ASO, the New Kid on the Block in the Localization industry! PART 2

Last week post I covered 4 areas to pay attention when preparing our ASO localization strategy. Today we are going to focus in the second part of this post in another very important area. Probably the most important in your ASO strategy!!!

THE POWER OF KEYWORDS

Keywords in ASO is much more than translating your words. It requires a deeper thought. Let’s start with a keywords definition first.

Keywords are those words that we come to our mind when want to find a new app for our mobile device. And that moment we go to the Store and we type those words … yesterday, for example .... I wanted to try a new game; I was in golf mood! I grab my iPhone and I type golf … but I got too many hits in my search: 2138 to be precise :) … then I type PGA and the number of coincidences was reduced to 429. That looks better! (Although still I little bit far from how choices affect our brain. Have a look at this brilliant TED talk from Barry Schwartz  if you want to know more about The Paradox of Choice)

The words that we use to choose as Keywords for our app need to be relevant, they need to explain what our app does. We have to take a user mindset approach and think about what we will search if we want to find a new app. It's as if we put our mind in Google mode and we type there some words, those will be our keywords.

We can (and we should!) go deeper by using services such as Apptweak. AppTweak provides us with data, insights, and tools we need to increase the number of our app users. And they offer a very strong tool for Keywords! They rank our app vs competitors, they provide raking of keywords and they also offer localization in 10 languages.

AppTweak in action ....

Other possibilities are tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Trends. These services will help us to create our list of keywords.

In terms of rules for our keywords is important to mention that there are some basic rules we need to take into consideration. For me the most important ones are:

-       Apple limit is 100 characters and each keyword must have at least 2 characters

-       We cannot put phrases, it has to be words (but we can use comma to separate them, but do not use spaces)

-       Consider include also typos as keywords, i.e adress

-       Make your keywords combinable

-       Use both singular and plural keywords

-       Use numbers (2) instead of typing them out (two).    

-       Keywords in the app name have the biggest impact on app store search rankings. We can see an increase over 10% by including our keyword in the title!!!!!!

Credit to Mobiledevhq

One we chose our keywords the next step is to localize our keywords! yay!! of course, we need to localize every time we have an opportunity!!! Localizing our keywords will impact our visibility in the Stores in non-English speaking countries. Just an extra thought here about this part … we need to be very clear that our app is not fully translated, translating marketing material will be important but we do not want to create false hopes that the app might be fully translated.

Conclusion

Keywords and ASO, in general, is more complex than it might look. For this reason, it's important to be surrounded by specialists who might help us on our journey to be the next star in the Stores!!

 If you need some recommendation with partners to collaborate my top 5 are as follow :)

1. App Annie

App Annie is One of the biggest names in ASO. It is very good at keyword tracking and competitor analysis.

2. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is one of the best place to begin keyword research.

It’s designed for advertising, but you can use it to research organic keywords by customizing your results for one of your competitors.

3.ASMbee

Analyze Apple Search Ads keywords and competitors effortlessly with ASMBee, a splendid tool for iOS developers and ASO teams to analyze search ads data, find niche, improve and grow.

4. KWFinder

KWFinder is a long tail keyword research tool with a great interface. It shows you trend, search volume, CPC, and level of difficulty in results.

“Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling.”

— WordTracker Academy

5. Keyword Tool

Anyone using Google’s Keyword Planner for keyword research should also use Keyword Tool. Since Keyword Planner is designed for advertisers, 

That's all for this week, good luck! and happy keywords hunting!!

Have a fantastic day!

@yolocalizo