I’m going to share the advanced ASO Strategies that you should be utilizing in 2024. If you’re new, you’re in the right place if you’re trying to learn strategies that will help you grow your app downloads and revenues. I want to share with you all the different strategies that we are utilizing for the tiniest of apps and the biggest of apps.
- Niche Keywords
The App Store is not the same in 2011. It is very crowded, so if you’re not one of the big players with the big brand, you’re going to have to find niche keywords that these bigger brands may not even be paying attention to.
I’ve worked with a lot of big brands, and I realized that they think about the app business a little differently than what indies might be thinking about. The big brands tend to have a funnel in place. They raise some money, so they need to do some marketing, which means they need to run some Facebook ads and a bunch of other ads. They’re not even paying attention to ASO; they couldn’t care less about ASO. They’re just thinking about spending money to get some downloads, get that data, and then lower the cost per install—all that jazz. Also, some of these bigger brands are going to go after the most competitive, high-traffic, high-competition keywords. So let the big guys fight amongst themselves, and we’ll focus on these niche keywords.
- Examples: Our Motivational App
Mobile Action says the search traffic is 3,724 for these two particular keywords, whereas App Radar says it’s number five. I know that Mobile Action, especially with the AI craze, has way better traffic scores than any other tools. App Radar is still very good from a difficulty perspective, but Mobile Action is more accurate from a search traffic perspective. I discovered these two new keywords, and we are number one for these keywords.
This app was doing nothing for the longest time, so if you have an app out there and you’re struggling to make it work. Really pay attention to keyword research and try to find the best keywords out there. Sometimes, these new keywords will pop up just like they did for my app. We went from getting no sales whatsoever for this particular app to hitting over a thousand dollars in September and October.
We’re averaging about $1,000 to $1,500 just with organic downloads for a $20-a-year product. We didn’t add new features, just changed the keywords, the app title, … and that led to the boom.
As you can see, we’re getting about 2,000 downloads roughly, all organically. I’m not spending any money on paid marketing. This is the type of business I like to run.
3. New Sleep Sounds Apps
For me, what I’m doing is finding these niche keywords and then building the app, rather than thinking about the app idea first and then finding the keywords. I knew these keywords had traffic, so I launched a new sleep sounds app in November.
In that very first month, we launched around November 5th, we were able to get roughly $1,000—$933. In December, we’re doing pretty decently, around that same mark. My primary objective is to cultivate significant growth for this application. I am confident in its potential to achieve a revenue target of $10,000 by the second quarter of next year.
We have implemented a strategic approach that involves identifying and targeting a unique set of keywords that have been overlooked by competitors. This approach ensures we are not entering a saturated market. While the initial focus might generate smaller returns, it lays the foundation for successfully attracting larger clientele in the future.
One of our clients is making about $80,000 a month. Since we’ve been working together—we started roughly in the middle of September—their keyword traffic has just gone up. As you can see, we have 11 new keywords in the top one, 120 in the top 10, 262 in the top 30, and 76 in the top 50. I don’t really know what this means, but in the top 100, we lost some.
I want to give you some data. Here’s roughly the same amount of downloads they’re getting from App Store search only. These are App Store search downloads; they’re getting way more through other searches. But you can see, since we’ve been working with them from September, we’ve been able to grow their organic App Store search downloads.
I’ve used this strategy, and if you don’t believe me, someone in the YouTube comments said, “I literally tried this step-by-step strategy. Especially if you’re an indie developer out there, all right.
4. App Events
I’ve been talking about them for about two years, but here’s some new data to share with you. I’ve been using in-app events for ASO purposes, so I tend to have keywords right here that I’m trying to focus on when putting these in-app events together. It’s more for ASO purposes, and they do help. We saw one client go from two to one just by having that in-app event with the right titling.
- Make sure the keywords you’re going after are in the title of that in-app event and the short description, or both descriptions.
Now, pay attention to the dates. On November 5th, here’s what we saw for this client. On those dates, you can see November 5th, and then I pulled from December 4th. You can see the conversion rate for this app went up by 35%, despite the fact that we were getting fewer impressions, fewer downloads, and fewer product page views.
For multiple apps, big and small, when we’ve had an in-app event, we’ve actually seen this conversion rate go up. This is a great way to bring users back into your app and show them new content.
That’s why I’m loving in-app events. For many of our apps and our client apps, we’re putting together an in-app event calendar for the remainder of 2024. Google Play has a similar feature; currently, it’s only available for apps with over 1 million downloads. Here’s what we’ve seen with Google Play promotional content, which is what they’re called.
Here’s where they’re displayed: you can see them in the games home, where you can get featured, the store listing page, the events tab, and in the search results.
This is obviously super important. We did this for one of our clients and were able to get some leverage from an ASO perspective. They were already ranking pretty well for this primary keyword. We had an in-app event, and it started showing up in the search results, maximizing their impression share. It’s low-hanging fruit—all you really need are some graphics and some text. It’s a no-brainer: a low-touch, high-impact type of campaign.
5. US Localizations
I know this is a bit dated, but I wanted to ensure we had this in 2024.
The US App Store indexes 10 different localizations.
We’ve been utilizing the Spanish (Mexico) localization for a long time, but what I want to point out here is what we’re doing from our side. We’re going back to number one: finding these niche keywords. These niche keywords are in the title and subtitle in these nine different localizations. We’ll have 9, 10, 11, 15 different niche keywords and put them all in the right places.
You can see the English title and subtitle, and then the Spanish (Mexico) title and subtitle in all these nine localizations. Other localizations, even though they are Arabic, Russian, Spanish (Mexico), and Vietnamese, should include English keywords to help your US App Store rankings. Now, obviously, if you’re big in Brazil or Mexico, you might want to keep Spanish in there. However, you can start to utilize Vietnamese, French, or Korean as well.
What we’re doing right now is really utilizing the big three for us: US English, Spanish (Mexico), and Vietnamese. Those are the ones that we’re focusing on. On this note about localizations, I also want to say: don’t just focus on English-speaking countries. We’ve worked with a few different apps, especially indie ones outside of the US. Pay attention to your home country. We’ve worked with a couple of different indie developers who have done $3,000 to $4,000 in sales outside of the US. For example, in Germany and Russia, they’ll do a lot of sales, revenue, and downloads from those countries before they start focusing on the US.
Don’t just think that at launch it has to be the US and it has to be in English only. You know your market and your language. The space is probably less competitive in your home country, so focus on that first and then start thinking about other countries. Even if you just get downloads from those countries and maybe not sales because conversions might be low, it’s still beneficial.
6. Keyword Installs or Boosts
The effectiveness of keyword install campaigns in improving app store ranking has been observed by industry professionals, including those working for prominent companies. While this practice may still be employed, it is important to note that there may be associated risks. This information is presented for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement of such campaigns.
I’m very fascinated and focused on Google web search. I’ll give you two examples.
As an illustrative example, a client application titled “Niche Keyword App” achieved a top ranking in organic search results for “Niche Keyword App” on both Google desktop and the App Store. This demonstrates the potential impact of effectively targeting niche keywords. Search volume for this specific term is estimated at 5,400 monthly searches, signifying a relevant user base. While the ideal search volume may vary by case, a threshold of 1,000 monthly searches can be considered a positive indicator. It is important to acknowledge that higher search volume can further enhance discoverability.
On mobile search, where most searches happen on our phones, they are also number one. I’ve blocked out all the apps because I don’t want to reveal this niche keyword. When I look at their App Store Connect data, you can see they are getting roughly about 100 downloads a day just from Google. This is app referrals, and this is Google. Combining Google and Google Chrome, they get roughly over 100 downloads a day just from those two channels. As long as there’s traffic and people searching for “Niche Keyword App” or just “Niche Keyword,” you might get better results on Google.
The potential impact of organic search ranking is further emphasized by a case study involving an acquaintance’s app. This app achieved significant download numbers (over 200 daily downloads) by ranking first for a specific keyword on Google. While the underlying algorithm for achieving such a ranking can be complex, this example highlights the power of organic search optimization.
7. SEM/PPC Marketing
It’s important to distinguish this approach from paid advertising strategies like SEM/PPC Marketing, which offer a greater degree of control but require financial investment.
We’re bidding on some keywords, so when people search for “podcast app,” he’s bidding on this term. Unlike a Google UAC campaign, they’re then taken to a website, which directs them to the App Store. It’s not a Google UAC campaign; it’s actually a Google search campaign where you can bid. It’s like an Apple Search Ads campaign, but on Google. We’ve seen decent success with this for some of our clients.
Further research is ongoing to explore potential methods for streamlining the user acquisition process beyond the traditional landing page approach. While conclusive data is not yet available, initial observations suggest that the cost-per-click on Google Ads may be lower than the cost-per-tap on Apple Search Ads. This finding presents a potentially cost-effective alternative channel for app downloads. A comprehensive analysis will be conducted to fully understand the efficacy of this particular campaign. Once a clear understanding is established, the development of an educational resource (potentially a course) may be considered for dissemination of this knowledge.