5 Beginner App Store Optimization Mistakes to Avoid in ASO

[00:00:00]coming up i'm gonna share five simple aso tips that you should know before you hire an expert or try to do it on your own stay tuned what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of appmasters.com the place you go when you want action-packed content related to helping you grow your app downloads and your app revenues today i want to focus on the five beginner aso mistakes that i routinely see these are the same tips i give day in and day out on my client calls or when i'm talking to people just entering the app store optimization space so if you want to know the person that you hired on upwork or maybe you got asl done on fiverr if you want to make sure they did it right make sure they aren't making these five simple mistakes shall we get to it number one they do not utilize the spanish mexico localization for those who aren't familiar with this trick the u.s app store actually indexes the spanish mexico localization so you can double the amount of keywords that you're targeting now let's go to the screenshot i'll show you exactly what i mean so here's one of my apps and here you definitely want good keywords in your app title and your subtitle that's an old app of mine and so we packed into subtitle did not exist but that's why you don't see it but you definitely want good keywords here in the title and in the subtitle as well and here's where you go i'm in the app store connect and here is where you go into spanish mexico so you definitely want different app titles here so if i said fun game here i might put exciting game these aren't good keywords but i'm trying to give you an example of where you want it and you want a completely different title subtitle here in the spanish-mexico localization so you want to put english keywords here and thereby you can really target the amount of keywords that you're going after so let's pretend this was a meditation app right and so maybe in the u.s i have meditation and in spanish mexico i might put mindfulness here right so that's how you start thinking about doubling up those keywords because what we found is if you put the keywords in the subtitle they have more weight and so keywords that are in the us keyword field but in the spanish mexico subtitle as well they tend to rank better from my experience so when i'm going after this keyword optimization these the secondary localization especially the title and subtitle are where i want really important keywords in in the us and in the spanish mexico all right now let me show you where the keywords fields go so i'm going to click here and you need to go to version number so here's where the english keywords are so you definitely want new ones okay so you definitely don't want to repeat and the one thing i'll show point out too is i don't have keyword comma space keyword comma space okay you will have only 100 characters so you want to maximize it because the space counts as a character and also you don't need to repeat things that are in the title if it's paintball rush i don't need to put paintball rush here okay so here is the spanish mexico i'm gonna go all the way down here and then you definitely want different keywords so if my keywords were fortify color switch and all these things i might want to put crossy road here other keywords here that are all in english so you've done the research you want to put it in here all in english this is for those who don't care so much about the mexico market but they want to really maximize their efforts in the us all right if you want to figure out what other localization so let's say you're in the uk you can click this little question mark right here and you can click this link for some reason it's not working for me right now it might be a browser issue but it'll tell you all the different localizations that your particular country will also index so for the uk it's australia as well and for a lot of different countries like asian countries you might have a lot more localizations that you can play with so for canada for instance there's french canadian and so if let's say you want to go after the usb or the english-speaking canadian market you want want to put english keywords in that french canadian localization as well number two the mistake that i see is targeting really high traffic high competition keywords now if you're an app that's just starting out you really want to focus on the keywords that have good traffic but lower competition you can use any aso tool out there to find what the competition is but you want to find those keywords because part of the algorithm takes into account the amount of downloads that you've been getting and so if you're not getting any downloads in the very beginning you want to really focus on the keywords that don't have that much competition so let me show you a screen share here this is the meta tape app i'm going to pick on them a little bit because they haven't been updated in a while but you can see your first step to meditation now they're just starting out so i know with meditation maybe other types of meditation you want to focus on right so like chakra or the types of meditation those tend to have lower traffic than just going after meditation because it's going to be really hard to compete with the calms the headspace the simple habits the ten percent happier of the world and so you don't really wanna look at their aso and be like let's do the same things they doing because they're already spending a ton of money on advertising and you're never going to catch up to their download velocity okay so you definitely want to focus on more the lower competition keywords now the other thing i want to mention is we as an agency we give you the data so we give you the spreadsheet that has the data for all these keywords whereas most aso firms won't give you that they'll just say here's the new app name here's a new subtitle here are the new keywords so you really want to try to say where is the data like how are you pulling this optimization so ask for it i don't know any better because i'm like i want to teach my clients so we just present you with the data and we kind of tell you hey this is a data-driven process and this is why we are determining where these keywords should be so ask for it if they're going to give it to you i do know that fun fact that people on fiverr are using my template so i take that as a compliment all right let's get into number three the third mistake is using your title and your subtitle for branding let's get back into the screen share this meditate app i'll use again but the title is very important that's where the most keyword priority goes into so you definitely want your best keyword right here the meditate app pretty good meditation has more traffic than meditate so the meditation app might be better but okay that's not bad branding they don't have any branding here they're really going after those keywords so not a huge thing here but your first step to meditation that's a brandy thing right that should be here welcome to the meditate app i don't need this it could be your first step to meditation here in the screenshots so you definitely want to put your branding your taglines anything that you feel like i need this we'll put it in your screenshots because most people are going to read it you want good keywords here so this could be this should rather be meditation mindfulness you know calm those are good keywords to put in those subtitles highly competitive so you shouldn't use those keywords i'm just trying to give you an example that these actually are good keywords then your first step nobody's gonna search for your first step okay number four is optimizing your screenshots so a lot of times i see this where app creators will just put literal screens of their app as their screenshots and that is a complete no no you want to use your app store screenshots as banner ads think of them as banner ads what's going to entice people to want to click into your app and want to eventually download your app and so really optimizing those screenshots as banners okay and i'm going to give you examples so let's go screen share here this is one of our clients and we did you know we optimized their screenshots here granted their first screenshots just showed screens of the app so we're like hey this is the way we're gonna go and here's what happened we saw a 91 percent in increase in downloads and one of the things i like to do is that first screenshot should always talk about what you do what makes you different the second and third should kind of regurgitate why your clients are using your app or have some social proof and so this second screenshot when i say social proof that could be the number of clients you have the publications that you've been featured on for our client here they've got some big name customers and so we're using their logos in that second screenshot and we saw tremendous growth look we doubled their downloads without even touching the keywords just by redoing their screenshots so again a template you want to use is first screenshot what are you what do you do let's be simple and let's be clear the meditation app we are your first step to meditation the second one should be feel relaxed and calm because we know that's what most people want from a meditation app number three we've been featured by so many things we've got 300 meditation videos whatever your social proof numbers are put that in there as well you're going to see tremendous growth by just doing that so don't make that mistake and just have those screens of your app make sure you have them banners make sure you're highlighting the benefits of your app and not just representing those features all right the last mistake that i see maybe not the last but the fifth one that i'm gonna cover in this video is asking for the reviews too late all right reviews make a huge impact on your keyword rankings and they also help a customer decide whether they want to download your app the more positive reviews you have the more likely the customer is going to download your particular app so super important and ios and google as well make it super simple for you to ask for the review let's go to the screen share real quick so here's the ios one and you can see it's an embedded one so ios allows you to pretty much say hey are you enjoying this app the before used to be you have to leave the app and go to the app store now you can easily embed it so you can ask for the review right within your app and they don't have to go anywhere and the clever way to do it is it is saying hey are you enjoying this app would you rate us five stars if they say yes pop em up this review if they say no give them a little contact form but even if you can't develop that just ask for the review usually second or third open or if they're on the first open maybe a win point are the best practices so if they've done something phenomenal within your app or they did something that was cool ask for the review and or maybe they opened it for the second third time ask for the review and here's why this is a study done by appsflyer on is this 2019 study on the average retention rates now it varies by apps but this is just an overall average retention rate for apps in q3 of 2019. so day one meaning the next day after i download your app i open it that's day zero the next day only 28 of people are coming back into your app you're losing over 70 percent of the people they're not coming back day one day seven it falls to 10 on android and 11 on ios day 34 and 4.5 and week 8 6.5 8.5 so again you don't want to wait too long i talk to clients and they say steve you know i usually ask them about the fifth time or they've done something really phenomenal they wait way too long you don't have the time i'm showing you these stats you don't have the time people are not going to come back and so one of my apps i asked on the first one first open that was a bad thing to do but least the second open day one they're gonna come back right and so you're gonna get some people 28 of the people coming back ask them then or ask them as they're going through the onboarding process maybe your calendar app and they hit syncing with your calendar or they add in an event you want to ask them then so you really want to take advantage of the small window of opportunity you have to ask for those reviews they're gonna make a huge difference for you all right guys that's it five simple aso beginner mistakes that i routinely see and frankly i'm sick of telling everybody on my call so hopefully you guys watch this before you get on a call with me and you'll go through this and you'll see some major growth for your particular app that's it hope you enjoy the video let me know what one mistake that you feel like oh duh i gotta fix right after the video leave it in the comments below make sure you hit that subscribe button because i look cooler to my wife and kids when i have more subscribers and go check out appmasters.com if you're interested in learning more about our services or our courses anything related to appmasters go check it out appmasters.com and we can schedule a call so until next time i'll see you on the next video