Everything you need to know about ASO in South Africa

What is App store optimization?

App store optimization (ASO) is the process of improving a game’s or application’s visibility and conversion rate to create the greatest number of organic downloads.

People may confuse ASO with SEO, but they are not the same. SEO is more complicated than ASO because it is influenced by a greater number of factors.

Let’s look at improving visibility and conversion rate:

Improving visibility

Only people who are aware of your app will be able to download it. As a result, you must bring it to the attention of your audience. In other words, you must make it available in app stores.

Here are some ways you can use to create visibility for your app:

By including it on the home pages of the stores.

Features (or Stories, as Apple refers to them) generate a lot of attention and usually result in thousands of extra downloads. However, getting a feature is difficult because the spots for features are very limited, and the apps for these spots are chosen by the stores’ editorial teams.

To increase your chances of getting a feature, you must have a great app that is bug-free and uses cutting-edge technology. It should also have excellent user metrics and fit into a topic that the editorial teams want to highlight.

By getting the application into the top graphs that present the most famous or best applications overall or in a particular classification. Like getting included, coming to the top places of the outlines is difficult. Plenty of downloads or tremendous incomes are vital
By increasing the app’s visibility in search results for relevant keywords. Search is the simplest way to gain visibility. You don’t need a track record of success, and you’re not reliant on the editorial team’s goodwill. All you need is an understanding of app store algorithms.

Improving Conversion rates.

To achieve improving conversion rates, you need to optimize the information about your app to help your app’s users make decisions.

To optimize your app, you need the following:

Compelling app descriptions.
Beautiful icon designs and screenshots.
Promotion videos on Google play.

The metadata that users can see and the look and feel of your app are huge factors when it comes to conversion rates. All these components should not only look great but also convince users that your app is a solution to their problems or their needs.

Why is ASO important?

First, successful ASO results in a steady stream of new users discovering your app in search results. These organic users are free, and they are typically more engaged and loyal than users who find your app through a paid campaign. As a result, organic users are the most valuable to app developers.

Second, Conversion Rate Optimization has a positive impact on your paid campaigns, social marketing, and other user acquisition efforts. A higher conversion rate leads to more downloads from all your traffic channels, allowing you to get more bang for your buck with each marketing dollar spent.

The app product page and metadata.

These elements include the app title, the subtitle (iOS) or the short description (Android), the keyword field (iOS only), the app icon and screenshots, and videos. As the app owner, you can manipulate these metadata elements directly. They include the app title, the subtitle (iOS) or the short description (Android), the keyword field (iOS only), the app description, the app icon, screenshots, and videos.

Some elements are relevant for creating visibility because they are indexed by the app store. Other metadata elements don’t have an impact on visibility, but they can convince users to download the app and thus increase the conversion rate. Some elements are important for both visibility and conversion rate optimization.

What is an ASO keyword?

It is important to bear in mind that, not every word is a keyword. Google’s search engine does not consider articles, prepositions, or conjunctions to be keywords, as they do not provide additional information about user problems or needs. Only terms that narrow down the user intent qualify as keywords, such as fix, or fixing are considered keywords.

We can group ASO keywords into different categories, including:

Problem Keywords: It narrows the needs and problems of the user.
Feature keywords: How your app solves problems is explained. They describe the features and mechanics of USPs.
User Keywords: It describes the people who use your app in terms of age, gender, or profession, as well as the roles they take when using the app.
Location keywords: which context do people use your app in, these may be names of countries or cities as well as general terms.
Action keywords: What people do when they use your app.

How to find keyword ideas?

To find keyword ideas, you need to brainstorm with friends or family. Sit down with them and listen to what they have to say about your app. Take note of the terminology they employ.

The keyword categories you defined earlier can assist in channeling their thoughts. For brainstorming, there is only one rule: no censorship. Your objective should be to find at least four to five keywords per category.

After you’ve finished brainstorming, use the results to generate more keyword ideas.

Here are some ways to assist in finding keywords:

Find word associations: Go through your list and read what’s on it.” Write down the first thing that comes to your mind. It is possible to get even more word associations with friends who were not involved in the initial idea.
Find synonyms: These are terms that have the same meaning as your ideas. Like thesaurus websites. Oxford Dictionaries are great for dictionaries.
Check media coverage and user interviews: You can find out how people talk about your app by looking at their reviews and comments.
Follow competitors: Users and journalists use different terms when talking about their apps. Check product pages, websites, social media, reviews, and media coverage.

This is how to verify your keyword ideas:

Relevance: Keywords are relevant to your app if they are connected to it. For instance, the term “food” is relevant for a cooking app, but not for a sports app. If most of the apps in the results belong to another category, likely, the keyword is not relevant.
Difficulty: The more apps rank for a keyword, the more difficult it will be to position your app in the top rankings. To get a rough idea of a keyword’s difficulty, search for it in the store, and count the number of results that match your app’s description.
Search volume: Don’t worry, you don’t need to start the campaign, so this approach will cost you nothing. A small vertical bar indicates the search volume for each term on Apple’s search engine.

Keywords research tools.

Having a keyword research tool makes the App store optimization process easier because it quickly pulls out the needed information from the stores.

If you want a long-term ASO, having a keyword tool is essential to help you maintain your ASO.

Here are some of the tools to try:

Sensor Tower.
App Radar.

How to implement keywords and CRO

Product pages – iOS

Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) on iOS display the most effective one or natural seek outcomes on the primary page. To see extra outcomes, customers need to scroll down. However, no longer do many customers do so. Apps withinside the pinnacle three ranks acquire approximately 50% of all downloads that result from a keyword seek, however those who rank worse than #10 benefit from nearly no downloads. Therefore, your approach must be to get your app into the pinnacle three ranks for the key phrases you put in force into your product page.

You can use four different placements in your iOS app to accomplish this goal.

The title of the App: You can use up to 45 characters per IAP with these. Their weight is the lowest.
The subtitle: This has up to 30 characters and is second in weight for the algorithm. It can be a call to action, a slogan, or even a list of words separated by commas.
Keyword field: Up to 100 characters can be contained in a long tail. Long-tail is invisible to users, but your app will rank apps based on the combinations of these words
The titles of in-app purchases: You can use up to 45 characters per IAP with these. Their weight is the lowest.

Follow these CRO guidelines to get the most out of each placement:

Don’t duplicate keywords in your app’s metadata. Only the metadata element with the highest weight counts for the algorithm. Using a keyword twice, for instance in the app title and subtitle, won’t increase an app’s ranking for this term.
Avoid using the words “app,” “free,” and the names of the categories to which your app belongs. In any case, the store algorithm will give you some visibility for these terms.
If the plural is regular (that is, singular + s), do not use both the singular and the plural of the keywords. Use a form with a large search volume. You can get some visibility for other forms as well.
Do not violate Apple’s policy by using brands that are not rightfully yours.
When your app ranks lower than the 5^th spot in the SERP, remove your keywords from the title and replace them with one that is more likely to rank in the top 3.
Put the keyword in the subtitle rather than the title, if your app ranks number one for it. See if it retains its position. If so, move another keyword into the title. If not, return to the previous setting.

Product pages – Google Play

Google Play’s algorithm is different from its counterpart on iOS. The SERPs display up to five apps per page. Users will be able to see even apps ranked lower than #3 at first glance without having to scroll down the SERP.

To benefit from this increased visibility, aim to get your app into the top 5. Ranking in the top 10 is also allowed for less relevant keywords.

As with iOS, indexed placements differ as well. There are five different metadata elements for keywords on Google Play:

The title of the app: The title of the app should only have up to 50 characters.
Short description: short description must have up to 80 characters.
Long description: The long description can have up to 4000 characters.
IAP titles: These are also included in the index. 55 characters per IAP is what you can use.
The package name: In the URL of your app, the package name is what follows the equal sign. This is another way to use keywords. When you upload your app for the first time, you can only include keywords in the package name. The package name cannot be changed later.

Apply the following guidelines to your app description and other indexed metadata elements:

Do duplicate terms. With Google, different placements are combined, unlike on iOS. As a result, an app with a keyword in its title and short description will rank higher than one with the same keyword only in its title.
You shouldn’t use the names of brands that you don’t own.
Long-tail keywords will be combined across different placements, just like on iOS. However, if you want to rank for a specific long-tail keyword, use it as a perfect match (all components in the correct order). You can even repeat it several times in the long description.
Use both the singular and plural forms of a term if you want to rank for both.

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Measuring the impact of ASO marketing.

To assess the success of your keyword research, you must first understand how the number of impressions changes. The metric Store Listing Visitors indicates how many people clicked on your app in search results. This metric does not provide an exact value for visibility, but it is the best data point provided by Google.

ASO is a long-term task

Changes in the app stores, new competitors, seasonal factors, and other reasons can impact your app’s visibility dramatically. You should use one of the keyword tools suggested before to monitor your app’s rankings on the SERPs, as well as the search volumes and difficulties.

How to approach ASO for your app.

App Store Optimization is the top priority of your marketing strategy. All of your user acquisition strategies are based on this. You should give a fair share of your time and resources to ASO.

Here is a summary of what we talked about.

Define your app’s target audience. Learn from their apps.
Your app’s capabilities of solving problems, as well as your audience’s problems, should be researched.”
Pick a tool and use it.
Put your words into your product page.
You can measure the impact of your new set.
If you want to get the most value out of your keywords, review them on a regular basis and adjust your product page.