Recently, some of our customers have asked a lot of detailed questions about Google Play Store optimization. I think it is necessary to write a practical article on on-metadata optimization to help new promoter and app developers to begin your ASO.

To ensure the promoter quickly understands the optimization of the basic metadata tags, through the combination of on-metadata and off-metadata optimization, improve a new application’s rank in the Google store quickly, and obtain more organic users and drive the app downloads. We have selected one of our user’s application here as a case study to discuss how a new application can start the optimization of the Google App Store step by step.

How to start basic optimization after an app launched into the Google Play store?

It is a very representative story from our user. As a new application, after some pre-launch promotion, a small number of local users know the brand and application, and very few users will search, download and install the application through brand words. Such downloads can hardly improve the status that your app is overwhelmed by a large number of competitor's apps in the store category. How to start your optimization?


Start your Google App Store optimization with the following metadata tags:

1. Application name/app title

In the Google Play Store, the app title refers to the displayed application name. The relevant information of the application title will directly affect the ranking of the key keywords in the app store. The store’s machine learning algorithm will search and classify applications based on the information here, and compare the relevance with the user’s search keywords, which will ultimately affect the search results that users view.

The app title in the Google Play Store allows up to 50 characters in length. Making good use of this data is very important for your app’s ranking.

App title, preferably a simple phrase, or a logical phrase or sentence containing the most important keywords. If the name is too long and without useful information, it will be displayed as a bunch of garbage keywords, and the name is too short to give full play to the role of keywords. To make full use of the information displayed by your app title, we recommend the combination of the title: brand name + "phrase or sentence composed of 2 to 3 keywords", which clearly expresses the core functions of your app and reasonably embeds valuable keywords.

For example, our customer did an electronic product trading platform in the Indian market, and only the brand name is placed in the position of the app title, which is very unfriendly to subsequent keyword coverage and app visibility, and will lose a lot of opportunity from their potential users. In this section, we found a good benchmarking sample: IndiaMART. The name of this application is “IndiaMART: Search Products, Buy, Sell & Trade”. We decomposed his value keywords as: IndiaMART, Search Products, Buy, Sell, Trade, and various combination phrases of these words, and get ranking weight bonus in the Google App Store ranking algorithm.

The significance of these keywords to him is reflected in this scenario: users want to find a local business platform for India in the app store, through their targeted keywords as “India MART, Business Mobile Apps, Business Promotion App, India Business, India's B2B Trading Platform, Buy Products in India, Sell in India, or Trade in India, etc.”, we can touch a series of needs from their potential users. If your app’s contents contains relevant keywords or synonyms, you may get opportunities to make your users find you. If it doesn't, there is no chance.

2. Description of the application

Basic specifications

The description of the application is also very important for the application to obtain keyword coverage in the app store. Google Play extracts keywords from the short and long descriptions of the application. Your short description is limited to 80 characters, and the long description in the Google Play store is limited to 4,000 characters. The short description will affect your Google Play keywords far more than your long description.

We recommend that you include 4-5 times in your long description. More than 5 mentions will not improve your ranking. Including keywords too many times may be considered keyword spam, so please try not to mention more than 5 times with keywords stacking, and your description should be grammatically correct and readable. It is best to reasonably describe the characteristics of your application that are different from your competitors based on keywords.

How to practice and optimize the description information of your application?

Let’s look at our selected app IndiaMART. His short description is: "IndiaMART is India's Largest Online Marketplace & the trusted choice of 9 Cr buyers & 50 Lac Suppliers. We make ‘Doing Business Easy’ !" The content clearly expresses the characteristics of this application, and it is natural to insert valuable keywords as: IndiaMART, India's Largest Online Marketplace, Online Marketplace, buyers, Suppliers, Doing Business, and interpret the needs of these words from the perspective of customers, and the goal is clear.

Looking at the long description of the IndiaMART app, we obtained his long description from the Google App Store as shown in the image below. From different positions such as the paragraph title, we can see the value keywords of his app as: Best Business App, IndiaMART, Search for Products, Buyers, Sellers, Resellers, Wholesalers, Manufacturers, Retailers in India, online B2B marketplace, online shopping, Electronics & Electrical Goods & Services, etc. 

These keywords will get ranking weight bonus from the algorithm of the app store. From the expression, the persuasiveness of his target users can be felt by everyone. We can predict the trust of users and download conversion.

How to quickly improve the ranking of Google App Store?

With a large number of applications and games pouring into the app marketing every day, too many applications are in the same situation as our customer’s. For many new promoters, the very familiar picture is that as an new applications with few downloads and installs, be submerged by competitors’ applications, it is difficult to be found by users, and that do not know where to start their application market optimization. Let's take a look at how to start your optimization step by step in stages:

1. Optimization of basic meta tags;

In this regard, you can follow our instructions above, and you also need to pay attention to your Icons, Screenshots, Videos, etc.

2. Off-metadata optimization;

1) Paid downloads and app package installs, app reviews

Paid downloads - Generally, what we call paid downloads in the app market refers to gaining potential customers through display ads to increase brand exposure. It also includes purchasing high-quality app downloads and installations to establish the early off-metadata data.

App package installs - refers to the direct installation by the user through the app’s url in the app store. Generally, application developers or promoters will conduct multi-channel pre-promotion before the application be launched. When the audience knows the brand and download by link of the application, they will find the application through the app package url or application ID, and then download and install the app directly.

While optimizing your basic metadata tags, together with the optimization of off-metadata data, your application will get a good ranking in the shortest time. You can promote the ranking of your brand keywords and industry keywords through advertisements or high-quality paid downloads (purchase app package installs and reviews) in the early stage to improve the app ranking and obtain more organic traffic.

According to our data, a certain amount of package downloads and installations of new applications every day, plus 15% to 20% of 4~5 star ratings and detailed positive reviews, will boost your app ranking to top within a few days to several weeks. Asking your users to write review content seriously, rather than simply "Good App" review content, will have a good effect on rankings and will affect the download conversion rate of organic users.

"app package installs + ratings + reviews" will effectively improve the search ranking of the core keywords contained in the title and description of the app in the app store.

Click "Learn More" to drive your apps & games business with ASO World app promotion service now.

 

2) Keyword installs

Keyword installs - Refers to the user finding the application through the intended keyword search in the app store, and then completing the download and installation. Through the mining of target keywords and the increase in the number of keyword installations, it will help you to maximize the visibility of the application and enlarge the organic traffic. It is also an important factor for your new applications to develop their marketing rapidly, bringing you hundreds of downloads and registered users every day.

3) Country-targeted app installs and reviews

For applications with certain local business characteristics, such as our user's application, his target population is mainly for the local people in India, so app downloads, installs and reviews from local people will be more helpful to the ranking of this application. If you want to increase the number of basic installations through paid downloads in the early stage, you need to make sure that the downloads and reviews you purchase come from local IPs and accounts in India.

The above is about a new Indian electronic product trading app promotion, I explained the basic optimization in detail as how to complete the preliminary application store optimization work. In the next article, I will further describe how to conduct keyword research and optimization; how to choose the key value keywords; why do you need to do keywords installs; how to quickly optimize the keyword coverage of the application in the Google App Store and other strategies, you can also leave a message below, and we will take you through the application store optimization one by one.