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How Apple Search Ads Impacts App Store Optimization

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App Masters20:06Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Apple Search Ads and organic App Store rankings lift each other, because both reward keyword relevance, tap-through rates and conversion rates. Teams should build ASA campaigns from the keywords they already rank for and improve their product pages to cut costs.

Key takeaways

  • Search ads reach high-intent users, so they convert well. 2:01
    • Apple says 65% of iOS downloads come directly from search.
    • Users type a specific keyword, so retention and subscription rates beat Facebook or Google ads in AppsFlyer and Adjust data.
  • Apple now weighs tap-through and conversion rates more heavily when it judges relevance. 4:56
    • Since iOS 15, signals go beyond rankings and download velocity. The algorithm stays a black box, so this comes from observed correlation.
    • iOS 15 also brought custom product pages, which ASA campaigns can use to raise these rates.
  • Better tap-through and conversion rates lift organic rankings, and better rankings lift ads in turn. 7:00
    • A crypto finance app launched custom product pages in ASA. Its CPAs dropped and its organic keyword count jumped.
    • One client's app went from about 200 to 2,200 ranked keywords from mid-April, while its ASA costs fell every day.
  • A strong organic ranking makes the same keyword cheaper in Apple Search Ads. 16:00
    • At an identical $3 bid, an app got more impressions after its organic ranking rose.
    • One app bid about 50% more on a generic money-management term with no organic ranking and still struggled to get impressions.
  • Start campaigns with keywords you already rank for, then widen the list with discovery. 8:15
    • Terms ranking between 1 and 50, found with an ASO tool, are the best starting point.
    • Discovery campaigns, broad match and search match surface new terms. Check their organic performance, then merge the two lists.

Basically bid less, spend less per user, still get better results if you're performing organically.

Emre Bilgic, MobileAction

Chapter summaries

0:00 Why paid search and organic search belong together

Apple Search Ads and App Store optimization work on the same search system, so they are best planned together.

  • Apple Search Ads is a strong first paid channel. 2:38
    • Steve recommends it to clients who are ready to start paid marketing.
    • Apple Search Ads is only about five years old.
    • Steve's team runs many campaigns for clients and had not seen a big effect on keyword rankings before this talk.
    • Emre still sees a strong correlation between the two.
    • Example audiences are people searching for a card game, a finance app, or how to buy bitcoin.
  • App Store optimization covers the whole product page, not only keywords. 3:57
    • It is SEO for the app stores.
    • Anything visible on the product page counts as optimization.
    • Most people think only of keyword work, but the page itself needs a lot of effort too.
    • That page work is what later feeds tap-through and conversion rates.

4:18 Apple's ranking signals widened with iOS 15

Product page quality now feeds organic rankings, and custom product pages let ads improve that quality.

  • Tap-through and conversion rates are hard to raise without new iOS 15 tools. 5:11
    • iOS 15 launched custom product pages, product page optimization, in-app events and cards.
    • Custom product pages fit Apple Search Ads best.
    • Before, the lever was good screenshots, icons and preview videos on one page.
    • Rankings and download velocity were once the main signals. Conversion rates now count as well.
  • Mid-ranked keywords gain most from strong conversion. 6:34
    • Keywords ranking about 20 to 50 with good tap-through and conversion rates improved in both ads and organic.
    • Organic rankings and downloads rose.
    • These rates can be checked inside Apple Search Ads.
    • A keyword does not need a top ranking for this to work.

7:21 Which keywords to start with

Begin with terms the app already ranks for, then use ad results to decide what belongs in the metadata.

  • Metadata terms are a fine start, and an ASO tool gives a bigger list. 7:50
    • Title, subtitle and App Store Connect keywords are a good first set.
    • An ASO tool lists every ranked term at once.
    • That list saves extra keyword and competitor research.
    • Steve asks whether keywords that work in ads should move into the title and subtitle. Emre calls it a really good point.
  • Tracking each keyword shows both sides improving together. 9:08
    • MobileAction compares ad and organic results keyword by keyword for clients.
    • Paid impressions, taps and installs raise download velocity.
    • Download velocity is one of the most important organic ranking factors.
    • The effect runs both ways, so a better organic rank also lifts ad impressions.

10:03 Rankings and ad rates move together

Tap-through rate, conversion rate and organic rank rise in step, because Apple judges relevance the same way in ads and in search.

  • Organic rank and ad performance feed each other in a loop. 10:14
    • The algorithm sees good results and lifts the ranking again.
    • That lift flows back into Apple Search Ads.
    • Organic ranking and download velocity matter most, but the signals are not formally ranked 10:30.
    • MobileAction sees a very strong link between tap-through and conversion rates in its ASA data 10:44.
  • Rising tap-through and conversion rates show up next to rising organic rank. 11:00
    • On one client term, tap-through rose day by day while organic rank improved.
    • Conversion rate was lower a few weeks earlier, then climbed with rank.
    • That pattern was the first cue to dig deeper 11:21.
    • Daily conversion data is noisy, so compare start and end dates 11:46.
    • The direction of cause is open: rank may lift rates, or rates may lift rank 11:58.
  • Apple scores a keyword's relevance to your app the same way in ads and organic. 14:53
    • A relevant app should hold a decent organic rank and perform in ads too.
    • So check the organic rank of terms found through discovery and broad match.
    • A MobileAction ASA report marks when custom product pages began, followed by a jump in ranked terms 13:01.
    • Searching those terms yourself shows how you rank before you bid 15:29.

15:37 Organic rank beats a bigger bid

An app with an organic ranking wins impressions that a higher bid alone cannot buy.

  • A lower bid with an organic rank outperformed a higher bid without one. 16:00
    • One app bid less and still got far more impressions.
    • Its rival bid more on a generic money-management term and could barely spend.
    • The two are different companies, one bidding in pounds and one in US dollars 17:20.
    • The ranked app's organic position kept improving even on a small bid 16:45.

In the growth library

Emre Bilgic, Apple Ads Client Partner at MobileAction, interviewed by Steve P Young of App Masters. Apple Search Ads and App Store Optimization feed each other: better tap-through and conversion rates lift organic rankings, and organic rankings make search ads cheaper and more visible. Case studies show a crypto finance app cutting CPAs with custom product pages and a client growing from 200 to 2,200 ranked keywords.

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

Transcript604 lines
0:00

what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of appmasters.com the place you go when you want action-packed content related to helping grow your downloads and more importantly those revenues and today we're going to talk all about the relationship between asa we're going to be saying that a lot so that means apple search ads asa and aso which for those who are just joining in our newbie app store optimization seo for the app stores how they tie in together do does running asa campaigns help your organic keyword rankings so breaking it down all with me is emery bilkitch i tried to say it emery from mobile action and he's going to share some of the case studies that show you the impact of asa on aso emery welcome to the show brother thank you steve well great to be here um i've been a fan of what you've been doing for quite some time now so yeah um thank you for the introduction so hey guys uh my name is

0:57

emra um namely big i'm a apple ads client partner over at mobile action searches.com um i've been working in this field for quite some time now previously has been you know doing customer success management so yeah i've been the guy who's taking care of the community so to speak over at the mobile action site so yeah great to be here awesome all right emily as i said before we hit record i was like you know i haven't seen a direct impact by having asa campaigns you know we run a lot of asa campaigns for our clients and i haven't seen a huge impact with the keyword ranking so i'm very curious to see what you guys have seen and for me to learn along with the audience so why don't we kick it off with the presentation that you guys put together and i'll let you lead and i'll have questions along the way so going on to you know the more basics um for for you know the audience here uh for apple searches what is apple search

1:50

ads why is it important why are we doing it um just to say you know apple search has been something that's quite very new it's been you know launched in about like five years ago something that apple is saying is you know when it comes to ios 65 of the downloads are coming from you know directly from search so this is a really important metric and this is what we're targeting through apple sources specifically um as well and yeah so like right now we're seeing and we're going to be talking about you know how the ao society is affecting the apple search aside and vice versa um there's still steve i know like you're having some difficulties here but there's still quite a strong correlation between the two and we're gonna be delving a little bit deeper into that you know moving forward in uh what we're gonna be talking today all right so hey emmy i leave an apple search ads i actually am a big proponent of apple search ads and

2:42

when people ask me clients ask me hey what they're really ready to start paid marketing i actually recommend apple search ads because from a down funnel perspective we've actually seen the best performance when you look at the apps flyer or the adjust data you see the higher attention higher subscription rates all coming through apple search ads versus like facebook or google ads and such are you guys seeing the same thing on your end exactly i mean the main reason why that is happening is because people who are coming in through apple searches they're typing and searching specific keywords right so we're already targeting high intent users rather than you know looking at okay according to this demographic this targeting whatever the scoop is i want to show my ad to these particular people um etc like we do um elsewhere right now we want to show our ads so to speak to people who want to look for a card game

3:29

we want to do it for a finance ad we want to do it for anyone who's in the interest of oh i want to buy bitcoin right so since we are able to do this through apple search as high intent users pour in and like you said we get really good results compared to other channels as well okay let's take a look at how it plays in with app store optimization so absolutely all right so just to give like a quick um overview like you said seo for app stores that's exactly what app store optimization is something that everyone you know talks about and you know really likes to do like everyone thinks about just keyword optimization when it comes to aso there's a lot anything that you see on the product page is basically app store optimization at this point um so there's quite a you know hefty amount of information and stuff that you need to do on that end to have you know good success all right so moving over to

4:22

how keyword rankings and you know apple's algorithm works so this is something basically like a black box right not many people really know how this algorithm works apple you know um is you know pretty much like i said like a black box and we're trying to figure out what is working best and what is not working best um apart from the general statistics you know looking at the organic rankings of what we have of course that's you know where we're going to get relevancy information um you know moving um forward but there's also quite a few things that we did notice um especially in the past especially with ios 15 launching where you know the factors that you know signal relevancy for apple has been a little bit broadened compared to what we were seeing before which is basically a little bit more heavier when it comes to tap through rates and conversion rates right um so as you know ios 15 launched cpps

5:14

came out ppo came out in-app events cards came out like a lot of exciting things came out uh which you know specific over cpp is something that we can utilize quite very well in apple search ads so yeah um basically we've been able to see a strong correlation between the two apart only from the organic rankings and download velocity now we're seeing tattoo raised conversion rates um affecting the organic performance uh moving forward as well all right so you know this is something that is quite very hard to maximize right normally speaking you know taffy rates and conversion rates and stuff like you need to have good screenshots good icons good you know preview videos etc to be able to boost these numbers up um as much as possible but yeah so with these um you know recent launches of cpps and stuff which is something that i'm going to be going into uh just to explain how all of these things tie in together

6:06

um you know we'll be moving forward and you know looking into a little bit more detail on that side right so um moving forward um like i said you know this is something that we can definitely be speeding up you know when it comes to our organic performance and improving our apple searches performance alongside with it by trying to boost up these conversion rates and these tap through rates uh moving forward on you know rather than just solely focusing on organic rankings and you know the donald velocity that we're getting so this is something like i said that we did notice and you know without getting ridiculous good organic rankings let's say you're ranking between let's say 20 to 50 um if you are able to achieve really good through rates and conversion rates something that you could check when you're using apple storage as well we did notice that it did start to improve the apostrophe's performance

6:57

alongside the organic performance so what we've seen we've seen increases in organic rankings we've seen you know increases in downloads and since that happened it again affected the apple search side positively which again affected the organic side positively so it's quite a nice cycle of benefit between the two that you know builds up each other um you know moving forward as you know all sides are improving so yeah moving along there is a specific case we have here yeah i wanted to jump in real quick so should we focus in on it maybe you tell me steve i'm going to get to that in the next slide but should we be then focusing on the keywords that we have in the title subtitle when you say there's been an increase in the organic is it by is it the specifically the keywords you're bidding on on exact match so i want to get a little bit granular and should you if you're just starting out should you just focus on

7:46

the keywords that you have in your title and subtitle absolutely like one of the things that does definitely work is targeting the terms that you have in your metadata that being their title subtitle apps or connect keywords definitely a good strategy to start off off the get-go the best way that we could be doing this rather than relying on what you have in your metadata is if you have like a very strong aso tool like mobile action you can go and see exactly what you know terms you're ranking for um especially those rankings that you would have between one and fifty right you know those that would have potential in applesearch site that would be the best starting point when we start to set up our apple search as campaigns if we didn't do you know an excess of keyword research and competitor research and stuff like that if we go into you know those kind of advanced tools and look at our entire pool of ranked terms then we

8:36

have immediately a gigantic list of keywords that are going to be working well in apple search ads and of course understandably because we have decent organic rankings good ttrs good crs we're all happy so should we be aiming for good ctrs good tap through rates too so good conversion rates good tap through rates and those are the keywords if we find those keywords working well in apple search ads then maybe even moving them up into the title subtitle would you recommend things like that and would that help us more word rankings okay that's that's that's that's a really really good point you know something that we do notice a lot and this is something that we do with you know some of our clients as well is that we look at their apple search as performance for specific keywords we look at the organic performance for the specific keywords that they have and the kind of granular kind of improvement in

9:24

the both sides so what we did we know what we were able to notice is in cases where the organic rankings are uplifting really greatly we've seen an immediate effect on the apple search side even though the bids are identical to each other right so it was three dollars before it's three dollars now they're getting more impressions simply because of the reason that they have more um they have a higher ranking in a particular keyword and the same goes you know the other way one of the most important things download velocity right when it comes to organic rankings since we're able to get more impressions more taps more installs that's you know bringing our download velocity up you know the paid search um the paid demos that we're getting in through apple's search ads and now we're you know putting that in the organic side then the algorithm is saying okay great you guys are doing awesome so let me increase your ranking

10:10

a little bit more up and then again it affects apple search site and it's kind of like a cycle of benefit like i said before hey if i can jump around here if you had to pick one which one would you pick in terms of like the most important is this ranked by an order of what you think is the most important these signals no not necessarily the most importance in this instance would be uh definitely like the organic um you know the rankings and when it comes to like apple such as performance but you know download velocity again is going to be something that's going to be super super important um something that we do notice is there is a very strong correlation right now between tattoo race and conversion rates something that we can track through through applesauce specifically so and you know we have some examples moving forward there as well with you know uplifting rates and what kind of is there all right cool

11:00

so yep so one of the examples that we have um over here for a specific term that we had for one of our clients we did notice that their chat through rates have been increasing um granularly speaking over the past uh over the past days and we started to notice well yeah it seems that their organic rankings are also improving when this is happening right so this was you know one of our first cues of saying okay let's let's look a little bit you know deeper into this moving forward there's also a very similar kind of example that we have when it comes to conversion rates so over here we can see that you know the conversion rates compared to you know a couple weeks before it was slightly lower then it eventually starts to increase of course for um anyone who's out there conversion rates and this kind of data can be a little bit wonky um according to the days and stuff that are happening what should we be doing here looking at

11:52

the start date and end date and kind of granule kind of improvement there so again similar structure here organic rankings are improving conversion rates are improving or you know the other way around all right so moving forward what we're able to see when it comes to you know apple searches performance and overall keyword performance as we have mentioned uh you know the details over at the counter rates and the conversion rates and the organic rankings um and the download velocity all of these are a lot of information taken all at once but definitely you know we've been able to see the improvements so one other example that we have that's an amazing example that we've seen you know one of our major major clients that we had for a specific crypto finance app we've seen a very very great improvement in their tap through rates and conversion rates once we started to implement customer product pages for this particular client

12:41

one that happened we have seen a significant decrease in their cpas understandably because now we're getting more installs from the volume of people who are searching for the terms right we were able to see that their organic performance at the same time started to improve very greatly as well so moving over to the next page you can see here um a little screenshot that we took from the mobile action platform specifically from our asl report where exactly where we started those custom product pages and we saw that uplift in tap through rates and conversion rates understandably again a little bit higher installs we've seen a similar kind of hike when it comes to their organic performance for those keywords the graph that you see there is a number of terms that that particular app was ranking for and once we implemented these changes we've seen an immediate jump you know you know something that i was doing by myself um

13:33

for one of my clients you know not an example that we have on here was i started off around mid april for one of my clients you know doing um aso helping them with their asu services uh their efforts sorry and you know we've been you know looking at their metadata what to put in what not to put in and alongside we're running apple search ads you know with custom product pages so when we're doing that i've noticed since the start um mid april right which is a start date for their particular app since then now they are ranking for 2 200 separate keywords as of yesterday so well from 200 to 2200 that's like like steve you don't know that kind of uh that's what kind of a gigantic impact that that might have on their organic side as well and it made their applesauce just cheaper like moving forward every single day their cpas started to improve and the kind of results that they were getting were improving as well

14:31

for for you know discovering the keyword side and what we're doing in apple source chat specifically of course is that you know we have discovery campaigns we have broad match terms we have search match on ad groups where we're able to find these terms but definitely something that i said in the beginning as well is the organic side using those terms in your applesauce campaigns is going to be helping you very greatly because the way that apple calculates this is they look at how this term is at you know relevant to your app and this goes exactly the same structure like the same mentality on the organic side and is exactly the same on the apple store chat side so if you're super relevant then it means you're probably of course going to have a certain decent amount of organic ranking if that's the case i can immediately assume that it should be performing at a certain degree on my apple search side as well so this is

15:18

something that i would definitely suggest that you guys do is checking your organic performers and checking um you know what you're getting through the discovery and your broad match um search terms then going in searching for those terms see what kind of organic performance you're getting there and kind of combining the two together um you know merging them together all right moving forward uh we have actually an example uh where we've seen you know how this you know came into place and you know something that we were really strongly seeing so you know something that i was focusing on a lot is the organic side and combining that with apple searches right two sides perfectly working well so for the apple search side if you're getting an organic ranking we have we have a case where a client was bidding less than someone who did not have an organic ranking and they were well number one they were spending more for this

16:11

particular keyword and they were getting significantly more amount of impressions so if you can move over to the next page steve we can see the example there like we can see these numbers and yeah like for example these guys they're spending about 50 more they're willing to spend 50 more for this particular keyword they do not have an organic ranking and they were really struggling to get any impressions from a very simple money management super generic term right so this is why the organic side and why the aso side is super important for apple searches and if we can go back to the other page to the you know the previous example we can see for example their organic rankings have been improving even with a very small amount of bid compared to the other guys um and you know their their organic rankings were increasing and this is why apple sources are super important for the aso performance side as well yeah i mean i'm

17:01

a little bit confused and are you showing us is this one app is are these two apps this is one app this is second app or is this one app this whole thing is one app and then this is the second app yeah it's it's the first one is one app and the second one is a different app so understandably yeah you can also kind of take you have a guess at you know who they might be when is bidding in pounds one is bidding in us dollars as well so yeah they're like um kind of like uh different different companies here that are um bidding on the same terms um on our site and this is the kind of results that we're able to see they were getting better organic performance understandably getting more impressions even though they had a lower bid and the other guys they were bidding more they didn't have an organic ranking and they were not able to spend through that particular keyword although it's super generic right so this is something you

17:57

know we definitely definitely suggest you guys to do this is how you combine the aso aspect the keyword aspect of things to boost up your you know organics and boost up you know your apple searches you know performance spend less you know basically bid less spend less per user still get better results if you're performing organically something exciting here and exciting right absolutely so this is something that we recently launched so in mobile action you know we have a very community driven understanding when it comes to you know creating our products and our product range so what we've launched very recently is our free forever plan our freemium tool which you know includes all of the basic asc services it has a very limited but very useful ad intelligence and creative tracker and also something that's going to be super very neat is if you come along and integrate your apple search as api in

18:53

you get one month free access to searches.com and you're ace also able to utilize search as intelligence which shows you impression shares which shows you who's bidding on these keywords which shows you for my own branded terms who's trying to steal traffic from me and you're able to see exactly how people are doing and how people are performing so um steve this is something that i really wanted to share um for quizzes i know this is what i've been you know like basically wanting to come to with like with the whole video as well you can definitely go in here anyone who's uh watching definitely go ahead check this out it's completely free uh for the simple iot tools and if you want to go ahead and connect your search as api you get one month of free access to searches.com and search as intelligence tools where you can see impression shares and basically spying on everyone else and see what you know

19:47

who's doing what in the market to build up your strategies go check him out is mobile action dot co everything thank you so much for coming on and doing this yeah absolutely very very nicely you know be on the show so great to be here too thanks thank you guys for watching and i'll see you on the next video