How to Identify and Effectively Manage Meaningful Store Keywords

I Wish Our App Got Better Store Visibility (Part 2)

In the previous post (Increasing Store Keyword Rankings), we looked at the basic principles of getting an app to show up for specific keyword searches. While there are plenty of detailed strategies branching off from those principles, there's no silver bullet that guarantees a rank increase. If there were, rankings would lose their meaning entirely. (Just look at Naver's real-time search rankings, which have faded into the annals of history.) It's important for each of us to go through our own trial and error to figure out the "prerequisites" that drive rank improvement. These prerequisites can vary depending on each app's unique situation (things like average user retention, average rating, review count, stability score, the number of competitors, and their competitiveness).

But before putting in the effort to boost a specific keyword's rank, there's something that has to happen first. We need to determine whether ranking for that keyword will actually have a meaningful impact on increasing our app's installs. In this post, we'll explore what makes a keyword meaningful and how to go about managing them.

01. The Starting Point for Determining Meaningfulness

Basically, we start with two criteria: "Is the search volume high?" and "Is it highly relevant to our app?" Common sense says the more a keyword is searched and the more relevant it is to our app, the more meaningful it will be. We usually refer to the former with words like "volume," "traffic," or "popularity," and the latter as "relevance" or "efficiency." Of course, these aren't absolute standards. Only when we select keywords based on these criteria, try to boost their ranks, and cross-check whether organic installs actually increased can we finally judge if they're truly meaningful.

For keywords with low relevance but high volume, no matter how much you boost their rank, you'll only get more impressions; the conversion rate will be incredibly low, leading to a tiny share of actual installs. Actually, in these cases, it's pretty hard to raise the rank in the first place, simply because they're such popular keywords. On the flip side, for keywords with low search volume but high relevance, no matter how much you boost their rank, impressions themselves barely happen, resulting in very few installs. These are usually highly specific keywords, often in the form of compound phrases (combinations of two or more words).

Still, because the competition isn't as fierce, keywords with high relevance (even if low volume) are much easier to rank for than high-volume keywords, making them a surefire way to scrape together at least a few installs. We call these "long-tail keywords," and in the early days of an app launch, it's common to manage the ranks of these "long-tail keywords" well, taking a "many a little makes a mickle" approach. You need to salvage even a tiny number of installs to build up your Keyword Strength (see the previous post), which can spark a virtuous cycle that positively impacts the impression algorithms for higher-volume keywords down the line. You might wonder if it's just too much dust to ever build a mountain, but according to industry data, 41% of in-store search keywords are single words, while 49% are compound words. Furthermore, 20% of those compound words consist of three or more words—so you might build that mountain easier than you think.

Metrics like volume and relevance are often provided by ASO tools. If you're not using an ASO tool, checking out the scores in Google Ads Keyword Planner or ASA (Apple Search Ads) is another solid option. Plus, you can tap into the various keyword-related resources offered within each store console.

02. The Intermediate Step for Determining Meaningfulness

When you actually sit down to manage keywords, the sheer volume can get so massive that keeping a "feel" for which keywords are more meaningful becomes surprisingly difficult. That's when establishing your own "meaningfulness" formula based on the data sources mentioned above can help you break through the clutter. At DelightRoom, we calculate scores and set priorities based on a "volume" score, a "relevance" score, and our current "rank value." Building and maintaining a database like this definitely takes extra effort, but as the number of keywords you need to track grows, you'll quickly realize that this approach is far more efficient in the long run.

03. The Final Gateway for Determining Meaningfulness

Once you've managed the rankings for high-scoring keywords based on your personalized "meaningfulness" formula—and assuming those ranks actually climbed—you're left with the most crucial step of all. It's time to verify if organic installs actually increased. "When this keyword's rank went up, installs saw a meaningful bump...!" Depending on whether there was an increase, you'll also tweak your meaningfulness formula. That might mean adjusting the weights of metrics like volume and relevance, or overhauling the formula entirely.

So, how should you check if organic installs have increased?

A. Install Data by Keyword

In the Google Play Console, you can filter and see the exact number of installs for specific keywords. Since it only tracks installs that converted after visiting your store listing, it won't capture every single install that converted directly from the search list, but it's incredibly accurate for comparing rough before-and-after trends.

Unfortunately, Apple's App Store Connect doesn't offer a similar feature. To fill the gap, some ASO tools use their own proprietary tech to provide install trends by search keyword in the App Store. Since these are estimates, they aren't 100% accurate, but they're similarly quite useful for checking trends before and after a rank increase.

B. Organic Install Data

You can also check install data through each store's console. Of course, since external variables outside of keyword rank also play a big role, it's hard to definitively say that a specific keyword rank boost caused the spike in installs. Still, it's worth checking if the overall trend is pointing up. If you're running paid marketing at the same time, you'll need to strip out users who came in through those campaigns. This means skipping the store consoles and instead filtering for organic users in whatever MMP you're using to track the trend of app first open events.

Depending on the extent of the increase or decrease, you log the presence or absence of an organic effect (i.e., its degree of meaningfulness) in your keyword database, and carry those insights into the next keyword management cycle.

Throughout this post, we've looked at how to identify and manage keywords that can drive organic installs. Now, drawing from the previous post, you just need to optimize the rankings for those keywords. After repeating that cycle two or three times, you'll hit your next hurdle: a rapid depletion of candidate keywords to even test for meaningfulness. You'll need to uncover more keywords bursting with install potential, but how exactly do you find them?

I Wish Our App Got Better Store Visibility (Part 3) — Discovering Store Keywords

In the final installment of this series, let's explore ways to discover even more store keywords.