The Most Important App Store Optimization (ASO) Factors in 2020

What is up everybody. Thank you guys for coming to this burning ASO questions. Thank you to app follow for putting on this amazing webinar and bringing together all of your favorite ASO tools into one place to answer. Your questions. Look, ASO has been changing a lot. I'm super excited to talk to everybody on this panel, and because we got so many great minds, we're going to try to get to all the big questions that we found to be the most valuable.

And as I told the panelists, if you guys want to add on or talk about anything other than that's not listed, feel free to jump in. So let's get started. So let's start with this guys. Mel, maybe you could kick this off. What are the ranking criteria? What is it based upon? And maybe we can start with iOS and then move on to Google play. Yeah, definitely. I was going to suggest, so obviously the criteria quite different, whether you're on the app store or on the play store.

Um, so, uh, and then I would also do a difference between, if you're referring to category ranking or keyword ranking, um, on the app store. It's pretty straightforward in the sense that. What really influences category ranking? I would say the main influencer is definitely the download velocity of your app. So the more download your app is getting, that is going to help you go after those rankings. It terms of keyword, it's much more the conversion rate that your app has on a specific keyword.

So if your co, your your key, your app, sorry, converts really well on a keyword, that's definitely going to help you ramp up the rankings. On Google. I'd say that Google also uses those criteria, but definitely the main criteria, Google is they have a much higher focus on fallacy metrics such as pension, crash rate, even Android, vitals. So, um, it's actually much harder to see any impact on Google because the algorithm is so much more complex because it takes all those extra elements into account.

So reading on Google, I'd say, um, you have to look out on your retention, on your uninstalls. Um, anything that translates into like quality metrics that that's the main posts on Google, I'd say no. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. Can you give us a little bit intro in your background? Sorry. Yeah. So I'm, I know, I'm, I'm CPO so I'm in charge of the athlete product and actually cause a, an ASO tool like many others. Awesome.

Okay. And then we've got mobile action, and then we've got Thomas from outbreak, Dar, and then Ilya, is that the, okay. And then from that follow as well. So why don't we start with this and is it Mustafa for map from Yeah, I am so far from my election. Okay. Great. Quick intro. I started as a data scientist. Right now I'm the head of product at no valuation. We are an app intelligency. Uh, we are offering, uh, also intelligence that intelligence market changes today.

Obviously we are going to talk about this soon. Cool. All right, well, what I want to talk about this myself, like what is the impact of keyword optimization? You know, this is something that I've noticed from an overall app store optimization. Maybe when I see people checking it, but like I noticed it used to be very powerful. Like we had the little tricks here and there that could get us to really grow downloads, but I've noticed a certain change.

So what have you guys noticed on the impact of keyword optimization? Mustapha you want to kick it off and then. Yeah, sure. Around the room. So can you sort of, musician is like, like a must right now, but it's not enough for when it's old. So, uh. You need four, four impressions. You definitely need need to do your keyword optimization. That's some words, but since the app stores are really crowded right now, everybody's doing their optimization on that side, so everybody's looking for keywords, hunting for keywords.

So this is a must. You should be doing that. But conversion rates are getting more and more important every day. Ranking algorithms are taking more into account them. So what we think is, that first you find the right keywords, then you should tackle with your conversion rates so that you can get meaningful results from the tree cure position. Thomas, you got anything to add to that? And you want to do a quick little intro?

Yeah. Hey, my name is Thomas. I'm the CEO over here at Alfredo. Uh, I've been working as a consultant in the fields of apps for optimization. I dunno, it started eight years ago or something like that. Then I founded the company of operator, and what we're doing is we are also providing an ASO tool as well as a services that are on the field of ASO. And ASA. Um, yeah, I just can, um, I would say agree to what, uh, uh, Mostafa said, uh, in terms of, uh, yeah, like keywords or, you know, it's, it's like the basically, or because the keywords is the way how apps are being found within the app store.

When people enter the app store, go into the search bar dance or something, they enter a keyword. So they look for an app that they will not, you know, like install or they are looking for a game that they want to play. And, uh, also the conversion rate, that's for sure. Once the app is found, it's about convincing the user out there that the app iOS it gets downloaded. And so therefore, I think really having a high quality, uh, app store page actually is also, I would say at least, um, same important as, you know, like finding the right keywords because you, on the one hand, you have to be visible.

But on the other hand, you have to convince the people that your app or your game is executive. That's what the user now needs to install on their smartphone. Is there one factor Eylea that you would start paying attention to? Right? Like, I think before, what I used to focus on was keyword optimization and then work my way down to like creative, creative optimization, so forth. Well, how have things changed for you guys?

Like when you look at the most important factors, what do you kind of. Wayne, in your opinion, like you, uh, remember these times when, when we were talking about the activization, that means only like keywords. So everybody was busy about keywords, but right now it's, it's like a protest. The big protest that optimizing keywords, optimizing screenshots, optimizing user, uh, feedback, uh, and even, uh, internal metrics of the app.

Like in Google play, we know that Google play, um. Consider a app crashes and a loading times for them for the rankings. So it's a complete protest. I, I don't know how we can like separate one from another. It's like you have to do keywords, you have to do CR optimization and internal app optimization. So it's like. One in everything. And first of all, of course you have to start with keywords because it's like a, it's the only way to get visibility in the store, but then you have to do everything together.

So without, like today I'm doing keywords and like next year I will do, I will do screen shots. It's won't work this way. So yeah. I want to say hello to everybody who's been running right on the chat. So if you guys got questions as we're talking about this, please feel free to put it in the chat. I'm continuing the monitoring, so thank you guys for coming. Let's, let's talk about this keyword density. How important is it.

Oh, he would. Density was really important. Like, uh, maybe even two years ago when we just in Google pay as we talk about keyword density is absolutely his Google play. So we just needed to, you know, to put as many keywords as we can in the description. Just stuff it like repeated several times and maybe doing some other stuff. And right now. Doesn't work right now. You have to prepare your description for Google algorithms, uh, using the Google nature language and trying to, uh, trying to optimize your descriptions, optimize your keyword density for the Google machines, for the Google robots.

So keyword density is not really important right now that the . Uh, you know, your final text is what matters. Like it should be for Google algorithms, for people. It's without, without all this. Like, we can, uh, you know, uh, okay, we can order like for the flower or the app, you don't need to put your all, all types of flowers, uh, in the list so it won't work. Google will considered spam and even you will rank worse.

So. It's not really important right now, but, uh, of course you have to include all the, all the most important keywords in your description to get the Google, uh, to bring the idea was your app is about. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you like, should we be repeating a bunch of our target keywords in the long description? I know you want to talk a little bit more about the keyword density side of things too. Yeah. It's just cause I wanted to share an experience we had with a plan that's from India, and so they're really focused on games and especially like card games.

And she's actually been working on her description over the last two months. And she really did see a, well, she really focused on two keywords. The keywords were around me and poker, and she redid the whole description. It was a lot of work because of course, as ESS, like you wanted to read it like in a natural human way, but she managed to increase the density of those words. I quite a nice level and we did see that, um, the rankings, uh, of her app for those keywords.

So the words were Remy and poker and any related combination like Rummy, games, poker games, well, actually she went up from ranking like in the top 15 ranking in the top 10. So, obviously on one side she was happy, but on the other side, she was like, wow, that's a lot of work just to, you know, be number seven. Obviously she's targeting number one. Um, but yeah, with Google, we have to be patient with that, but I would say that it does still have an effect.

Um, and you need to, you need to repeat important keywords in your description, but you can't do keyword stuffing. And so we actually have a, um. And actually we have this little thing that actually measures the keyword density, and we always recommend to have a density between two and 3% because that's enough for the Google algorithm to see, okay, this word is repeated a lot, but you don't want to go over 3% because then that's definitely keyword stuffing and then you get punished.

But yeah, I just wanted to share that example of a client that actually did it, and it did. They did see an impact. I love those numbers melt the 3% now, does she write a longer description too, or was the length of the description have any impact on that? Well, actually the, the thing about density is that the, if you have a very short description, so we imagine this five stencils long, you can repeat a keyword like 10 times, and obviously you'll have this huge density the longer your description is.

The more you're going to have to repeat that keyword to maintain that same level of density. And so again, I would really focus for us on the human aspects and natural aspects. So you don't want to have like 2000 character description along because that's just really long. And the longer it gets, the more difficult it's going to be to get a high like density level. But of course you don't want to write two sentences.

People who are actually reading your description, they're probably looking for information on, on your game. And so it is a nice area, even though only 2% actually read description. Those who are reading, they're looking for information. If you want to give them that valuable information, like you know, why they should download your game. Any, um, I guess more like trust factors like that many people have also downloaded the game or is it an editor's choice or, or you know, those elements.

So it's worth, you know, having quite a nice description. Recommend around like a thousand characters, but that's, I wouldn't take that as a number. I would really adapt it to, you know what you have to say, and if you don't have more to say, then just leave it there. Just an assumption here, and I want to just make sure when she's going after those keywords, they were in the title as well, I'm assuming. Um, yeah, so she added them as he changed them or she added them in the title, but they actually were already in the title.

So the real changes, she did start repeating them more in the, uh, in the description. They were already in the title. And. Yeah, and I would like to add one thing here, if you can find this. Uh, right now, I guess even the 2000 symbol description, if you don't write it to work better, much better than 4,000. A single description when you just stop your keywords like one by one, so it won't work anyway. Uh, and it's like you times we have to adapt.

Yeah, I would say in the end, uh, I think it's really super important to have the end user in mind because when you read the description at the end, you want to convince them that your app is once again the app that they should download. And so therefore, I think it's really important that you nailed the description. I would say, especially at the beginning of the description, because it might not be that people read through the complete description, especially when it's a longer run, but chances are super high that they read through the first paragraph, or maybe the first two paragraphs.

So I think it's very important that you name it and also that you incorporate your important keywords in there as well. Got it. On the topic of.