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How to find low competition keywords for app store optimization

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App Masters13:41Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Compare Sensor Tower and MobileAction data together to pick keywords, because each tool alone sometimes misleads. Then use relevance to decide whether a keyword goes in the app name, the keyword field, or the Spanish Mexican localization.

Key takeaways

  • Each tool scores keywords on its own scale. 2:34
    • Sensor Tower gives a traffic score from 1 to 10 (higher is better) and a difficulty score (lower is better).
    • MobileAction gives a search score from 1 to 100 and a "chance" figure, the likelihood of ranking in the top 10 of the app's category.
  • The two tools often disagree about the same keyword, so one source can mislead. 6:51
    • A keyword with Sensor Tower difficulty 4.9 but a 93% MobileAction chance ranked number three in the app name.
    • A keyword with difficulty 1.7 but only a 50% chance ranked number 79. A keyword with difficulty 2.8 and a 67% chance ranked number five.
  • The US App Store also indexes the Spanish Mexican localization, which doubles the keywords you can use. 10:03
    • An English keyword placed only in the Spanish Mexican app name ranked number one in the US store.
    • Its scores were a 4.1 traffic score, a 42 search score, 0.5 difficulty and a 100% chance.
  • Where a keyword goes depends on how strong its scores are. 12:44
    • Very high traffic goes in the US app name or keyword field.
    • Lower traffic with low difficulty and a high chance goes in the Spanish Mexican fields, along with competitor names you want to hide.
  • Relevance to the app matters more than any score. 12:14
    • People who see an irrelevant app because of a keyword will not download it.

Sometimes you can't trust just one source.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Build a keyword list and score it in Sensor Tower

Good keyword choices start with a long candidate list scored in Sensor Tower.

  • Start with 50 to 80 candidate keywords and score each one. 2:16
    • Much of this data is free, even though the dashboard shown is a paid version.
    • The test app is Paintball Rush, a game featured in China in May.
    • Sensor Tower also lists iPad difficulty and the number of iPhone and iPad apps for each term.
    • Paintball Rush has low traffic and a middling difficulty of 3.8.
    • Every keyword's numbers go into a new spreadsheet.

3:19 Add MobileAction and combine both in one sheet

Putting both tools' numbers beside the real rank shows which keywords are worth targeting.

  • MobileAction accepts whole phrases, separated by commas. 3:31
    • The test entered Paintball Rush, Brick Arrow and Paintball.
    • It also shows the app's current rank and the total number of apps per keyword.
    • The tool shows how the app already ranks for each term.
    • Phrase input saves time compared with entering single words.
  • One spreadsheet joins both tools with the real US rank. 4:42
    • Columns B and C hold Sensor Tower data, D and E hold MobileAction data, then the real rank.
    • The rows come from several client apps, with the keywords hidden.
    • Rows were picked for low difficulty and high chance.
    • All ranks are for the US App Store.
  • Agreeing scores predict a strong rank. 6:25
    • One keyword had a 4.1 traffic score, zero difficulty, a 38 search score and a 100% chance.
    • That keyword ranks number two in the US keyword field on iOS.
    • The two tools' traffic and search scores were close to each other here.

6:51 Three app-name keywords where the tools disagree

A keyword's fit with the app, plus both tools' data, tells you whether a score is worth trusting.

  • A high Sensor Tower difficulty can be wrong when the keyword fits the app. 7:00
    • Traffic score 3.4 matched a MobileAction search score of 31.
    • The keyword was very specific to the app name.
    • He used to skip anything near difficulty 4.9, so this was where he got into trouble before.
    • Sensor Tower alone would probably have made him ignore it.
  • A low chance figure signals a keyword that may not earn its name space. 7:52
    • Sensor Tower gave it a 4.0 traffic score, and MobileAction's search score was similar.
    • He wants a chance of 80% or higher.
    • App name keywords are weighted more, so a weak result there is a bad sign.
    • He kept it as a test of the two scores, and may swap it for a keyword that uses the keyword field better.
  • Sensor Tower is right when its difficulty is low and the chance is middling. 9:00
    • Traffic score 3.6 matched a search score of 36.
    • He likes anything under 3 on Sensor Tower difficulty.
    • MobileAction alone might have made him drop it from the app name.
    • He liked the traffic score, so he went after it.

9:58 Using the Spanish Mexican localization

The Spanish Mexican fields give English keywords a second home that still ranks in the US store.

  • Keywords with both tools in agreement can go in the Spanish Mexican fields. 10:03
    • He chose the app name keyword because it was relevant and both sources promised a high chance.
    • A second keyword scored 3.5 traffic, 32 search, 0.3 difficulty and a 100% chance.
    • That one sits in the Spanish Mexican keyword field and ranks number four.
    • Neither keyword is in the US app name or keyword field.
  • The Spanish Mexican keyword field hides competitor names from rivals. 11:35
    • He likes to add competitor names there when the chance of ranking is very high.
    • He isn't sure the number four keyword is a competitor name.
    • The field is hidden from everybody.

12:12 Relevance decides the final call

Scores only narrow the list, and relevance picks what goes in the name.

  • Look for relevant keywords first, then low difficulty and high traffic. 12:12
    • A low traffic score with a high chance is not a reason to use a keyword.
    • Irrelevant visitors won't download just because they saw the app.
    • He thinks much of the MobileAction data he showed is free.
    • He finds the paid version well worth it for the extra data.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency. Keyword research for App Store optimization works best when you combine Sensor Tower and MobileAction data instead of trusting one tool, then place each keyword in the US app name, US keyword field or Spanish Mexican localization based on its scores and relevance. Real client data shows each tool was right on different keywords, with rankings from number one to number five on the ones tested.

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

Transcript384 lines
0:00

Coming up, I compare my two favorite ASO tools and how you can use them to decide whether to target a particular keyword for your app name or keyword field. Also, I share real data that shows you why it's so important to use both tools when performing App Store optimization. All that and so much more. What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.co. And today, I want to share two of my favorite ASO tools, App Store optimization tools in the space. And these are the tools that I've been really using a lot for my clients. And I want to highlight some of the data that they provide and give you real results on what data you can actually trust. And it's going to be some mixed results, so a little bit teaser there, but I think it'll highlight why you kind of need both data, why it's important to have data from multiple sources, okay? So, I want to show you first and foremost, if

1:15

you're if you're new to ASO App Store optimization, I recommend taking a Skillshare course that I have up. You can get started in that for very, very cheap. I think it's just a couple of dollars. If you want to get access to that course, it is a monthly fee, so you know, if you don't want to stay on with Skillshare, you can cancel, but you just have to pay a few dollars to get access to the course. I'm going to link that into the link below. But, if you're just new to it, go check out that course. I walk you step-by-step how I do App Store optimization for my clients.

1:47

For this, what I want to highlight is just the data that both tools present, Sensor Tower and MobileAction. So, let's get started with this. For those who are familiar with Sensor Tower, you'll notice this is their their dashboard. And so, this is a paid version that I have, but you can get access to this tool for free. A lot of this stuff that I'm going to show you, you can get access to it for free. So, what you normally do within Sensor Tower is you have a list of keywords that you're probably targeting. So, initially when I start, I say I try to get a whole slew of maybe 50 to 80 keywords of that I might be targeting, okay? And then I put them into Sensor Tower. And Sensor Tower gives me this data. So, I've already put in Paintball Rush. This is one of my games that was featured in China back in May.

2:33

And Sensor Tower gives you this data. Traffic score, a difficulty score, iPad difficulty score, the number of iPhone apps, and the number of iPad apps, right? And the for traffic score, I'm going to break that down. The higher, the better. So, right now obviously Paintball Rush doesn't have a lot of traffic, but it's not as high. So, it's a scale of 1 to 10, and 1 being the lowest. Difficulty is something you want low.

2:58

So, if you see something that's really high in difficulty, that's harder for you to rank well for that particular term. So, 3.8 is this score's difficulty, which is somewhat in the middle, right? iPad difficulty, same thing. And the number of apps, pretty self-explanatory. So, that's what I do. I try to get all this data for all the keywords I'm considering, and I put it into a brand new spreadsheet. Now, let's look at MobileAction.

3:22

So, I've got my app on MobileAction as well. Now, just to save time, here's where you're going to enter all your keywords that you're considering. What I really love about MobileAction is you can put in phrases. So, and then separate them by comma. So, I've put in Paintball Rush, Brick Arrow, and then Paintball as well. Just a few keywords just so you can see multiple keywords with data. And here, just the same thing as Sensor Tower, you get data from MobileAction. But, here's the difference. So, search score, pretty much same as the traffic score of Sensor Tower.

3:56

Right? You're looking for a 1 to 100 now. So, the the higher the the number, the better it is from a search volume perspective. But now, MobileAction has this this column called chance. And this is the chance I'm going to hover over so you can kind of see it, but I'll read it to you. This shows the likelihood of this keyword to be at the top 10 in your app's category. So, it's really the likelihood that you'll rank really well for the the keyword. And as you can see, you know, here's what they have, their scores. Here's how my app is ranking for these keywords.

4:30

And then again, here's the number of total apps. So, I try to combine all this data into one big spreadsheet, and I'm going to show you that spreadsheet right now. Okay, here is the spreadsheet that we put together. Now, I generally have a whole lot of columns in my particular spreadsheet when I'm doing an ASO report, and you can get that on that Skillshare course or that Udemy course, you can see that spreadsheet. But this is what I want to highlight here today is sort of combining all that data, and then really making a decision on where you should put that keyword, whether it be in your app name or your keyword field. So, I'll go through This is real data that I have from some of my clients. Now, I've taken away what those particular keywords are, but I have put in here where the the keywords appear in their app name, whether it's in the And this is specifically for the US App Store, okay? So, let's go through some

5:27

of this data so that you can see step by step why you should try to use both, and how do you decide where the keyword goes, whether it goes in the app name, the keyword field, the Spanish Mexican, because hey, hint hint, the US App Store indexes the Spanish Mexican localization as well. So, you're essentially doubling the number of keywords you can use. And I'm going to show you that it works right here cuz I got real results to show it to you. Okay? All right. So, first keyword, this is a US keyword and you can see from Sensor Tower data, right here, these two columns, B and C, are all Sensor Tower data.

6:02

And then D and E are all MobileAction data. And then here's the real rank. Now, these are multiple apps. These aren't just one apps with multiple keywords. I pulled data from multiple apps. And I wanted to highlight things that had low difficulty, high chance, and where we'd rank versus all the different ones. So, I tried to pull them dump a number of different keywords to show you. Okay, for this particular keyword, good traffic score, 4.1, according to Sensor Tower, no difficulty whatsoever.

6:32

MobileAction says 38 for their search score, so they're very similar. And then 100% chance that we're going to rank in the top 10 for the app category, right? So, that keyword, right now for our client, we have we're ranking number two as a keyword in the US keyword field on iOS. Okay? The next one, it's in the app name. It's in the US app name. It has a decent amount of traffic score, 3.4, really high difficulty of 4.9. Now, this is where I got into trouble before because I looked at that 4.9 and said, "I'm not going after that keyword." Right?

7:05

Because it's too hard to rank for probably. Now, but I started using MobileAction's data now. So, the search score is 31, which is very similar to 3.4 in my opinion. And then 93% chance of actually ranking in the top 10 for that particular keyword. So, I said, "All right, I'm going to trust this data." And plus the app name, the keyword was actually very specific to the app name. So, I'm going to use it in the app name. I'm going to go after it hard. And we're able to rank number three for it. So, if I had just used Sensor Tower data, I would have probably ignored this likelihood. I might have ignored this keyword. But because I've seen the data from MobileAction, I can say, "You know what? I'm going to trust MobileAction in this case. Let's go after this keyword, and it's relevant to my app, as well."

7:52

The next one, next US app name has a 4.0 score, so really good score, a 1.7 difficulty, which you know, again, if I just based on SensorTower blank, this is perfect. I'm going to rank really well for it because it has very low data. But, but the search score on MobileAction is very similar. But, the chance that we're going to rank is 50% on MobileAction, which is really low. I like to stay anywhere from 80 80% and up uh if I'm using MobileAction data, right? Instead, 50%. And guess what? We have it in the app name, so which means it's weighted the keyword is weighted more when you have it in the app name. And we're ranking number 79 for that particular keyword.

8:32

So, again, if I just use SensorTower data, I might have been wrong, but because I have MobileAction data, I'm able to kind of decide, all right, this still makes sense. Now, again, we're still going after this keyword, so it's in our app name, right? We're still using valuable character links. And if it's relevant, we're going to keep it in there. But, now that we have data, hey, maybe we switch it out and put a different keyword. Utilize that those keywords fields a little bit better.

8:54

So, we had it in there because I wanted to test SensorTower score versus MobileAction score. Okay, here's the last US app name that I'm going to share with you. So, 3.6, and I'm not going to kill SensorTower this time. But, it's a 3.6 score from MobileAction search score is 36, so very similar again from a traffic perspective. The difficulty, however, is a 2.8, which isn't too bad, right? Like, I like anything under three for me on SensorTower is pretty decent difficulty that I would target in my keyword. But, MobileAction says it's only a 67% chance that I'm going to rank well for this particular keyword. So, again, SensorTower now wins because we're ranking number five for that particular keyword. So, now See, this is what I'm telling you. Sometimes you can't trust just one source and just think, if I was just using purely MobileAction data and for this particular keyword, I might not consider

9:46

it in my app name. But, because I saw Sensor Tower's data and it made sense for that particular app and I really like the traffic score, I said, "Let's go after it." And now we're number five for that particular keyword. All right, the last couple things I want to highlight is again, I repeated I said it before, but I'm going to repeat it again, the US App Store indexes the Spanish Mexican localization. So, you can essentially put English keywords, English app names into that localization and still rank for it in the US App Store. And here is proof and here's how we decided which ones are going to go which keywords are going to go in the Mexican Spanish Mexican app name and keyword versus US app name or keyword.

10:29

Okay, so for this particular keyword, really good different traffic score again, 4.1 on Sensor Tower, 42 on MobileAction, 0.5 difficulty on Sensor Tower and 100% on MobileAction that we're going to rank in the top top 10 10, right? And we're ranked number one for it. Now, again, this is not in the US keyword, it's not in the US app name, it's only in the Spanish Spanish Mexican app name and we're able to rank number one for this particular keyword for this app. Why I decided to do that? Because it was relevant, I really liked the I really liked the traffic score and based on the 100% and very low difficulty, I said, "Okay, I'm going to put it into the app name in the Spanish Mexican because apparently, you know, it's 100% and very low difficulty. Both sources are telling me that it's a very high chance that I'm going to rank really well for this particular keyword.

11:19

And the same thing here, Spanish Mexican keyword, 3.5 32 on 3.5 on Sensor Tower, 32 on MobileAction, 0.3 difficulty on Sensor Tower, 100% on MobileAction and we use that as a Spanish Mexican in the keyword field and that's number four. Sometimes I like to put competitors' names in that particular Spanish Mexican keyword field especially if there's the really high chance I'm going to rank well for it. Like in this particular case, I don't know if this is competitor name, but sometimes I like to throw competitors' names in there because I really hide it from everybody.

11:51

Okay? So, again, this is what I wanted to point out that hey, there are discrepancies between the two tools and you don't rely on just one. And a lot of the things that I'm showing you with MobileAction I believe are free, but you can get away with it paying for it. I think it's well worth it because you get all this data, you're able to really decide what makes sense. And in the end, in conclusion, you're going to decide an app name whether it makes sense or not based on the relevancy. Just because it has a low traffic score and a high chance doesn't mean you should always be using it in your app name or your keyword field because the likelihood that people are going to download it if it's not relevant, people aren't going to download it just because they see your app. It's It's not going to happen. So, you really want to focus on highly relevant relevant and then low difficulty high traffic scores. And the

12:42

way I like to key it up is based on the relevancy. If there's a really high traffic score, I like to put it in the US stuff and then if there is a somewhat low difficult traffic score, but a really high chance in that I'll rank well and low difficulty as well, then I'll put it in the Spanish Mexican Spanish. And if I'm trying to hide keywords that I'm using, maybe competitors that may be in the app name that I'm trying to get it rated high, I might throw that in the Spanish Mexican as well. So, that's it, guys. Check it out. sensortower.com is what I use. mobileaction.co is the other site. Hope this was valuable. If you got anything out of this and you're watching this on video, leave a comment on my YouTube video. And if you if you're listening to this, go check out the YouTube video because you'll find some really really good data and that blog post is linked in that show notes in your favorite podcast app

13:34

as well. Thank you so much for your attention. I'll see you guys on the very next chat. Bye.