ASO: Keyword Research

1- What is ASO Keyword Research?

Per Hubspot, Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization SEO (or, in this context ASO).

Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

2- Benefits & Use Case

Building a solid keyword list by seriously conducting keyword research is very important, with many benefits.

Knowledge Benefits

• Give you an in-depth understanding of keywords & keywords groups that exists
• Understand market insights, industry insights & search behavior insights

Work Benefits

• A fundamental list of keyword ideas for long-term usage
• Instantly apply for the metadata writing
• Use for boost keyword ranking with agency

3- Tool

Apptweak

I recommend using Apptweak App Store Optimization (ASO) due to its big business scale and constant platform upgrades.

Apptweak helps us to do Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis & Performance Monitoring. Not only ASO, but it also allows you to get insightful data for the Apple Search Ads (ASA)

However, Apptweak has a big weakness is that, it can’t show the Live Ranking of Our Keywords. To cope with this, we have to go to App Stores, manually search the keyword and count the ranking of our app for that keyword.

I dislike this weakness a lot!!! [angry face]. But to be fair, not only Apptweak, other ASO tools face the same issue

4- Metrics

The image below shows an actual Apptweak keyword table of a project that my team managed.

You can find all metrics in the first row of this table. Let me give you the definition of each:

Metric	Definition
Vol.	The volume is an indicator between 5 and 100 that shows how popular a keyword is in terms of searches. The higher number, the more popular the keyword is
All Inst.	Estimated number of all the organic installs this keyword generates across the store in the selected country in the last 30 days (You should take this for reference only, the accuracy is not assured)
Diff.	The Difficulty is an indicator between 0 and 100 that shows the level of competition of a keyword. The higher the number, the higher the competition. A high Difficulty indicates that powerful apps rank in the top 10 search results, making it more difficult to rank high for the keyword.
Chance	Chance is an indicator between 0 and 100 that shows how likely your app will rank in the top 10 search results on a keyword. The more powerful your app, the higher the chance score and the easier it might be to rank in the top 10 of that term.
KEI	The KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index) is a score between 0 and 100 that indicates the visibility potential of this keyword for this app (the app you select for analysis). The KEI takes into account both the keyword Volume and the Chance score Keywords with high volume, and high Chance have a higher KEI and more potential to increase your app’s visibility
The rest 4 metrics	Showing the actual performance of your selected app. However, per my experience, just consider those as the reference as the data is not so accurate! Rank: The current ranking of this app for this keyword Growth: The ranking growth compared to yesterday Installs: The estimated 30-day organic installs of this app for this keyword Inst %: Formula = Installs / All Inst.

You should consider all metrics seriously, especially if you are new to ASO. However, when it comes to practical work of Keyword Research, I recommend you focus on only 2 primary metrics:

Vol.

You will understand the search demand of keywords to tailor your optimization strategy. If the volume is high, you can be visited by higher traffics. But if the volume is low, don’t underestimate the keyword because you can merge the low-volume keyword with the high-volume keyword to amplify the effectiveness.

Example: Low Volume: Trading Analysis High Volume: Forex Trading Combine: Forex Trading Analysis

All Inst.

This data helps you imagine the potential Install Volume that the keyword can bring in. Or in other words, this number shows users’ intention to install the app

I would pay more attention to keywords with higher “All Inst.”

5- Step-by-step Guide

The theory above is a good start. If you don’t understand something, please read it again and again, or ask me (Nemo) directly. Now, it’s time for a practical guide:

Recap: 3 Types Of Keywords

Before moving forwards, let’s differentiate 3 types of keywords

Keyword Type	Definition	Examples	Search Volume (Tendency)
Semantic (Root)	It’s the root keywords. Each semantic keyword covers each main topic that users may search for in the App Store. We use semantic keywords to define Short-tail keywords Keyword Length: 1 word as normal	Forex	High
Short-tail	They are the keywords that upgraded from the Semantic keywords. We use short-tail keywords to define long-tail keywords. Keyword Length: 2 words as normal	Forex Trading	Medium to High
Long-tail	They are the keywords that upgraded from the short-tail keywords. Keyword Length: From 3 words as normal	Forex Trading Broker Japan	Medium to Low

Combine relevant Semantic (Root) and Short-tail & Long-tail is a great hack to boost ranks for many keywords at the same time!

Step 1: Build Semantic Keyword List (or Semantic Dictionary)

Think of what people may search for to find the relevant app. Example, what a forex-trading-intent user search for?

Write your keyword ideas in 1 Google Sheet; any ideas can be precious for later steps.

To easier imagine, this is an example of Semantic Keyword List, prepared for a CFD Trading App, targeting the Indonesian Market

Semantic Keyword	Special Case You Should Aware
trade	3 variants of 1 Meaning
trading	3 variants of 1 Meaning
trader	3 variants of 1 Meaning
invest	**English Language
investasi	**Local Language (Indo)
investing
investor
forex
stocks
saham
crypto	3 variants by Typo
kripto	3 variants by Typo
krypto	3 variants by Typo
emas
logam
bonus
broker
demo
broker
beli
analysis

Step 2: Build a Short-tail Keyword List

At this step, please open Apptweak and leverage the Semantic Dictionary above to find Short-tail Keywords!

Guide in text

1- Open Apptweak, select “Keywords”

2- Choose “Keyword Table”

3- Choose “Generate Keywords”

4- Choose “Play Store Auto-Suggestions” or “App Store Auto-Suggestions”

5- Type the keyword (type Semantic Keyword for Step 2) & (type Short-tail Keyword for Step 3)

6- Click “Get Suggestions”

7- Click “Show more suggested hints”

8- Click all buttons “Analyze all” to import keywords to an online Keyword Table

9- Analyze the online Keyword Table, pick the good keywords and download CSV

10- Add the downloaded Keywords to your offline keywords table (or maybe in Google Sheets?)

11- Repeat for all other keywords in the list

Back to number 9, what are the criteria when picking keywords?

• Must be relevant
• Volume higher than 10
• Sometimes, all keywords are lower than 10 >> in this case, just pick the most relevant ones without caring about the volume
• Note: for short-tail keywords with low difficulty score >> treat them equal as long-tail keywords

Note: The procedure above can be applied for both Step 2: Build a Short-tail Keyword List and Step 3: Build a Long-tail Keyword List. Thus, I won’t repeat it in the section below.

Step 3: Build a Long-tail Keyword List

Following the same procedure step 2, but you are going to explore Long-tail Keywords by using Short-tail Keywords

Keyword Picking Requirements:

+ Be relevant & correctly contain the short-tail keywords

+ Low difficulty score – High chance score – The highest volume. Be flexible at this step, don’t be a perfectionist

+ Pick around 5 long-tail keywords per each short-tail keyword

Then, download the CSV and insert to the keyword table as Step 2.

Step 4: Research for Other Languages, repeat step 1 to step 3

You have done the keyword research for 1 language. Let’s do it again for other languages. The keyword table of 1 country can’t be applied for others, even they use the same language (such as English). Why? Because search behaviors are different between countries, regardless the same language being used

Once again, please do this task carefully for a strong initial foundation & long-term usage.

Before ending

In the next lesson, you will be trained on how to select keywords for Metadata

The selected keywords should be qualified:

• As high search volume as possible
• Keywords that can be combined and support each other to up-rank

Let’s read the full content in the following article then!