As a marketer are you wondering how to rank your mobile game in 2021? Do you need to reach more gamers? Discover how the ASO (App Search Optimisation) works is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your app, you’re increasing the likelihood potential buyers will find your product.
According to a study released by Statista, as of June 2020, there were 2.96 million apps published in the Google Play Store. The Apple App Store was the second-largest app store with almost 1.96 million available apps.
So what marketers should do to make their app stand out in the crowd? How brands can increase their reach, traffic, and lastly conversions due to the growing competition?
Just like any product or service, building a great app that brings true value to customers is a key element for any brand to maximize its downloads, traffic, and revenue. However, providing great software sometimes is just the beginning and it cannot be enough to win the game.
One of the classic mistakes made on SEO (or ASO) is writing content for algorithms rather than focusing on providing valuable content to their customers. Lucky for you, in this article, I have gathered 8 tips to improve the ASO in both the Apple App Store and Google Play aiming to outrank your competitors by providing better content maximizing the experience of your potential customers.
Right? Let’s get started!
Top 8 Tips for App Store Optimisation
- Optimize for conversions
- Keyword research
- Title, Subtitle & Descriptions
- Focus on Branding
- Reviews
- App Indexing
- iOS Promotional Text
- App Localization
1. Optimize for conversions
By keeping in mind your macro-conversion, optimize your content strategy including that Call-to-action in the subtitle and description.
See 2 example of the subtitle of Nike and CornerJob including their CTA:
Nike: “Shop exclusive sneakers, sportswear & clothes. The best of Nike, tailored to you”
CornerJob: “Find jobs nearby, fast and easy. Apply, chat and get an answer easy”
2. Keywords Research
As it happens in SEO for web pages, keyword research is a crucial aspect for ASO as well. Competitor research coupled with keyword research will help to understand what keywords you may include in the description and subtitle to improve your ranking. Explore what keywords you should do not use because of the higher competition or because they have been already used by more players in the market.
There are a number of tools in the market to research keywords for ASO. Due to the sophistication of Google machine learning, once again we suggest you optimize contents for human beings rather than thinking about a sea of possible keyword variations and different combinations.
3. Title, Subtitle & Description
If your app is up and running but you feel you need to improve the discoverability of your brand, you should optimize 3 assets at this stage:
Title
The title should include the brand name with nice punctuation and a tagline, for example:
Call of Duty: Mobile
Bubble Pop – Bubble Shooter
H&M – we love fashion
If brands are already pretty popular they include brand name only to prioritize discoverability and branding.
Subtitle
The subtitle is a key asset because it influences keyword rankings and is always shown along with the title. Describe the USP and what users can do using the app. Show your app in a nice and unique way speaking the same language as your target audience. Use keywords with a medium-low competition. Add emoji to adapt the communication style of your brand accordingly.
4. Strong Focus on Branding
Whether you’re promoting a game or a productivity app you should focus on improving the visual looking of your content. Icons, screenshots, and videos should be eye-catching, attractive, and consistent, carefully selected according to the brand identity. High-quality pictures will make people want to interact and trust the brand over the competition. Also, demo videos are a weapon to make people understand what the app is about. Additionally, use pictures to build storytelling. Make sure each screenshot is telling a single message about your app: showing the most important messages in the first two screenshots.
5. Reviews
App reviews just don’t happen by themselves. To get more positive reviews you need to ask past users or friends to review. There are a number of plug-ins that ask them to rate the app when some conditions are applied. Many marketers make the mistake of asking for reviews upon the user launching the app. This brings for a poor rate. Indeed, a better way is to wait until the user has accomplished a goal or task within the app.
By keeping track of reviews app owners are able to spot potential bugs or adding/removing product features. Moderating comments is a must: engage positively with those who left a good rate. Ask for a further positive review if you got medium-high feedback. Apologize to those clients who have had a bad experience; be realistic letting them know that you’re working on their problem on potential bugs.
6. Search App Indexing
App indexing (Firebase) is basically the process by which apps appear in Google SERP in mobile and desktop results. By supporting HTTP URLs in the app and adding the App Indexing SDK, we allow Google to crawl and index your app as it would a web page, enabling users to install the app from search results.
Making app content searchable by Google Search (SERP) helps gain additional clicks and impressions in SEO but it does not impact directly the performance of ASO.
7. Promo iOS Text
The Promotional Text is a section of an iOS app page that provides quick and additional information about the (game) app. This is a 170-character section and includes taglines promoting special sales or special events (without needing to update its entire description). The tagline can be updated at any time and it is not indexed for ASO by Apple.
8. App Localizations
If your game is already popular in your own country you might want to scale at an international level. The process of translating contents into multiple languages is called “App localisations”. However, in order to truly localize your mobile game, you have to understand not only lingual differences but cultural ones as well. Indeed, as an app developer, marketer, or publisher, you should consider not only contain elements of the app and store listing but also the visual ones. It’s easy to make a mistake in terms of visual design and tone of voice if you are not 100% familiar with the country. In a worst-case scenario, you could be using a colour or graphic that is offensive to a population without knowing it.
But no worry, this is a popular mistake many brand managers has made in the past already 😲
Conclusion
Implementing effective tactics for App Search Optimisation can be tough. Multiple factors play simultaneously a key role in developing the searchability of the app against competition. By keeping track of users’ interactions with the app, the likelihood of ranking higher improves in the long run. Improving the product itself, branding identity, adapting keywords and graphics according to customer feedback can be crucial to success.
If you are looking for a better way to increase the ranking of your gaming ASO, our team has the experience you’re looking for.
We offer 30 days for free. Reach out to us to get started!
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.