Exhaustive keyword research is an essential element of optimizing your app store for search visibility. This is the first step before launching your app in the store and when your mobile app or game downloads are not reaching the expected volume or you want to increase organic traffic and reduce the UA fees paid.

Start your keyword research by mining the keyword ideas

The first stage of keyword research for app store optimization is brainstorming. In this stage, the goal is to write down as many keywords as you can think of. 

Of course, keywords should be based on the functionality of your app or game and contain phrases that are relevant to your niche. 

Start by answering the following questions:

• What terms do people use to describe the services your app offers or the features of your game?
• What are the most important features and benefits of your app or game?
• What advantages does it provide to your users or what problems does it solve?
• What makes your app or game unique?

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The best way to start your keyword research is to look at what your application offers. Start with what is most unique about the application and work your way up to its standard features. Then, go beyond the features and add the benefits. Benefits are the answer to the question, "What will users get out of the app?" The answer to that question, not the answer to "how" they will get it.

These are your most important keywords because they are relevant to your application and directly targeted to your users. The next steps will help you expand this list with keywords that are relevant and effective for your competitors.

Read your reviews

The goal of keyword research is to find as many relevant keywords as possible, and your app's reviews are a place full of words that describe it. Your users, especially those who like your app a lot and leave reviews, will use their own words to describe the app. Some may say it exactly the way you want, but others may use slightly different words that you can capture and optimize.

Market research and competitor traffic analytics is helpful

1. Explore your direct competitors' most successful keywords

Your competitors are probably also using ASO to acquire new users. They are also researching keywords and may have found some great keywords that you didn't know about. You can quickly learn from them by finding their top-ranking keywords and focusing on those keywords at the same time.

To learn more about competitor research, you can check "Competitor Research: How To Improve Aso Skills & Marketing Strategy From Your Competitor" of our previous articles.

2. Find related keywords

Users may search for your app's features using different wording than you expect, so a good practice is to look for keywords that are related to your primary keywords. The best sources of related keywords are those that have a similar intent, are relevant to the application, and as a bonus, they apply to similar applications.

3. Find keywords that you already rank for but are not optimized for

The keywords your app is already ranking for are good "fingerprints" because the algorithm has identified your app as relevant for those terms. The application's rankings are less relevant because with a little more attention you can quickly improve that ranking.

4. Analyze competitors' names, subtitles and descriptions

You now have a good list of keywords that are relevant to your application. The next step is to see what keywords your competitors are using.

We know that keyword optimization means changing the name and subtitle/description of your application, so an easy way to understand what keywords your competitors are targeting is to look at their name and subtitle/description.

Remember that in terms of ASO, a "competitor" is any app that targets the same keywords as you, so check the top 10 apps for any keywords you target.

5. Look for long-tail versions of the most successful keywords

Last (but not least) is an underused technique. Since many applications compete for the same keywords, it is often best to optimize for longer keywords. Yes, that's right. Longer. But only the really great ones, meaning high popularity and low competitive scores.

Validate your keyword list within users needs

Now it's time to judge your keywords. Especially on iOS, there is limited space to implement keywords in your product pages, so you need to choose the keywords that will most effectively help your app gain visibility. Filter the terms in the list by the following three criteria.

Relevance is the most important factor. The keywords must be relevant to your application. Otherwise, users will not see your application as the solution to their problems.

Usually, it is obvious whether a term is relevant or not. "Food" is certainly a relevant keyword for a cooking application, but "piano" is obviously not. In some cases, however, the relevance is not obvious. If you're not sure, go to the App Store and search for the keyword. If most of the apps in the search results are your competitors, then the keyword is relevant to your app. However, if the search results show apps from other categories, the term may be considered irrelevant.

Competition (or difficulty) is the second criterion. It defines how many other applications rank for the keyword. The more apps that do this, the harder it will be to push your app to the top position. Therefore, low competition is what you are looking for.

To understand the competitiveness of a keyword, you can simply search for it and calculate the results. Performing this for all your keyword candidates would be a very time consuming process, so it makes sense to use a keyword tool that provides competitor data for each keyword.

Keyword search volume (or popularity) for keyword creation is the third factor you need to consider. Only words that users actually search for are useful keywords, otherwise they won't generate any traffic. The higher the search volume, the better.

For iOS keywords, there's an easy way to get an idea of search volume: log into Apple Search Ads and create a campaign for the country/region you want to research. When you add a keyword, you will see a bar indicating the keyword search volume. Again, the Keyword Tool takes this manual work out of the process.

To learn more about keyword selection, you can check "ASO Keywords Selection Strategy: How To Choose Keyword for Ranking Optimization" of our previous articles.

Make app title, subtitle & description effectively drive keyword coverage

At this point, the hard part is over. All you have to do now is decide where to implement the keywords when you update/launch the app.

To learn more about metadata optimization, you can check "Strategy About Keywords Optimization In App Store" of our previous articles.

App Store 

In the Apple App Store, you only have two opportunities to enter keywords: the title and the keyword field. For your best keywords, try using them in titles that are 50 characters long, as they typically rank higher than keywords used in keyword fields that are 100 characters long. According to a study by MobileDevHQ, app titles that include keywords rank 10.3% higher than app titles that do not include keywords. For the rest of the keywords, include them in a 100-character keyword field, separated by commas and no spaces. If you use a keyword in the title, you do not need to use it again in the keyword field.

Google Play 

In the Google Play app store, you can enter keywords in the title, short description, and detailed description. Again, aim to put your best keywords in a 50-character title. For the rest of the keywords, insert them into the short and long descriptions. Try to include each keyword at least 3 times in order to better rank high for it.

Monitoring and maintenance 

After launching your application with your chosen keywords, you need to monitor which keywords your application is ranking for and which ones it is not. Every time you make a new app update, use the ASO tool to see how it ranks for your keywords. Remove keywords that you don't end up ranking for in the top 20 or so search results and replace them with new keywords. As you update and tweak your keywords, you'll notice that keyword rankings should improve, so you'll get more downloads.