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This post gives you a detailed (in-depth) guide to app store optimization (ASO) with proven actionable strategies that help app developers and marketers to boost their apps discovery, downloads and ranking on major app stores (Google Play Store and Apple App Store).

We’ll begin by introducing the essence of ASO, how to effectively do it and the benefit you get for your app purchase and visibility.

Mobile usage is ever increasing with the breakthrough in smartphone technology. Many people are shifting from using desktops to more comfortable and easy to manage smartphones apps. This outlook has led many app developers to focus their developments to design mobile apps to solve their users’ needs based on their categories.

Why are mobile apps exploding in popularity?

The three reasons lie in the fact that:

• Many apps complement the web very well as they offer many advantages and enhanced functionality
• Mobile apps strengthened your business branding by offering unique value to the customer, unlike the web-based brands.
• Mobile apps strengthened user usage and facilitate effective communication between the customer and the business.
• Apps designed for mobile tends to bridge the gap between desktops and mobile devices since many people aren’t comfortable using the desktops as they are bulky, not portable and power intensive than a mobile device. This gives mobile devices a perfect match for developing apps that serve their needs.
• And much more.

With those numerous advantages, it’s almost difficult to get your mobile app visible in app store search due to a lot of competition and poor app store optimization. To overcome this challenge, app developers and marketers need to devise an effective approach to make their apps visible on app store search.

Statistics recorded as of March 2017 (almost a year ago, as of writing), state that there are more than 2.2 million apps in the Apple App Store and 2.8 million apps available in Google Play. You can see how hard it is to make your app visible with such massive app competition. How can you stand out from your competitors?

This guide explains every app store optimization (ASO) and how to effectively optimize your mobile app’s discovery, downloads and ranking.

 

What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?

App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process (technique, strategy or tactics) of optimizing mobile apps for achieving a higher rank in the app store search results (based on search algorithms) and top charts rankings. App store optimization (ASO) is also referred to as App Store SEO, App Search Optimization, and Mobile App SEO. Its techniques aren’t far from search engine optimization (SEO) you would do for websites but it’s limited to app store search only.

Once you master the strategies for ASO, your app visibility and download will begin to soar up. It’s the most cost-effective method most app developers use to get more downloads and push your app higher on the store charts. If you don’t have a budget to run for your mobile app downloads, ASO proves to be the only free organic strategy that you can focus on to increase your app visibility, rankings, and downloads within a short period of time.

How to do App Store Optimization?

App Store Optimization (ASO) is much like SEO for websites. In order to gain visibility for what you’re optimizing, you need to focus your attention to learn how search engines work. In our case, ASO is strictly tailored for mobile app store search (taking visibility, rankings, ratings & reviews, and downloads into account).

We’ll begin step by step from the very basic (important) to core strategies until you grasp all the effective ASO strategies you can apply when optimizing your mobile apps.

Step 1: App Store Keywords

Just like you would do when optimizing your web copy with the right keywords, ASO also has the same when it comes to optimizing your mobile apps. This is the basic and most important since app store search engines use it to rank and display your app to users according to their search intent.  And the good news? Most users use it to search for a particular app!

The choice of keywords is important to your app ranking. Start your app store optimization with the right app keywords. To bring this clearly to your understanding, I’ll break it up into the following steps from finding the right app store keywords to optimizing your app keywords.

1. Generate the right app store keywords

What terms do your users search in order for your app to pop up in search results? To make your app visible, you need to come up with the right keywords primarily related to your app and use those keywords heavily (avoiding keyword stuffing) in your app page.

Why?

Most of people use app store search to find the apps they need. They begin this with a search for the apps with their search terms (intent) and install the one that contains such keywords and has better ratings and is highly ranked. A research study shows that on average, 63% of app store users who download and use apps do so by search and browsing the app store with their search intent keywords.

That tells you how valuable keywords are when targeting organic search for more downloads.

To generate the best app store keywords, try to come up with at least 50 app store keywords with the help of app store keyword tools to guide you through the hunt for quality key terms (keywords).

Leverage the power of the following free keyword ideas tools:

• Keyword Suggestions (only for iOS mobile app developers) by Meatti. This is the most simple but informative keyword suggestion and analysis tool that check the overall ASO compliance of your app. Do your app meets all the ASO essential requirements for ranking, visibility, and downloads. This tool pools all the full report of your mobile app and shows you which fields you optimize correctly and those that need improvements. The details range from your mobile app store profile, keywords, graphics & previews, ratings & reviews, language & conversion to pricing & compatibility.
• Ubersuggest: This is another Keyword Suggestions tool by Neil Patel. Ubersuggest isn’t for mobile app store alone but it a general tool for generating and analyzing your target keywords for your mobile optimization and competitive intelligence. With this tool, you can easily find the best keywords for your app.
• OneLook Reverse Dictionary:
• io: Allows you to find popular app store keywords by country and language.

How else do you generate your app store keyword ideas? – App Store Review Keywords -It’s by paying attention to what terms users using to review your app. App Store search engine uses the users’ reviews to look for users search terms in a search query. You’ll be surprised to find how effective this concept works since you’ll get a lot of keywords related to your app and ideal for adding them to your ASO require fields.

Use tools like Meatti (an AI-based ASO platform) which uses review analysis technique to identify keywords from the app reviews- it helps you identify what your valuable app users like and what they don’t like about your app among other app store optimization report you get for your apps using AI.

Now that you’ve known how to generate keyword ideas using the above methods, let’s dive into the next step on how to optimize your app store keywords effectively.

• Optimize Your App Store Keywords

You now have some set of keywords you consider adding to your app store optimization. But do all the researched keywords worth your app optimization? Definitely, there are some that are highly competitive, relevant, popular, and traffic-driven while others are less poplar etc.

With those keywords, you’ll need to develop a strategy to filter and select the best keywords that effectively describes your app. By using the beforementioned ASO tool for keyword suggestion, I’ll strongly agree that the tool helps you with your app store keywords popularities (or search traffic) as well its difficulties (or chances).

In simple terms;

There are some considerations to make when filtering your app keywords with optimization strategy.

The first goes to new app entering the app store. If your app falls into this category, choose the app keywords with low difficulty but have reasonable popularity. Why? It helps your app with the initial popularity which is the best way to grow your app in the app store.

You aren’t restricted from changing your app keywords. When you’ve gained an initial momentum, it’s time to change your earlier keywords with high-quality app store keywords with higher popularity and reasonable difficulty. The main point here is to find the best app keywords that are most relevant to your app name & category and try to balance it for traffic, ranking, and difficulty in order to penetrate through your app competition.

• Long-tail App Store Keywords

As for SEO (search engine optimization), long-tail keywords play a major role in boosting your web copy in SERPs. This too applies to app store long-tail keywords- it helps you App store optimization to outrank the competition.  You outrank your competitors by utilizing keyword phrases that less competitive but have high chance to drive high traffic.

Having tested everything from finding the right keyword and optimizing quality keywords for your app, it’s time to retire the less performing (poor) app store keywords that have less ranking. Replace it with the best, quality app keywords that have the ability to boost your app ranking and visibility in the app store.

That’s all for the ASO keyword research for your app. Let’s now move to the next step of our complete guide to app store optimization (ASO).

Step 2: App Store Keywords Placement

Following the guide from step one above, it’s time to use your selected optimized keywords in the right places of your app store metadata text fields for your app.

It’s not that difficult. What matters here is how effectively you place those keywords in the right text fields (metadata) available to fill for your app.

This step discusses a couple of metadata where you must fill in the required text with the right app store keywords.

Let’s begin;

a) Your App Name

What’s the purpose of your app? Answering this questing ultimately gives you the best name for your app. As a developer, it’s advisable to name your app in a creative and searchable fashion. Not all people search you by your app name. It has to be user searchable and easy to guess. Naming your app with the right terms (with keywords in it) tells your users what your app is and get your app rankings in the app store search results.

I’ll take an example of Google Play store app – Google Maps – Navigation & Transit. The app name is self-explanatory and easy to be found in app searches. The first piece (Google Maps) – the word Maps depicts itself as the app is all about maps from Google. The second piece after”-” explains what best the app can do (subject) in high-level understanding.

According to a study from Tune (formally MobileDevHQ), keywords usage in the app name (title) can result in significant increase in app raking up to 10.3%.

Image: Tune via Kissmetrics.

Why add an app keyword in the app name?

Apple App Store and Google Play Store search engines (based on their search algorithms) scan the apps for keywords whenever a user performs an app store search. If your app has user search keyword (terms) in it, the algorithm gives you higher priority over your competitors.

As a developer or a marketer, it’s always wise to include a few important keywords in your app name. But there is a catch! Be moderate. Don’t stuff your app title name with every keyword as this makes your valuable app looks spammy. Find the good balancing spot to add your keywords to the app title but also retaining its branding.

b) App subtitle (for Apple iOS App Store only)

This metadata text field was introduced in Apple iOS 11 and only available to Apple store apps. It appears under your app name (title) and is limited to 30 characters only.

You may wonder;

What’s the need for this field? It has two achievements for both apple apps store search engine and users. Since it is limited to only 3o characters, it’s the ideal place to also add your app keywords while communicating about the real value of your app to users or searchers. Search engines will use the title and its subtitles among other search fields to index your app in users search. So make good use of it to cover very important keywords for your app.

  c)App description (for Google Play Store Apps)

This is another great field for Google Play Store Apps to explorer more about what your does. This metadata field gives you an opportunity to explain in detail what your app offers to your users. What’s this that they will benefit from your app? It’s not just a text field but Google Play Store search engines scan your app description for users search terms. If the search keywords are optimized and found in the description field, your app will get some rankings and get an opportunity to be visible in users search apps results.

Tip: while writing your app description with your keywords included, there are two sections you need to know as a developer – the above the fold section (the first few lines) – visible on the app page and the rest of the app description (below the fold) – usually you get this by tapping the “read more button”

Write a bullet list of your app’s biggest features to create a persuasive app description. It’s a great approach to bring simplicity while optimizing your app description with your app keywords.

Why optimizing above the fold is a good way to better rankings and increased downloads?

From StoreMaven “10 Killer App Store Marketing Tips” post, the first impression matters most and an average of 5% of Google Play users will click the “read more” button below the short description text field (the above the fold section). How about the 95%?

As for iOS App Store, its clocking is at only 2%. This means that as a developer or a marketer looking for ways to optimize your mobile app with app store optimization strategies, you must utilize every character in the short description section with first impression content mixed with your app keywords. Don’t waste any space here. Make every word valuable. Above all, add a strong call-to-action line of text to encourage and persuade users to download and install your app.

d)App description (for iOS App Store)

This also applies to the new App Promotional Text in iOS 11.

Unlike Google Play Store app description field used by Google Play Store search engine to look for users’ key terms (keywords), the Apple iOS App Store does not search for app store keywords in the app description, but that does not mean iOS developers should neglect this important field. Even if it’s not used by Apple store search engine, users can benefit from it by learning much about the unique features of your app.

e)App Store Keyword field (available only for iOS App Store)

Of most text fields available in the Apple App Store, the App Store Keyword field decides how your app gets discovered with your app keywords. It’s a 100 character field and you don’t have to be lazy here. Fill in the field with your most important app store keywords for a better visibility and rankings.

The good strategy to make it optimized is to;

• Use high-quality keywords of your app and avoid repeating it.
• Separate every keyword by a comma
• Avoid space, articles and prepositions words. Remove any empty (extra) space to free up more space
• If possible, don’t include your company name, app name or app category
• You may use singular or plural words
• Use all the fields’ space with 100 characters.
• Don’t spell out “numbering” write it down in number.

That’s all for step 2. So far, you’ve learned in detail about keyword research and suggestion, keyword placement in the app store text fields and how to optimize those field with call-to-action download message while maintaining the value of your app keywords in it.  All these strategies aimed at increasing your app store visibility, ranking, and downloads. It’s now time we move to the next step-step 3 of app store optimization (ASO).

Step 3: Convert The App Store Page Visitors To App Users.

What trigger your app store visitors to become your app downloaders? The answer lies in how well you optimize your app page with all the points mentioned above. But there are other important aspects that work together with step 2 above to boost your app downloads. We’ll begin looking at each of them one-by-one and how app developers need to take into consideration some of the app page design and the overall presentation to boost app installs.

  a)App Icon

Look at your smartphones home screen. What you see there are several app icons with different functionality and different icon design style. The best and most downloaded apps are the ones with first impression icon design. In fact, it boosts your app download up to 560% according to splitmetrics.

What makes a good icon design?

The concept implies that a good icon is simple, eye-catching and represent your brand function. Icons inspire your visitors to download and have a test of what your app does. Moreover, top-rated icons stick with people’s memory and if it’s great enough, they’ll remember your app whenever they see the app icon.

And the best part? Colors actually affect our purchasing decisions. The best color design for a product always wins the purchase decision of a customer.

Take for example Twitter, their icon is simple but has a great first impression that’s filled with inspirations. The icon looks good no matter the icon scalability required by any app store. Their color choice also looks good against dark or light backgrounds.

That’s a great concept. To get more inspirations, visit your favorite app store and browse the top-rated app in your category and go after those icons that have a simple, eye-catching and compelling icons for your next icon app design. To avoid app confliction or confusion from your users, make your icon unique and totally different from your competitors. Build your own brand with contrasting colors with awesome shapes.

Here is an image of color inspiration to help guide you in your app icon design:

Source: bufferapp

Tip: make your app icons uniform with your app website or landing page colors. This help builds a strong brand for your app. Take the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Viber, Uber etc. their app’s icon represents their online brands.

  b)App Screenshots

Like your app icon, users use your app screenshots to get a glue of what your app best functionality. They depend on these screenshots as the best app sections that offer the best solutions. That means more than 60% of app searches preview the first two app screenshots before making a download decision.

The hard part is that the same percentage of users view all the screenshots available in your app store page including other detailed information before making a purchase decision.

That means apps screenshots increases your app conversion rate by more than 25%. Make every effort to produce better screenshots with each telling a single message about your mobile app. Add a short caption/explanation in each of your app screenshots. This technique simply tells the viewer more about each of your screenshots.

Tip: Vertical screenshots orientation are better than horizontal for small screen mobile users. Screen dimensions are no longer a problem for app store optimization since the app store will adjust screenshots to sizes of all phone generations automatically (this is especially for the case of iPhones).

You can even add your app screenshots for smartphones, and tablets at the same time.

  c)Preview video

That’s another great strategy for app store optimization (ASO). App video preview increases your app download rate by more than 23%.

Video production may be difficult for you. If you don’t have enough resource to produce your own videos, consider hiring a qualified expert or outsource a video editor from qualified freelancer. Make sure they understand your app features and let them give the best shot (Focus on the best features, instead of all features) to attract more views and downloads. Include a call-to-action voice with the best background video music.

If you’re not sure where to start, have a chat with Apptamin. They are the best app marketing video company well known for its app videos.

  d)Ratings & Reviews

We’ll talk a lot about your app reviews and ratings here. As part of the App Store Optimization (ASO), we’ll take a deep analysis of how to effectively manage your app reviews to get better app visibility, ranking and ultimately to attract more downloads.

How to optimize app store ratings:

There are several ways you can use to optimize your app ratings from both your active users and new customers. The process is to find the most effective approach that will trigger your use to willingly rate and leave a review about your app.

For example, you can wait until your app user completes a certain action in your app like finishing a mission in a game. If their first game was lovely and impactful, they definitely rate it 5 stars. Don’t beg for a review. Ask them nicely in a friendly but professional approach.

A message prompt to ask your users for their app experience via a review can be something like this:

Image source: Apptentive

The truth about formulating a better user review is to try as much as possible to make your users rate your app with great experience. No one really likes your mobile app popups or alerts for reviews. I too hate it the most. No matter how much you crave for your app reviews, your users are pressing it hard to rate your app if you keep distracting them. They may even dislike your approach and go ahead with a negative review like this.

And you know what happens with your app as a developer. It gets hidden from search results and decreased rankings.

App ratings are greatly necessary for two things when it comes to app store optimization.

• Apps ratings are taken into account for users search results and top chart rankings. App store apps that gain better ratings with substantial downloads over time will remain in the app store top chart rankings and highly ranked in search results for a given keyword.
• Ratings act like the users’ judgment of your app. The more positive (high) ratings your app gets, the more downloads you’ll get.

That’s it.

And the simple rules when asking for your app review include:

• Did your app just crash and you receive some complaints? Don’t ask for app review after its crash.
• Don’t interrupt your users experience with your app review popups. Wait for the right time to ask for it.
• Delay asking for reviews/ratings until there is a constructive feedback.

How to effectively ask for reviews

There are several ways to ask for an app review but few are effective for better user experience. An effective approach to asking for reviews doesn’t involve distracting your users with “please rate us” command. Here’s how to go about it.

Integrate rating request within your app. This varies depending on what your app does. You may use the old fashion as discussed in the “simple app rules” above, but integrating it into your app is a great way to get absolute positive ratings and reviews about your app. It’s a kind of an ad within your app services. This technique boosts your users’ experience.

So you get the idea. Right?

Well.

When it comes to what to say when asking for a review, ask a question. Don’t beg.

Why?

You need a better user engagement that at long last it’ll help you with your app positive ratings. The engagement will typically convert even the negative users who may not like your app to rate it better with an utmost reasonable review.

Have a look at this approach from Image: Circa News via Medium

Now that you’ve dice the best way to get your app users ratings and reviews, it’s time to revisit each and every user review and look for the negative and positive parts of your app. Remember the best way to know if your app is worth your users is through reviews. Not all people love your app though. So try your best to reply to every review and give the best possible solution to your app reviewers?

Did something go wrong with the app? Let them know that you’ve seen their review and you’re looking for ways to improve it in the next update.

Can the problem be fixed right now? Fix their technical issue and consider asking them to update their rating and review.

Did you get a 5-star rating from a user? Give them a “big thanks” for rating your app. After all, you’re both benefiting from these 5 stars.

That’s all for the app review and rating optimization.

Let’s now move on to the next app store optimization (ASO) technique.

  e)App Store App Size

The size of your app has a direct correlation to how users download it. The bigger the size of the app, the less it’ll attract more downloads. In most cases, users can’t download an app that’s more than 100MB using their mobile cellular service.

The worst thing about an app bigger than the recommended 100MB is that if the user was on a busy schedule like travelling, and by chance found that your app is worth their needs, they’ll try to download it but due to its size, they’ll leave it until a time they have access to a WI-FI. The problem? He/She can’t remember your app name anymore if they forget or fail to write it somewhere.

That’s how easy to lose a valuable customer.

So how can you optimize your app download with the ideal app size?

• Reduce the app size- compress some of the app graphics and make some content downloadable after install.
• Don’t add too much unnecessary things to your app that increases its size. Most top 100 apps on the app store are less than 100MB.

    f)App Update Frequency

The best apps in the market are frequently updated with bugs fixes, user experience and performance (enhancements) or new features added. Statistics from business insider show that there is a higher correlation between the number of app ratings & downloads and the frequency of those app updates.

Regular updates come with some great benefits like improving your app user loyalty and showing your app at the list of updates in the app store. This strategy shows you’re committed to the app functionality and user experience as well as being active in your app maintenance.

Chart source: Sensortower

As you can depict from the image chart, most of these top apps are updated with a frequency of 15-50 days.

   g)App Store App Localization

The more app localization, the more your app get downloaded. The best approach to this is by localizing your app (whole or partly) to many languages.

That’s really a hard task?

The best approach is to first localize you app listing like performing tasks like translating your app name, app store keywords, screenshots, descriptions etc. performing this simple task can improve your app download to a value greater than even 500%.  Localizing your app listings first helps you gauge how your app performs in different languages. If you find out your app performs well in some languages, consider localizing the app fully for best app downloads and better app reviews.

Step 4: App Conversion Rates

This is our final strategy in our complete guide to app store optimization (ASO). It’s now time to review what you’ve applied in the discussed ASO strategies above and track the number of impressions of your app visits and downloads.

Perform some app store page analytics like how many people visits your app page and fail to download your app? Or how many visit your app and install the app? Or how many visitors have access to your app video and screenshots? Such statistics help you come up with a comprehensive report on the most converting areas of your app page and the areas that need some enhancements.

The main goal is to find the spots that make people leaves your app page.

Step 5: Putting It Up Altogether

So far so good. We’re almost coming to the end of our complete guide to app store optimization (ASO). As always, visuals are better than writings. How can I sum up all that we’ve discussed in this guide?

I have got an infographic to show you for a quick preview of what we’ve discussed so far. The best thing about ASO is that when you effectively apply all the above steps in your app store page optimization, you’ll definitely get the results within a few given timeframe with an improved number of your app downloads. Make most of your app keyword and pay attention to every user review. Remember bad review damage your app visibility, rankings and downloads.

Always try to scrutinize everything to see what’s working and not for better app ranking and user experience. Keep your users ahead of everything. They are there to either build your app reputation or destroy it.

Here is the infographic for what we’ve discussed so far.

Detailed infographic produced by Y Media Labs.

App store optimization is a process. Not everything works like what you expect. Keep repeating the steps time after time until you get the ideal spot for maximum rankings, visibility, and downloads for given app keywords and optimization strategies.  Reach for a press release to review your app, get bloggers expert in your app niche to drive traffic to your app page. Go to social networks and strategically hunt those enthusiastic profiles who might find interest in your app. Even social influencers can do the job for you. In the end, every download increases your app visibility and rankings which is the most achieved process of app store optimization (ASO).

Getting more downloads for your app will be always a priority for any app developer. In this post, we will discuss how to increase mobile app downloads with best marketing strategies out there.

You may have designed a lovely app that people will love to use for their needs.  Your app design, icon, and functionality work flawlessly on many platforms you choose to run on. That’s a great start.  Success won’t come immediately after your app launch but it can if you choose a less competitive niche and there is great market demand for your app.

The real challenge comes when you realize you’ve uploaded your app to the major app store and waiting for app downloads. Creating your app wasn’t really a challenge. You’re a geek when it comes to coding (and your program coding uniqueness leads you to implement an awesome app that helps your target prospects solve/ meet their needs) but promoting your app and gaining loyal customers (if you intend to sell) is the most battling field where most developers struggle to overcome.

But the escape isn’t secret at all. It’s just knowing your app target audience and devising a marketing/ promotion strategies that help boost their reach and create awareness about your app and its usefulness.

Your enthusiasm to promote your mobile app entails paying attention to all the details we’ll discuss in this article. It’s long but delightedly reading to the end will enlighten you to drive ahead and apply the same tactics we ourselves have found effective if you seriously want to increase mobile app downloads of your choice.

Shift from inactive mobile app downloads to a robust, active user app downloads. When you get active mobile app downloads, you’ll begin to devise some approaches to make real money through your app. Why? Because earning money involves increasing mobile app downloads. And to make this successful, you’ll need to strategically focus your creativity on attracting real customers to downloads the app and provide them with real user app experiences.

How to Increase App Downloads?

There is already a tremendous amount of competition on major app stores like Apple app store and Google app store. Convincing users to downloads your app is extremely challenging only if your promotion approach isn’t effective. Great developers know when and how to boost their mobile app downloads. You too can implement the same with our proven techniques provided through this post.

Before we dive into how to increase mobile app downloads strategies, let’s first have a clear introduction to how mobile app store works.

Mobile App Store

An app store (sometimes called app marketplace) is an online store offering software distribution for a specific software platform where users can browse through available different app categories, and downloads and install the app they need. App store offers other functionality like each app information including app purchases, ratings & reviews, and security scans etc.

There are conditions that each app developer must meet before adding their app on such app stores (called approval process). The main goal is to inspect the app for compliance with certain guidelines and to protect the user against malicious software downloads.

There are many app stores available for different mobile OS platforms. The three major ones include   App Store for iOS,  Google Play for Android, and Microsoft Store for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, and Xbox One.

From Statista Sept. 2016 report, the number of apps available has already exceeded 2.4 million (3.3M as of 2017) with the store generating more than 6 billion U.S dollars in revenue (as of 2015).

Apple Store for iOS reports over 140 billion app downloads with over 650,000 (2.2M from recent statistics for iPad and iPhone combined) available app to downloads according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

You can find the information on other mobile app stores via this Wikipedia page but keep reading for the important part of how to increase mobile app downloads.

So you get the idea. There is already a stiff app market competition from these app stores. Many apps are added each day to the app store. For example, Apple Store gets over 1000 apps added every day according to an ibtimes report. These data depicts that there is so much to benefit from having a mobile app for your business especially when the era of smartphone technology is blooming.

1.  Improve Your App Store Optimization (ASO)

If you’re a blogger or know some site search engine optimization (SEO) approaches to ranking a webpage higher on SERPs. How about App Store Optimization (ASO)? The two has some similar strategies but ASO has a greater impact on your app listing that SEO on SERPs. ASO is specifically optimized to boost the visibility of your app in the App Store (marketplace).

Effective use of ASO strategies (increase mobile app downloads) to rank higher in an app store’s search visibility attracts more potential customers to downloads your app. There is an article primary written for ASO from this site. It’s a very important topic and it’s important to understand its techniques in order to rank your app visibility (in app store search) high with your app focus keywords. The main goal here is to increase mobile app downloads you’re promoting.

There are hundreds of mobile apps similar to yours already available in the app store and effectively understanding the concepts of ASO to increase your app’s search ranking is the first step of promoting your app downloads. People are constantly using app store searchers to find an app replacement with better feature and functionality than what they already have. The use of keywords and Meta descriptions is part of the ASO goal for optimal app visibility and downloads.

Here are some of the ASO main factors you must pay attention to increase mobile app downloads:

• Title: optimize your app title with relevant keywords in it. Your name app should be eye catchy (impressive) with a global meaning of the app functionality. This works with ASO search engine just like web page search engines like Google. It uses your title through its sophisticated algorithms to fetch the results entered by the user. Titles should be descriptive, short with keyword optimization in mind. You may also want to localize your app title to various countries with different languages.
• Keywords: users search engines terms are what contribute to keywords. Make sure your app title, descriptions and other necessary parts consists of your primary relevant keywords in order to rank higher (better visibility). Keywords help monitor your app competitors in order to compare how you’re performing with your keywords against your competitors.
• App Description: this is part of the fields required by Metadata. Make sure you put the important info at the “above fold” part of the app description. People will read this to learn if the app describes what they need (description of what the app does for them). Fit relevant app keywords inside the description but don’t go overboard. You can also talk about your app features concisely and in detail. Here is an example of an “above the fold” description of an app.

• Ratings & reviews: this is another important aspect to consider in ASO. Though it’s difficult to control there are great ways to incentivize happy users to rate and review your app. Mobile app stores rank higher apps with higher positive ratings hence increased app downloads.
• Images & screenshots: people love to see the real usage of your app with actual images or screenshots. Make sure you add the relevant screenshot of your app important parts in action. They’ll appreciate and take a step to test it for themselves.

As you progress optimizing your mobile app with ASO strategies, keep in mind that ASO takes time. It needs to be monitored and constantly tweaked over time. Some developers have little or no keywords research at all during their app submission which can lead to difficulty being visible in app searches. CEO of MobileDevHQ (Tune), Ian Sefferman interviewed by Kissmetrics had something special on how not investing quality time in ASO can affect many app dev customers:

“ASO is having dramatic effects on our client apps. For those who put the time in to understand, iterate, and test, we’ve seen many apps increase their downloads by a factor of 2x-10x, and an increase of revenue by a similar, or bigger, rate due to the increase in engagement of users earned by ASO. ASO is not a simple process, and you might not see the impact overnight, but if you’re willing to invest in it, the outcome can be incredibly worthwhile.”

 As a developer, you can use some great tools like AppTweak for free ASO insights, data, and tools you need to increase mobile app downloads, Google Keyword Planner, or Apple Search Ads for keyword inspirations and some free resources. With AppTweak tool, you’ll get actionable ASO report, search ad intelligence, meta-analysis, app ranking, competition analysis among other important tools to get your app more downloads.

App Annie, Sensor Tower, Keyword Tool and Tune among other tools are also another place to get specific keyword data you’re looking for.

2. Building Your Online Presence

Your online presence help create concrete awareness of your app (brand). This technique works well for driving a lot of traffic to your app store app downloads address.  This strategy is the best way to increase mobile app downloads. You market your app through various online channels like social media, landing pages, and blogs. We’ll focus on how you can increase mobile app downloads more effectively by building a strong, optimized online presence

a) Create a unique app website or a landing page

The goal here is to create an online presence where you offer all the app features, documentation, pricing, guide or help related services to your mobile app. You don’t need to be a master of web development to create a stunning site or a landing page.

There is great free CMS software like WordPress where it offers excellent themes based on your niche category. WordPress is the world popular and leading CMS platform where most publishers and e-commerce site use to accomplish their online businesses. Just select a theme of your choice (free or paid) like appai or softa and begin adding highly optimized content and link building to your site for SEO and user experience.

Begin your search with ThemeForest’s WordPress technology and software themes search and buy the best that perfectly fits your app needs. If you don’t get one, or need a professional web developer to get things done for you, consider that the expert of your choice understand very well about ASO and all the SEO strategies that need to be done to make sure your website ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for your mobile app focus keywords.

Website SEO best practices entail performing on-page and off-page SEO techniques (white hat approaches) while paying attention to user experience. You don’t need to get off your brand test and looks. Be consistent with your app colors and icon design. The primary goal of your site architecture and optimization is to increase mobile app downloads by creating a strong awareness and marketing strategy that get your site visible in search engines and app store searches.

On-page SEO involves the following tips:

• Use your mobile app focus keyword in headings and title tags including HTML tags (H1-H6);
• Use short, detailed and informative paragraphs for better user readability- these increases dwell time which is a factor Google uses to rank pages.
• Optimize meta description with your mobile app keywords
• Use your focus keyword in your page URL
• Include images and other infographics on your page. Make sure you add the keywords in the “ALT” tags for search engines to understand your images well.
• Add videos as well to boost user interaction with your content. People love videos just like infographics more than content. Videos also improve your online customer retention.
• And other factors you’ll find from online sources.

Definitely, your mobile app website doesn’t need to contain much of the content. Since you want to optimize your app, focus on the best strategies that lead your app downloads. Add a blog section to write on important articles to help boost your app popularity while giving the very best solutions your app offers. This technique varies from one app to another. Some apps don’t need content at all especially game app but a landing page works fines. A website or a landing page help you spread useful content and provide a platform where visitors can learn more about your app. Just make sure its design is creative and personal. Make it user-friendly and above all mobile friendly. Doing this will boost your search engine visibility and engage your app users to get solutions to their problems.

b) Social media promotion for app downloads

Social media communities are becoming the best media for online content marketing, promotion and brand recognition.  A lot of your mobile app target prospects are already on social media. Not all platform works really well for your app promotion.  Choose your platform wisely and effectively engage your prospects with valuable information about your app.

LinkedIn works fine if your app is tailored for business relations.  Instagram and Pinterest work pretty well for fashion related apps. Facebook suite all the niche industry just like twitter. With your platform selected, engage your community with relevant content that’s tailored to increase mobile app downloads. Remember the strategy here is to choose the best platform to leverage the power of social media and stand out from your competitors.

Social communities need to engage in an effective approach. The rule of 80/20 proves to work well for app promotions where 80% of your user engagement should be delivering entertaining and informative content and 20% should be for CTAs.

Use infographics and videos clips to get your message out. People love visual content than text-based articles. They’re more likely to take action (CTA) for your app downloads.

c) Press releases

Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group once said that “A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.” And this strategy is dearly effective for increasing mobile app downloads. How do you expect to get your mobile app downloads if it’s not visible to them? It’s just like a story, journalist help to push the publication through the press release for the audience to get the information/news.

Before the launch of your app, it’s important to cater some PR team to roll out press release some months earlier prior to your app launch (can be launch as a beta version). This form of the campaign can help generate a lot of signups before your app official launch date.

Reach out to the influential bloggers and journalists in your app niche (category) to review your app. find the right journalist especially from different publications as your target audience may not be a fan for a certain publication media but can get the information about your app from another publisher. This applies to reviewers. Get those who understand your app niche for example if your mobile app is an iOS game, reach out to iOS game reviewers. By using this strategy, you’re sure you’ve created a working strategy to increase mobile app downloads than before.

3. Make Your Mobile App Free at Launch

Another effective strategy to increase mobile app downloads is to make your mobile app free at launch is you intend to sell the app to your target audience. This strategy can be called “free trial” for a given period of time before you enroll a subscription or one-time purchase of the app. This phenomenon increases your mobile app downloads which if the app satisfies their needs, they’ll be happy to be your forever customers.

What if your app has already been available from the app store for a time and looking for a way to increase mobile app downloads? The same pint works. Make it free for a time and reach out to the press release to create a publication or do some in-app promotion to drive traffic to downloads your app. Making your mobile app free at launch comes with two benefits;

• It drastically increases your chances of getting more downloads.
• It encourages people to use your app more and help generate positive reviews which boost your app ranking and visibility.

4. Ask Your Users to Rate & Review your Mobile App

In order to increase mobile app downloads, your app needs to have substantially great positive reviews. Ratings and reviews benefit both the user and the app store algorithms when it comes to ranking and motivation for user downloads.

Users will be tempted to downloads and install your app if it has good reviews from many reviewers. In most cases, users tend to rely on other users rating of the product before making a final purchase. The more the app has many reviews and better ratings, the more the users are likely to try the app. Bad reviews scare away your app downloads and more likely you can’t convert much from your app.

As a developer, always focus on how to effectively deliver the best user experience with your app in order to attract 5-star reviews and increase mobile app downloads. Mobile app store relies heavily on users experience of your app through their ratings and reviews to decide (favour) if to rank your app higher in app store search engines against your competitors or bury it from search visibility at the bottom.

Most successful apps developers have an effective friendly technique to encourage users to positively rate and review your app. They trigger this by the use of push notifications at the right time (after some app sessions) in order to avoid user annoyance and increase user engagement and inspiration to rate your app.

Source: Yoni Heisler

And the negative reviews? It’s obvious. The problem lies with your app. Without best user experience, your app can’t generate the best conversion you expected. Take time to read and pay attention to user reviews and fix what they tell you. Heed to their complaints and make your app the best in your niche and stay close to user’s needs. Your app success relies on your users. They can either build it or destroy it.

Consider adding your app address – like email and phone number for easy reach on your app store. They’ll be more than happy to contact you for solutions to their problems.

5. CPI (Cost-Per-Install) Campaign

This is the most commonly used technique to increase mobile app downloads. Its where mobile App marketers run digital ads (advertisement) across the media with a target to drive traffic to their app installs. These apps owners pay a fixed rate for every successful app install.

The approach is cost-effective for all parties involved since the app makers only have to pay when their app is installed. The more target users download your app, the more you’ll pay for it as long as your CPI campaign is still active.

As opposed to free online app campaign, CPI comes with a lot of benefits since you’re sure your app is installed rather than driving traffic to your app with no guarantee users install it when using free social media or blog campaign. With clean app installs, CPI helps increase your mobile app ranking as more clean installs occur. The more installs your app gets, the more it rises a step further on the store charts.

The budget for CPI depends on the number of downloads. For example, using the below formula, if you want to know the daily budget you can spend for your CPI, you’ll multiply the number of daily downloads by cost per install.

Downloads * Cost Per Install = Total Daily Budget

That’s it. No hard math there.

However, the cost per install varies greatly depending on your app target location, platform, and app category. The average cost per install for Android-based apps is around $0.53 and around $1.24 for iOS.

There are many app install platform you can choose to run your campaign. Twitter and Facebook are becoming more popular because it has large visibility due to its number of users using the platform. These two platforms also carry very low CPI rate as compared to other networks. For example, Facebook CPI runs approx. 40% less than that of Twitter and offers other great details to run your ad more effectively with clear analysis. You’ll get details user information like demographic data including things like ethnic affinity, income/net worth, generation, preferred political party and life events just to name a few.

There are very many other platforms target various app categories and you can choose the best that suits your needs. Here is a list of the top app install networks you can begin to learn more information about each one of them. Use sites like appdexterity, NativeX and more from the above list.

To conclude, CPI is a great technique to increase mobile app downloads. You can target your preferred niche audience who uses the same app category like yours (with interest) and encourage them to install yours.

6. Create Clean, Enticing App Icon & a Professional Real-Life Screenshots and Descriptions

Images speak louder than words. When you’re launching your app or applying some updates, select the screenshots (images) that fully represent what your does. It’s not only images, add descriptive images to let users understand in detail hat your app does from your images. The images should cover the major aspects of your app and of high- quality. Doing so increase mobile app downloads.

Also, the design of the app icon has a direct correlation on how users download your app just like screenshots. Design an app icon that’s appealing and attractive to the eye like you would with your app website or a landing page. Here are some example of great app icons.

The mobile app description is another strategy that increases mobile app downloads. When creating a description, keep your users in your mind. Understand them and add a description of how your app will satisfy/fulfill their needs. Come up with precise objectives or the benefit of the app and add it to your description. When doing so, there is one thing to keep in mind- the keywords.

Keywords are used by app store search engine to understand what your app is all about. Users easily download an app that contains their search terms in it. We explain this from the first point on how to increase mobile app downloads with ASO. Integrate your main app focus keywords in the app description so that search engines can find your app easily. Based on your app category, determine which keywords garner the most search results and incorporate them into your description, title or any other app text fields that are relevant to include a keyword.

As for the name of your app name, give it a name that’s unique and appropriate. Obviously, we can’t all come up with perfect names but make an effort to make it the best, short, sweet easy to spell memorable and that reflect what your app does. Don’t make users scroll past your app when looking for something to fit their needs.

7. Regular Updates

Make your app active at all times. This involves revisiting your app backend to improve its user experience and performance while updating some possible few errors and adding major features that improve the overall user experience (usability).

Updates may occur during the major critical bugs but make it once a month to update on other minor updates like performance, usability and other minimal user experience. As an app developer, constantly add new features, create improvements and fix some bugs to provide a better user experience for your users. Take an example of Google products. They constantly update their apps whenever there is an issue or bugs that need to be adhered to.

Google pays attention to what their users are critiquing about their apps. They pay attention and make adjustments to the app architecture and performance in accordance with users’ suggestions. This technique of constant regular updates gives users the best experience they need resulting in app better reviews and ratings. The overall ranking of the app is improved and its popularity is improved.

8. Add excellent app videos alongside your images.

Videos are the best mobile app download strategy. You expect increase in your mobile app downloads with a simple video strategy. Making a great video for your mobile app is a must. Users love to watch app videos more than images and descriptions before making a final downloads decision.

This strategy comes with some advantages like showcasing visually all that your app does in front of the user.  It also boosts your app rankings to some extent since the video depicts how worthy your app is to the user.

If you don’t have the tools to create an awesome video, I’d advise you to hire a professional agency or a video editing and a voice talent from a freelancer. If you aren’t sure on how to begin with them, there a dedicated app video editors like experts from Apptamin.  Furthermore, to make your video even greater, add subtitles for a local language you’re targeting. You can also have it translated into other common languages.

As you edit the video, add excellent app features and explain it in detail. Never leave any important feature uncaptured. By adding a video to your app store, you increase mobile app downloads by a higher percentage while boosting its app store ranking and visibility via better ratings and reviews.

9. Offer Limited Discounts

Like you would offer your app free at launch, you can also increase mobile app downloads if you offer your app for free or half the price for a period of time. This strategy works even more effective if coupled with CPI campaign.

With limited offers, you can take a step further to marketize it through your online presence (as discussed in detailed beforementioned). Promote your discounted price via your app social network, press release and your personal blog and landing page.

10. Create an In-App Referral

Obviously, there is a lot of power in a word of mouth. People progressed because of communication. When you incorporate an in-app referral into your mobile app, you increase a chance of your app being downloaded.

There are many benefits that come with in-app recommendations but it all comes to how worthy your app can be to your users (is it worth sharing?). If your answer is yes, go ahead and target the right users with the right strategy. Look for those users who love to use your app more often and make them convince their friends to try your mobile app.

Here is a complete step process on how you can begin a powerful mobile app referral program to increase mobile app downloads.

• Look for the right users according to the analytics inside your mobile app.
• Do you have some high-value users? The ones who spend their resources on your app? Look for them and have something nice for an in-app referral.
• How about those active users on social networks who use your app? Target them also.

Having come up with a group of users who interact with your app in some ways, it’s time to strategically come up with a way to promote your app referral.

      a)Create a shiny invite button to increase mobile app downloads

This strategy is common in most of the mobile apps. The button should be visible through the classic method (a call to action approach). With a call to action share button, users will be compelled to click and share the downloads link with their friends. Be it on social networks or phone contacts.

Image source: Rererralsaasquatch

     b)Interstitial Messages

And it should not be too annoying or disturbing. Interstitial Messages prompt make users aware of your in-app referral and increase mobile app downloads if done in a user-friendly approach.

    c)Use creative Push Notifications

This acts as an announcement to your mobile app users. The app triggers push notifications to their mobile device notifications tap.  Strategically applying this to your app lovers will make them share the app with their friends thus increasing mobile app downloads.

    d)Add Social Sharing To Increase app downloads

The social sharing button you choose should be the very top commonly used platforms. Your app social sharing button convinces your app users to share your app with all the friends they have in their social circles.

With all these In-App Referral techniques, you’re sure you’ll increase mobile app downloads more than before while creating strong backlinks and visibility which is a signal to app store search engine ranking factor. Lea I forget, don’t make a big mistake of not following up on your referral leads and tracking analytics to see how your in-app referral program works.

11.  Use an “app of the day” service

This is another opportunity to get featured on an “app of the day” site promotion. You can use site app of the day offers users with one paid app for free per day. This feature is a great way to boost exposure to your app and get more downloads and reviews. It helps app developers improve app discovery.

App of the day is part of the app store strategy to make it easy for users to find the app to try and increase mobile app downloads for app developers. It also helps to foster notable newcomers who may not have the marketing resources to promote their mobile apps through paid advertising and other cash-intensive user acquisition strategies discussed above.

The good thing about this strategy helps both the developer and app store to generate more revenue. From statistical data analyzed by apptopia, promoting your app of the day on weekday’s increases more downloads than weekends especially for game apps. Another benefit of this technique is that it boosts your app ranking and visibility.

Need to have a new start to increase your mobile app downloads? The path to successful downloads over time lies within the beforementioned strategies. Leverage them with other techniques you found actionable for your app in order to increase mobile app downloads. That brings us to the end of our super complete guide to increase mobile app downloads. Feel free to share this article on your social circles. We also encourage comments.