Insights on App Store Optimization (ASO)

Thank you. Hello everyone, happy new year, welcome to a brand new live stream, a brand new year, but still we're going to be talking about App Store Optimization today. I haven't done this in what feels like forever, even though it's been less than a month since my last live stream, but it just feels like I haven't done it in so long. So I'm so happy to be back on camera for you to talk about App Store Optimization. We have a really easy one today. I'm going to answer your questions. I'm sure you have questions about App Store Optimization. I have... I think the answers? I guess we'll see. I ask every time I send an email or I tweet about this to come with your hardest question. So let's see if anyone can give me a question I can't answer today. But before we get started, as per tradition, please tell me what's in your cup and where you're from. I have what I have here. Earl Grey tea in my AppFigures mug. And I'm in New York where it's super duper cold. It is 24 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too cold in my opinion. In the studio, it's kind of nice and warm. I have too many lights to keep me warm. So tell me what's in your cup, where you're from in the chat. As we wait for people to shuffle in, I see the numbers are going up. And we're going to get started answering your questions very, very soon. So what's in your cup and where you're from? Let's see where people are from. Tea from Israel. That's nice. Tea is always the winner in my opinion. I mean, I'm not biased in any way. But still, coffee in Brazil. I feel like that's the right move, coffee in Brazil. What time is it in Brazil? Hmm, I don't know. I'll find out later. Turkish tea. What is Turkish tea? Oh, Turkish tea is really, really heavy, right? Really, really dense. I gotta give that a try. I haven't had Turkish tea in a million years. Almost forgot that it exists. Green tea in Canada. Hello, Canada. We're international again. I love that so much. London in a taxi. You're watching me in a taxi. That's... kind of cool. Okay, okay. Coffee in India. Oh, it's 1230 in Brazil. Not too bad. Hopefully 1230 middle of the day, not middle of the night. Although we've had that before on the live stream. Black tea. I see tea is winning. Hopefully I'm not biasing you all, but tea is good. I do like tea. So I think we're ready to get started. And before we get started again, for the second time... I have something really cool that I've been dying to do for a long time, and we're going to do it today. for the new year, we're going to do a giveaway. A lot of people ask me where to get this shirt. See, we made this shirt. This is a custom shirt we designed of all Apple devices before the iPad. And it's got literally every single device. The feet are one, or a whole bunch of mice. You can't really see it. But a lot of people have asked me where to get it. And up until now, the only way to get it was to refer people to my newsletter, which you should definitely do. It's at the bottom of every newsletter. But I'm going to give you an opportunity to get this shirt today. All you have to do, it's really, really simple, if you're watching this at least, be subscribed to the channel, give the video a like, and let me know in the comments, not in the chat, in the comments, what's your favorite app. I will pick one of the comments at random, and we will do, and we will send you a shirt like this wherever you are in the world, completely on us. Totally free, open to anyone, whether you're a member or not, as long as you're here with us. But. it's going to close at the end of this live stream. So if you're thinking, should I do it? Should I not do it? You should definitely do it unless you don't want to share it before the end of the live stream. And on that happy note, let's get started. I'm going to look at questions in the chat. I'm going to bring them up on the screen and I'm going to be answering them. So let's see what kind of questions I have in the chat. I have too many monitors as usual, but we're going to bring up questions over here. And let's see. We had actually a few questions before the live stream started. And I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't know you could have questions in the chat. And I'm pretty sure they disappeared on YouTube. So I saw them and I think I can bring them up on screen. But I don't think you can see them, which is really strange. But the first one was really good and I wanted to bring it up. So let's start with a question from Paul. Paul is asking for a new app. How would you strategize about improving the search visibility? And I think that's such a good question because in most cases, you may not even be thinking about it when you release a new app, but that's the one thing you should be thinking about. You should be thinking about a little bit before too, but that's for a different live stream. So how would I go about making recommendations or a strategy, building a strategy for an app that's about to launch? It's kind of... easy. So there are two main components to App Store optimization that I talk about all the time. One is having the right keywords, obviously. And two is, you can see I'm streaming from a Mac. And two, you need to have the right number of ratings. And that's really the part that trips up a lot of people. When I talk to people and they say, oh, but I have all the right keywords for my app and I still can compete. The usual answer is, but do you have enough ratings to compete with the apps that are also using the same keywords? And the answer is usually no. So here's what I would do. I would use Keyword Inspector to start looking for relevant keywords for whatever my app does, look through my competitors or look through similar apps if there are no direct competitors, and then look for apps for keywords where the top results don't have a lot of ratings. Now, you don't have to look at number one or number two, even number three or four or five. And we see this a lot more at this point. The App Store will rank more apps across more keywords, but because not all apps use all the right keywords, that's why there are still many opportunities, you'll end up in situations where there is a keyword where maybe the top app has many, many ratings, and number two and three and four barely have any ratings. And that's really what you want to look for. Ideally, you would also be able to find keywords where the top apps don't have the keyword in their name. So between that and finding apps, keywords, not apps, finding keywords where the top apps don't have many ratings, that's where I would start. And that's going to give you the most bang for your buck. And if you don't do that and just go with keywords that are either very relevant or amazing and very popular, you're probably not going to get that sort of visibility right out of the gate, unless you have some other way to get new ratings. And that usually means paid ads. So... you can do that and that could work. And then the strategy, half of it is at least useful. But if you're not going to do that or you're not going to do that at scale, then what you should be doing are those two things. And that's where I would get started. And hopefully you're all doing that. Let me know in the chat if you've done that before you launch your app or as you launch your app, or if you completely ignored it. I'm just curious to know which stage you started doing this. All right. So let's go back to. Let's go back to the chat and let's see what's going on. And we have quite a few. I have to bring this up on the screen. Yes, the usual. Where is my mouse? If you knew how many screens I have in front of me. You would also probably lose your mouse. In the future, I'll have touchscreens and then I don't need a mouse. Maybe that's the strategy. We'll see. Musa is asking if we will do App Store page reviews. So yes, but not in this live stream. This is all about questions and answers. I want to make sure that as you go through your journey of App Store optimization, especially this early in the year, you know what you're doing as much as you can. We'll do live app teardowns later. in hopefully later in the month or early next month. So be on the lookout. I know a lot of people have asked me when I'm going to do those. So that's coming very soon. Eventually, I'm just going to have to do a live stream every week. Okay, so Unai is asking, my app has AI image generator in the title without repetition and receives about 130 ratings per month. Could you analyze the results for that keyword explaining why we're ranking lower than position 80? So let's take a quick look. I'm actually curious. The thing about image generators, well, the thing about pretty much anything AI related at this point is, this is my computer, AI image generator, is that anything with AI is incredibly competitive, incredibly competitive. And so you really have to focus on something. So if you look at these results, I mean, it's pretty clear. The popularity is really high. Competitiveness is fairly high. I would imagine anything with AI in its name probably has a really high competitiveness score. And you can see there's a lot of money in this. And this is actually new. I don't know if I've shown this in a live stream before, but we now show you the downloads and the revenue of the top 10 results just to give you an idea of what you're up against. You can also see their DPR. This DPR is actually horrible. So that's already good. There's an opportunity in there. But you can tell that all of these apps are getting a bunch of new ratings. And here's the interesting bit. So 704 new ratings. And this is new ratings in the U.S. specifically because this is the market that we're looking at. So if you set 130 ratings per month, is that in the U.S. specifically or in the market you're optimizing for? Or is that globally? If it's globally. Less good. Or not really applicable. It has to be in the country that you're optimizing for. So 52. So what we're looking at here is AIR generator. And they have image in the subtitle. I bet you they also do their keyword list pretty okay. And that's why they're here. AI image generator. Right in here. Boom. Fewer ratings. But again, the name is right in there. AI image generator. Because it's in the beginning of the name. they can get away with fewer ratings and still rank really, really well for this crazy high term. And then you have photo generator. Photo generator is not really an image generator, so it's not getting as much love, but it's still on here. I imagine image is going to be somewhere in the keyword list. And the keyword list has become more relevant for App Store optimization in the last year, year and a half. So now it's something that you should definitely pay attention to if you haven't before. Hopefully you have before. And so what we're seeing here is we're seeing a lot of image generation. Now, we have this weird case at number five, chat box. And chat box, from what I understand, I don't use it, but it's one of those, it can do anything. And that's the main challenge with AI apps at this point. Most AI apps can do anything because ChatGPT, which a lot of these are based on, can do anything. So how do you actually say that? And what I'm seeing here is that they're using image generator in the subtitle. And the reason they're number five is because look at this crazy amount of ratings. So even though they have a crazy amount of ratings, they're not really competing for number one. They can't unless it was in the name. But even though it's in the subtitle and towards the end, it still works for them. So really, that's what I'm seeing here. When we do live app teardowns, you should submit your app and I will do it live on screen. If it gets picked, I think that would actually be really interesting to see what's happening. So that's... AI and Keyword Inspector. Hopefully you like these new changes in Keyword Inspector. I really think they're cool. And we're releasing a bunch more stuff for Keyword Inspector, which, as you know, is my favorite tool. And I use it all the time. So let's see what else we have here. Dean is asking, let me bring this up on screen. Dean is asking, is it a good strategy to use USA to identify what intent? is driving downloads by your app with a max cost per acquisition and then work on ASO. Yes and no and maybe. I think there are people who will tell you, and Apple is one of those. Well, Apple are one of those. Apple's in the camp that will tell you that you have to do a discovery campaign using Apple search ads just to see what kind of keywords are driving people to your app and then use those and focus on them in another Apple search ads campaign. And I think that could be a way to do it if you want to waste the money. The problem with discovery campaigns is Apple will tell you that you should do them on Smart Match and that's just, in my opinion, a colossal waste of money. What I would do instead is I would see what's working for competitors. If you have competitors, if you don't have competitors or direct competitors, look at similar apps. There are several tools that will tell you what's working in the Apple search and Apple search ads side of things, but also on the organic side of things. So if we go back to my computer, I'll show you what I mean. If we take, let's say, these three apps. Actually, let me show you a shortcut. So from here, I can easily jump to comparing organic keywords. And what this is doing is this is going to show us which keywords these apps are actually showing up in for organic results. So we're not basing this off of what people are paying money for, which is not what you want to do. You want to base it off of what's working in the App Store directly. So as it's loading, what we'll be able to do on this. is get a bunch of different ideas, and they probably have thousands and thousands of keywords, if I had to guess, because it's AI and because that's so popular. And, yep, that's exactly what I thought. Roughly 6,000 keywords between these five apps, and you can quickly see what's working and what's not working, and you can look by popularity, and you can look by competitiveness, and you can see which keywords are not being addressed by them as much. So for example, we're going to sort this and we're going to see where Wonder is being ranked. And while that's loading, I'll tell you that what I do with this is I will usually find a popularity range and a rank that is really fitting for the app. So if the app is extremely competitive, it's getting a lot of new ratings all the time, then I would go for something high in popularity, probably around high-ish. If not, I'll look at the low or medium depending. The medium is pretty wide because different keywords really have different ranges. And so I'll narrow it down a little bit. And then I will look for keywords that I should be using based on what I see here from the competitors. In my opinion, that's the best way to go about building a strategy for organic keywords. And we have the same tool for Apple search ads. that you can see which keywords the apps are advertising in. And based on that, you can make the same exact decision, but with your money. So I don't think you should spend your money on discovery campaigns or on any sort of, I don't really know what I'm doing. Let's just see what the algorithm says on the paid side, because that costs you money. And instead, I would go with what are my competitors doing, usually in the market, especially in the US, especially in AI. You're not going to find a lot of companies are just throwing money on things that don't work for too long of a period. So either it works or you're not going to see it. That's kind of how I approach all of these things. Okay, let's see next. Bring that up. Babu is asking, how long should you wait after making ASO changes before assessing if it was a success or not? and deciding to pivot to targeting other keywords? That's an easy and a difficult question all at the same time. So for a big keyword, meaning a keyword that you probably use that connects to other words and creates multi-word keywords, I would give it about, on the App Store, less than a month, between three weeks and a month, something along those lines. You might see results really, really fast. So I've seen results overnight. I've seen results within a day, within two days, three days that are pretty good. But the real thing is the algorithm tries things. And because it tries things, you may see a huge boost almost instantly, but then it will slowly degrade over time, over another three or four or five days. And so I would give it at least two weeks for things to pick up. And not all cases happen overnight, go up and down. Some cases gradually go up. Give it about two, three weeks after three weeks. If something is not really showing any results and no changes, then you're probably looking for something else. For smaller keywords that are probably modifiers on a bigger keyword. So, for example, if fitness is a major keyword for you, I would wait three, four weeks for that. If fitness at home. So the at home part, if that's a new keyword that you added, you'll probably see results a little bit faster. So within two weeks, maybe you can make that determination and either move on or not. But the one important thing is, if you see something that really hurts your ranks, also give it another day or so before you say, undo, undo. I've seen people who had a small dip and then a huge increase. I've seen people at a small dip and then it went back to normal. And I've seen people at a small dip and immediately freaked out. changed everything, and that really confused the algorithm. And that's the last thing you want to do. Of all things that we can do with abstract optimization, confusing the algorithm is probably the last on my list. So let's continue. David is asking a question that I've heard more than once. What should I do if a competitor overpays for keywords in Apple search ads? The easy answer is nothing. So realistically, if you can't compete with someone on a keyword, or I should, let me rephrase. Realistically, you won't be able to compete with everyone on keywords, especially with spend. In some categories, you might be. In some other categories, if you're going up against companies like Teamwork or TikTok or any of those that have infinite budgets, you're just not going to be able to do it. So instead, what I would do and what I recommend to everyone who's doing Apple search ads and what I wrote in my guide is. Take the time and find many, many, many smaller keywords that maybe a competitor that has that sort of budget is not looking at, not thinking about. They might be thinking, I have money, I have my investor money or my revenue or something else, and I'm just gonna burn it on the big keywords, the ones that everyone thinks about all the time, like fitness, raw, just fitness. But there are so many other, what we call long tail keywords. Long tail because they will probably get you fewer results, fewer clicks. But if you have... Many of them you'll actually you could have the same end result of many many clicks But for much much much less because not many competitors are actually targeting them I wrote about it in my guide for how to do Apple search ads better We link to that at in the description later, so you can give that a read I think it's one of the most important things that you can do whether you're an indie developer a small company a medium company a large large large company And you will see that large companies have adopted this strategy because it gives them more bang for the buck, even though they have the money to spend. So you want to do that as quickly as you can. And that's the way to do it. OK, another question from I about Apple search ads. I did not expect we'll talk about Apple search ads so early. And I'm so glad I love talking about this. When I was asking, should the increase in ratings resulting from a significant investment in Apple search ads campaign? be reflected immediately within a few days in organic positioning, or how long does it usually take to show results? So this is interesting because the algorithm doesn't like spikes. So if you invested a million dollars into Apple search ads and got a billion results, a billion new ratings, let's just say, the algorithm may not look at it and go, ho, ho, ho, everyone likes this app. Yes, let's make it number one. Instead, it's going to be like, hmm, let me see what's happening here. So what I have seen usually with bigger spikes, it takes a little bit longer actually. And that's something that we should be expecting. Otherwise, it would be a lot more gameable. Normally, you would have a rating increase a little bit over time. So somewhat of a gradual increase. And usually we see those within a few days, maybe a week or so. If you think about it, the algorithm takes about 30 days of ratings into consideration. And so if you only have one day of spike and everything else is empty, it's not going to give it. the kind of value, the kind of input that it needs to know if your app is really popular enough to be shown in the top results, but it might. If you grow gradually and if you have a new steady state, that's gonna make it a lot easier. And for it to know what a steady state is, it's gonna take a few days, probably a week, something along those lines. And I like the way you're thinking. This is the way to go. If you are paying for Apple search ads, make sure that those downloads are converting to new ratings. And that should decrease your DPR and a lower DPR is better. And that's what you should really be aiming for. Okay, let's continue. Oh, wow. I skipped all the questions. Oh, no, we have a lot of questions. Let's see. So next question is, in order to benefit the geolocals for US, how should we choose keywords for the metadata of other languages that are also indexed in the US? Simply copy paste US metadata or another approach? So let me zoom out a tiny bit so everyone knows this. And this is probably one of my most favorite, favoritest tips that I can give any developer. And that is. Apple will index, meaning Apple will read your keywords, your name, your subtitle, your keyword list, in 10 languages and use all of those keywords for ranking you in the US. Even if it's not gonna show those in the search results, it's still gonna use them under the hood. So what you could do, if you're not localizing for any of those 10 languages, and 10 is a lot, so the odds are you're not localizing for all of them, use English keywords in those localizations in addition to the English localization, and then you can grow your keyword list. You get 100 characters for your keyword list, 30 characters for your name, 30 for the subtitle. Now you can multiply that by one or two or three or four, however many, up to 10, that you want to use. So the question here is, how do you choose the keywords? And the answer is simple. The same way you pick them for the US. You should never copy and paste the keywords from the US into other localizations. because that would not give the algorithm any additional value. It's just having that repeated is gonna do absolutely nothing. What will help you is if you use other keywords. So let's say, going back to the fitness example, if your app, actually, no, a better example, if you have an AI app, like Chatbox, or like a generic, a more generic assistant, then you should take the time to find all the different things your assistant can do, and maybe in the US have something a little bit more generic. and in other localizations, go for something more specific, like AI image generator as part of the name. Now, all the languages that are supported and also my strategy for doing that are in a guide that I will again link to in the description below later, and we'll probably do a video on that later on. And I'm also working on a worksheet that will help you do that more quickly. But for now, that is the answer. Follow the same way that you have picked keywords for the US. and do that across more localizations. Now you just have more space. That's really the bottom line here. And that's what you want to use this to your advantage with. Okay, tea time before I run out of voice. And then let's see, next question. Ooh, okay, interesting one. I have a good performing brand, bad performing keywords. What should I do with those bad ones? Can I improve the bad ones? That's, you know, it's an interesting question because the definition of bad is pretty loose. I'm assuming bad means that they are just not ranking. Maybe relevant, but not ranking. Maybe loosely relevant, but not ranking. I think, again, what we said in the beginning, or at least what I said in the beginning, is just having the right keywords. isn't enough. You also need to show the algorithm that people care about your app. If not, it's not going to rank it. There are just too many apps out there and it doesn't know what to do. So what you have to do is you have to make sure that you are selecting keywords where you can, with your current performance, compete with. And that's the thing that's most, most important. In many cases, a bad keyword is really a keyword that you can't win with. So maybe take that and expand on it. So if it's a short keyword like fitness, maybe you need fitness at home or fitness equipment or whatever comes with fitness. Or if it's something like AI image generation, maybe you can be a little bit more specific. AI, our generator for background, AI background generator. Think about it creatively. And because we learned the trick that we just talked about with the localizations, now you have a lot more opportunities to use more keywords. So that's really what I would do. Now a small, a small break. My team has told me that the comments are not open yet. So you can't really get a shirt. So I didn't think that would happen. And that's because the first giveaway. Tell me, put in the chat giveaway colon your favorite app. I will analyze that later. And that's how you're going to get a shirt. And if you did not see what I said before, we're giving away this beautiful shirt. Not this one, obviously. You're going to get a new one. All you have to do is subscribe to the channel, like the video, and put your favorite app, put giveaway colon favorite app name in the chat, and that's how you could win one. Unless you don't want this shirt. And that's okay, but it's so nice. I guess if not enough people like the shirt, then the one person who will will definitely get it. That's not really a giveaway. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's go back into my comments. into the chat and let's see what's going on uh leonardo with a good question so leonardo is asking any tips for google search visibility What would your approach be for already released apps with low downloads ratings count? So let's talk about Google for a little bit. I think that comes up every time I do this and I never get into it deeply enough, mostly because I'm still working in a guide for how to do, how to increase visibility on Google, which I will release hopefully later this month. But Google is a lot more, there are many more opportunities, I will say. On Google, ratings are good, but they're not the only thing that's driving where you're ranking in search results. Keywords are. So Google, because it's Google and it's a search engine and they have been doing this for a long enough time, they know how to use keywords from your description. That's something a lot of people ignore. Your description on Google Play is really important for app store optimization, and we have a tool dedicated to helping you find out how to do it. and also analyze competitors. I'll link to it as well. I'm writing a guide on that as well. So that's something that I would first pay attention to. With the description, the long description that is on Google Play, you have to repeat keywords. It's very different than anything else. Not in the name, not in the short description, which is the equivalent of the subtitle. And none of this applies to Apple. Google specifically, you have to repeat keywords in the long description. There's a right number and a wrong number to a number of repetitions. And so the tool will tell you exactly what is the right number, what is the wrong number. All you have to do is load in your app description and it will tell you. So that's the number one. Number two, everything with a name in the subtitle follows very similarly to Apple. You have to have your main keywords in your name. You have to have them as early as possible. And you want to use them more in the name than in the subtitle. Those are, again, the same. But there are two things that... I don't personally understand why they exist, but they're very important to Google. The first one is keywords in reviews. And it's kind of silly in my opinion, but Google reads all the reviews for your apps and the keywords that are repeated there the most, your app will likely rank for them. Why? I don't know. It's so easy to game. I've seen this being gamed in the wrong direction for spam purposes. It's pretty awful, but... that's a thing that's still happening in 2025. And I think it's really important that you know that this is a thing. I'm not entirely sure how responses get into this. From everything I've seen, they're not indexed. And so you can't influence this yourself. And you shouldn't buy reviews with specific keywords in order to increase your ranking. You could, and it will probably work, and that your app will get banned completely. And I've heard horror stories where entire accounts got banned, and people somehow got banned. So I would not recommend doing that. But what I would recommend is getting those reviews and asking for reviews, just like on the Apple side that we want those for ratings. On Google Play side, we want that text. That text can help us. It may be kind of challenging to do, but it's something you want to do. The other thing on Google Play is, well, two more things. I thought of a bonus thing. The inbound links to the App Store page, to the Google Play page from the web, the text within the A tag. is going to be used as a keyword. I'm not entirely sure how strong that signal is. I'm still testing that, and it's fairly challenging to test. But I know for a fact that what you have in those links will translate into rankings. And so if your fitness app or AI image generator is linked as AI image generator on a website, and someone clicks that and gets to Google Play, then they will know that that is the signal for them that... your app should be ranked for AI image generators. It's, again, one of those things that's a lot more difficult to tackle. But if you're doing any sort of search engine optimization, this should be a part of your strategy. The last thing is, and I hope everyone knows this at this point, if your app crashes, Google's gonna hate it. It's gonna hate it with passion. If your app crashes, or if people uninstall it very quickly after they download it. And that's an interesting one Sometimes you will get to a point where you maybe have advertised your app to the wrong audience on paid ads, either through Facebook or Google or really in Google Play with a campaign. Or you somehow managed to optimize for the wrong keyword because the description has so many opportunities for optimization. And if that happens and people download your app thinking, I'm going to get one thing and get another and delete it instantly, your rank is going to tank. And the thing is, gaining ranks. takes a long time. Losing ranks takes nothing. It's almost instant. So you really want to be careful what you optimize for and what you say about your app. You don't want to get it to the wrong hands. That's weird to say, but you don't want to get in front of the wrong users. because that could get you a lower rank ultimately. So those are the things that I would start with beyond just the name, the subtitle, short description, and the long description. All right, follow-up question to the trick about multiple localizations. So Brunel is asking, regarding the use of multiple localizations for the US App Store, in the main localization, US, I have conversate... conversion calculator. And in the Chinese localization, I have convert units. Continuing, I feel like my app should rank higher. Do you know if extended localizations like the Chinese one in this case are deprioritized or penalized for ranking in the US App Store? To my knowledge, they're not penalized for sure. Also, to my knowledge, they're not deprioritized in any way. So the real question is, why do you think the app needs to rank? higher? Is it based on the number of ratings you have and you're beating all the competitors? Is it because you have the keyword in the name and they don't? Let me know in the chat and I will follow up on this. Oh, interesting. Nam is asking or saying, I'm having a huge success with a hard paywall, but should I try soft maybe with increased pricing? I think you answered your own question. Try. That's really the key. It's so challenging to just answer these questions about what's better, especially when it comes to paywalls, without knowing a ton about the app itself, the competitive landscape for this app specifically, but also for your user base. Different users tend to behave differently. I've done several live streams in the past few months on paywall optimization. And the end result in almost every one of those live streams, the lesson to take home was that your users are probably a little bit different than everyone else's. And you should test everything to make sure that you are catering to your users specifically. And that goes into pricing, a hard or soft paywall, the length of your onboarding, what you show in your onboarding, the give versus take. So I would definitely test it. Now, I personally think that hard paywalls are problematic because they create this weird side to the app where it feels very frictionful. And that friction actually causes... an increase in upgrades, but I don't think that causes an increase in brand recognition. People are not loving your app more. They're loving it less. So depending on what you're trying to build, are you building an empire for the future? Are you just trying to get as much money as you can now? Somewhere between those two is what a test would show you, how you can maximize your revenue. Leonardo is following up with, we are talking about running. Ad campaigns for our kids app. Any recommendations on where to run them? Meta, ASA, Google Ads? The answer is interesting. So who are your users? And I know it might sound like a very silly question, but who are your users? An app for kids probably is targeting parents, but what kind of parents? What are these parents doing? Where are these parents spending their time? And are these parents actively looking for these sort of apps? The actively looking for these sort of apps is something you can look at by looking at downloads of competitors or in the kids section, probably similar apps. If there is consistent demand, that demand increases over time, then you know that the demand is there and they are looking for it. If the demand is spiking, let's say only on weekends, you know that it's probably being driven by some sort of a paid campaign for those competitors. Beyond that, what I would do is I would look if your competitors are actually spending on something like Apple search ads. If they are, that makes it a lot easier to know what you also have to do. And that's where I would start. If you see that demand is growing over time, if you see that your competitors are advertising on search ads, spend money on search ads. And the reason I say this is because it's probably the least effort that you can put into paid ads and still get an amazing result in some cases. Some cases are those that I just said, if people are looking for it. So as long as you know that your competitors are doing something on Apple search ads, give it a try. That's where I would start. The keywords are still not that expensive. Some have gotten really expensive, expensive over the last year, but they're still attainable to some extent. And so that's where I would start with Apple search ads. If you want to grow beyond that to meta, to Instagram, to Facebook, to TikTok, to Google ads. then that's something that you should spend more time on because now you have to make creatives and you have to really get to know your users because they're not looking for you. So you have to stop them and whatever they're doing and say, you need me. Whereas if they're on the apps already looking, you want them to just find you. I would start there and that's I would go then to meta and everything else. TikTok ads are a whole other thing. I think we'll do a bunch of live streams on TikTok ads in the future. So put those on hold for now. OK, Ricardo is asking a question that I also get very often. What would you recommend for selecting the best keywords for different locations, different countries? What is the best workflow? So what I do, and we recently improved our site because of it, is I do the same exact thing that I do for the U.S., but for the country that I'm optimizing for. And the reason I do this, and not just copy and paste U.S. keywords with a translation, is because in different societies, people think a little bit differently, people talk about things a little bit differently, and that translates into how they talk about, how they search on the App Store and on Google Play. And so what I would do is I would find the top competitors in the country. Let's say I'm optimizing for China. I'm optimizing for Japan. I will look in that country or Germany, and then I will analyze their keywords. Now, their keywords are going to be a mix of English and the local language. And the reason for that is, and that's something that surprises almost everyone I talk to about this, the amount of English keywords that are really popular in countries that don't have English as their main language. The reason for that is most apps are not localized. Most apps are in English. That's just the reality of the App Store and Google Play. There are many apps that are localized, but most apps are not. And what that forces the algorithm to do, regardless of the country and the localization, it forces it to index keywords in English. It has to, otherwise it would have no results. And so you may get better results with a localization if more people are looking for the keyword. in the local language, and you can see that by its popularity score. But if that's not the case, you can optimize in English. Tip number one. But the other thing I would do then, I would look at the keywords that are not in English and see and then use the auto-translation that we have built into all of our reports, and that's available to all members, not on a specific plan. If you have keywords, you have automatic translations, and use those to understand which ones are relevant enough, and then take the local keyword. and use it as appropriate as you can, as you can fit it. If it's a language you speak, that's obviously very easy. If it isn't, do your best to fit it in. I would recommend if you're localizing, don't use Google Translate because that usually doesn't come with good translations. A lot of people I know are using ChatGPT for translations or one of the other LLMs, and people are saying that it's really amazing. I haven't used it all that much. When we do localization, we use actual translators. It's a huge pain, and I hope that using an LLM is going to make it easier. But take the time and do that. And that's how I would go about it. So fit your localization or fit your keyword list to the localization that you're optimizing for, just as you do in the US. OK, next. And I'm not seeing a lot of likes. I guess you don't really want that shirt or you're not having fun. If you like what you're watching. Please give the video a like so YouTube knows and YouTube promotes it. And then I feel like more people are seeing me. And that's a win-win for all of us. Also, if you want the shirt. Okay. Ooh, a question from X. So we're streaming or restreaming. We're streaming on X on YouTube and on LinkedIn. And everything is funneling into YouTube. So if you're on any of those, you can also interact with me. So Alvar is asking, what is the best and only tip you would give to someone launching an app for the first time? Wow. Okay. Not a hard question, but a very hard question all at the same time. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. What would I tell someone who's starting and if I only had one tip to give them? Well, we're going to have to go generic. I would say build an app for an existing user base. So build an app that people want. Don't build an app because you had an idea. Don't build an app because you think someone will want it. Build an app that you know enough users are looking for. And you can do that by looking for whatever it is that your idea is and see, one, if there are competitors. Two, what is the popularity, meaning how many times people are looking for this keyword. And then you will build. an app that has some business viability. Otherwise, you're just building an app that's going to fail and it's going to be miserable. We don't want that. Also, I'm seeing a bunch of little hearts in the chat and I love those. Those are really cool. But the likes have to go under the video. The hearts in the chat, I don't think really do anything. And I don't think I can even count them. Later on. So heart's nice, but the thumbs up below the video, that's what I'm looking for. Okay. Haha. Okay. Atomic app is asking a question that comes up too often, very often. Do apps that have a higher revenue have better ranking? And the answer is maybe. It's very unrelated, meaning the amount of money your app makes has no relationship to your keyword ranks. It just doesn't. I have not seen a single case. I've been asked that a million times. Not a single case. Instead, what Apple does is it uses ratings because ratings show popularity. It doesn't even do downloads because downloads are very easy to game. Ratings, still easy to game, but not as easy. So that's what Apple looks at, not the revenue. I have not seen a single case of apps making more money, getting better ranking, with something else not being better too. More ratings, the proper keywords in the proper places. So that's that. Andre is asking a question that I also, I get all these questions all the time. I'm so glad I'm getting to answer them. What's a horrible DPR? There's no such thing as a horrible DPR really because a DPR, which is your downloads per rating, how many downloads does it take you to get an additional new rating? In an ideal world, it would be one. One download, one new rating. Another download, another new rating. That's rarely the case. I've seen apps with thousands of downloads or hundreds of thousands of downloads getting very low single digit ranks, DPRs. And so that's where I would say that's good. But really, the sky is the limit. It really depends on you versus the competition, on the type of user you have, on the way that you show the ratings pop up, whether it's on Google or on the Apple side of things. Now they both force you to do that. But I would say anything in the. Probably more than high double digits. Ideally, you want anything less than 30. I think less than 30 means that you're doing a good job. Anything more is not ideal. Anything above 100 is going to get ugly. And I've seen apps that are really, really big that could not care any less about ratings. And their DPRs are in the many, many high hundreds. And that's just why? Why? Why? So that's what I would say. Um, okay. A very simple question that I don't think I ever really answered here. What factors influence app ranking for a specific keyword? And that's the basic, basic, basic part of apps for optimization. It's your keyword strategy. What is the keyword that you have in your name, in your subtitle, in your keyword list? Does it align with the keyword the user searched for? And also how many new ratings your app is getting? So Apple and Google both use keywords to understand which apps. should be shown as search results. And then they use some sort of a performance metric in order to say which one is going to show up first, which one is going to show up second. So what you should be thinking about is what are the most relevant keywords for my app? Use those in your app's name, keyword list, and subtitle or short description and long description, and then optimize your new ratings. And that's the mix of apps for optimization. I do have a guide. I think one of my first guides was, write about this, we will link to that as well. And hopefully someone else is taking notes because I managed to forget all the guys that I said I will link to. But don't worry, Frank is listening. Let's see what else. Okay, a good question. How do we create the right keywords before publishing an application for the first time? After all, the application is not published, so we can't put the application into the ASO tool. The thing is, because it's unpublished, even if it was published for just a little bit of time. You wouldn't have any sort of momentum unless you did a good job before. So what you really want to do is you want to look at competitors. And competitors are where I would start. What I would do is what I was showing before on my screen, load up the keyword that you're looking for. Let's see if I still have that on my screen. I have something on my screen. So I'll go to Keyword Inspector and let's look for AI tattoo. Is that how you spell tattoo? Yes. Generator. I'm looking for something very specific. There we go. Kind of what I said before. Pretty much everything with AI in its name has a high popularity. So let's say you are launching an app for tattoo artists that will give them, that will make tattoos using AI. Your app doesn't have to be launched yet, but you can look at all of these. And I'm going to just... I'll be lazy and take the top first. The top five. Top first. top five, and I'm going to analyze them. And boom, in a few seconds, I will have thousands of keywords that I can choose from. And I'm gonna use those keywords to see what I want to rank for or what I want to optimize for. And wow, this is actually really interesting. So a lot of keywords, not many keywords. Also, that's not true. I guess that's 1,700 keywords, but DaVinci is an AI image generator, not specifically for tattoos. Let's see what this AI tattoo generator, tattoo AI, tattooy? What tattooy is ranking for? Oh, wow, tattooy is doing pretty good. I know it's not tattooy, it's tattoo AI, but it's still, it's nicer to say. So now you have a bunch of ideas, tattoo design ideas, not really popular. But if you look for, let's say, anything where the popularity is a little bit higher. Let's go to 10. Because your app is brand new, you don't want to compete over hundreds or 90s or 80s. It's just impossible and impractical. And we'll just look for 10 to 30 just to get an idea of what's going on. And now you have yourself a lot of interesting keywords. Tattoo design, tattoo maker. Their popularity, not super high. Tattoo designer. I love this. I think this is such a great opportunity. And I bet you if we look for this in Keyword Inspector. It's going to look like an opportunity. Yeah, there we go. So you see tattoo design. Okay, this is a great opportunity. If you are making an app for tattoo artists, this is your keyword. Use this keyword. Take this keyword right now and make an app for it. None of the keywords here, none of the apps here use the keyword we're looking for in the name with the exception of number two. And look at these ratings, 9, 3, 261, 18, 32. You can get that on launch if you do a launch and if you use. A little bit if you hustle a little bit and make sure that everyone knows about it on Reddit and on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on really all the channels without having to pay for ads, you can rank for this. Now, it's a 14, so it's not really that big. It's not going to get you millions of downloads. But that's going to create a snowball effect, and that snowball effect will eventually get you to a point where your app is visible and is showing up to people. And that's what you really want. And you can build on a 14, but you can't really start with a 50. So that's what I would do. This is actually really cool. I don't know how we got to this. Oh, so to answer your question, you don't have to have an app in the App Store or in Google Play in order to start doing App Store or keyword search, keyword research. You can do that off of competitors. I think that's the easiest way to go about it. That's the best way to go about it. And it's the most actionable way to go about it. And I'm seeing we're running low on time, so let me try to go a little bit faster, if that's possible. Um, let's see. Oh, and I see a bunch more likes. Someone is going to get a shirt. So Leonora is asking, is there a way to find specific keywords install conversion besides running paid ads? No, not really. Again, it's really dependent on users. We're looking into maybe finding a way to do that in the future or estimating that. But I think that's to get something that's actually useful where you can, I can tell you with certainty, put your money on this keyword, you're going to get this conversion. I don't think we're going to get there anytime soon. It's just, there's too much that is unknown. There is too much that is incredibly, increasingly variable. And so test it. Always, always test. I did a live stream with... Um... What did I do a live stream with? I did a live stream with an Apple search ads optimization expert. And he talked about Thomas, Thomas Pettit. And he talked about how to do this right. He gave a whole bunch of ideas how to do it when you have a big budget, when you have a small budget. I think it was really, really useful. So we'll link to that also in the description later. We're building a whole list here. We'll link to that in the description. And I would recommend giving that a watch. I think it's incredibly important. Continuing. Oh, those are a lot of responses. You're talking amongst yourselves. I love it. David is asking, I thought the title and subtitle are shared, but AppFigure says these matches are likely ignored by search algorithm because term is split between the app's title and subtitle. So yes, they are shared, but this error could come up if there is some sort of duplication. So if you have something in the name and the subtitle, then it will get ignored. Now, it's also possible that there are terms that if you split them, you're going to really lose the impact of having both of them. It doesn't really happen with long tail keywords, but if you're trying to aim for something really competitive, do not break it up between the keyword, between the name and the subtitle. The algorithm is just not going to be able to see it. Ooh, a question from Dean. Do you think downloads retention has any weight in ranking in iOS? So from my knowledge, the retention or really any on-device data. is completely ignored by Apple. And Apple is extremely privacy forward kind of a company. So to see them using something like that for ranking is less imaginable. Also, I've not seen any data to suggest that what happens on the device reflects in ranks. The conversion between how many people see your App Store page and download it does have an impact on your ranks, but that's a whole other longer conversation. But what happens on the device specifically, to my knowledge, does not. And I'm saying I'm only using one localization and getting about a thousand downloads a day. It feels like if you use less keywords, those keywords way more. And that is absolutely right. A million percent true. I call that focus. And if you read any of my app teardowns or keyword teardowns or really any of my guides, you will know that less is more depending on what you're trying to do, of course. But if you are trying to focus on keywords that are either bigger or too big for you, meaning you don't have enough ratings to compete at the top top or something like that. Not using as many keywords is a good idea. Now, that is within a localization. That is not a cross localization. So that's an important difference from what we're saying here. If in your English localization, let's say you only wanted to optimize for fitness and you could get a name for your app that is just fitness, you should do it. Because then the entire 100% of good juju the algorithm has will go directly for this one keyword. Now, if you do that across multiple localizations, you can actually attract multiple keywords. You can rank for multiple big keywords without having to load the name, the subtitle, the keyword list. So if you wanted to use AI image generator in the US and then AI art generator in your Russian name, Russian is another one of the localizations that counts for the US. And then something similar in China, because Chinese is also one of the localizations that work in the US. You could do that, and that should, in theory, get you to a much better standing point. Again, it depends on the number of ratings and overall if your app can compete, but this will give it as much possibility, possibility, flexibility, as much power as is possible with this setup. Now we have, what is it, four more minutes. Let's see what we got. Oh, wow, and I see a lot of apps, a lot of favorite apps. Duolingo is on this list. Nice. I'm going to actually go through and download these apps because now I'm curious. Oh, wow. A lot of giveaways. Someone is definitely getting a shirt. Maybe we'll do two giveaways. I'm feeling like someone should get a shirt. Okay. One last question, and I'll see if there's time for more because we're really running out of time. So another question is, how can we avoid cannibalization of performing organic keywords? while doing Apple search ads. That's super important because if you don't do that, you're just gonna burn money. So what I normally do is anytime, so we have in AppFigures alerts that will tell you what your rank is when your rank changes for a keyword. What I will do is I will make sure that I'm tracking all the keywords that I'm also spending money on and every keyword that is in a rank that I like. Maybe it's first, maybe it's first or second. I will make sure as a not. in my Apple search ads. And then if that dips, I will get an email again and I can bring that back in. It's a little bit more work, but if you do it this way, you'll make sure that you're not wasting any money and ultimately you have the best approach to this. Now, there is a really small nuance that is probably too small. It's like a micro nano optimization. And that nano optimization is because trends change based on the time of the day, depending on your market, depending on the localization, You might want to use Apple search ads for a keyword that is ranking organically or vice versa, just around specific times. So that's something that probably a nano optimization. I don't know if anyone wants to waste time doing that, but you could look at your trends, see when the downloads come in, see when your ranks dip. Because we have hourly rankings for both organic, for organic specifically in this case, and see if your rankings dip. let's say over the weekend, which is a slightly bigger date range, then you can use that augment with Apple search ads for keyword that usually does pretty well. That's how I would do it. Probably not worth anyone's time. And I think that's pretty much all the time we have today. We're just getting started for the year. If you have been paying attention to the channel, you know that I've been doing slightly different kinds and formats of content. I'm experimenting. Some of you have told me that you love the new formats. So that's great. If you have watched any of my videos recently and you like what I'm doing, make sure to tell me in the comments. We're trying to figure out what's the best way. to get more content out there and really make sure everyone knows what's going on. So if you haven't done that, give that a try. There are still two minutes, one minute actually, to apply for the giveaway. So make sure that you subscribe to the channel, you give the video a like, not the chat, the video a like, and then you drop giveaway colon the name of your favorite app in the chat, and I will pick one of those, maybe two. possibly two, as I'm doing this, I'm feeling generous, and I think we have a lot of shirts, two, to give this to, we'll reach out to this person and we'll make sure you get a shirt wherever you are in the world. So that's pretty much it for me. We have another live stream coming up in a couple of weeks with a guest. Keep an eye on your inbox to make sure that you see it. And as usual, if you have any additional questions, drop them in the comments that will open up after the live stream is done, and I will keep an eye on this. And get back to you in the comments. We have quite a busy year coming up. Between products, features, updates. You saw the new features in Inspector. Even more is coming for that. We're going deeper into Apple Search Ads to give you more insights. We're working on a really big project that I shouldn't even be talking about yet. That I think all of you will love and will give you a lot more opportunities to see what's becoming successful. On the apps around Google Play. So a lot more is coming. And a lot more of that. On that. In the future. That's pretty much it for me. Enjoy the rest of your day. And I will see you. In the next one.

So I'm so happy to be back on camera for you to talk about App Store Optimization. We have a really easy one today. I'm going to answer your questions.

I'm sure you have questions about App Store Optimization. I have... I think the answers? I guess we'll see.

I ask every time I send an email or I tweet about this to come with your hardest question. So let's see if anyone can give me a question I can't answer today. But before we get started, as per tradition, please tell me what's in your cup and where you're from. I have what I have here. Earl Grey tea in my AppFigures mug.

And I'm in New York where it's super duper cold. It is 24 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too cold in my opinion. In the studio, it's kind of nice and warm. I have too many lights to keep me warm. So tell me what's in your cup, where you're from in the chat.

As we wait for people to shuffle in, I see the numbers are going up. And we're going to get started answering your questions very, very soon. So what's in your cup and where you're from?

Let's see where people are from. Tea from Israel. That's nice.

Tea is always the winner in my opinion. I mean, I'm not biased in any way. But still, coffee in Brazil.

I feel like that's the right move, coffee in Brazil. What time is it in Brazil? Hmm, I don't know. I'll find out later. Turkish tea.

What is Turkish tea? Oh, Turkish tea is really, really heavy, right? Really, really dense.

I gotta give that a try. I haven't had Turkish tea in a million years. Almost forgot that it exists. Green tea in Canada.

Hello, Canada. We're international again. I love that so much. London in a taxi. You're watching me in a taxi.

That's... kind of cool. Okay, okay. Coffee in India.

Oh, it's 1230 in Brazil. Not too bad. Hopefully 1230 middle of the day, not middle of the night. Although we've had that before on the live stream.

Black tea. I see tea is winning. Hopefully I'm not biasing you all, but tea is good.

I do like tea. So I think we're ready to get started. And before we get started again, for the second time... I have something really cool that I've been dying to do for a long time, and we're going to do it today. for the new year, we're going to do a giveaway.

A lot of people ask me where to get this shirt. See, we made this shirt. This is a custom shirt we designed of all Apple devices before the iPad.

And it's got literally every single device. The feet are one, or a whole bunch of mice. You can't really see it. But a lot of people have asked me where to get it. And up until now, the only way to get it was to refer people to my newsletter, which you should definitely do.

It's at the bottom of every newsletter. But I'm going to give you an opportunity to get this shirt today. All you have to do, it's really, really simple, if you're watching this at least, be subscribed to the channel, give the video a like, and let me know in the comments, not in the chat, in the comments, what's your favorite app. I will pick one of the comments at random, and we will do, and we will send you a shirt like this wherever you are in the world, completely on us.

Totally free, open to anyone, whether you're a member or not, as long as you're here with us. But. it's going to close at the end of this live stream.

So if you're thinking, should I do it? Should I not do it? You should definitely do it unless you don't want to share it before the end of the live stream.

And on that happy note, let's get started. I'm going to look at questions in the chat. I'm going to bring them up on the screen and I'm going to be answering them. So let's see what kind of questions I have in the chat. I have too many monitors as usual, but we're going to bring up questions over here.

And let's see. We had actually a few questions before the live stream started. And I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't know you could have questions in the chat.

And I'm pretty sure they disappeared on YouTube. So I saw them and I think I can bring them up on screen. But I don't think you can see them, which is really strange.

But the first one was really good and I wanted to bring it up. So let's start with a question from Paul. Paul is asking for a new app.

How would you strategize about improving the search visibility? And I think that's such a good question because in most cases, you may not even be thinking about it when you release a new app, but that's the one thing you should be thinking about. You should be thinking about a little bit before too, but that's for a different live stream. So how would I go about making recommendations or a strategy, building a strategy for an app that's about to launch?

It's kind of... easy. So there are two main components to App Store optimization that I talk about all the time. One is having the right keywords, obviously.

And two is, you can see I'm streaming from a Mac. And two, you need to have the right number of ratings. And that's really the part that trips up a lot of people.

When I talk to people and they say, oh, but I have all the right keywords for my app and I still can compete. The usual answer is, but do you have enough ratings to compete with the apps that are also using the same keywords? And the answer is usually no. So here's what I would do. I would use Keyword Inspector to start looking for relevant keywords for whatever my app does, look through my competitors or look through similar apps if there are no direct competitors, and then look for apps for keywords where the top results don't have a lot of ratings.

Now, you don't have to look at number one or number two, even number three or four or five. And we see this a lot more at this point. The App Store will rank more apps across more keywords, but because not all apps use all the right keywords, that's why there are still many opportunities, you'll end up in situations where there is a keyword where maybe the top app has many, many ratings, and number two and three and four barely have any ratings. And that's really what you want to look for.

Ideally, you would also be able to find keywords where the top apps don't have the keyword in their name. So between that and finding apps, keywords, not apps, finding keywords where the top apps don't have many ratings, that's where I would start. And that's going to give you the most bang for your buck.

And if you don't do that and just go with keywords that are either very relevant or amazing and very popular, you're probably not going to get that sort of visibility right out of the gate, unless you have some other way to get new ratings. And that usually means paid ads. So...

you can do that and that could work. And then the strategy, half of it is at least useful. But if you're not going to do that or you're not going to do that at scale, then what you should be doing are those two things.

And that's where I would get started. And hopefully you're all doing that. Let me know in the chat if you've done that before you launch your app or as you launch your app, or if you completely ignored it.

I'm just curious to know which stage you started doing this. All right. So let's go back to. Let's go back to the chat and let's see what's going on.

And we have quite a few. I have to bring this up on the screen. Yes, the usual.

Where is my mouse? If you knew how many screens I have in front of me. You would also probably lose your mouse. In the future, I'll have touchscreens and then I don't need a mouse. Maybe that's the strategy.

We'll see. Musa is asking if we will do App Store page reviews. So yes, but not in this live stream. This is all about questions and answers. I want to make sure that as you go through your journey of App Store optimization, especially this early in the year, you know what you're doing as much as you can.

We'll do live app teardowns later. in hopefully later in the month or early next month. So be on the lookout.

I know a lot of people have asked me when I'm going to do those. So that's coming very soon. Eventually, I'm just going to have to do a live stream every week.

Okay, so Unai is asking, my app has AI image generator in the title without repetition and receives about 130 ratings per month. Could you analyze the results for that keyword explaining why we're ranking lower than position 80? So let's take a quick look.

I'm actually curious. The thing about image generators, well, the thing about pretty much anything AI related at this point is, this is my computer, AI image generator, is that anything with AI is incredibly competitive, incredibly competitive. And so you really have to focus on something. So if you look at these results, I mean, it's pretty clear. The popularity is really high.

Competitiveness is fairly high. I would imagine anything with AI in its name probably has a really high competitiveness score. And you can see there's a lot of money in this.

And this is actually new. I don't know if I've shown this in a live stream before, but we now show you the downloads and the revenue of the top 10 results just to give you an idea of what you're up against. You can also see their DPR.

This DPR is actually horrible. So that's already good. There's an opportunity in there.

But you can tell that all of these apps are getting a bunch of new ratings. And here's the interesting bit. So 704 new ratings. And this is new ratings in the U.S. specifically because this is the market that we're looking at.

So if you set 130 ratings per month, is that in the U.S. specifically or in the market you're optimizing for? Or is that globally? If it's globally.

Less good. Or not really applicable. It has to be in the country that you're optimizing for.

So 52. So what we're looking at here is AIR generator. And they have image in the subtitle. I bet you they also do their keyword list pretty okay. And that's why they're here.

AI image generator. Right in here. Boom. Fewer ratings.

But again, the name is right in there. AI image generator. Because it's in the beginning of the name. they can get away with fewer ratings and still rank really, really well for this crazy high term. And then you have photo generator.

Photo generator is not really an image generator, so it's not getting as much love, but it's still on here. I imagine image is going to be somewhere in the keyword list. And the keyword list has become more relevant for App Store optimization in the last year, year and a half. So now it's something that you should definitely pay attention to if you haven't before.

Hopefully you have before. And so what we're seeing here is we're seeing a lot of image generation. Now, we have this weird case at number five, chat box. And chat box, from what I understand, I don't use it, but it's one of those, it can do anything.

And that's the main challenge with AI apps at this point. Most AI apps can do anything because ChatGPT, which a lot of these are based on, can do anything. So how do you actually say that? And what I'm seeing here is that they're using image generator in the subtitle. And the reason they're number five is because look at this crazy amount of ratings.

So even though they have a crazy amount of ratings, they're not really competing for number one. They can't unless it was in the name. But even though it's in the subtitle and towards the end, it still works for them. So really, that's what I'm seeing here.

When we do live app teardowns, you should submit your app and I will do it live on screen. If it gets picked, I think that would actually be really interesting to see what's happening. So that's... AI and Keyword Inspector.

Hopefully you like these new changes in Keyword Inspector. I really think they're cool. And we're releasing a bunch more stuff for Keyword Inspector, which, as you know, is my favorite tool.

And I use it all the time. So let's see what else we have here. Dean is asking, let me bring this up on screen.

Dean is asking, is it a good strategy to use USA to identify what intent? is driving downloads by your app with a max cost per acquisition and then work on ASO. Yes and no and maybe. I think there are people who will tell you, and Apple is one of those.

Well, Apple are one of those. Apple's in the camp that will tell you that you have to do a discovery campaign using Apple search ads just to see what kind of keywords are driving people to your app and then use those and focus on them in another Apple search ads campaign. And I think that could be a way to do it if you want to waste the money. The problem with discovery campaigns is Apple will tell you that you should do them on Smart Match and that's just, in my opinion, a colossal waste of money.

What I would do instead is I would see what's working for competitors. If you have competitors, if you don't have competitors or direct competitors, look at similar apps. There are several tools that will tell you what's working in the Apple search and Apple search ads side of things, but also on the organic side of things. So if we go back to my computer, I'll show you what I mean.

If we take, let's say, these three apps. Actually, let me show you a shortcut. So from here, I can easily jump to comparing organic keywords. And what this is doing is this is going to show us which keywords these apps are actually showing up in for organic results.

So we're not basing this off of what people are paying money for, which is not what you want to do. You want to base it off of what's working in the App Store directly. So as it's loading, what we'll be able to do on this. is get a bunch of different ideas, and they probably have thousands and thousands of keywords, if I had to guess, because it's AI and because that's so popular. And, yep, that's exactly what I thought.

Roughly 6,000 keywords between these five apps, and you can quickly see what's working and what's not working, and you can look by popularity, and you can look by competitiveness, and you can see which keywords are not being addressed by them as much. So for example, we're going to sort this and we're going to see where Wonder is being ranked. And while that's loading, I'll tell you that what I do with this is I will usually find a popularity range and a rank that is really fitting for the app. So if the app is extremely competitive, it's getting a lot of new ratings all the time, then I would go for something high in popularity, probably around high-ish.

If not, I'll look at the low or medium depending. The medium is pretty wide because different keywords really have different ranges. And so I'll narrow it down a little bit. And then I will look for keywords that I should be using based on what I see here from the competitors. In my opinion, that's the best way to go about building a strategy for organic keywords.

And we have the same tool for Apple search ads. that you can see which keywords the apps are advertising in. And based on that, you can make the same exact decision, but with your money. So I don't think you should spend your money on discovery campaigns or on any sort of, I don't really know what I'm doing.

Let's just see what the algorithm says on the paid side, because that costs you money. And instead, I would go with what are my competitors doing, usually in the market, especially in the US, especially in AI. You're not going to find a lot of companies are just throwing money on things that don't work for too long of a period. So either it works or you're not going to see it. That's kind of how I approach all of these things.

Okay, let's see next. Bring that up. Babu is asking, how long should you wait after making ASO changes before assessing if it was a success or not? and deciding to pivot to targeting other keywords?

That's an easy and a difficult question all at the same time. So for a big keyword, meaning a keyword that you probably use that connects to other words and creates multi-word keywords, I would give it about, on the App Store, less than a month, between three weeks and a month, something along those lines. You might see results really, really fast. So I've seen results overnight.

I've seen results within a day, within two days, three days that are pretty good. But the real thing is the algorithm tries things. And because it tries things, you may see a huge boost almost instantly, but then it will slowly degrade over time, over another three or four or five days.

And so I would give it at least two weeks for things to pick up. And not all cases happen overnight, go up and down. Some cases gradually go up. Give it about two, three weeks after three weeks.

If something is not really showing any results and no changes, then you're probably looking for something else. For smaller keywords that are probably modifiers on a bigger keyword. So, for example, if fitness is a major keyword for you, I would wait three, four weeks for that.

If fitness at home. So the at home part, if that's a new keyword that you added, you'll probably see results a little bit faster. So within two weeks, maybe you can make that determination and either move on or not. But the one important thing is, if you see something that really hurts your ranks, also give it another day or so before you say, undo, undo. I've seen people who had a small dip and then a huge increase.

I've seen people at a small dip and then it went back to normal. And I've seen people at a small dip and immediately freaked out. changed everything, and that really confused the algorithm.

And that's the last thing you want to do. Of all things that we can do with abstract optimization, confusing the algorithm is probably the last on my list. So let's continue.

David is asking a question that I've heard more than once. What should I do if a competitor overpays for keywords in Apple search ads? The easy answer is nothing. So realistically, if you can't compete with someone on a keyword, or I should, let me rephrase.

Realistically, you won't be able to compete with everyone on keywords, especially with spend. In some categories, you might be. In some other categories, if you're going up against companies like Teamwork or TikTok or any of those that have infinite budgets, you're just not going to be able to do it. So instead, what I would do and what I recommend to everyone who's doing Apple search ads and what I wrote in my guide is.

Take the time and find many, many, many smaller keywords that maybe a competitor that has that sort of budget is not looking at, not thinking about. They might be thinking, I have money, I have my investor money or my revenue or something else, and I'm just gonna burn it on the big keywords, the ones that everyone thinks about all the time, like fitness, raw, just fitness. But there are so many other, what we call long tail keywords.

Long tail because they will probably get you fewer results, fewer clicks. But if you have... Many of them you'll actually you could have the same end result of many many clicks But for much much much less because not many competitors are actually targeting them I wrote about it in my guide for how to do Apple search ads better We link to that at in the description later, so you can give that a read I think it's one of the most important things that you can do whether you're an indie developer a small company a medium company a large large large company And you will see that large companies have adopted this strategy because it gives them more bang for the buck, even though they have the money to spend.

So you want to do that as quickly as you can. And that's the way to do it. OK, another question from I about Apple search ads. I did not expect we'll talk about Apple search ads so early. And I'm so glad I love talking about this.

When I was asking, should the increase in ratings resulting from a significant investment in Apple search ads campaign? be reflected immediately within a few days in organic positioning, or how long does it usually take to show results? So this is interesting because the algorithm doesn't like spikes.

So if you invested a million dollars into Apple search ads and got a billion results, a billion new ratings, let's just say, the algorithm may not look at it and go, ho, ho, ho, everyone likes this app. Yes, let's make it number one. Instead, it's going to be like, hmm, let me see what's happening here.

So what I have seen usually with bigger spikes, it takes a little bit longer actually. And that's something that we should be expecting. Otherwise, it would be a lot more gameable.

Normally, you would have a rating increase a little bit over time. So somewhat of a gradual increase. And usually we see those within a few days, maybe a week or so.

If you think about it, the algorithm takes about 30 days of ratings into consideration. And so if you only have one day of spike and everything else is empty, it's not going to give it. the kind of value, the kind of input that it needs to know if your app is really popular enough to be shown in the top results, but it might.

If you grow gradually and if you have a new steady state, that's gonna make it a lot easier. And for it to know what a steady state is, it's gonna take a few days, probably a week, something along those lines. And I like the way you're thinking.

This is the way to go. If you are paying for Apple search ads, make sure that those downloads are converting to new ratings. And that should decrease your DPR and a lower DPR is better.

And that's what you should really be aiming for. Okay, let's continue. Oh, wow.

I skipped all the questions. Oh, no, we have a lot of questions. Let's see. So next question is, in order to benefit the geolocals for US, how should we choose keywords for the metadata of other languages that are also indexed in the US?

Simply copy paste US metadata or another approach? So let me zoom out a tiny bit so everyone knows this. And this is probably one of my most favorite, favoritest tips that I can give any developer. And that is.

Apple will index, meaning Apple will read your keywords, your name, your subtitle, your keyword list, in 10 languages and use all of those keywords for ranking you in the US. Even if it's not gonna show those in the search results, it's still gonna use them under the hood. So what you could do, if you're not localizing for any of those 10 languages, and 10 is a lot, so the odds are you're not localizing for all of them, use English keywords in those localizations in addition to the English localization, and then you can grow your keyword list. You get 100 characters for your keyword list, 30 characters for your name, 30 for the subtitle. Now you can multiply that by one or two or three or four, however many, up to 10, that you want to use.

So the question here is, how do you choose the keywords? And the answer is simple. The same way you pick them for the US.

You should never copy and paste the keywords from the US into other localizations. because that would not give the algorithm any additional value. It's just having that repeated is gonna do absolutely nothing.

What will help you is if you use other keywords. So let's say, going back to the fitness example, if your app, actually, no, a better example, if you have an AI app, like Chatbox, or like a generic, a more generic assistant, then you should take the time to find all the different things your assistant can do, and maybe in the US have something a little bit more generic. and in other localizations, go for something more specific, like AI image generator as part of the name.

Now, all the languages that are supported and also my strategy for doing that are in a guide that I will again link to in the description below later, and we'll probably do a video on that later on. And I'm also working on a worksheet that will help you do that more quickly. But for now, that is the answer. Follow the same way that you have picked keywords for the US. and do that across more localizations.

Now you just have more space. That's really the bottom line here. And that's what you want to use this to your advantage with. Okay, tea time before I run out of voice.

And then let's see, next question. Ooh, okay, interesting one. I have a good performing brand, bad performing keywords.

What should I do with those bad ones? Can I improve the bad ones? That's, you know, it's an interesting question because the definition of bad is pretty loose.

I'm assuming bad means that they are just not ranking. Maybe relevant, but not ranking. Maybe loosely relevant, but not ranking.

I think, again, what we said in the beginning, or at least what I said in the beginning, is just having the right keywords. isn't enough. You also need to show the algorithm that people care about your app.

If not, it's not going to rank it. There are just too many apps out there and it doesn't know what to do. So what you have to do is you have to make sure that you are selecting keywords where you can, with your current performance, compete with.

And that's the thing that's most, most important. In many cases, a bad keyword is really a keyword that you can't win with. So maybe take that and expand on it. So if it's a short keyword like fitness, maybe you need fitness at home or fitness equipment or whatever comes with fitness.

Or if it's something like AI image generation, maybe you can be a little bit more specific. AI, our generator for background, AI background generator. Think about it creatively.

And because we learned the trick that we just talked about with the localizations, now you have a lot more opportunities to use more keywords. So that's really what I would do. Now a small, a small break.

My team has told me that the comments are not open yet. So you can't really get a shirt. So I didn't think that would happen.

And that's because the first giveaway. Tell me, put in the chat giveaway colon your favorite app. I will analyze that later. And that's how you're going to get a shirt. And if you did not see what I said before, we're giving away this beautiful shirt.

Not this one, obviously. You're going to get a new one. All you have to do is subscribe to the channel, like the video, and put your favorite app, put giveaway colon favorite app name in the chat, and that's how you could win one.

Unless you don't want this shirt. And that's okay, but it's so nice. I guess if not enough people like the shirt, then the one person who will will definitely get it. That's not really a giveaway.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's go back into my comments. into the chat and let's see what's going on uh leonardo with a good question so leonardo is asking any tips for google search visibility What would your approach be for already released apps with low downloads ratings count?

So let's talk about Google for a little bit. I think that comes up every time I do this and I never get into it deeply enough, mostly because I'm still working in a guide for how to do, how to increase visibility on Google, which I will release hopefully later this month. But Google is a lot more, there are many more opportunities, I will say.

On Google, ratings are good, but they're not the only thing that's driving where you're ranking in search results. Keywords are. So Google, because it's Google and it's a search engine and they have been doing this for a long enough time, they know how to use keywords from your description. That's something a lot of people ignore.

Your description on Google Play is really important for app store optimization, and we have a tool dedicated to helping you find out how to do it. and also analyze competitors. I'll link to it as well. I'm writing a guide on that as well. So that's something that I would first pay attention to.

With the description, the long description that is on Google Play, you have to repeat keywords. It's very different than anything else. Not in the name, not in the short description, which is the equivalent of the subtitle. And none of this applies to Apple. Google specifically, you have to repeat keywords in the long description.

There's a right number and a wrong number to a number of repetitions. And so the tool will tell you exactly what is the right number, what is the wrong number. All you have to do is load in your app description and it will tell you. So that's the number one.

Number two, everything with a name in the subtitle follows very similarly to Apple. You have to have your main keywords in your name. You have to have them as early as possible.

And you want to use them more in the name than in the subtitle. Those are, again, the same. But there are two things that... I don't personally understand why they exist, but they're very important to Google.

The first one is keywords in reviews. And it's kind of silly in my opinion, but Google reads all the reviews for your apps and the keywords that are repeated there the most, your app will likely rank for them. Why?

I don't know. It's so easy to game. I've seen this being gamed in the wrong direction for spam purposes.

It's pretty awful, but... that's a thing that's still happening in 2025. And I think it's really important that you know that this is a thing. I'm not entirely sure how responses get into this.

From everything I've seen, they're not indexed. And so you can't influence this yourself. And you shouldn't buy reviews with specific keywords in order to increase your ranking. You could, and it will probably work, and that your app will get banned completely. And I've heard horror stories where entire accounts got banned, and people somehow got banned.

So I would not recommend doing that. But what I would recommend is getting those reviews and asking for reviews, just like on the Apple side that we want those for ratings. On Google Play side, we want that text.

That text can help us. It may be kind of challenging to do, but it's something you want to do. The other thing on Google Play is, well, two more things.

I thought of a bonus thing. The inbound links to the App Store page, to the Google Play page from the web, the text within the A tag. is going to be used as a keyword.

I'm not entirely sure how strong that signal is. I'm still testing that, and it's fairly challenging to test. But I know for a fact that what you have in those links will translate into rankings. And so if your fitness app or AI image generator is linked as AI image generator on a website, and someone clicks that and gets to Google Play, then they will know that that is the signal for them that... your app should be ranked for AI image generators.

It's, again, one of those things that's a lot more difficult to tackle. But if you're doing any sort of search engine optimization, this should be a part of your strategy. The last thing is, and I hope everyone knows this at this point, if your app crashes, Google's gonna hate it. It's gonna hate it with passion.

If your app crashes, or if people uninstall it very quickly after they download it. And that's an interesting one Sometimes you will get to a point where you maybe have advertised your app to the wrong audience on paid ads, either through Facebook or Google or really in Google Play with a campaign. Or you somehow managed to optimize for the wrong keyword because the description has so many opportunities for optimization.

And if that happens and people download your app thinking, I'm going to get one thing and get another and delete it instantly, your rank is going to tank. And the thing is, gaining ranks. takes a long time.

Losing ranks takes nothing. It's almost instant. So you really want to be careful what you optimize for and what you say about your app. You don't want to get it to the wrong hands.

That's weird to say, but you don't want to get in front of the wrong users. because that could get you a lower rank ultimately. So those are the things that I would start with beyond just the name, the subtitle, short description, and the long description. All right, follow-up question to the trick about multiple localizations. So Brunel is asking, regarding the use of multiple localizations for the US App Store, in the main localization, US, I have conversate...

conversion calculator. And in the Chinese localization, I have convert units. Continuing, I feel like my app should rank higher. Do you know if extended localizations like the Chinese one in this case are deprioritized or penalized for ranking in the US App Store?

To my knowledge, they're not penalized for sure. Also, to my knowledge, they're not deprioritized in any way. So the real question is, why do you think the app needs to rank? higher?

Is it based on the number of ratings you have and you're beating all the competitors? Is it because you have the keyword in the name and they don't? Let me know in the chat and I will follow up on this.

Oh, interesting. Nam is asking or saying, I'm having a huge success with a hard paywall, but should I try soft maybe with increased pricing? I think you answered your own question. Try. That's really the key.

It's so challenging to just answer these questions about what's better, especially when it comes to paywalls, without knowing a ton about the app itself, the competitive landscape for this app specifically, but also for your user base. Different users tend to behave differently. I've done several live streams in the past few months on paywall optimization.

And the end result in almost every one of those live streams, the lesson to take home was that your users are probably a little bit different than everyone else's. And you should test everything to make sure that you are catering to your users specifically. And that goes into pricing, a hard or soft paywall, the length of your onboarding, what you show in your onboarding, the give versus take.

So I would definitely test it. Now, I personally think that hard paywalls are problematic because they create this weird side to the app where it feels very frictionful. And that friction actually causes...

an increase in upgrades, but I don't think that causes an increase in brand recognition. People are not loving your app more. They're loving it less. So depending on what you're trying to build, are you building an empire for the future?

Are you just trying to get as much money as you can now? Somewhere between those two is what a test would show you, how you can maximize your revenue. Leonardo is following up with, we are talking about running.

Ad campaigns for our kids app. Any recommendations on where to run them? Meta, ASA, Google Ads? The answer is interesting.

So who are your users? And I know it might sound like a very silly question, but who are your users? An app for kids probably is targeting parents, but what kind of parents?

What are these parents doing? Where are these parents spending their time? And are these parents actively looking for these sort of apps? The actively looking for these sort of apps is something you can look at by looking at downloads of competitors or in the kids section, probably similar apps.

If there is consistent demand, that demand increases over time, then you know that the demand is there and they are looking for it. If the demand is spiking, let's say only on weekends, you know that it's probably being driven by some sort of a paid campaign for those competitors. Beyond that, what I would do is I would look if your competitors are actually spending on something like Apple search ads.

If they are, that makes it a lot easier to know what you also have to do. And that's where I would start. If you see that demand is growing over time, if you see that your competitors are advertising on search ads, spend money on search ads.

And the reason I say this is because it's probably the least effort that you can put into paid ads and still get an amazing result in some cases. Some cases are those that I just said, if people are looking for it. So as long as you know that your competitors are doing something on Apple search ads, give it a try.

That's where I would start. The keywords are still not that expensive. Some have gotten really expensive, expensive over the last year, but they're still attainable to some extent. And so that's where I would start with Apple search ads. If you want to grow beyond that to meta, to Instagram, to Facebook, to TikTok, to Google ads.

then that's something that you should spend more time on because now you have to make creatives and you have to really get to know your users because they're not looking for you. So you have to stop them and whatever they're doing and say, you need me. Whereas if they're on the apps already looking, you want them to just find you.

I would start there and that's I would go then to meta and everything else. TikTok ads are a whole other thing. I think we'll do a bunch of live streams on TikTok ads in the future. So put those on hold for now. OK, Ricardo is asking a question that I also get very often.

What would you recommend for selecting the best keywords for different locations, different countries? What is the best workflow? So what I do, and we recently improved our site because of it, is I do the same exact thing that I do for the U.S., but for the country that I'm optimizing for.

And the reason I do this, and not just copy and paste U.S. keywords with a translation, is because in different societies, people think a little bit differently, people talk about things a little bit differently, and that translates into how they talk about, how they search on the App Store and on Google Play. And so what I would do is I would find the top competitors in the country. Let's say I'm optimizing for China.

I'm optimizing for Japan. I will look in that country or Germany, and then I will analyze their keywords. Now, their keywords are going to be a mix of English and the local language.

And the reason for that is, and that's something that surprises almost everyone I talk to about this, the amount of English keywords that are really popular in countries that don't have English as their main language. The reason for that is most apps are not localized. Most apps are in English.

That's just the reality of the App Store and Google Play. There are many apps that are localized, but most apps are not. And what that forces the algorithm to do, regardless of the country and the localization, it forces it to index keywords in English. It has to, otherwise it would have no results.

And so you may get better results with a localization if more people are looking for the keyword. in the local language, and you can see that by its popularity score. But if that's not the case, you can optimize in English. Tip number one.

But the other thing I would do then, I would look at the keywords that are not in English and see and then use the auto-translation that we have built into all of our reports, and that's available to all members, not on a specific plan. If you have keywords, you have automatic translations, and use those to understand which ones are relevant enough, and then take the local keyword. and use it as appropriate as you can, as you can fit it.

If it's a language you speak, that's obviously very easy. If it isn't, do your best to fit it in. I would recommend if you're localizing, don't use Google Translate because that usually doesn't come with good translations. A lot of people I know are using ChatGPT for translations or one of the other LLMs, and people are saying that it's really amazing.

I haven't used it all that much. When we do localization, we use actual translators. It's a huge pain, and I hope that using an LLM is going to make it easier. But take the time and do that. And that's how I would go about it.

So fit your localization or fit your keyword list to the localization that you're optimizing for, just as you do in the US. OK, next. And I'm not seeing a lot of likes.

I guess you don't really want that shirt or you're not having fun. If you like what you're watching. Please give the video a like so YouTube knows and YouTube promotes it. And then I feel like more people are seeing me. And that's a win-win for all of us.

Also, if you want the shirt. Okay. Ooh, a question from X. So we're streaming or restreaming. We're streaming on X on YouTube and on LinkedIn.

And everything is funneling into YouTube. So if you're on any of those, you can also interact with me. So Alvar is asking, what is the best and only tip you would give to someone launching an app for the first time? Wow.

Okay. Not a hard question, but a very hard question all at the same time. Let's see.

Let's see. Let's see. What would I tell someone who's starting and if I only had one tip to give them? Well, we're going to have to go generic.

I would say build an app for an existing user base. So build an app that people want. Don't build an app because you had an idea.

Don't build an app because you think someone will want it. Build an app that you know enough users are looking for. And you can do that by looking for whatever it is that your idea is and see, one, if there are competitors.

Two, what is the popularity, meaning how many times people are looking for this keyword. And then you will build. an app that has some business viability.

Otherwise, you're just building an app that's going to fail and it's going to be miserable. We don't want that. Also, I'm seeing a bunch of little hearts in the chat and I love those. Those are really cool. But the likes have to go under the video.

The hearts in the chat, I don't think really do anything. And I don't think I can even count them. Later on.

So heart's nice, but the thumbs up below the video, that's what I'm looking for. Okay. Haha.

Okay. Atomic app is asking a question that comes up too often, very often. Do apps that have a higher revenue have better ranking? And the answer is maybe. It's very unrelated, meaning the amount of money your app makes has no relationship to your keyword ranks.

It just doesn't. I have not seen a single case. I've been asked that a million times.

Not a single case. Instead, what Apple does is it uses ratings because ratings show popularity. It doesn't even do downloads because downloads are very easy to game. Ratings, still easy to game, but not as easy. So that's what Apple looks at, not the revenue.

I have not seen a single case of apps making more money, getting better ranking, with something else not being better too. More ratings, the proper keywords in the proper places. So that's that. Andre is asking a question that I also, I get all these questions all the time. I'm so glad I'm getting to answer them.

What's a horrible DPR? There's no such thing as a horrible DPR really because a DPR, which is your downloads per rating, how many downloads does it take you to get an additional new rating? In an ideal world, it would be one. One download, one new rating. Another download, another new rating.

That's rarely the case. I've seen apps with thousands of downloads or hundreds of thousands of downloads getting very low single digit ranks, DPRs. And so that's where I would say that's good. But really, the sky is the limit.

It really depends on you versus the competition, on the type of user you have, on the way that you show the ratings pop up, whether it's on Google or on the Apple side of things. Now they both force you to do that. But I would say anything in the. Probably more than high double digits. Ideally, you want anything less than 30. I think less than 30 means that you're doing a good job.

Anything more is not ideal. Anything above 100 is going to get ugly. And I've seen apps that are really, really big that could not care any less about ratings. And their DPRs are in the many, many high hundreds.

And that's just why? Why? Why? So that's what I would say.

Um, okay. A very simple question that I don't think I ever really answered here. What factors influence app ranking for a specific keyword? And that's the basic, basic, basic part of apps for optimization. It's your keyword strategy.

What is the keyword that you have in your name, in your subtitle, in your keyword list? Does it align with the keyword the user searched for? And also how many new ratings your app is getting?

So Apple and Google both use keywords to understand which apps. should be shown as search results. And then they use some sort of a performance metric in order to say which one is going to show up first, which one is going to show up second. So what you should be thinking about is what are the most relevant keywords for my app?

Use those in your app's name, keyword list, and subtitle or short description and long description, and then optimize your new ratings. And that's the mix of apps for optimization. I do have a guide.

I think one of my first guides was, write about this, we will link to that as well. And hopefully someone else is taking notes because I managed to forget all the guys that I said I will link to. But don't worry, Frank is listening.

Let's see what else. Okay, a good question. How do we create the right keywords before publishing an application for the first time? After all, the application is not published, so we can't put the application into the ASO tool. The thing is, because it's unpublished, even if it was published for just a little bit of time.

You wouldn't have any sort of momentum unless you did a good job before. So what you really want to do is you want to look at competitors. And competitors are where I would start. What I would do is what I was showing before on my screen, load up the keyword that you're looking for.

Let's see if I still have that on my screen. I have something on my screen. So I'll go to Keyword Inspector and let's look for AI tattoo.

Is that how you spell tattoo? Yes. Generator.

I'm looking for something very specific. There we go. Kind of what I said before.

Pretty much everything with AI in its name has a high popularity. So let's say you are launching an app for tattoo artists that will give them, that will make tattoos using AI. Your app doesn't have to be launched yet, but you can look at all of these.

And I'm going to just... I'll be lazy and take the top first. The top five. Top first. top five, and I'm going to analyze them.

And boom, in a few seconds, I will have thousands of keywords that I can choose from. And I'm gonna use those keywords to see what I want to rank for or what I want to optimize for. And wow, this is actually really interesting.

So a lot of keywords, not many keywords. Also, that's not true. I guess that's 1,700 keywords, but DaVinci is an AI image generator, not specifically for tattoos. Let's see what this AI tattoo generator, tattoo AI, tattooy?

What tattooy is ranking for? Oh, wow, tattooy is doing pretty good. I know it's not tattooy, it's tattoo AI, but it's still, it's nicer to say.

So now you have a bunch of ideas, tattoo design ideas, not really popular. But if you look for, let's say, anything where the popularity is a little bit higher. Let's go to 10. Because your app is brand new, you don't want to compete over hundreds or 90s or 80s.

It's just impossible and impractical. And we'll just look for 10 to 30 just to get an idea of what's going on. And now you have yourself a lot of interesting keywords.

Tattoo design, tattoo maker. Their popularity, not super high. Tattoo designer.

I love this. I think this is such a great opportunity. And I bet you if we look for this in Keyword Inspector. It's going to look like an opportunity. Yeah, there we go.

So you see tattoo design. Okay, this is a great opportunity. If you are making an app for tattoo artists, this is your keyword.

Use this keyword. Take this keyword right now and make an app for it. None of the keywords here, none of the apps here use the keyword we're looking for in the name with the exception of number two. And look at these ratings, 9, 3, 261, 18, 32. You can get that on launch if you do a launch and if you use.

A little bit if you hustle a little bit and make sure that everyone knows about it on Reddit and on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on really all the channels without having to pay for ads, you can rank for this. Now, it's a 14, so it's not really that big. It's not going to get you millions of downloads.

But that's going to create a snowball effect, and that snowball effect will eventually get you to a point where your app is visible and is showing up to people. And that's what you really want. And you can build on a 14, but you can't really start with a 50. So that's what I would do. This is actually really cool. I don't know how we got to this.

Oh, so to answer your question, you don't have to have an app in the App Store or in Google Play in order to start doing App Store or keyword search, keyword research. You can do that off of competitors. I think that's the easiest way to go about it.

That's the best way to go about it. And it's the most actionable way to go about it. And I'm seeing we're running low on time, so let me try to go a little bit faster, if that's possible. Um, let's see. Oh, and I see a bunch more likes.

Someone is going to get a shirt. So Leonora is asking, is there a way to find specific keywords install conversion besides running paid ads? No, not really. Again, it's really dependent on users.

We're looking into maybe finding a way to do that in the future or estimating that. But I think that's to get something that's actually useful where you can, I can tell you with certainty, put your money on this keyword, you're going to get this conversion. I don't think we're going to get there anytime soon. It's just, there's too much that is unknown. There is too much that is incredibly, increasingly variable.

And so test it. Always, always test. I did a live stream with... Um...

What did I do a live stream with? I did a live stream with an Apple search ads optimization expert. And he talked about Thomas, Thomas Pettit. And he talked about how to do this right.

He gave a whole bunch of ideas how to do it when you have a big budget, when you have a small budget. I think it was really, really useful. So we'll link to that also in the description later. We're building a whole list here.

We'll link to that in the description. And I would recommend giving that a watch. I think it's incredibly important.

Continuing. Oh, those are a lot of responses. You're talking amongst yourselves. I love it.

David is asking, I thought the title and subtitle are shared, but AppFigure says these matches are likely ignored by search algorithm because term is split between the app's title and subtitle. So yes, they are shared, but this error could come up if there is some sort of duplication. So if you have something in the name and the subtitle, then it will get ignored.

Now, it's also possible that there are terms that if you split them, you're going to really lose the impact of having both of them. It doesn't really happen with long tail keywords, but if you're trying to aim for something really competitive, do not break it up between the keyword, between the name and the subtitle. The algorithm is just not going to be able to see it.

Ooh, a question from Dean. Do you think downloads retention has any weight in ranking in iOS? So from my knowledge, the retention or really any on-device data. is completely ignored by Apple.

And Apple is extremely privacy forward kind of a company. So to see them using something like that for ranking is less imaginable. Also, I've not seen any data to suggest that what happens on the device reflects in ranks. The conversion between how many people see your App Store page and download it does have an impact on your ranks, but that's a whole other longer conversation.

But what happens on the device specifically, to my knowledge, does not. And I'm saying I'm only using one localization and getting about a thousand downloads a day. It feels like if you use less keywords, those keywords way more. And that is absolutely right. A million percent true.

I call that focus. And if you read any of my app teardowns or keyword teardowns or really any of my guides, you will know that less is more depending on what you're trying to do, of course. But if you are trying to focus on keywords that are either bigger or too big for you, meaning you don't have enough ratings to compete at the top top or something like that.

Not using as many keywords is a good idea. Now, that is within a localization. That is not a cross localization.

So that's an important difference from what we're saying here. If in your English localization, let's say you only wanted to optimize for fitness and you could get a name for your app that is just fitness, you should do it. Because then the entire 100% of good juju the algorithm has will go directly for this one keyword.

Now, if you do that across multiple localizations, you can actually attract multiple keywords. You can rank for multiple big keywords without having to load the name, the subtitle, the keyword list. So if you wanted to use AI image generator in the US and then AI art generator in your Russian name, Russian is another one of the localizations that counts for the US.

And then something similar in China, because Chinese is also one of the localizations that work in the US. You could do that, and that should, in theory, get you to a much better standing point. Again, it depends on the number of ratings and overall if your app can compete, but this will give it as much possibility, possibility, flexibility, as much power as is possible with this setup. Now we have, what is it, four more minutes. Let's see what we got.

Oh, wow, and I see a lot of apps, a lot of favorite apps. Duolingo is on this list. Nice.

I'm going to actually go through and download these apps because now I'm curious. Oh, wow. A lot of giveaways.

Someone is definitely getting a shirt. Maybe we'll do two giveaways. I'm feeling like someone should get a shirt.

Okay. One last question, and I'll see if there's time for more because we're really running out of time. So another question is, how can we avoid cannibalization of performing organic keywords?

while doing Apple search ads. That's super important because if you don't do that, you're just gonna burn money. So what I normally do is anytime, so we have in AppFigures alerts that will tell you what your rank is when your rank changes for a keyword. What I will do is I will make sure that I'm tracking all the keywords that I'm also spending money on and every keyword that is in a rank that I like. Maybe it's first, maybe it's first or second.

I will make sure as a not. in my Apple search ads. And then if that dips, I will get an email again and I can bring that back in. It's a little bit more work, but if you do it this way, you'll make sure that you're not wasting any money and ultimately you have the best approach to this.

Now, there is a really small nuance that is probably too small. It's like a micro nano optimization. And that nano optimization is because trends change based on the time of the day, depending on your market, depending on the localization, You might want to use Apple search ads for a keyword that is ranking organically or vice versa, just around specific times. So that's something that probably a nano optimization.

I don't know if anyone wants to waste time doing that, but you could look at your trends, see when the downloads come in, see when your ranks dip. Because we have hourly rankings for both organic, for organic specifically in this case, and see if your rankings dip. let's say over the weekend, which is a slightly bigger date range, then you can use that augment with Apple search ads for keyword that usually does pretty well. That's how I would do it. Probably not worth anyone's time.

And I think that's pretty much all the time we have today. We're just getting started for the year. If you have been paying attention to the channel, you know that I've been doing slightly different kinds and formats of content. I'm experimenting.

Some of you have told me that you love the new formats. So that's great. If you have watched any of my videos recently and you like what I'm doing, make sure to tell me in the comments.

We're trying to figure out what's the best way. to get more content out there and really make sure everyone knows what's going on. So if you haven't done that, give that a try. There are still two minutes, one minute actually, to apply for the giveaway.

So make sure that you subscribe to the channel, you give the video a like, not the chat, the video a like, and then you drop giveaway colon the name of your favorite app in the chat, and I will pick one of those, maybe two. possibly two, as I'm doing this, I'm feeling generous, and I think we have a lot of shirts, two, to give this to, we'll reach out to this person and we'll make sure you get a shirt wherever you are in the world. So that's pretty much it for me. We have another live stream coming up in a couple of weeks with a guest. Keep an eye on your inbox to make sure that you see it.

And as usual, if you have any additional questions, drop them in the comments that will open up after the live stream is done, and I will keep an eye on this. And get back to you in the comments. We have quite a busy year coming up.

Between products, features, updates. You saw the new features in Inspector. Even more is coming for that.

We're going deeper into Apple Search Ads to give you more insights. We're working on a really big project that I shouldn't even be talking about yet. That I think all of you will love and will give you a lot more opportunities to see what's becoming successful.

On the apps around Google Play. So a lot more is coming. And a lot more of that. On that.

In the future. That's pretty much it for me. Enjoy the rest of your day.

And I will see you. In the next one.

Transcript for:Insights on App Store Optimization (ASO)

Transcript for:
Insights on App Store Optimization (ASO)