You have identified your target audience, you may have even designed a great app to meet their needs, but designing a great app is not the only challenge an app developer faces. There are millions of apps in major app stores and thousands of apps may be added to these stores every single day. The challenge that a developer faces is getting discovered in this highly competitive market.
ASO is one of the most effective ways to do it. By performing ASO, you can increase the visibility and number of organic downloads your app receives, but only if you have done it correctly. While performing ASO, many people make common mistakes that do more harm than they do good. Here are the mistakes you need to avoid, if you want to increase your app’s search ranking, not lower it:
Focusing on High Volume Keywords
Finding the keywords that users use to find your app may be one of the most important things in ASO process. You can use these in the keyword field (max 100 characters in App Store, but Google Play does not provide a keyword field), and optimize your app title and description. You see, keywords play a major role in ASO, so finding the high volume keywords is of the utmost importance. However, you should not miss any small details in this, as high volume keywords are also used by big players in your category (like Whatsapp or Angry Birds), so in that case, you should also look at the competitiveness of keyword. I think the main challenge is finding the highest volume and least competitive keywords for your app. You may have a clue about them if you search social media, user reviews and competitors titles that rank higher than you do. For more information, you can read How To Use Long Tail Keywords in ASO article.
Changing Your Title Too Often
Users’ habits tend to change along with the keywords they use to find an app they need. Needless to say that your keywords must be up-to-date and you should optimize your title with them if you want to rank high in app store searches. However, that doesn’t mean you should change your title too often. If users download your app and like it, they mention it in reviews and spread the word about your app to other users by mentioning your app title. This is a very important chance of increasing your organic download numbers, so don’t miss out on it.
Stuffing Keywords to Your Title and Description
Putting relevant keywords into your app title and description is essential to increase your app ranking, but you shouldn’t overdo it. You should think of it from a user’s view, when you’re reading title and description you’re going to see same words again and again. I don’t know how you would feel, but it would irritate me and in the end, I would rather choose another app to download in that category. You should also know that your app could end up suspended from search engines because of keyword stuffing. For more information, you can read A Few Things You Should Know to Write a Great App Description article
Quality and Quantity of Your Screenshots
When deciding to download an app, visual contents like screenshots or preview videos have considerable influence on users. With this in mind, you should choose high quality and well-designed screenshots that scream “Download me”. While considering the advancement of mobile devices, if you use low quality screenshots, users easily notice the flaws, so quality is really an important factor to consider here.
Another important thing i might add about this topic is the quantity of screenshots you use on your app’s landing page. While I was browsing app store search pages, I realized that some app developers didn’t need to use all available screenshot slots (IOS App Store allows 5 screenshots, while Google allows 8 screenshots). As previously said, visual content has a considerable influence on users, so the more you have, the better it is. For more information, you can read the How to Create Effective App Screenshots article.
ASO is a One Shot Thing
As I said before, users’ habits tend to change along with the keywords they use to find an app they need. You should test your keywords and replace the poorly performing ones, then optimize your app’s title and description with new keywords. You should also make seasonal updates to your app icon, screenshots and preview video. If you keep your content up-to-date, you will surely increase your number of downloads.
If you avoid these mistakes and perform ASO right, you’ll see the positive effects on your app ranking and download numbers. If you want to learn the best practices of ASO, you should check out Ultimate ASO Checklist.
