How to Keyword Research for Mobile Apps

21 May How to Keyword Research for Mobile Apps

When doing ASO and ranking the mobile apps in App Store/ Google Play Store, keyword research plays an important role. If you aware of SEO, you know how much keyword research is important in the process of ranking the web page in the google. In the case of mobile apps and ASO, basics remain same except the backlinks and off page part.

Keyword research for application is the very important part when writing app store listing. But, as in SEO, you will find many resources and tools for keyword research including Google’s own tool – Google Keyword Planner, you will not find such tools for app stores. App stores are search engines for apps uploaded by developers and works similar to search engines in many ways. It counts some parameters to rank apps.

App title and description are the only places from where the app store algorithm can get text-based content to see the relevancy of app and according to the content; it ranks the app on found keywords. Hence, you will need some keyword estimate before writing app title and app description. If you are not familiar with ASO, you can check this post on the importance of ASO in mobile app marketing.

In the market, some tools give you estimated searches of keywords like app Annie. It is a paid tool and cost you a lot to use all the app feature. Its free version will provide very fewer features and data. So we will need to find some way to get estimated search volumes so our app can get high organic installs.

Let’s see how you can do keyword research for mobile apps and get more organic traffic from play store…

1. Play store’s autosuggestion

Like search engine Google, Google play store also provide autofill of your query. You can start writing your keyword and it will suggest you exact and other long tail keywords that are people mostly searched. You will get a fair idea about the popularity of any keyword by this method. Also, don’t forget to analyze the top ranking app’s total installs to get a clear idea to install potentially.

If the app is new, don’t target high competitive keywords with huge volume like “dating”, “games”, etc. There are already many big apps with millions of installs ranking on these keywords and it will be too difficult to rank on this type of keywords. Instead, find lower hanging fruits. Find long tail keywords and craft your app description around it so you can get easy starter installs.

2. Keyword volume estimate from the search engine data

We can use Google Keyword Planner or any other SEO tool to get search volume of any keywords in Google. We can use this data smartly to get some keyword volume estimation for our app in the Google play store. (In this post, we are going to focus on Google play store).

As per the research, people started using the internet on mobile devices compared to the computer. People are shifting to mobile browsing from traditional desktop surfing. Google also started shifting their algorithm to the mobile-focused version of websites to rank them in SERP.

If you have googled any app related term, like “wallpaper”, you will find app icon pack in search results. It will show you a bunch of app icons ranking in play store and users can browse that app list from the search results and install it easily. This is an excellent opportunity to get organic installs directly from the Google search. If you can rank your app in this “app pack”, you will get a good amount of organic installs directly.

Check your targeted keyword in Google’s mobile search; if you find the “app pack” listing in the page, this is mobile app keyword. Now check its search volume in any tool like Google keyword planner or KWfinder. You will get enough idea about the keyword’s estimated reach.

App marketing being saturated day by day with huge competition in each category of app. And you will find hundreds of apps having the same features. However, with unique features that add value, users will definitely reward the app.