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Avoid These Common ASO Mistakes
August 12th, 2017
by Anh Nguyen
COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc
Developers that have an app on the App Store or Google Play Store need to use App Store Optimization (ASO) as a tool to market their apps. As developers create their ASO strategy, it’s imperative that ASO best practices are utilized to maximize visibility. Before developers start utilizing ASO, they need to avoid some common ASO mistakes to boost their success.
1. Not understanding ASO’s impact
Having an ASO strategy is crucial in today’s competitive market, but it is still an underrated and misunderstood tool. Ultimately, it helps apps gain more visibility, especially for user searches. ASO helps bring your app closer to the top of relevant search results and encourages users to stop scrolling and take a closer look.
2. Not understanding your audience
A key aspect of ASO is that it recognizes how different users search on the app stores. Developers need to understand who their target audience is to create the most effective ASO strategy. If developers accurately target a specific audience using ASO, then they are more likely to direct the right users to their app. Not understanding their app’s audience is a common pitfall that needs to be avoided at all costs.
3. Keyword stuffing
While many developers want their app to index well and build relevancy for keywords, if they pack too many keywords in a description, it can backfire and diminish their relevancy. Keyword stuffing is a “black hat” approach to ASO, which can lead to being rejected by the App Store or Google Play for keyword stuffing. In addition to possible rejection, keyword stuffing reads unnaturally and can discourage users from downloading an app.
4. Using the same ASO across platforms
Developers need to adapt their ASO to each platform because they index apps differently. Apple indexes an app by first looking at the app’s keywords, then goes through its metadata to determine which keywords are relevant to the app. Google Play, however, crawls through an app’s metadata to determine which words and phrases are relevant to an app. Developers should create feature-forward descriptions that utilize bullet points and straight forward language. It is important to use high-volume keywords naturally to not only address core features, but to help the app build relevancy.
5. Not monitoring ratings and reviews
A bad review isn’t the end of the world, but it does need to be taken care of. Developers can respond to poor reviews and engage with unhappy users to resolve any issue before it escalates. Responding to users can encourage them to change their negative rating into a positive one.
6. Not maintaining an ASO strategy
ASO is not a one-time thing. User trends are constantly changing, as does having a good ASO strategy. As users change how they search for apps, and the app stores release new pieces of metadata, you need to stay on top of your ASO strategy to maximize their visibility.
Key Takeaways
It’s critical to avoid these common ASO mistakes to maximize visibility in the app stores. Before developers get started, they need to learn about ASO and how it can affect their app’s performance.
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