Post updated August 14, 2015.
“He said true things, but called them by wrong names.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You’ve just finished your app.
AWESOME!
Sigh of relief…
Champagne…
Wooooooo party time!
“……what do you mean publishing?”
Yes, iPhone app publishing – the process of moving your delicious little Xcode archive into the App store for the world to consume.
There are many parts and it used to be that the name and keywords were the biggest parts of the equation. This is known as App Store Optimization or ASO.
Things have since evolved with Apple’s algorithm and new features like video previews have emerged. Apple looks at multiple areas when ranking an app.
Downloads, reviews and user engagement are just a few.
To learn how to optimize all the parts of your app’s metadata and the other ranking factors, be sure to take our complete ASO course.
However, we are here to talk about choosing the right app store keywords, so let’s dig into that one aspect of ASO. It is the closest you will get to SEO in the app world, so listen up…
Choosing good keywords can make a big difference, as I learned earlier.
To see 15 successful case studies, be sure to read this post.
Side note: this post is a direct result from talking to the people who decide which apps are featured in the Apple store, in the email newsletters, etc. I was lucky enough to sit down with them and this is EXACTLY what they told me….so you can rest assured that this is coming straight from the horse’s mouth (at least I assume they would tell me the truth, haha).
Just in case there are some beginners out there – the Name is the Title of the app, the keywords are input on the back side (users never see them).
Here’s how it looks in iTunes Connect (the dashboard where you upload everything).
Whoops – spelled Categories wrong…. 🙂
Why You Need to Select the Right App Store Keywords and Title
Your app will be useless if it cannot be found through app store keywords.
All that hard work for nothing.
If you have some money to spend on ads, then you will be able to generate some downloads that way. But once you stop paying for ads, your downloads will dry up shortly afterwards.
Having the right title and keywords can give you a steady flow of free organic App Store search traffic. Even if you pay for ads, why not get some downloads for free too?
Considering that the App Store only allows your app to be searched through its name, keywords and your company name, it is of utmost importance that you pick a name and keywords that are search engine optimized to make sure that your app is visible in App Store searches.
iTunes Keywords
Here are some helpful tips in picking keywords for your app.
Character Limit
The keywords field in iTunes Connect is limited to 100 characters so make sure to maximize this. The more app store keywords you can include, the more likely your app is to be found in search.
Sensor Tower released a study that showed that there is a correlation between number of keywords and downloads. Their platform also as a handy character counter, but you can also use Word or another word processor to count your characters.
Remember to put a comma between each individual word and remove all spaces, to maximize the field.
Singular or Plural?
This is a common question.
[tweet_box design=”default”]Don’t waste space by repeating both the plural and singular versions of App Store keywords.[/tweet_box]
You will generally get credit for both anyway, according to Apple’s algorithm (if it is just a matter of adding a “s”).
So do your keyword research and find out which version of the word has less competition or you have a better chance of ranking for.
For example, here is the keyword research for a finance app. I used Mobile Action to check how likely the app I am researching is to rank in the top 10 for each version of the keyword.
As you can see, there is a significantly better chance of ranking for the plural “traders,” so that is the version I would use.
If you want to get two months of the Premium version of Mobile Action ($998 value), be sure to join Bluecloud Select.
Repeating Keywords
Do not repeat keywords. Some new app developers think that repeating a keyword will put more emphasis on that keyword.
You are just wasting keyword space by repeating keywords. Your app may even get rejected for keyword spamming.
In addition, don’t include your company name and your app name in your keywords since you are already searchable in the App Store with these terms.
Research Your Competition
Do your homework by trying out what search results will come out with your chosen keywords. This will inform you of the competition that you are up against.
Avoid Overly Used App Keywords
Choose as many keywords as possible but avoid overly used ones. When you use generalized keywords, several results will come out and your app might get lost in that long list.
The fewer apps using similar keywords would mean less competition in search engine results and a higher chance for your app to be found.
TIP: Its important to pick keywords that help define your app, but don’t pick keywords that will clash with the masses. Keywords should be searchable, but also have low competition.
Try longtail keywords, which are multi-word phrases people may search for.
Download Relevance is Essential
Relevant keywords are essential. While extremely unique keywords seem interesting, they won’t help your app unless they are relevant.
Unrelated keywords can affect your search relevancy in the App Store as it can lower your search engine ranking in your app’s genre.
Apple does not allow keywords that are offensive or refer to other products or trademarks. Your app can be rejected if you use these prohibited terms.
Localization
If your app is available in several languages, make sure to submit keywords covering these languages to make your app searchable in those other places too.
Double Check Your App Keywords
Aim for perfection in optimization and spelling. You can only edit your keywords when you upload a new version or when your app is rejected.
Be sure to get it right the first time.
Don’t Guess
Use programs like Google’s AdWords keyword planner, Sensor Tower, Mobile Action, and AppCodes to identify and compare the popularity of specific keywords. It will help you get an idea of what people look for online in relation to the subject matter of your app.
Yeah, there is a lot you need to remember with keywords. For more in-depth tutorials on how to choose the right keywords, check out our ASO course.
App Title
Of course your app’s name is important because that’s how your app will be known. Here are a number of things you need to bear in mind when brainstorming for that perfect app name:
Keep it Short
This is so it can be displayed in the iOS home screen and in the App Store search results without being truncated. A short name will also allow you to add a descriptive caption of your app to the title.
People used create lengthy titles crammed with keywords, but Apple has caught on. Make your titles unique and to the point.
Put Your App Name First
When you add a descriptive caption to your app name, make sure that your app name comes first. Separate the caption from the app name with a hyphen or colon. The example Above is Alpha Combat – Defend Your Country.
Make sure that the caption describes your app’s core functionality. It should be catchy and interesting too. This would be greatly helpful for users who do not have the time and patience to read lengthy descriptions about your app.
When coming up with a description caption, make sure to use related keywords to help boost your ranking in the search results.
Proofread (or Suffer the Embarrassment)
Like your keywords, your app’s name is also subject to Apple’s review and you cannot change it anytime you want (only if you release an update). Thus, make sure that there are no typos, it is search engine optimized and uses relevant words.
If you make a mistake, it could be out there hanging in the wind for awhile. 🙂
Other Naming Considerations
Never use offensive terms or those that refer to celebrities, other products or registered trademarks as these can lead to the rejection or flagging down of your app.
Remember, you can only revise your app name and description when you submit a new app binary version for review or when you need to resubmit your app because it was rejected.
Use your app name and caption as marketing extensions. Coupled with search engine optimized keywords, these will definitely increase your chances of being found on the App Store.
Where to Get Keyword Ideas
Now the question becomes, where do you get new app store keyword ideas? Here are a few great places…
- Google Keyword Planner – Keyword ideas from the web
- Review Mining – Look at keywords that are used in reviews of similar apps
- Spy on competitor keywords – Find similar apps and see what hot keywords they are using
- Look at titles of successful apps – How do you know which apps are successful? Look at their estimated downloads and revenue.
Other Things to Consider
Before I end this post, there are three more things that you need to be aware of.
The Launch Boost
Apple will typically give new apps a boost right after launch. This means that you will rank higher for your keywords for the first 7 days after your launch.
You can play this a couple of different ways. First, you can try to rank for keywords that are slightly harder to see if you can get a boost from those keywords.
Second, you can just go for keywords that you have a high probability of ranking for and not even worry about the boost. This is method I prefer.
Apple Deletes Keywords
If you are not ranking for the keywords that you put into your keyword field, double check it after your launch. Apple reviewers delete keywords that think are copyright infringement or are not related to your app…without telling you.
Your app can get approved, but they reserve the right to remove keywords before launch. I’ve seen cases where 80% of the keywords were deleted.
It really is a black box and is really left up to chance. If the reviewer that you have that day is having a bad day, you might get a bunch of your keywords deleted.
So it is your job to check!
This is a Marathon
A lot of new app developers think that they can set their keywords once and that’s it.
Oh no!
You need to continually track and update your keywords. Not in the top 10 for a keyword?
Throw it out and find another!
After some experience, you will get a feel for which keywords you can rank well for and it will become a lot easier.
Conclusion
Hope this helps! If you have had any other experiences or insights with keywords, names, descriptions, or ASO, please leave a comment so that everyone can hear about it.
If you’d like to hear more about choosing keywords and app marketing, join Bluecloud Select or take our ASO course.
To learn how to turn your current idea for an app into a business, be sure to download our free kit.
Talk to you soon!
Carter
Great post!
I think we should use as many keywords as Apple allowed.
In my experience, i’m using mistypo keywords and other language keyword too in order to get in the search result when someone mistype our real keyword.
For example, i use bible, byble, biblo, bibla, etc as my keyword for Dual Bible app.
And i get some downloads from people who mistyped bible.
Related to your post, i think you can add: combet, combad, kombat, airplen, erplen, etc as an additional keywords.
Not guruing, just sharing.
I knew that you have more experience than me 😉
Thanks!
Success for you.
Carter,
Enjoyed this article, along with you Keyword Conclusions- Exact Matches For Success.
Submitting my first update in a moment. I describe my app to others as, “Instagram and Someecards had a child.” In the interest of keywords should I use, “some, e, cards” to appear with Someecards? Or will that get my update rejected?
Trying to figure out where the line is.
-Chad
Hey Chad,
It won’t get rejected, but they’ll delete Trademarked keywords in the review process. If something is flagged about your keywords, etc, they’ll do a “Metadata Rejected” review which means all you have to do is update your meta data and not go through the whole process again.
Check out Appcod.es for some keyword ideas – so sweet.
Carter
Carter,
Thanks for the AppCod.ed direction. Learning and incorporating some of that now.
-Chad
how i will localize my apps keywords?there are no directions anywhere
Does this help? http://www.bluecloudsolutions.com/blog/know-app-localization-20-minutes/
Hi there! Thanks for the informative article. I’m still curious about something though — I manage a suite of business plan apps and am working on optimizing their keywords. If the app’s name is “Business Plan Premier” and I want to have “small business” as a keyword, can I just use “small” and assume that the search will pull “business” from the name of the app?
That would save me a lot of characters that I could use for another keyword!
Yes – correct. Think of Google search as a permutation which dictates a linear match. X->Y->Z
Apple’s search is a combination, meaning any combination of X,Y,Z can work. So, you’re right on.
Carter
That’s great news! Thank you for your help!
Hi,
You can also give a try to iOS Keywords for Mac.
Thanks
Hi Carter,
I have a couple questions about one of the statements above:
“Considering that the App Store only allows your app to be searched through its name, keywords and your company name, it is of utmost importance that you pick a name and keywords that are search engine optimized to make sure that your app is visible in App Store searches.”
1. When you say “keywords”, do you mean include only the keywords placed within the ‘Keyword’ field, or also keywords used in the ‘Description’ field?
I suspect Apple is using latent semantic indexing to return results for related terms, curious to hear your thoughts?
2. Do you think the quantity and quality (1-5* scale) of user reviews affects how apps are ranked within the App Store?
Thanks,
Allie
Hey Allie,
1. Keywords that will be placed in the keywords section, but also the title and potentially the Publisher name. As of now, those are the three searchable fields in terms of optimization.
2. As of now, it seems that ratings affect search rankings but not chart rankings. Looks like they are two differing algorithms.
Check out David Janner’s stuff at makeappmag.com – he knows this stuff better than anyone.
Carter
Thanks Carter! I will check out David Janner’s site too. Appreciate your help.
Is there any way to tell how many times a term is searched in the app store? Or i the only way to tell by using google adwords? Thanks for the excellent post
Hey Carter, so will the method of “putting your competition name in your keywords” still works?
I’m planning the keywords for my game which is some sort of shooting games like Counter Strike. Do you have any suggestions? :). I’ve been following your blog for 2 days now. Thank you for all the information 😀
Hey Dennis,
Hard to say. These days they’re getting more strict about doing stuff like that. I’d stay away from big brand names like Zynga or Supercell, etc because they’re going to remove them.
Check out appstorerankings.net – great way to get ideas.
Carter
This has been mega-helpful. A huge thank you.
If you used names of other apps in the keywords section will they be rejected? Or in my case which weren’t rejected but I believe they just unranked them. Is that the right way to say it? I used keywords such as instagram, facebook, hipstamatic in a couple of our apps but when I go search through with those keywords my apps don’ts appear. I know both facebook and instagram have very high competition but for something like hipstamatic it doesn’t but the apps don’t appear for any of these keywords. Does Apple derank for any such keywords and your keywords allotment is wasted? Any ideas or suggestions? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the suggestions, especially about app description. I’ve had a lot of luck making short descriptions that I think convert the users well — the most important thing to consider is how many characters show up because on the iPhone only a small portion shows up. Also like Carter, I’d like to strongly recommend App Store Rankings as the keyword optimization tool I’ve had great experiences with it.
Thanks,
Stephan
@sebastian once i used another apps name in my keyword .i got a proprietary copyright mail from the games company 😛 .they said to change the keywords!
I currently have an app ‘waiting for review’ at the itunes app store. It appears that I still have the ability to change the key words. Is this the case? If I change the key words, will this mess up my review? Thank you.
you can change your keywords as long as the status is “waiting for review”. when the app status is “in review” you cannot change keyword.but after in review if your app is metadata rejected then you can again change your keyword
Hi Carter,
Thanks for these extra helpful tips!
I don’t have a mac or an iphone (I’m a google fan) but working on writing keywords for both google play and the app store.
1. Do you know how I can search the itunes web site to check out different word results.
2. Do you have any tips of how to come up with key words for google play and the amazon market? How many characters?
Thanks!
Anna
Hi there carter,
Very helpful tips here in selecting keywords to target. We are very close in launching our app and we haven’t figure out what keywords to target. Do you have any idea what are the terms in-order for someone to review our app? We are looking for testers/reviewers prior to releasing the app. It’s called Priveyo an social media privacy app.
hello carter, this is very valuable article . for optimize the keyword this article will definitely help me.
as always awesome stuff thanks for sharing working on my first game project. so excited!
I was looking sensortower for quiz gameapp.
Looks like all succesfull apps get the same common keywords as ‘photos”, “word”,”pic”,”guess”, etc
So is it really a good spy tool, because it looks strange to me, every apps get the same words, when everybody say to avoid too common keywords.
And by the way, the biggest mystery for me is “use single word or phrase?”
exemple: 1) guess,word 2) guess word
Dont know whats the best way.
Hello,
I have checked Google adwords and keywords like sleep and sleeping both have a high search number, but to save space can I just add “sleeping” to my keyword list and App Store will include “sleep” in the search result or should I add both.
Thanks for your help.
It’s good practice to follow traditional SEO practices for apps too, just consider you apps page on the android market or on iTunes being same as you consider for web, so all the SEO strategies like link building, on-page optimization and etc work effectively. It’s better to research on some useful mobile app metrics before we go on entitling the app and submitting the keywords or even planning to develop the next app. @Bellamine , Google and other search engines are very smart about synonyms, days are gone when people used to care about Exact Match Keywords; using exact match even penalizes you by Google in many areas of SEO and it’s not recommended these days. Even the Keyword Planner which used to be Adwords keyword tool has no option for exact match now. Try searching for both “sleep” and “sleeping” in Google, you will see almost same results for both.
Our app is call “Architect (Create an App) and when you type in “Create an app” we don’t even appear and if you type “Architect” we appear in like 7th position. We have that same phrase on the keywords and also in the Description. I still don’t get it how can Apple display other apps in front of us just because they have the words “app” “an” and “create” in their description but don’t give weight or importance to the sequence of the words. I checked the results when I put “create an app” and I even get Disney game apps just because the 3 words are somewhere in the description. That is not right. Can someone please explain to me what can we do to get in front of those non related apps?
After I initially left a comment I appear to have clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now every time a comment is added
I recieve four emails with the exact same comment.
Is there an easy method you can remove me from that service?
Kudos!
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I think what you published made a bunch of sense. However, consider this, what if you aded a little information? I am
not saying your information is not good, however what if you added something that grabbed people’s attention? I mean App Store Keywords – How To
Choose The Right Teerms is a little vanilla. You could glance at Yahoo’s front page and see how they create news headlines
to grab viewers interested. You might add a related video orr a related picc or two to get readers interested about everything’ve written. Just my opinion, it might bring your posts
a little livelier.
Dear Carter,
A little suggestion:
Make all of us App Flipping Program Members very happy…and comemorating your new site design… posting for us as next the code of the month the souce code of 20 LINE SLOT MACHINE !!!!
🙂
Thank you so much for sharing a great and informative psot. You ahve summrised all about to choose the keywords.
Hi Carter Thomas,
This is my first visit to your blog and your post is just awesome. I think app keywords position should be in app title, review and description. In ASO part, there is app need highly relevant keywords. Highly relevant keywords lead to conversions!!
Thanks
Hi Carter – thx a bunch for the great info. We have not yet incorporated as a business. After reading that the Business field is indexable, I’m wondering if we should keyword load our Business Name with keywords before we get our LLC license.
1. Does keyword overlap between the 3 searchable fields increase search standings?
2. How important is a business name when releasing unrelated Apps?
I only planned to release 1 app, but now we have a model we can repurpose for other types of un-related content.
@BenG – Answers:
1. Not really. There is little impact to repeat keywords now
2. Not that important in terms of ranking for keywords now
Somebody know another web site for keywords, because appstoreranking.net is out.
@Roberson – go to https://sensortower.com/
Saved as a favorite, I like your web site!|
Hello Carter, After reading your article I have learned a new thing and by applying your method I’ll get more blog reader. thanks for this great post.
Hello Carter, your articles are more than helpful and I red it all 🙂
I am trying to get access to your recommendations for keywords searching tools, etc. AppCode.es, Sensortower.com, Searchman.com.. I do not know what is the problem, these days I am in China and have a lot of problems with Restrictions and Vpn’s. Only thing that I found out that works is Keywordtool.io but for relevant information you need to pay premium account. Any new recommendation?
Hey Nebojsa – Are you a Bluecloud Select member? If yes, you’ll get a 2 month free trial for Mobile Action ($499/mo regularly). That might be a good place to start.
How come I dont see keyword slot in my iTunes Connect for my app?
keyword are very good in content and can help you very good