- 2 stores
- different ranking rules
- Installs
- the dominant factor
- Creative
- biggest conversion lever
App Store Optimization
The App Store and Play Store are search engines with their own algorithms. Most brands optimise heavily for Google and ignore the two places their users actually download from.
- Important
- Do not apply one playbook to both.
The two stores work differently
Apple uses a dedicated keyword field that users never see, weights the title heavily, and does not index your description. Google Play does index the description, has no separate keyword field, and behaves more like conventional web search.
So the same app needs genuinely different metadata in each store. Copying your Apple keyword strategy into Play wastes the description; copying your Play description approach into Apple ignores the field that matters most.
Both weight install velocity and retention heavily, which creates a compounding effect: ranking drives installs, installs drive ranking. Breaking into that loop is the hard part, and it is where creative testing earns its cost.
- 8 areas
- One body of work, not a menu.
What’s included
Keyword research per store
Store-specific research, since search behaviour inside an app store differs substantially from web search for the same product.
Title and subtitle optimisation
The highest-weighted fields, with the character constraints that make them genuinely difficult.
Apple keyword field
The invisible 100 characters that carry disproportionate weight, and the most commonly wasted asset in ASO.
Play Store description
Written for indexing as well as for reading, which are different briefs.
Creative testing
Icon, screenshots and preview video — the largest lever on store conversion rate, testable natively in both stores.
Review and rating strategy
Prompting at the right moment in the user journey rather than on first launch, which is where most apps ask and lose.
Localisation
Store listings localised per market, which frequently produces the largest available gain for apps with international users.
Competitive tracking
Monitoring competitor metadata and creative changes, since store rankings are relative.
- Common questions
- Asked on most first calls.
Questions
How long does ASO take to work?
Metadata changes can register within days, faster than web SEO. Ranking gains that depend on install velocity build over weeks and compound.
Do we need paid installs to rank?
Not necessarily, though paid acquisition can help break into the install-velocity loop. We would rather fix conversion rate first, since more installs from existing traffic is cheaper than buying new traffic.
How much difference does the icon make?
Frequently more than the metadata. Store conversion rate is where most apps lose users, and icon and first screenshot dominate that decision.
Should we localise the listing?
If you have meaningful users in other markets, it is usually the highest-return work available. Translated store listings are one of the few places machine translation is acceptable as a starting point.
Does web SEO help our app?
Somewhat — app store pages rank in web search, and a strong brand presence drives branded store searches. But they are separate disciplines and one does not substitute for the other.
- Related
- Often scoped alongside this.
Related services
Mobile App Marketing
Install campaigns and retention, measured to activation.
App Conversion Optimization
The gap between people who see your app and people who use it.
Mobile Advertising
In-app and mobile web inventory with post-install measurement.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Testing on high-traffic templates, prioritised by revenue.
- Next step
- We look at your site before the call.
Start with a free audit
An automated crawl plus a 30-minute walkthrough of what we can see from outside your site. If what you need isn’t something we do well, we’ll tell you.