4 Things to Consider to Boost Your Store Keyword Rank
I Want Our App to Stand Out in the Store (1)
In the previous post, we looked at the basic approach to increasing organic users. The main point was that we should obsess over the actual user experience, not the numbers on a console, when devising strategies and action items.
When you obsess over the actual user experience, your strategies are bound to change constantly. The store's app ranking algorithms keep evolving, and in terms of competitor apps, existing ones disappear while new ones emerge. Moreover, the structure or types of meta-information that can appeal in the store may also change. A fixed strategy won't let you properly respond to these shifts. That's exactly why, for the first post of this series on increasing organic users, I chose the message to start from the user's perspective rather than wandering around looking for an invincible growth rule.
Nevertheless, there are two major directions that are (mostly) immutable.
Our app needs to have good exposure in the store, and once exposed, it must look appealing enough to successfully convert into an install.
No matter how the store layout changes, how fierce the competition gets, or how the ranking algorithms shift, this overarching principle won't really change.
Among these, getting our app well-exposed has the biggest impact. To compare it to regular goods, it has to be distributed somewhere for people to even consider buying it. At this point, unlike the effort to look appealing, the effort to get good exposure is harder because prime spots are scarce. Everyone wants that spot, but the number of spots is limited, so competition is fierce. In the industry, we call this KWO (Keyword Optimization).
I'm planning to organize this "I want our app to stand out in the store" series into three parts as follows.
If you think from the store's perspective, which app would they want to show first?
Let's unpack this starting with a somewhat commonsense KWO (Keyword Optimization) story.
This is common sense that an organic marketer absolutely must know. It's easy to understand if you think about it from the store's point of view.
If you were the app store, what criteria do you think you should use to show apps when a user searches for a specific keyword?
You can't just show any app. You have to find the app the user is looking for. But the only hint right in front of you is the keyword the user typed in when searching. There are four main criteria the store can use to make a judgment.
1. Keyword Eligibility
First of all, the keyword must 'exist' in the meta-information (app name, subtitle, description, developer name, release notes, etc.). From the store's perspective, that is the minimum basis for recommending it to the user. In particular, the iOS Apple Connect console allows each app service to prepare keywords relevant to them in the backend for the store to reference, in addition to the meta-information visible on the surface. (To avoid confusion with regular noun keywords, we'll call these meta-keywords from now on.) Based on this information, it will prioritize showing 'apps where the keyword exists' over 'apps where the keyword does not exist in the meta-information.'
2. Keyword Relevance
When looking to recommend apps that have that keyword in their meta-information, you'll see that some apps only have the keyword in the description, while others have it in the app name. Naturally, you'd want to recommend the app that has it in the app name first. How much more relevantly it is handled is the second criterion.
On iOS, the app name and meta-keywords have a similar effect, followed by the subtitle. It's the accepted theory in the industry that the presence of a keyword in the description is not significant on iOS.
On An (Android), the app name is the most powerful, followed by the short description, then the long description.
Besides that, there's a 'theory' that relevance is higher the closer it is placed to the front within each piece of meta-information, and another 'theory' that relevance increases with higher density (the proportion of the keyword text out of the total text count). I haven't personally experienced the effectiveness of these yet.
3. Keyword Strength
Now we've found apps that have that keyword, and figured out how prominently each app placed that keyword. Up to this point, this is an intuitive 'hypothesis' from the store's perspective. A hypothesis that 'if an app treats those keywords prominently in its meta-information, it's likely the app the user is looking for.' On top of that, if the app has a history of actually being installed after being searched with that keyword, the confidence in that hypothesis becomes much greater. It's a variable that can change 'it's possible' to 'it's highly likely.' What if the install history is relatively recent? If there's an app that was installed a lot with that keyword 5 years ago, and one that was installed a lot a month ago, of course it would recommend the latter first.
On both iOS and An, the larger the install volume generated by that keyword and the steeper the recent install volume growth curve, the higher the rank goes.
From my own experience, I concluded that iOS puts more weight on the 'recent growth trend' than An does.
This variable is also one that accelerates the "rich get richer, poor get poorer" phenomenon. If installs generated by a keyword increase, pushing the rank up during a keyword search, the conversion rate to install after search also increases because the rank has gone up. When installs increase further like that, the already elevated rank becomes more solid, creating a virtuous cycle of increased installs and rank maintenance.
4. Product Quality
We've gathered all the recommendable apps based on the keyword the user typed in when searching. What if the quality of the shortlisted apps is just awful? The store would be reluctant to recommend those apps to the user.
Basically, the number of reviews and the average star rating affect the rank. It's not yet known whether the average rating or the number of reviews is more important.
For An, the crash rate (app stability) is also reflected in the rank.
Both iOS and An reportedly consider post-install retention from that keyword and various in-app engagements as product quality. But honestly, any product quality beyond that is something the product manager needs to take care of more meticulously. We'll ponder product quality together, but the variables an organic marketer should focus more on are numbers 1 through 3 above.
In terms of product quality, what an organic marketer can look after is managing the average star rating and the top reviews that are exposed first at the top.
Looking at it comprehensively, we can't know which of the above 4 variables the store values most. The only thing that is certain is that Google's ranking algorithm is far more advanced than Apple's, true to its nature as a search company. You can feel this immediately if you experience it yourself. The fluctuations aren't frequent, and it's incredibly hard to figure out easily.
Fundamentally, you start by satisfying Eligibility for a specific keyword and optimizing its Relevance. As the rank goes up that way, installs naturally increase, and thanks to those installs, the Strength solidifies—that's the flow.
But even the most basic action item isn't entirely easy.
The Difficulty of Strategies to Increase Keyword Eligibility & Keyword Relevance
Character Limit Constraints
Those who have done it themselves will know, but the biggest constraint is the 'character limit.' Especially for the most important app name, the 'character limit' is 30 characters. If a search keyword I absolutely must capture is 'challenge,' I'm already starting with 9 characters used up. When that happens, there are often cases where you can't fit in the keywords you want to include. One tip here is that using '&' is an effective way to combine at least three or more keywords within the given character limit constraints. Alarmy's current app name is "Alarmy Alarm Clock&Sleep Sound," completely utilizing the 30 characters by using '&'.
This character count is a particularly headache-inducing factor in 'localization.' When you translate the above app name into French or German, there's no guarantee it will perfectly hit 30 characters. As if it weren't hard enough not knowing the local language, adjusting it to fit the character count is no easy feat.
(Ah... I could easily whip out three separate posts just on the difficulties and know-how of localization.)
2. Engaging Writing
To increase Eligibility and Relevance, let's say you've crammed specific keywords into every nook and cranny of the app name and description. As a result, it gets better exposure than before. But when a user actually looks at it, will they want to convert to an app install? What I realized through several before-and-after experiments is that cramming in keywords without context just to get better exposure causes adverse effects. If it doesn't lead to a conversion after being exposed, the Strength weakens, and eventually, it won't even be exposed at the top anymore. You're required to have the additional skill to compose your desired keywords—while fitting the character limit constraints—so that they are well-understood and appealing when users read them.
3. Inconsistent Effects for Each Keyword
When you put some keywords into the app name, it immediately ranks 8th, while other keywords do not. This is the biggest stumbling block in the process of learning the efficacy of Eligibility and Relevance. There needs to be some consistent result for marketers to keep learning, but it's just not consistent... Unfortunately, this is inevitably going to appear differently depending on the keyword's properties. In other words, there are keywords whose rank goes up well and keywords where it doesn't. We'll look further into this in the sequel, 'Which keywords are meaningful keywords?' What we can gain in this process is building up as many learning cases as possible to find at least a minimal 'tendency.'
So far, we've briefly looked at the methods and difficulties of getting our app well-exposed when searching for a specific keyword. Actually, what's more important is how meaningful that keyword is. No matter how much you optimize a meaningless keyword, the rank won't go up, and even if it does, it won't lead to app installs. We'll explore more regarding this in the sequel.
There are many learning cases scattered throughout the industry regarding Eligibility, Relevance, and Strength mentioned here. Of course, it's mostly "I heard someone say," but they are absolutely not things to ignore. It's best to learn from as many as possible—the more, the merrier—and find the growth strategy that fits your service by applying them yourself.
Lastly,
as bonus strategies to get better exposure, there's being featured, and there's search ads.
Regarding being featured, please refer to Understanding Google Featured (1). The newer the app service, the bigger the impact of this opportunity.
Search ads are practically paid marketing, not organic marketing, so I won't cover them in this series. However, as an organic marketer, you continuously need to care about the cannibalization between rank optimization and search ads.
For instance, should the marketing team really run search ads on the 'alarm' keyword where we are already maintaining a 1st place rank, or if we don't, will a competitor be exposed on that search ad placement and steal the conversion opportunity? — You have to make a good judgment through before-and-after tests and such. For reference, with Google search ads, an app exposed in the ad placement won't be ranked in the list below it (as of November 2022). I have a lot to say about the relationship between search ad placements and organic rank placements too, so if I get the chance, I'll prepare a separate post for it.