The Smart ASO Trick for Higher Rankings
It’s no secret that titles – and now also subtitles - are the most important factors for keywords in iOS11. Here’s a smart and simple trick that you can use to leverage the fact that these keywords are given more weight than those included in the standard keywords field.
Quite surprisingly, there’s a trick which isn’t discussed often but is probably one the most important strategies to drive traffic. I’m not talking about common things like ensuring Spanish (Mexico) localization is used for the US App Store. What I want to explain - in a very detailed manner – is how to move beyond long-tail keywords and go one step further.
Forget the keywords field
Using a fitness app as an example, let’s assume you have already done your keyword research and have a list of key phrases. One of the best long-tail keywords you have identified, and want to rank for is ‘weight loss’.
The keyword has good traffic, is relevant and has lower competition than others. As well as this, you have identified more long-tail keywords that also include the words like ‘weight’ and ‘loss’.
So, what will you do? When optimizing your app with new keywords, try to forget that you have a keywords field. The keywords field is the only place these days where you can experiment and assess new keyword brands.
The best place to grow your rankings is in the title and subtitle fields! Your goal should be to stick with one good long-tail keyword and then use all the combinations around this keyword. By doing so, you can create a large number of combinations alongside your title and subtitle.
For a better understanding of how this works, let’s move back to iOS 10. In this iteration you only had one title. Here are two examples we’ve created for our fictitious fitness app:
title #1: Weight Loss Fitness & Workout Tracker For Women
title #2: Weight Loss Fitness & Ab, Butt & Leg Exercises
Although it might not be obvious at first glance, there’s a significant difference in the number of combinations you can create from these titles.
Title #1 includes 16 long-tail keyword combinations with traffic that is also relevant.
Title #2 includes only 7 keyword combinations. You can see the comparison below:
Having almost three times the number of phrases is a big deal, which significantly increases the visibility of your app. If you don’t mix the keywords together in the title, you are wasting space and missing opportunities.
How to leverage subtitles in iOS11
Now let’s move on the title and subtitle in iOS11. Again, you can mix the keywords between each other. We can see how this works in this example:
You can see the logic between keywords combinations. It should help you understand how to visualize keywords. The goal should be to create as many combinations as possible between these two fields. There are actually more combinations than those I have illustrated. If you have time, why not try to find them all? Also, don’t forget that there are combinations in the title and subtitle too!
Start combining, now!
The trick for high rankings is not in finding the best keywords but in your ability to pick those which generate the highest number of combinations of relevant, high-volume and low-competition long-tail phrases.
Start by combining words in the title and then move to combine the title and subtitle. After this, combine the subtitle (if you still have space), then the title, subtitle and combine with keyword field.
When you have ‘weight’ in the title and ‘loss’ in the keywords field, it still counts and it has more power than only using words in the keywords field. If you have any space left in those 100 characters, then create combinations there. The graphic below shows the “holy triangle” of iOS11 keyword optimization.
I hope that you have found this article interesting and that it helps you to improve the way you use keywords.
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