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How to Find Low Competition Keywords That Convert

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App Masters14:55Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Keywords that a big competitor pays to bid on probably convert well, so the best targets pair decent traffic with low competition. Mining competitor data in an ASO tool lets a small app find and rank for them.

Key takeaways

  • Keywords a big competitor bids on in search ads probably convert well. 3:13
    • Calm wants to be ROI positive, so paying for a keyword suggests it works for them.
    • It is an assumption, since some of those keywords may only be tests.
  • The sweet spot is decent traffic with low competition. 4:30
    • A search score of about 20 to 40 is the range that works best.
    • For "unwinding anxiety" he wants a search ads score of at least 20 before targeting it.
  • Competitor rankings and the keyword finder turn up more low difficulty terms. 7:57
    • Adding several competitors and sorting by lowest difficulty shows terms in the thirties for traffic with difficulty around 1.1.
    • Sorting the keyword finder by competition surfaced "bell sound" with low competition at 35.
  • Found keywords go into the keyword field and subtitle, with phrases kept together. 11:01
    • "Breathwork" and "happier" can combine into a subtitle like "use breathwork to be happier".
    • There is no data that word order matters, so he only tests the placement of low competition words.
  • Scores alone can mislead, so check that each keyword is relevant to the app. 10:12
    • A "neutral" KEI rating can mean the keyword is not relevant, so he sorts by competition by eye.
    • On Google Play, keyword density in the description should stay under 3%.

If people are paying for these keywords, my assumption is they're probably high converting for them as well.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Starting from a big competitor's app

A small meditation app can borrow the data of its biggest rival to find keywords worth targeting.

  • Entering Calm into ASO Mobile gives a small app a starting list of keywords. 1:30
    • The example is Unplugged Meditation, a small app up against Calm and Headspace.
    • Calm's URL goes in, plus seed terms like sleep sounds, mindfulness and sleep meditation.
    • The first table is the usual view: keywords, traffic and competition scores.
    • KEI blends traffic and competition, so one click on it surfaces terms like "mindfulness", with good traffic and lower competition.

2:36 Mining the search ads spy tab

The search ads spy tab turns a rival's ad spending into a shortlist of keywords to track.

  • Sorting Calm's bid list by traffic cuts out junk terms. 3:55
    • The path is Market, then Search Ads, then ASA spy, then Keywords.
    • Symbols like a percent sign have no real traffic in ASO Mobile.
    • Other tools judging only by search ad score may count those symbols as having traffic.
    • Calm even bids on "period tracker", which he guesses reflects people meditating during their period.
  • Going down the pages finds terms to track. 4:44
    • He tracks clockology, breathwork, deep sleep and happier.
    • By page two the search scores fall to the high twenties.
    • "Unwinding anxiety" could be an app name, but it also reads like a generic phrase.

5:35 Checking bidders, categories and KEI

Looking up a tracked keyword shows who bids on it and which category they sit in.

  • Bidder lists also hint at the best app category. 5:40
    • Glorify takes many of the impressions on "prey".
    • Sweatcoin has most of the impressions for meditation terms.
    • Most meditation apps sit in Health and Fitness, so he suggests staying there.
    • Reference or lifestyle could be worth testing for a meditation app.
  • Sorting tracked keywords by KEI ranks the best finds. 6:50
    • "Mindfulness" is still too competitive.
    • The app already ranks number two for "deep sleep".
    • "Happier" and "sleepy time" show decent traffic with low competition.

7:28 Finding keywords from competitors and the keyword finder

Competitor data and the keyword finder show low difficulty terms that a small app can target.

  • The app keywords tab lists every keyword all competitors rank for. 7:31
    • Adding more competitors gives a fuller list.
    • Sorting by lowest difficulty surfaces the easy targets.
    • A new app can use it to see which keywords it already ranks for.
    • One result has traffic in the thirties with a difficulty score of 1.1.
  • The keyword finder turns up terms you had not thought of. 9:29
    • It is slow to load, so be patient.
    • He sorts by competition, because he trusts his own eyes over the calculated rating.
    • The popular tab shows terms that are popular and may be new to you.
    • The low competition list is another quick way to find terms.

10:46 Placing keywords with the ASO creator

The ASO creator shows where each keyword is already used, so no slot is wasted.

  • Keywords in a phrase should stay together in the keyword field. 11:57
    • He writes "deep sleep" rather than splitting the two words.
    • Used keywords get highlighted, which replaces his spreadsheet.
    • He has no data that order matters, and tests of extra variants sometimes made no difference.
    • He sometimes puts a low competition word like "prayer" at the front to test placement.
  • The tool shows which low competition keywords are still unused. 13:20
    • "Sleepy time" has low competition and is not yet placed.
    • He copies Calm's terms into an Unplug example to show the workflow.

13:30 Checking Google Play descriptions

On Google Play, the density of each keyword in the description matters more than its raw count.

  • The text analyzer keeps keyword density under 3%. 13:38
    • It reads the description and shows how often each word appears.
    • Past about 3% the density gets too high.
    • The question is not whether to repeat a word eight times, but what its density is.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters. A walkthrough of how to use competitor Apple Search Ads bidding data and an ASO tool to find low competition, high converting keywords for a crowded category like meditation. It also shows how to place those keywords in the keyword field and keep Google Play descriptions under 3% keyword density.

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

Transcript307 lines
0:00

Coming up. I'm going to show you an easy, simple way to find high converting keywords that have very little competition stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is your boy. Steve P young founder of Appmasters.com. The place you go when you want action packed content related to helping you go. Yap. Downloads. All the strategies you need to grow those most important revenues today. I want to show you a very cool tool that we have been working with, and it's a great tool for you to find high converting keywords keywords that we know will convert high for your app and have low competitions to hopefully if you're just starting out so that you can rank for these keywords and they translate to downloads and revenue.

0:50

Well, let's get started. Well, here's the scenario we're going to be doing ESO for unplugged meditation. Love this app. I know the founder, Susie. We got to work together as well. Love her. So I really wanted to create this video for her as well. And I think it's a great example, picking a space that we all know and love meditation. And trying to find, because it's so competitive with all the big players out there, like calm and Headspace, how do we find the keywords that are going to help us drive more downloads and more importantly, those revenues.

1:21

So let's get. We're going to go into an ASO tool called ASO mobile.net, ASL, mobile.net. Go check them out. And what we're going to do is pick a competitor of Susie's and I'm going to pick on calm because they're one of the biggest meditation apps out there. They're super huge. So I love picking on them and I'm just going to put calm in there. So rather than putting unplug into ASL mobile, we're going to actually put calm.

1:45

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to add application to up here, I'm going to paste the URL and then. It's a mobile has some keywords that we want to kind of look at as well. So I'm going to put sleep cycle sleep sounds obviously mindfulness, super important, sleep meditation and calm. So I'm going to ask. And boom, we have what we would normally see, you know, a bunch of keywords, some traffic, some competition scores, KGI is sort of a blend of traffic and competition.

2:17

So instead of like, you know, looking for low competition, you can just click on this and mindfulness has good traffic and lower competition. So that's what I stands for. Right. So this is typical. You see this everywhere. That you haven't seen before now. Here's where I really want you to pay attention. And here's a trick that I found. Okay. So we're going to go into market right here, and then we're going to go to search ads, spy.

2:43

Now we're going to come here to this ASA spy because we can put in any keyword, but I really want you to come into keywords, right? Now, this section shows us all the different keywords that comm is trying to bid for. Now, this is interesting, right? Calm. They're not dumb. They want to be ROI positive. So we're going to assume that a lot of these keywords, they might just be testing out for one. Okay. But also that since they're bidding on these keywords, they actually are effective for.

3:12

As well. So that's why I want you to come here because if people are paying right for these keywords, they're probably, my assumption is they're probably high converting for them as well. So I'm coming down here a little bit. Now we can sort by the search ads, it means. And as you can see, sometimes these tools have period tracker. We think this and percent is just like a space. And so that's why I like ASL mobile saying, Hey, there's no traffic.

3:42

So forget the. For Sam signs. Okay. And these like random symbols, they, they probably don't have as much traffic as other ESL tools. If you just went off the search ad score, say they do. So you can sort off traffic right here. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go off their traffic from ASO mobile. And we're going to try to find some keywords to look at this prey. Interesting. Right. So I'm going to add this.

4:05

I'm start tracking that keyword. Cause I think that's interesting clock ology might be interesting for us. I'm going to take. Cycled tracker, which is really crazy, right. If you come up here there's period tracker, I'm just going to see why calm might be going after that keyword. But that's interesting. Maybe you need it more. Maybe you need meditation where if you're on your period. Okay. Now here's the key thing too, that you want to do.

4:30

So I've found that usually the sweet spot for finding low competition keywords that have. Decent traffic is around the 30, 20 to 40 mark. Okay. So I'm going to go into page two and I'm going to see if I can find anything here soon as you can see, the search score is now becoming high twenties. So breathwork interesting. So I'm going to add that, trying to find if there's anything unwinding, anxiety. This could be a name of an app, but it also could be a generic phrase too.

5:02

So I like kind of like calm, right? I like terms like that. So there's potential for us to possibly rank for that keyword. I think this looks good. I'm going to go one more page just to see if there's anything else. I might be able to find sleepy timeline. Why not? Right. Deep sleep. Interesting. Right. Happier who doesn't want to be happier now that we're tracking these keywords, we can actually go back into this ASA spy section and putting some of those things that we found.

5:33

So let's put in prey. I just want to see what types of apps are bidding for this. And I like this section, right? So you can see glorify has a lot of the impressions they're really going to aggressively. This keyword and you can see the different categories these apps have. And so if I know I get this question a lot, Hey, what category should I be in? Should I change from health and fitness to something else? And you can see here that meditation, when we search for that sweat coin has most of the impressions, which is crazy.

6:05

Didn't know about that, but you can see that most of these meditation apps are in the health and fitness category. So you can see probably, maybe stay in there. All right. The last keyword that I want to check out is unwinding anxiety or that in here. And let's see who's bidding on this and percent. Okay. Works interesting. So unwinding anxiety. So it is an app that's out there. Calm is bidding on this too. Cool. So if there is a category you might want to try, it seems like reference or lifestyle.

6:38

If you have a meditation app, you might want to try out those different categories, right? So you can get a sense of who's bidding on which term in this section. But here, we're going to go back into our ASO monitor and then sort by K E I, which is a mobile. Just says, look, these are good traffic keywords with low competition. That's essentially it. Now we're able to find mindfulness. Okay. It's pretty competitive still.

7:03

So we want to be really low, but now unwinding anxiety, decent traffic, low competition search ads. I want to be at least 20 if I'm targeting that particular keyword. Right? So I think this is good. Deep sleep comes already. Number two for it. Great. Maybe that's something that we should try to go after as well, because this low competition happier is decent, sleepy time, pretty decent, right? It's neutral, but low competition rate here.

7:30

It's got decent traffic. So we were able to find these keywords. Now, if I'm coming into unplug, what I'm going to be doing is thinking about breath work, maybe using breath, work, use breath, work to be happier. That might be a great subtitle. Cause then we're using breath, work and happier. Okay. That's a really cool way of doing it. Okay, continuing on this ASO tab, we're going to go next into app keywords. And this is a really, really cool tool.

7:59

And one of the more popular features of ASO mobile here, and this is part of our ASO process. We're trying to find keywords that. We're already ranking for, and for us, we're looking for keywords that our competitors are already ranking for. So what we've been doing so far is using calm as a competitor for unplug. And so we can see which keywords that home is already index for, which is a whole lot. Right. But if we had our own app, we were optimizing for calm.

8:35

We can actually go into this competitors. And then you can add more competitors here up top and the more competitors the better, but then you can see all the keywords that all your competitors are ranking for. And I've sorted here by the lower difficulty, lowest difficulty. So we can see all the lower difficulty keywords here. And hopefully we're able to find some with pretty decent traffic. So in the thirties or so atmosphere, that's crazy and that have low.

9:06

Difficulty 1.1 difficulty score that's really low. So we're able to really see all the keywords that all our competitors are index for. And then if you are just starting out your ASO journey, you might be not indexing for many keywords, but here's a quick, really quick look to see which ones you are already ranking. The next thing I want to show you guys is this keyword finder. So I'm in here. It does take a little bit of time to load.

9:35

So just be patient with that, but here's where you can also do some keyword research and try to find some new keywords that you might not have thought about. So this has all the keywords you can either sort. Competition and try to find a few more, you can sort by KGI and try to make it a little bit easier on yourself by prefer to do a competition sometimes because I'm like, just let me do it. I'll I don't want to always rely on machines to do some calculations where I feel like my eyes can do a better job of it.

10:03

Right. So maybe I'm able to find this. Bell sound interesting. Low competition, 35. That's how I prefer to do it right. Instead of just doing KPI. Cause it says neutral, which could also mean that eight might not be as relevant to your app as you might think it is. So don't just look at the scores. Maybe it's not as relevant to your app. A couple of more spots. I want you guys to pay attention to. We've got the low competition keywords, so really easy way.

10:29

And then now you can sort by KPI, right? Really cool way of finding new keywords there. And then you can also check out the popular, just to see if there's any new keywords that you might find, because these are popular to your rank. Look at that. Okay. The last thing I want to show you guys is this ASO creator down here. So here are all the keywords that we. Right. And we should be putting a lot more. I usually just have hundreds, so it becomes a lot harder, but now you can see what keywords are being used, where right.

11:04

So you got sleep, calm meditation. These are all being used. And this is very helpful. I have a spreadsheet to help me do this, but this is very helpful to see which keywords are being used where, and I've, if I've already used it. So let's say I'm now doing unplug, right. And I'm going to copy and paste. So again, I'm using calms stuff, but unplug. Okay, cool. Now I've only used meditation so far. I want to do breath work, breath, work to be happier right now I've started using this because now what I want to start doing is going off of the search ad strap.

11:52

Okay, then we can go deep sleep. Generally speaking. I want to keep phrases together. So I like to go deep sleep. And then if I'm going after cycle cycle, now I don't have any data to say this works better than if I had put deep in-app up, pray right here and then sleep. I just would rather get. Similar. And also you might be asking, what about deep space sleep Hama cycle? Again, I don't have any data on this. Some people report that it helps.

12:28

I've tried to test it. Sometimes it makes no difference whatsoever. So I just stick with deep calm sleep, and then maybe I want to put praise. And then sometimes I do try again. I have no idea if this works or not, because we're getting into the minutia, but sometimes if it's a low competition, keyword, like prey, I might put that in the front. So I'm just playing around with where the placement is sometimes, but that's how I try to do the keyword field.

12:54

So here really cool. Right. We start seeing when keywords are being used, they get highlighted. So might even want again, I try to put, sounds close by. Right. And we can see that and I'll just go through the rest so that we can see that we used all the keywords in here. Right? Mindfulness. It's a really cool way of doing your ASO rather than a spreadsheet that I use. Then you can see, Hey, I haven't use sleepy time yet because I know it has low competition.

13:26

Right. I need to put sleepy time. The last thing I want to show you. And this is more for Google play. Is this text analyzer. So this will look at your description and you can hit analyze. So it pulled in comms description already. And you can see from a keyword density where you are. So it tells you, Hey, how many times you said a certain word. Here's some queries, all that stuff, the density of that keyword, and especially on Google play, you want to be underneath that 3%.

13:59

It gets a little bit too high. And so it's less about, should I repeat a certain keyword eight times? It's more about, Hey, what's the density. And we found that 3% under 3% is where you ideally. All right guys, that's it really cool tool to help us find all the keywords. I prefer to rely on tools to help me because they already have all the knowledge, all the data, and it makes it easier for us to be like search for meditation.

14:27

Right. Mindfulness. And we're able to find a lot of different keywords that have these in traffic. So, if you wanna check out the tool, it is called ESO mobile.net. Once again, ASO mobile.net. Let them know you heard it on this very YouTube channel or podcast. And if you've got any questions for me, leave in the comments below, or shoot me an email@appmasters.com. All right, guys, until next time, I'll see you on the next video.