ASO Guide

Ⅰ. Interpretation of data indicators

1. Keyword

When you type in words you are interested in or the words related with an App in the blank, our ASO analysis engine will automatically recommend relevant ASO keywords for you. The searching logic of the keywords is similar to Google search that our goal is to intelligently match all the results you might be interested in, and then display them by default according to the matching degree and popularity (the words you typed in will always appear at the first by default). You could filter or sort them by yourself according to the categories you are interested in.

2. Popularity

Popularity, which is a comprehensive estimate of the current relative search popularity for each keyword. We obtain the data from iOS App Store, which means it is an official data that you could 100% rely on. The range is from 0 to 100 (search popularity from low to high). If search popularity data is not available, we will perform a weighted evaluation based on Google Search data.

*When the Popularity is between 0 ~ 5

We believe that this keyword will hardly be searched by users in the store, so we can completely ignore these keywords.

*When the Popularity is between 6 ~ 29

We believe that this keyword will be searched by users out of some need, but there are not many. When the keywords is highly matched with your product, you can choose it appropriately.

*When the Popularity is between 30 ~ 69

We believe that this keyword will be frequently searched by users. There are often many keywords that are not highly competitive, which are very suitable for small-scale app developers to focus on.

*When the Popularity is between 70 ~ 100

We believe that this keyword is a popular keyword in the store and will be searched by users very frequently. Of course, we may also find keywords that are not too difficult, but most of them are relatively difficult. It is more suitable for the leader app.

3. Volume

The Volume of App Store keywords means Keyword Search Volume on App Store; the “Volume” of Google Play keywords means Keyword Search Volume on google.com. The data reflects the search popularity of keywords from another aspect.

*App Store

Volume of App Store is the official data provided by the store. Usually 4605 is the dividing line, Keywords volume below 4605 are usually not adopted by ASO marketers, and keywords volume above 4605 will be considered by ASO marketers. Usually, small app developers will consider using keywords in the 4605 to 7500 range. But it should be noted that this data App Store official has stopped updating since Feb 6th 2020, and this data will not change dynamically. Therefore, we recommend that ASO marketers: When measuring the popularity of keywords, pay more attention to Search Score.

*Google Play

Volume of Google Play is the search volume of google.com. Usually, marketers consider keywords with the Volume greater than 100K, while the small-scale app developers are advised to focus on keywords from 100K ~ 5M.

4. KD

Keyword Difficulty, It estimates how hard it will be to rank in the top 5 organic search results. The result is displayed from 0 to 100 (low difficulty to high). This data is based on the top 5 apps in the keyword search results, about the reviews and ratings, downloads, app, and keyword relevance, operating activity score, number of recent updates, etc. KD is the comprehensive difficulty calculated from the weighted average of these data scores.

*When the KD is between 0 ~ 29

We believe that the difficulty of keyword competition in this range is very low, and there is no need for the App to have a large user group. We highly recommend users to find potential (higher Search Score) keywords in this range. And the higher the KD, the lower the search keyword, the more obvious the effect of ASO.

*When the KD is between 30 ~ 69

We believe that the competitive difficulty of keywords in this range is medium, but it is not easy to enter the top five of search results. You need a user base. Recommend some powerful apps to choose keywords with huge search volume.

*When the KD is between 70 ~ 100

We believe that the competitive difficulty of keywords in this range is pretty difficult unless you are a leader app developer. Otherwise, it is not recommended that you spend a lot of energy optimizing keywords at this difficulty level.

5. Related & Head

Related means the number of search results returns when one searches in store, which represents the total number of APP applications displayed in the store when one types a keyword. Due to the store policy, the display limit is generally within 250.

Head means the number of header applications, which refers to the number of applications with more than 1000 comments in the total number of all relevant applications. We locate these apps as the header applications under the search results.

6. Suggested Keywords

When you have no ideas with choosing ASO keywords for your App, you might as well try Suggested Keywords. The Suggested Keyword function intelligently recommends potential hot keywords to you.

Suggestion theory: when you search for one keyword of interest, click the Suggested Keywords, and ASOTools will count the search results of the store with the currently typed words as the search content for you, then list the keywords with better displaying to users those applied by the top apps for you in order. With this theory, we automatically display the keyword selection of potential competitive products for your reference.

Ⅱ.How to do ASO analysis?

1. Always pay attention to the ASO keywords used by competitors

Firstly, look up the keywords you are interested in with ASO Keywords function to see if your competitors are using any of them as well. Let's take "games" as an example, we could see the top 10 Apps search results showing by store.

Meanwhile, Keywords Recommendation in Store would give you more ideas about ASO keywords.

Forensic Master is the 1st App currently, we could learn more data about it by clicking it, including App details, App analysis and what ASO keywords it using now.

Through observing, it is not difficult for us to find new inspiration and creativity. For example, the KD of the keyword "scary games" is 39 which is relatively lower than the others. The corresponding popularity and search volume are quite considerable in addition. So that we might choose it to bury in our keywords as well.

2. Draw on the advantages and avoid disadvantages

In the selection of keywords, it is very important to keep away from the words that are already famous, because in these fields, top manufacturers have been torn apart. If you are not confident in your strength, we advise you not to take the initiative to join the fight.

As shown in the figure above, three words are all related to "games". When you have to choose one from "free games" "no wifi games" “puzzle games”as your keyword, you must choose "free games". Basically, the Popularity and Search volume among these three keywords are almost the same. However, the KD 86 or 100 is much higher than 60. The higher it is, the more intense the competition is. We don't need to be involved in the competition of hot words, so we suggest you to choose "free games" instead of the other two.

For another instance, if we currently want to select a keyword related to shooting game, we find that the keyword KD of the two keywords in the above figure is both 100. If we insist on selecting one of them, we should choose "shooting games", because it is higher than the second in terms of Popularity and Search volume.