The Practical Guide to App Store Optimization (ASO) in 2024

We crunched the data - there are over 2.6 million Android apps in the Google Play store and over 2 million apps in Apple’s App Store, used by approximately 3 billion smartphone users worldwide, which these figures growing every year.

These are enormous, staggering numbers, especially if you’re a developer trying to get your app noticed.

How do you stand out in a crowded field of competitors? And perhaps more importantly, how do you get your app to rank high in an App Store search, and make sure it matches the intent of searches in the App Store searches?

The key is using strong App Store Optimization strategies for the Google Play and iOS App Store.

To help your mobile app rank highly in the App Stores and be seen by more potential users and fans, you're going to need an App Store Optimization strategy.

Want to enter the app stores without spending 5-6 figures on developing a native app? MobiLoud is the perfect solution to convert your existing site into a like-native mobile app. Click here to schedule a free consultation to see exactly how it works.

What is App Store Optimization?

Just like internet marketers use Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, to get their web pages ranking highly in Google’s search results, app developers must use App Store Optimization, or ASO, techniques to get their app to the top of app store search results. It can be seen as effectively App Store SEO.

Unfortunately, the true algorithms for ranking in both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store for Android apps, just like the true algorithms for SEO, are not actually known, and change regularly.

However, we do know that certain things affect your App Store rankings more than others.

By taking advantage of this these App Store Optimization tips, your app could rank higher, be seen by more people, and receive more downloads.

Here are ten important steps you’ll want to take to improve your ASO in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Use a Descriptive Title
Use Keywords Wisely
Describe Your App Well
Use High Quality Screenshots
Add an App Preview Video
Pick the Right Category
Focus on Icon Design
Encourage Positive Reviews
Use App Store Analytics
Re-evaluate Regularly

1. Start With a Descriptive Title

What’s in a name? Plenty, especially when you’re talking about the name of your app and ASO.

A good name not only identifies what your app does to prospective users, but it can also improve your rankings.

We highlighted how a strong, relevant title can improve your ASO in this post, with an example of how to make your app title relevant. In fact, including a keyword or two in your app’s title can help you rank at least 10% higher than if you didn't include one.

Of course, both the Apple iOS App Store and Google Play handle titles and keywords differently, so how you approach your title should depend on if you’re marketing to Apple or Android users.

Here's how Google Trips includes their main keyword ("Travel Planner") in their app title to improve rankings:

The Apple App Store

The Apple App Store gives you 255 characters for your title. So, while a succinct title can help with your branding efforts, it will do you no favors if you’re trying to boost your Apple ASO.

Take the time to come up with a creative title that is unique, descriptive, and keyword rich; it’s not a bad idea to create a title and then a subtitle with your keywords. Doing so will help you both establish market share and improve your ranking.

The Google Play Store

Titles are handled a bit differently in the Google Play store. There, you get a paltry 30 characters for your title, so you have to be extremely concise.

However, you don’t have to be as concerned about keywords in the title with Android apps; for Google Play, the keywords should go in the description, as we explain in step two.

2. Use Keywords Wisely

Like in SEO, Keywords are an important factor in ASO.

Just like with app titles, how you should handle app keywords differs from the Apple App Store to Google Play.

With Apple, you get only 100 characters for all of your keywords, so obviously, you need to choose wisely; it should go without saying that you should get as close to this 100 character limit as you possibly can.

With Google Play, though, there is no specific keyword field. However, the app description is searchable, and you have a comfortable 4000 characters to work with.

For the best App Store Optimization, you’ll want to put your most important keywords in your description five times. However, be careful not to overdo it - keyword stuffing will get your app penalized (just like keyword stuffing on a website would get your site penalized by Google), leading to a drop in your ranking.

There's a fine line between optimizing your app description, and stuffing it with keywords - the key is to make sure it reads well and makes sense for a person reading it, not just for the App Store algorithm!

Keyword Research

Before you actually publish your app with the keywords you have selected, though, you will want to do some research to learn about the traffic, difficulty, and demand for those keywords, as well as how many apps are already using it.

MobileDevHQ and TheTool are a couple of App Store Optimization tools that’ll help find the best App Store keywords for your app.
Be sure to include select keywords in your app’s title and description. According to Fiksu, this simple step can potentially up your rankings anywhere from 80-100 positions, and 10-20 positions, respectively.

Keywords with high traffic and a low to moderate number of apps will be best for your ASO.

It’s also a good idea to take a look at what the top apps are for each keyword to get an idea of what people are looking for when they search for that term. If your app does something completely different than the top apps for that keyword, you may not have as much interest as you’d like.

App Store Optimization tools like SensorTower can help you evaluate your keywords and much more. We'll discuss more tools to help your ASO efforts in Step #8.

Finally, here are a few other tips to help you pick the best keywords for your app:

Try to put your top keyword in your app name - a test conducted by MobileDevHQ reveals that placing a keyword in the title alone can improve your app’s search ranking (for the keyword inserted) by 10.3 percent.
Use words rather than phrases, unless a phrase is an absolutely integral keyword (such as “tug of war”).
When researching keywords, look at singular versus plural and choose the one with the best numbers.
Try to avoid using conjunctions and prepositions as keywords.
Use commas rather than spaces to separate keywords.
Use digits instead of spelling out numbers.

3. Describe Your App Well

For both Apple and Android apps, your app description is like your website's landing page.

If you’ve brought your potential buyer this far, you want to be able to close the deal and make the sale! Therefore, your app's description and page within the app store should be viewed as an important part of your App Store Optimization Strategy.

Start by assuming that users know very little about your app besides, its name. You need to think like your customer would. It often helps to think in terms of bullet points:

What does your app do?
What problem does it solve?
How will it make the buyer’s life easier?
Why is it worth the price?

Be persuasive yet succinct, saving the more extensive write-up and how-to guide for your app’s website, or in-app onboarding process.

And, as we mentioned in Step 2, you’ll want to pay extra attention to keywords for your Google Play description.

Visually, you’ll want to include useful screenshots that look appealing in your app description and are relevant to what your potential customers are looking for. These should showcase the key parts of your app, making it look approachable to encourage downloads and, in turn, boost ranking.

A good example of how to create visuals that represent the benefits of your app can be seen in Sleep as Android's app page:

Notice how they highlight the key benefits of using the app alongside screenshots of the app itself? This should help improve your conversion rate of people viewing your app to downloading it.

4. Use High-Quality Screenshots

People only spend 7 seconds deciding if they’re going to download an app or not. How your app store page looks is a crucial factor in their decision, and high quality app store screenshots are going to make a big difference.

In fact, they're cited as being the second most influential factor when it comes to convincing someone to download your app (second only to your App Rating).

You should use your screenshot real estate wisely, and focus on the key benefits and most engaging parts of your app. There are a host of tools available to help you create app screenshots that look great, such as Figma, MockUPhone, and AppLaunchpad.

If you build apps with MobiLoud - we can prepare the screenshots (as well as all other design assets) for you to the highest standard.

5. Add an App Preview Video

85% of the US internet audience watch videos online, and over half of video content is consumed on mobile.

You can harness the power of video for your App Store page to give prospective users a better insight into what your app can offer them.

Pro Tip: "Most people will view this on auto play with muted audio. So have text overlays to explain pertinent sections or features that you're showing. And, only include footage of the app itself, don't waste precious seconds filming happy, smiling people using the app. This isn't 2009 anymore, people!"

- Lionel Valdellon, Content Marketing Manager at CleverTap

App Previews in the iOS App Store allow you to upload 30 second long videos to showcase the features and benefits of your app.
You can only show recordings of the in-app experience, so make sure your mobile app UX looks good, and matches what your prospective audience is looking for!

This App Store Optimization technique is going to help your App Store page convert higher as you're providing valuable content.

When you build an app with MobiLoud, our team is here to help you submit your app to the app stores, as well as crafting the perfect app store listing. Hit the button below for a free demo of the platform to see how it works.

6. Pick the Right Category

Placing your app in the proper category on both the Apple App Store and on Google Play is not only helpful for users who are browsing apps by category, but it is also best practice for helping your app to rank well.

If you feel like your app fits into more than one category, there are 3 ways to approach your problem:

First, and most obviously, you’ll want to pick the category that best describes your mobile app.
Next, it’s a good idea to check out just how many apps are in each category; choosing the least competitive category gives your app a better chance of ranking closer to the top.
Finally, look at the estimated app worth (EAW) of the apps near the top of those categories. Put your app in the one with the lower numbers may be to your advantage as well.

It’s also important to remember that putting your app in a category that’s blatantly wrong can lead to trouble.

Apple reviews all submitted apps before publishing them to the App Store, and adding your app to the wrong category for App Store Optimization purposes will probably mean a rejection stamp.

As for Google Play, users can report violations for review. If you have a major error like Sports app in the Medical category, it’s only a matter of time before someone points that out.

7. Focus on Icon Design

There’s a direct correlation between downloads and ranking: the more downloads your app has, the more popular it is perceived to be, therefore the higher it’s ranked.

Knowing how to design and an engaging app icon is very important as well. You only get one image to show app store audiences why your app is worth their time for consideration, so choose carefully!

Pro Tip: "Test four app icon variants before launch. Just because you like the icon, doesn't mean your target audience will. The app icon is the first visual impression people have of your app and it's crucial to get it right. It also doesn't hurt to do the same with screenshots."

- Carissa Lintao, Founder at Apptuitive

And, since it’s been demonstrated that icon design plays a significant role in how many downloads an app gets, it definitely pays to spend some time and energy coming up with a great one, and it's a crucial part of App Store Optimization.

You can argue about the injustice of judging a book by its cover (or an app by its icon), but at the end of the day, that’s exactly what a lot of people do.

Your app’s icon should be engaging, eye-catching, and not too similar to other apps.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, which is why it is worth the investment to bring in an experienced designer to develop a few icon options. Try to choose the one that is most visually appealing and most representative of what the app actually does. If you build apps through our MobiLoud platform we'll create a great app icon for you!

Remember, if app store visitors are drawn to your app icon while browsing, they’ll take a look and may decide to download it. Make sure you’re staying on the safer side in regards to explicit content, and that you don't copy any another app's icon too similarly.

8. Encourage Positive Reviews

Positive ratings and reviews, both in terms of quality and quantity, have a huge impact on your App Store Optimization efforts. It’s in your best interest to get as many as you can.

Of course, they need to be honest reviews from people who have actually downloaded the app.

Pro Tip: "Nothing is better for App Store Optimization than an app that has a great user experience! If people like the app, understand it, and are easily able to incorporated it into their daily routine, they're going to be happy to provide a glowing review."

- Bennet, Chief Experience Officer at TheUsabilityPeople

You can encourage users you know through word of mouth to leave a good review of your app on the App Store or Google Play.

Another way to get app store reviews might be sending a push notification to encourage users to review your app (as long as you’ve gotten permission to send push notifications!).

You can also have an in-app pop-up notification asking the user to leave a good review if he or she liked it. (MobiLoud includes this features in your apps for you and the results are encouraging, with a 4.5 average rating for MobiLoud customer apps.)

We would recommend having the notification appear after a certain number of times the app has been opened; if a user is opening the app frequently, chances are that they like it and will put in a good review. If they haven't used your app much, the review won't reflect their experience accurately.

9. Use App Store Analytics

Just like Google Analytics for web page marketing, there are a number of powerful app store analytics tools that are designed to help your mobile marketing strategy. You will be able to see where your app stands in relation to the competition, and boost your store ranking accordingly.

Just to name a few, there are:

These app analytics tools are helpful because they give you hard data about all sorts of measurements related to your app. They can show you what you’re doing wrong in marketing your app, what you could be doing to improve your app store ranking, and much more.

10. Re-evaluate Regularly

If it’s been a few weeks, and you’re not pleased with your app’s current app store ranking, it’s time to take a look at your data, make some assessments, and change some things around:

Maybe the keywords aren’t right?
Is the description isn’t persuasive enough?
Are you sure it’s in the right category?
Does the icon needs some fine tuning?

All of these things and more can be improved upon to get a higher ranking.

When you do make changes, it’s important to make them one at a time, and then wait a week or so to see if there’s any impact.

What you want to avoid is changing everything at once; doing that won’t give you any idea what the initial problem was, and it could lead to a fall in your app store ranking if the changes a

The Bottom Line

If you want to have a successful app with lots of visibility and downloads — and income-generating potential — you’ve got to pay close attention to your App Store Optimization strategy. While Apple and Google do not share their exact methodology for establishing app rank, it has been established that there are certain things that will have a positive impact on how well your app ranks.

One thing to mention is that a lot of this is based on making sure you have a great app to begin with.

If you already have an app - be sure to keep the UX fast and smooth, and keep it updated and well maintained. This will naturally lead to good reviews which are a ranking factor. If you have not built an app yet but you're researching the possibilities make sure that you either build it yourself to a high standard, or you hire reputable and skilled developers (which don't come cheap).

If you already have a website or web app - the best option is to convert your website into apps for iOS and Android. This is what our platform MobiLoud does best.

MobiLoud works for any kind of site:

Digital publishers who want tto convert a WordPress site to apps, building native apps with WooCommerce, integrating the functionality of any WordPress plugin to build LearnDash apps or PeepSo apps, or for building apps from any other platform, including Bubble mobile apps, Webflow apps, Wix apps, Laravel mobile apps, Squarespace apps - and anything in-between.

We add all the elements to ensure the optimal app UX and a provide you with a wide range of features to guarantee great reviews and ratings. We also equip you with unlimited push notifications, automatic ratings prompts, and all the other features you need for effective ASO.

If you think MobiLoud could be for you, check out our solutions, or book a free app consultation with one of our experts today to learn everything about the app building process.

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The Practical Guide to App Store Optimization (ASO) in 2024

What is App Store Optimization?