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Uncovering the Secrets of Your Competitor's App Store Optimization Strategy!

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App Masters10:59Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Spying on competitors' keywords in a tracking tool reveals niche, low-competition keywords with real search traffic that big apps ignore. Start in those niches rather than fighting for broad terms like meditation.

Key takeaways

  • A varied set of competitors surfaces more keywords than a narrow one. 1:45
    • Besides Calm and Headspace, a breathing app and a hypnosis app were added, because breathing exercises has good search volume.
    • The choice follows the content in your own app, such as hypnotherapy meditations or foam rolling.
  • The best keywords combine solid search traffic with low competitiveness. 4:14
    • Aim for a search ads score in the high 20s or low 30s, and at least 20 as a floor.
    • Examples were "breathing" at 21 and "anger management" at 29, both easier to win than broad terms.
  • Comparing rankings side by side shows exactly where your app is missing. 4:35
    • For "meditation", Headspace ranks 1, Calm 3, Simple Habit 30, and the example app sits at 67.
    • For "anger management" the example app does not rank at all, which flags it as a gap to fill.
  • A keyword pair like "breathing" and "breathing exercises" is worth targeting together. 6:38
    • If you can rank for one, you can likely rank for the other.
    • One app ranks number one for both, earns 100+ downloads a day, and scaled from $1,000 to $10,000.
  • Niches the big apps ignore are the easiest place to win. 9:38
    • "Christian meditation" has decent search volume, yet none of the compared apps go after it.
    • On "breathing exercises" the smaller Breathwork app is number one, ahead of Headspace at 7, Calm at 10 and Simple Habit at 56.

I feel like ASO these days it's better to start in the niches rather than very much up top like meditation.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Build the competitor list

A tracking tool can pull rivals' keywords for you, and a larger set of rivals gives a bigger keyword list.

  • The tool suggests competitors and keywords, and you edit them. 1:12
    • ASO Mobile pre-loads keywords and likely competitors for the app.
    • Remove the ones you don't want, keep the good ones like Simple Habit, and paste in an app's URL to add it.
      • The goal is a huge keyword list, which matters a lot for app store optimization.
      • The demo uses a friend's app, Unplug Meditation.
  • Competing on meditation alone can't beat the giants. 1:58
    • Adding a breathing app widens the strategy beyond Calm and Headspace.
      • The mix should match the app's content, here hypnotherapy meditations and foam rolling.
      • A more diverse group of rivals surfaces different keywords.

2:43 Filter the list and track the gaps

Filtering competitor keywords by a seed word shows what your app is missing, and the best finds go into your tracker.

  • Filtering by a seed word like "breathing" or "meditation" exposes missing keywords. 2:59
    • Sleep meditation and Christian meditation show up as gaps.
    • Christian meditation is a niche, longer tail keyword.
      • Starting an app today, he would begin with long tail niches rather than broad meditation.
      • The Calm column shows how your app ranks against each competitor on any keyword.
  • Promising keywords go straight into the tracking list with one click. 3:41
    • Unplug ranks 160 on one keyword, which could be a push for the new year.
      • Mindfulness meditation and sleep meditation are added to the list.
      • Christian meditation may be low competition, and the app's creator could build content for it.

4:35 Compare against one rival in Spy Explorer

Spy Explorer shows how your app stacks up against its closest competitor, one at a time.

  • A head-to-head view reveals where a rival ranks and you don't. 4:54
    • Simple Habit ranks 71 on one keyword, while Unplug doesn't rank at all for "motivation".
      • Simple Habit's top keywords are mostly branded.
      • It used to be number one for "meditation" but has dropped.
      • On one keyword Unplug is number one and Simple Habit number seven, but it has little search traffic.

5:30 Filtering the list for gaps

Sorting by traffic and competitiveness turns a long keyword list into a short list of keywords to add.

  • Sort by search ads traffic of 20 or more, then look for keywords the app is missing. 5:34
    • In the competitiveness column, lower is better.
    • Keywords the app doesn't rank for are added to its keyword tracking.
    • About 30 is the difficulty he wants to stay near. A score close to it is "good enough".
    • He sorts and filters first and only then brainstorms new keywords, so the list guides the ideas.
  • Similar terms can be treated as one, so pick one competitor and compare. 6:19
    • Breathing exercises and breathing exercises meditation look the same to him, so he picks Breathwork.
    • Breathing exercises shows strong traffic and low competition.

7:20 Spying on rankings for one keyword

The spy competitors tool shows how rivals rank for a keyword, which suits big companies that report on results.

  • Spy competitors gives a clean competitive view for a chosen keyword. 7:20
    • Big clients want a top ten spot for a keyword and need to show how they compare.
    • Keywords already added during the earlier analysis carry over, and more can be added.
    • The list can be filtered by keyword and traffic, and recommended keywords are suggested.
    • The view makes it easy to report up to managers.
  • A weak rank on a broad term is a cue to chase other keywords. 8:41
    • Look for decent traffic with lower competition.
    • The example app sits at the very bottom for meditation.

9:12 Finding what big apps skip

Keywords the leaders under-serve are where smaller apps can win.

  • Headspace focuses on meditation and sleep, so topics like anxiety are open. 9:12
    • Breathwork starts to win on anxiety, though it is much smaller than Calm and Headspace.
    • The work becomes asking which keywords the leaders give little attention.
  • This analysis helps beginners find gaps and helps big companies track rivals. 9:55
    • He would start with Christian meditation or breathing exercises instead of meditation.
    • Gaps can be found in any app category, not only meditation.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency. Shows how to spy on competitors' App Store keywords with ASO Mobile's three competitor tools, then pick the keywords worth chasing. The takeaway is to start in low-competition niches the big apps ignore, backed by an app that ranked number one for a breathing keyword pair and drove 100+ downloads a day.

Lessons that draw on this:

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

Transcript293 lines
0:00

coming up I'm going to show you three ways that you can spy on your competitors ASO keywords track them compare them and find the most valuable keywords that are working for them stay tuned what is up app Nation it is Steve p young founder of atmasters.com the app marketing agency that's going to help you grow your app downloads and your revenues faster and cheaper than anyone else now in this video I want to show you three ways that you can find your competitors keywords to help you build your huge keyword lists which is extremely important for ASL App Store optimization and also to find the most valuable keywords that they are using to generate revenue and downloads now let's get started alright this video is sponsored by ASL mobile asomobile.net if you guys want to learn more if you want to support a Ukrainian company go check them out it is Aso mobile dot net but I've already added a

1:02

friend of mine unplug meditation great app by the way so shout out to Susie now I don't think she'll mind me doing this for her particular app using this video what you want to do is go into competitors and first we're gonna do competitors and spy keywords now as you can see unlike other ESO tools ASO mobile has already given us a bunch of different keywords they've pre-loaded it already so we're going to hit add competitors and they've done some of the work for us they've added some of the competitors that they think most fit our app so I love simple habit I'm going to keep that in there I'm going to take out a few because I don't want those guys in there but the more competitors the better all right now I'm going to add a few more so I'm gonna add calm and it's better to just get the URL of the app here so I'm going to do that and then I'm going to put headspace right here now headspace and calm are obviously the

1:57

biggest competitors out there when it comes to meditation apps but I also want to put something different because I know that breathing exercises has good search volume so I want to pick one of the biggest breathing exercises apps in there because it might help me shift my ASO strategy if I'm just focusing on meditation there's no way that I might be able to be calm and headspace so I'm going to put breath work in here 's breath work and then maybe I want to put some hypnosis app so you want to just like diversify it depending on the type of content that you have within your app I know Susie said there's some hypnotherapy meditations in the app as well as foam rolling so you want a more diverse group of competitor apps to really help you find different keywords we'll say this is good enough and let's get started so now you can start filtering off of the search traffic now I like to typically use the search Edge

2:50

score right here so you can see column is the biggest one calm you can see how well we rank for calm compared to our competitors next you can also filter off of these keywords so I'm going to hit filter so maybe I want to go into breathing and see so there's meditation breathing if there's any keywords that I might be able to find around that or maybe around meditation and see which keywords I might be missing on so sleep meditation possibly Christian meditation that's a very interesting keyword if that's an app that I wanted to Target get now if I were starting an app today I would probably want to start with these more longer tail keywords like Christian meditation that are more Niche than just broad meditation but you can start filtering off of that next if you find a keyword like let's say Christian meditation that we just found or anxiety as an example I'm going to clear this real quick you can add this to your

3:43

keyword list so we're 160 right now which isn't too good but maybe it's a big push that we want to make for the new year so we can hit that ad and it'll add to the keyword tracking list so it's a great way to do keyword research by looking at your competitors we definitely want meditation in here and then possibly headspace columns number two for headspace so great way to do this so I have it filtered by meditation now and I'm going to put sleep meditation as well mindfulness meditation is not too bad you want to search ads score of a lease high 20s or low 30s so you definitely want to have these in here mindfulness meditation and why not let's add Christian meditation maybe this is a lower competition keyword and maybe Susie can build out Christian meditations as well so I'm going to add that to the list next I'm going to go into the Spy explorer that you can do use right here now here you can only

4:40

compare one competitor at a time but it allows you to see okay how well I'm doing against my closest competitor so here this is simple habit that we're comparing it with and you can see some of the keyword traffic that they have so simple habit is ranking number 71 see how I'm doing here motivation I'm not ranking at all and then you can even see you know what are the number one keywords for simple habit so this is simple habit so very much branded they used to be number one for meditation frankly but I guess they've dropped so you can see which ones they're ranking the top four and which ones might be keywords that we gonna go after and so unplugged their number seven but we're number one they're coming in but there's not that much search traffic and Kei just means the the effectiveness of a keyword for your particular app and then here CI is the competitiveness so the lower the better here that you want for me personally I

5:39

like to sort the search Edge traffic with at least 20. this is how I would do it and then come up with different keywords that I might be missing so like unplug Pace breathing which has lower difficulty right here and the search ads is 21. it's close to that 30 that I want to be but good enough and I want to maybe go after that anger management they have something here too they're 29 so again not as difficult but again unplug we're not ranking at all for it so these are great ways so I'm like all right I want to go after angular management possibly right and then I want to go after Pace breathing so we're adding these keywords to our keyword tracking also we can pick a different so maybe it's breathing exercises breathing exercises meditation I feel like they're all the same so I'm going to pick breath work and then again I want to get at least the search traffic search ads traffic score of 20 and then breathing

6:31

exercises really good traffic right here it's not as competitive so this is definitely a keyword that I want to work on same with breathing now I love any terms that have breathing and breathing exercises that are in the 30s because if I can rank for one I can likely rank for the other right so for one of our apps we it is sort of like breathing exercises and we rank number one for breathing and breathing exercises and we're generating good amount of downloads 100 plus downloads a day and we're being able to scale that up from one thousand ten thousand dollars so that is this is this type of two word compound that where the single version like breathing has good traffic volume and the Dual breathing exercise is good volume those are the keywords I really really really loved to look at now the last tool I want to show you is still under this competitors tab but spy competitors now this is really good and

7:27

for bigger companies this is phenomenal because I work with a couple of different big companies who just want to see for a given keyword like meditation how are my competitors doing because they want to be in the top ten for a particular keyword and so you really want to have that competitive analysis to see to see how well you're doing against your competitors so this is the best spot to do that and easily report back to your bosses and your boss's bosses and so forth or just really keep an eye so let's pick a couple of keywords right here meditation and we've already added the keywords because of the route we took it's about if you didn't do that you can do so right here and here's some recommended ones and then again you can filter off of the keywords and the traffic and all that stuff but these are all the keywords that we've added because we did the competitive analysis we already have

8:15

this list of keywords so these are the keywords we've added now if I'm missing any then we can definitely add it into here as well but I am not so I'm going to leave it as that now here is where we're going to look at now you can see when it comes to meditation fortunately unplug is at the very bottom so simple habit is 30 as you can tell right here headspace is number one column is number three and we're down to 67. all right so it's like again for me if I'm working on this app which you know Susie's good friend that's why I'm doing this video I would want to go after other keywords that have pretty decent traffic but lower competition and so breathing exercises let's take a quick look at this maybe there's some Headway that we can get on with this particular keyword as you can see breathing exercises breath work is number one so we can go all the way back to the day of this recording headspace is seven column is

9:09

10 simple habit now drops down to 56. right so now I'm like oh okay what are some keywords I don't see common headspace focusing on as much as meditation or sleep or better sleep right so like maybe even anxiety where now breath work is starting to win now breath work is not as huge as calm and head space they're doing fairly well but again they're not as big as them so now becomes an exercise of figuring out oh all right that is interesting let me go after that and then the Christian meditation if you guys remember that look this keyword decent amount of search volume right but none of these apps are going after it again that's why I would start with the niches because you can see the big guys are not paying attention to it alright guys that's it three simple ways to really do competitive analysis again if you're just starting now it's a great way to find where the gaps might be in a different category of apps I feel like

10:05

ASO these days it's better to start in the niches rather than very much up top like meditation I start with Christian meditation or breathing exercises instead of going after meditation also if you're a bigger company it's really great to do competitive analysis and see how well you're doing against your competitors once again this video was sponsored by ASO mobile I love working with these guys because it's my way of trying to support a Ukrainian company so if you want to learn more go check them out it is asomobile.net asomobile.net and we have a promo for you if you use the link in the YouTube description as well all right leave in the comments what you thought about the video hit like if you thought it was very valuable if there's any content that you want to see me do in the future definitely leave a comment as well until next time see you on the next video