera is we've got a brand new thing coming up guys it's called app masters Academy it is officially launching this Friday as when this video goes live but September 8th will be officially up and running but it is all the different strategies and campaigns that we run for our clients we're gonna show them how to do it on your own so if you're like if you want to see all the new and the latest things that we've got we've we're running for our clients now all those courses are gonna be their own

8:39

at masters Academy I'm probably gonna build out a community out after we built up a little bit of momentum and get some members in and that will probably happen later on but for now because it's so hard to manage communities for now it is just gonna be horses and everything that we do for our clients like the paid to free campaign we show you exactly how to run this at a master's Academy like I showed you our complete ASO strategy so if you're trying to figure out ways to find these really good traffic low competition keywords well we have that course that shows you exactly how to do that and how do you think outside the box when it comes to ASO because I think what makes us different from an ASO perspective is that we do think outside the box I've seen some optimization from other companies and services and usually if they're thinking inside the box like directly related terms where I think a

9:31

little bit outside of the box and that's how we've been able to achieve consistent growth for our clients when it comes to ASO so check it out if you want to learn all about it it is at masters Academy com it is Jess now I don't know if the price is gonna change or not caveat here but this is the lowest it's ever gonna be it's $25 a month to get started just $25 and if you're not completely happy with with the courses I'm happy to give you a refund but it's $25 a month if you want to get started at masters Academy com now see you on the next video bye