Source
Sourcehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0mRQ9TtIs0
Readwise URLhttps://read.readwise.io/read/01kv42rqrcd9jqw7kbvanj27gz
Readwise ID01kv42rqrcd9jqw7kbvanj27gz
Date2023-07-07
AuthorApp Masters
Categoryvideo
Cover imagehttps://i.ytimg.com/vi/j0mRQ9TtIs0/sddefault.jpg?v=64a55b39

What is up App Nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com. And we’re going to talk today all about the your favorite topic and mine, too, App Store Optimization. It’s what most

people know us for. And so, here to break it all down is a friend that I’ve known for quite some time. We had some dinner back in WWDC of 2016, and he’s going to break it all down, especially if you’ve got no downloads, what should your ASO strategy be? So, without further ado, let’s bring in Ariel from Appfigures.

Hello. Hey Ariel, welcome to the show. Hey, happy to be here. Man, 2016, I was trying to run back in my mind to think when was that steak dinner, and I couldn’t remember. It just It’s been so long. It’s the only WWDC I’ve been to, and then I’ve got a jacket with 2016 on the back. We’ve got a pretty good crowd here already. What’s up, Joe? David’s here, as well. Want to say hi to Ricardo, got

to talk to him. Aruna, Nurex, Dean. How’s it going, Miguel? Friday’s with Fam, in case you didn’t know, Ariel is Friday’s with Appmasters.com. And then, Catone, Adrian, Julio. This is going to be a good one. It is going to be a good one. Definitely. I’m pumped. Ariel, let’s break it down because I think this is one of our favorite topics to talk about, too, and you do a great live stream. So, go check out appfigures.com, but I want to really break down like, all right Ariel, for the developer out there who might have

just launched their app or is getting no download, what should our ASO strategy be? All righty, so well, let’s start at the beginning. I think the beginning is what is app store optimization? Obviously, everyone knows this, right? Like everyone knows what app store optimization is, but I get so many questions where people don’t know the basics. So I’ll give you the basics in a gist. And if you hate this, let me know in the comments that I should move forward into the more advanced stuff. Just jump in. So a A lot of people ask me what is app store optimization and I say very easy, it’s a way to tell Apple and Google what

your app does. That’s at the end of the day what it is. It’s not manipulating the algorithm. It’s not doing anything else. It’s just telling them what your app does because they have no idea. But how do you do that? That’s really the question. And that goes for apps with the zero of that new downloads, a thousand new downloads, a million new downloads, all of them need to tell the algorithm what the apps do do do does do because and for games too. Because at the end of the day, you want to appear in search results. If you think about it, Apple and Google spend so much money, so much effort to driving people

into the app store. They say, there’s an app for that. And the only way to find those apps for the most part is through search. Apple used to have this figure of 80 something percent of their site of traffic of downloads coming from search. They took it down for some reason, but it was that high. So you use ASO to tell the app stores what your app does and then they rank you in search results. And that’s pretty much it. But if if your app does not have downloads. If your app has downloads, that’s one thing. And misconception, downloads don’t actually

lead to better ASO, to better ranks. That’s not a thing that happens, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, unfortunately, depends which side of the download scale you’re on. But what it is is it’s all about where and how you use keywords because again, we’re telling the algorithm what they what it should know about your app or game. And And we’re also using ratings as the currency. More ratings is more better for the algorithm. So, that’s kind of the basics. Kind of the basics.

But, let’s talk about no downloads cuz I I know that’s a topic everyone wants to talk about and I’m sure we’ll get some more questions in the chat. So, um feel free to ask questions as they come up. The idea behind no downloads is is kind of simple. So, if you need keywords to rank, keywords to be included in search results, that you can do without any downloads. You don’t need any sort of ratings, any sort of downloads to be just considered to be ranked. The only problem is without downloads you’re not going to get ratings and without ratings

you’re not going to get up high in the search results. So, what you’ll do if you can’t do that, you got to reverse that. You got to aim low. That’s really where you begin and you you got to build up that momentum. So, if you think about it, ratings or if we talk about it, ratings are the currency. So, if you did your keyword research correctly and you did your keyword optimization correctly, meaning you found the keywords where you can compete that are relevant and are as popular as you can actually get, and then you use them properly in the name and the subtitle and the keyword list and the

short description, you optimize your long description on Google Play, and use tools and you did it with actual data, then you should be well positioned. Now, all you really need to do is you need to start small. Start small and grow from there and grow from there and grow from there. And that’s what you really want to do. One of the biggest mistakes that I see is that developers just aim so high for the most popular keyword, competing with Instagram, for example. You’re just never going to win that way. And so, start low and go from there and um I think Steve, you can probably talk

about this a little bit as well. Yeah. Starting low is is not There’s no number for what is low. It really depends on your competition, on the keywords you’re going after. How do you approach this on on your end? You know, I was going to I was going to You’re the guest, my bro. So, I’m I’m going to let you go. Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it. The So, I like to start with at least 30 search score traffic area. And then we can kind of break it down with the keyword inspector that you have here. And so, let’s let’s try. You want to try

a keyword with me? Meditation? let’s do a keyword. Oh, yeah. You’re going for the big guns. I’m always going for meditation. I always pick on that. But, like, you know, what I try to do with this with meditation, and look, I’m on I should If you subscribe to it, you’ll see the popularity score, but you’ll see that like 60, it’s like super high. And so, I like to go a little bit deeper and then or like lower in the funnel and think about like deep breathing or paced breathing because number start low when

opponent of it’s a lot less crowded in that space because the big guys are all going after the keyword anyway. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, the the cool tool. So, this is keyword inspector in App Figures, and that’s actually one of my favorite tools because it gives you everything you need to know in a really easy way to see it and very very quickly, too. So, if you look at meditation, you can see the keyword that you can see the um the popularity score, which for some reason is not loading for

you. We’re going to fix that. But, you can also see I’ll I’ll bring it up on my side later, and we can take a look, but it shows you the popularity score. It also shows you the actual results, and it shows you their new ratings. And you’re not going to see new ratings anywhere else, not on the App Store or really anywhere else because the most important thing for Apple in this example is to show you the overall ratings. A million ratings is great. But, the ASO for ASO purposes, the algorithm actually looks at the last 30-ish days. So, you’re not going to see

that on the App Store. They have no incentive to show you that, but you need to see that, and that’s what you see in keyword inspector. So, I use it all the time for my keyword teardowns and really for everything else. I love it, man. Was there anything When you said low still, like was there anything else we should be focused on if we have no downloads? Is it just Should we try to run some Apple Search Ads, or should we do anything else beyond like going after these low competitions? We have it in our title and subtitle. But what else should we be doing, Ariel? So,

there’s a more that you can do on the organic side, but yes to App Store optimization to Apple Search Ads, and I saw that in the chat as well. So, let’s talk about what it means to find keyword opportunities, and then I’ll move on to other methods that are not really just about keywords. But Perfect. keyword opportunities, the way I see them at least, are keywords that are the algorithm decided to to rank some apps that don’t have the keywords in their name because they probably there aren’t that many apps that target that keyword. But the search volume or the popularity score is high-ish, and Steve, you said

  1. I really like 30. I think it’s a good number. If you can’t find a 30 in the keywords that you’re targeting, aim a little lower, that’s still okay. But if you find a 35 or 36 or 37, and that’s not a linear scale, so a 37 is more than two better than a 35. So, you want to aim just as high as possible where the apps are not targeting the keyword in their name, you can target it using your name, and you will actually do considerably considerably better. So, even if you have two ratings, maybe not two, maybe 20, but the top results have

a thousand, you still have the potential of ranking in the top five for a keyword if you are actually using it better than the competition. That’s a small trick. Not many people talk about it, and I think a lot of people don’t think about how important it is to use the name for keywords, which is mind-boggling in 2023. So, that’s usually where I start. If you aim for those 30s, oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, I just wanted to give an example, like deep breathing is the example. I don’t think it has that much traffic, okay? But I’m just using as an example. So, you’re saying like deep

breathing as an example, you can see the top five results are not using deep breathing. So, this gives us an opportunity if this was a small keyword we wanted to go after to go after that keyword and use it in our app title. Yeah, am I following along Craig Hackett? Okay. Exactly. I love it. So, it’s uh I’m trying to get you on the right plan so we can see all the data. I know. I emailed Frank too, dude. I figured that’s what you were doing. Yeah, I got him on Slack.

So, yeah, that’s exactly the idea. The idea is you find a keyword that someone else decided is not important enough for them, but it’s still getting a ton of searches. And you know what’s really cool about this? I was working with a big company, uh the BBC actually, they were on my live show a few maybe a year ago or so, and they were telling me how they found a keyword that their competitors were using that they weren’t using, but not because they couldn’t, not because it was too popular or anything like that, it’s because they just didn’t think about it, like a twist on a thing that their app does. I think it was a game. And they said as soon as

they used it, they saw an immediate increase in ranks. And only because they didn’t think about using it. But then they saw it in the tool, they saw it in the competitor keywords report, another tool that we have in App Figures for app store optimization. So, it’s one of those things where you can’t always think about all of the keywords because people have just infinite creativity and infinite intuition when it comes to how to search on the App Store. So, that’s why this works so well. There aren’t that many keyword opportunities, so it’s possible that for your niche if you’re doing something very specific,

you won’t find them. But I’ve been able to find keyword opportunities almost in every type of app that I’ve I’ve looked at or helped or worked with over the last few years. And I write about it all on Keyword Teardown, so it’s definitely possible. Where do you like to go? So, you I know you said your Keyword Inspector is one of your favorite tool. I’m a lot now. Is there any way where you try to like your favorite tool on App Figures to find these keyword opportunities? So, let me show you. Uh what we got? Let’s uh let’s go back to meditation. Okay. The keyword meditation in Keyword

Inspector. And then that highlights it in the list. You can see which apps are using which words. It’s actually really cool. You can see the competitiveness is really high. I like it like don’t even go for it. Yeah, exactly. I mean it’s meditation. Apple made an app for almost they even made an app for journaling which I think is very close to what this is going to be. So, yeah. Right. Um so now on the right-hand side you’ll see uh view in and then if you or compare in just above the table.

Let’s see the result. On the right-hand side. Oh, compare to. Yeah. And then go into keyword into competitor keywords. Right here? Compare Compare keywords? Okay. Compare keywords, yeah. And what that’s going to do when that opens up is that loading? It might just be on my end. Oh, there we go. We got it. I’ve never had a live stream where everything just worked fast. right? As soon as I turn off the camera everything is like super super smooth.

It could be my internet. Just it’s not going fast right now. Ah. So, what’s happening? Mhm. What’s happening here is now we’re taking the top five results from Keyword Inspector that we just saw and we’re throwing it into a lookup that will give us all the keywords from all of those apps together. Mhm. And what we do here, there we go, is here I like to find keyword gaps. So, imagine if I’m one of the apps in this list and if I’m not I can add my app very quickly. The what we just did was a shortcut. Right. I can now find all the keywords that my

competitors are ranking in that I’m not ranking in. And so if it’s possible that maybe a competitor came up with a much they just did a lot of research and found a clever novel way to find their app, I can now take it. Mhm. And you can do that. You can sort and you can filter. There are filters up top so you can filter for let’s say popularity of 30 plus. Right. I see that. Medium. Oh, that’s so great, dude. You did all the things so like we can say medium or low Mhm. then we can start really figuring

out Exactly. competitiveness. And then from here you can go back to the keyword inspector, check out the actual other results, see if you can maybe sneak in, see if they’re optimizing with the keyword in their name. And if all of that is really sexy, go for it. And that’s how you win with a with a a brand new app or an app that hasn’t had enough traction. It’s it’s a lot of work. You have to really put in the time. But when I say a lot of work, I mean like an hour. I don’t mean like 6

weeks. Yeah. And here’s the cool thing about this. Just got to know how to use the tools a little bit and once you use them, that’s it. You’re in business. So, what you would do from here is you’d actually track all the keywords that you like. That’s what I do. That’s my process. Mhm. And then I would put them into the keyword performance report and then you can see all the trends, especially if your app is ranked for them. And then after that, you can optimize for it, meaning put it in the name, hopefully in the name, or if you need to, the subtitle and the keyword list, push out that update and then those

trends will update and hopefully you’re doing a good job and just through the roof. And you’ll get an email when that stuff happens. I like it. I know past guest of mine, Rooted Anya, was talking about how she went after panic attack and she ranks really well for panic attack. And she said, “Look, it was that same strategy we talked about. Hey, going after smaller keyword but that’s less difficult. Only 136 apps show up for it, but it’s very targeted.” And what I found Ariel too is, you know, obviously meditation, mindfulness, all

around the panic attack, but if someone’s having a panic attack, they’re very likely to subscribe anyways. So, the deeper down the funnel that you go from a keyword perspective, we started with meditation, but panic attack is in here, the deeper the the lower you go, the smaller the keyword, the more the higher the intent as well. And I think it’s a great starting point for beginning developers. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I like it. Do you think that just keyword optimization alone is enough these days? Yes, and no, and maybe. So, the the yes

is I think if you take the time and you actually do it and you’re you have realistic expectations, you don’t expect overnight to be a success, um and you give it, you know, a few weeks, a few months, then you will do okay. But, it also isn’t and that’s where it’s critical to understand who your audience is. What do they want? How many other competitors do you have in that space? Are they well-known? Are they not? Are they nameless? And it’s just a matter of whoever shows up in search results, or are there very existing, very known, popular brands? And all those make it a

little bit more difficult because if you’re competing with a game, for example, there are a lot of games that are brandless. So, the first one that comes up in search results, Solitaire, for example, you’ll pick the first one. They all kind of look the same. They have the same colors for the icon. There’s not really a lot of variety. And the variety that they do have within the game, you’re not going to see until after you download it. So, the decision to download is not really based on any of the real features when it’s something like Solitaire. It just it’s too basic. So, for those, you really just need to show up first in search results. They’re

also extremely well optimized because of that. So, that’s going to make it a little bit more difficult to find those keyword opportunities and that’s where you would want to go and you would want to build that um ratings performance because ratings are the currency to app store optimization, especially on the App Store. Google Play is a lot more sophisticated, but on the App Store, that’s all you need to do in order to rank up. And I show that in my newsletter almost every week. Yeah. Now, this is great, dude. Is this the estimated downloads for Okay, for the entire app? I love how you just have

everything in one spot. You know, a lot of times we’re going back and forth, different things, like, oh, and certain tools won’t show you all this data, but you’re like, yo, here’s our estimated downloads, here’s the ad networks, so like you can see that this app, the salt Solitaire app, is getting about 53,000 downloads, but not to according to app figures, no paid ads going on. And then you can see the new ratings and all this other stuff too. Released 7 years ago, I love that. And this is I’ve been working with this

for so long, just doing app store optimization for so long, that’s exactly what I want to see. So that’s why it’s there. But there’s a column there, the DPR, and the DPR is a it’s a brand new column that we added not too long ago, super useful. So I started talking about ratings, and when it comes to ratings, you can’t really you shouldn’t buy ratings, obviously, that should never be a thing because you’ll get penalized for it potentially. But you’re all honest, I know that, so we’ll talk about how do you raise how do you grow ratings on your own. And that is a direct transfer from

downloads to ratings. It’s all about when you ask and how you ask, and that is a whole new type of a whole thing. We can do a whole live stream on it. But realistically, as long as you do that, that transfer, that ratio between downloads and ratings, that’s kind of like your power. What is your multiplier? And if you know your multiplier, you can track it over time and if you’re optimizing ratings, you can see that you’re doing better. But putting that aside, if you’re comparing yourself to competitors, you can tell

what one download will mean for you versus one download will mean for them. So if we’re going into that second stage of should we do Apple Search Ads? That’s the question everyone is asking me. And the answer is if you can afford it, sure. Why not? The idea there is everything is getting more expensive, and I did a live stream on this explaining how to do it without breaking the bank. But by default, when you just create your first Apple Search Ads campaign, you’re going to break the bank. Apple gives you all the settings that will just drain your bank account.

And all the defaults are just bad. They will give you the least amount of downloads and the most amount of money spent. Why do they do that? I don’t know, so we’re not going to talk about that. But realistically, they do give you all the options all the all the knobs and and things you can tweak in order to fix that. So, if you do that and you do that well, and you spend time optimizing for getting those ratings, that will give you an improvement when it comes to app store optimization because ideally, you wouldn’t run those Apple

Search Ad campaigns forever. Or, if you do, it’ll be at the point where they’re ROI positive, meaning you put in a dollar and you get two, or you get more than one. Now, that takes a little bit of time to get into, especially if it’s a brand new app and you’re still getting to know the audience and their use patterns. So, you kind of want the paid to fuel the organic. Give it what it needs to actually just rise in the charts, and then organic will continue to bring those downloads in with the no investment. So, if you have if you have tweaked your campaign so it doesn’t burn

you money, and you optimize your ratings, then it’s important to know how many downloads do you need to get more ratings than the competition. That’s where the DPR comes in. That was my whole rant about So, the DPR is the number of downloads you need to get a rating. Downloads per rating, DPR. I see. And so, you want that to be as low as possible. And I’ve seen really successful apps get as low as single digits, which is amazing. It doesn’t happen too often, though. But, most apps, especially the bigger apps, will because they have so many ratings kind of a naturally they don’t

even try. And that’s a good thing for you. So, if you see an app that has 128 for a DPR, that’s terrible. It means they need 120 downloads for one rating. So, if you do that or keyword dependent here? This is app dependent. So, Okay. So, you’re basing off this app, like, "Hey, they get Okay, the acceleration of So, maybe if it’s a low rating, maybe we should take a peek at this app and be like, “How are they asking for ratings?” They might be doing They’re probably doing something right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you can use a DPR if it’s very low to try to understand at

what point do they ask? Do they ask multiple times? Do they ask with the native pop-up? Do they pre-seed it with some other pop-up? There are a lot of cool things that you can gain just by looking at that number. And that’s a number that I’ve been using for I want to say a couple years now just in my writing and in my own analysis. And at some point it just it’s it’s sparked like, why don’t we put this in Keyword Inspector? So we did. This is really cool. Like you really did put in everything that I really want to see, too. Like it it is a really cool

I’ve I haven’t seen it like this and I just think this is This has everything that I’m I’m really looking for. Like sometimes I am looking for apps that have just recently launched in a certain category cuz I want to break down what they’re doing right, especially if I find that they’re obviously making pretty good money and they’ve got good downloads. So I’m like, what are they doing right? Like this is 2 years ago, okay? You know, like maybe I’ll try to find something that was a year ago. Like, oh, this is great. How they rank so high? You know, what are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? Yeah. And I should add that the DPR and really all the metrics in this table are

country-specific because ASO is also country-specific. So if we switch to any other country, you’re going to get different results, you’re going to get different ratings, you’re going to get a different DPR, and you’re going to get different downloads. I love it. This is great. Cool, man. Let’s get into some of the other questions that people have had. Uh right. MD says, “Hey, happy to see you guys together. Now at least I don’t have to watch two different live streams and do different videos. See you.”

It only took us 6 years to get here. I know. I know. I’m surprised we haven’t done this earlier. Sammy says, “Please share some tips to rank ChatGPT app without using ChatGPT because, you know, his app got because app got suspended on ChatGPT keyword. I think they’re allowing to you to use it now, but like, yeah.” So you can’t use You can’t use ChatGPT in your name, I’m pretty sure. And you can’t use ChatGPT as a single word. So it has to be two two two separate words. What I I get

this question far more than anyone would believe. There are so many ChatGPT apps. I looked at it a few months ago before the official ChatGPT app came out, and it was crazy. It was like 400 a week or something. It was just insane. Yes, I totally get why Apple would try to be a little bit more strict. And I talked to a bunch of people who made ChatGPT apps about their struggles, and some people who know people at Apple also struggled to get their app approved. The only trick that I have in my arsenal for this is split the keyword up. So, chat is not a

registered trademark. GPT is becoming a registered trademark, but I think you can still use it. So, just use it in your keyword list very in the beginning of your keyword list, chat {comma} GPT. And in most cases, that would work. I’ve seen instances of chat and GPT in the subtitle, and that worked. But, I it depends on, you know, when do you want this app to go out? Do you want to fight with Apple for a little bit potentially, or do you want to get Maybe you’ll get lucky? Or do you just want to have it and kind of be safe? Yeah, I love it.

Here, I’m going to show you. So, we have a case study on this. We been able to I just talked to the client yesterday. It was a ChatGPT app, and we’re making about $5,000 a month purely off of ASO. And it really talked to what we talked about earlier. I mean, is finding a more niche keyword beyond just ChatGPT. Look, you’re not going to beat these guys, you know? Full disclosure, we’re working with one of them, okay? I don’t want to tell you who. But, like, you’re not going to beat these guys. So, you’re going to have to

go into, you know, what I just did with the keyword inspector and then competitor keywords. It’s a great tool, and then just find the ones that are a little bit lower competition. Right here. So, like, you’re starting to find some, right? And so, that’s how I like to break it down. Is really trying to find And we can just do this, and Air Oel and Appfigures makes it really easy for us to just be like, “Okay, give me medium competitiveness, medium popularity.” and now we can just start looking through. So, ghostwriter, novel

writing, you know what I mean? These become interesting keywords, script writing, because these big guys, as you can see, are not paying attention to them. So, that’s how you start approaching these type of keywords and these ASO for ChatGPT apps. And I think you hit the nail right on the head. It’s ChatGPT is so cool, it’s so amazing, it’s so mind-blowing if if you’re into that sort of thing. And I’ve been using it from day one. I use it a ton every single day. But, I don’t use I don’t use ChatGPT. I get something out

of ChatGPT. I use it as a tool. It’s like a pen. I use it for writing. I don’t actually use it for writing because I don’t think it’s creative enough, but it’s kind of like a tool in that sense where the tool gives you something. So, if you think about keywords, think about what your tool can give you. Do you need movie suggestions? Do you need a recipe? Do you need something else? And then cater to it. Now, there’s a trick for app store optimization that will allow you to optimize for a lot of different keywords, more than the 160, 30 for the name, 30 for the subtitle, and 100 for

the keyword list for Apple, multiplied by 10. Do you know what I’m You know what I’m talking about, Steve. So, what what I like to do, especially with something like this, is if I was doing a ChatGPT app, I would optimize for all the AI ChatGPT, the normal stuff, the kind of the boring stuff at this point. It’s very difficult to optimize for as the main maybe the main way of uh for the main localization. And then I’m going to use other localizations. There are nine other localizations that Apple looks at when it comes to keywords in

the US. And I’m going to use those for very specific verticals. So, maybe one I’ll devote to food. Maybe it’s going to be food recipes and finding food recipes and researching food and dinner ideas and stuff like that. And then I’m going to take the same idea and I’m going to duplicate it into the next uh language on my list. There are nine. I think Russian is on it, French is on it, a whole bunch. So, I’m going to do one for movie suggestions, and I’m going to do one for writing, and I’m going to do one for all of those different things that you can get out of ChatGPT. And that’s how I would approach it. So,

you’re probably not going to get number one for ChatGPT, but if you can get top five for 50 other keywords or 30 other keywords that have some some popularity, boom, you’re in business. You don’t even have to compete with the people who who spend enough money on Apple Search Ads. And I’ve looked at those, too. They spend a lot of money on Apple Search Ads. Yeah, here’s what I just did, too, Sammy, was look at ChatGPT, look at the popular sort by pop most popular, and then what you can also do is you can fill you can filter off the competitiveness. So, this is a really

great tool to just really find new keywords. And now you can see like if do the big guys have it are they ranking for it? They’re so they’re if they’re not, they’re not paying attention to it. So, like Room GPT, I’ve no idea what that app is. But like, all right, you know, I don’t know what that is, but this gets me got down the road. So, you’re writing. Right? I saw one with songwriting. Mhm. AI Songwriter. So, there you go. Starting the niche. Yeah, exactly. And going back to what I was saying before

about if you don’t have all those downloads in the beginning, you just have to put in the effort. You just have to do this. You just have to look at I mean, you looked at it for what, a minute? And you already found a bunch of things. You look at it for 10 minutes, just imagine what would happen. And then you need to take the time and actually put it into your name and craft all these localizations and do all these things. But again, we’re talking maybe in 2 hours, not even, and you’re doing the work most other companies don’t even do it all. So, you already have a leg up. Yeah, I love it. Okay, let’s get through. yes to Apple Search Ads. I think if I don’t know if I fully answered that

question. Yeah. Why app ranking Why is my app ranking in the for keywords in 200 or 300? How do we How do we increase that? So, let’s say we’ve optimized it, had it in our title, had it in our subtitle, had in all these different localizations as well. So, to Ariel’s talking about, you know, the US App Store indexes nine different localizations. We’ve been using the Vietnamese one a lot. And if you have different titles, right? Have different titles in the Spanish Mexico and the Vietnamese, have different subtitles as well, really helps your keyword rankings. What else should we be

doing, Ariel? So, now that we have them in the right spots, is there anything else we should be doing? Well, here’s the thing. So, if you’re in 2 to 300, you you’re not doing the right thing. Something is missing. Usually, when you optimize and you put it in the right places, you’ll rank much higher. You’re not going to be in the top 10, maybe. You’re not going to be in top 20, maybe. But, you’re not going to be all the way down to 300. 300, from my experience, is what the algorithm does or what the algorithm gets into the list where just it’s trying to find more. It’s really trying. So, it will take it from the end of your keyword list or it will take it from a keyword that sounds

like a keyword that’s at the end of your keyword list. And that’s why you get 300. So, really what it is is rethink your strategy. Why is your keyword not in the name? I mean, you can’t really be 200 and have and not have your keyword in the name or have your keyword in the name. So, why is your keyword not in the name? Is it because it’s a secondary keyword? Is that because it’s a part of a combination of keywords? Or is it duplicated maybe multiple times and then its value is really really decreasing? Um all those are questions I would ask first. But, beyond that, it’s all about

those ratings. So, if you push Let’s say you take the keyword and you move it all the way to the beginning of your name where the name has the most most most power in terms of algorithm, then you would probably get into 50s if I mean, I’m totally guessing. This isn’t really keyword dependent. But, let’s say in the 50s, then it would be up to your other keywords in the name in case there are combinations, but also the number of ratings. So, if you have zero ratings, you would still be able to rank in the 50s and then push it up from there. And I would focus on getting those ratings

up. Or not optimizing for it. I think this ties into David’s question. How much does ASA, Apple Search Ads, help with ASO? Does it help with better rankings? I think what I would be doing to answer Nerox’s question, too, is have it in the right places. And what I’ve been thinking about doing, Ariel, is like as a white hat strategy, is really going all in on the keywords. So, run an Apple Search Ads campaign in the keywords that you have in your title and your subtitle, but just go all in on those.

Like, set up a simple exact match campaign and just bid on those campaigns and give it all you got. And it’s not to just like drive the best cost per install, but it’s to hopefully help your ASO rankings. So, I don’t have no I have no data on this yet. It’s just an idea that I had. Try to test it out. So, that works. That ASA is a double-edged sword. And not because it costs money. It does also cost money. But, really your challenge is you want to find keywords that people who get to your app from those keywords

are most likely to download. Cuz there’s this perception that if people see your app in the ad, they’ll just get it because it’s number one. And that’s not true, unfortunately. And it doesn’t matter how much money you spend if you’re there number one all the time. You’re going to get more downloads, sure, but not necessarily to the extent that you could get if you really, really target it. And like Steve was saying before, it’s all about targeting and making sure that the user is as ready to make that make that decision to download the app. So, with Apple Search Ads, if you don’t do that, you’re going to end up either burning your money or getting downloads that are not necessarily going

to convert as much. And here, this is why this is a double-edged sword. Not only is going to cost you money, but that conversion rate, meaning when people come into the App Store and see your app in search results or in in an ad and don’t download your app, is not going to help you a lot. It’s not going to hurt you a lot, but the um the overall overall what this will add is negative. And you don’t really want that. So, if you’re going to spend on Apple Search Ads, you want to make sure that your funnel for getting

ratings is very optimized or DPR is low as possible, but also make sure that you going after really specific keywords that would lead to downloads. That’s That’s what I would do. Um I like the idea of using your keywords from the name subtitle keyword list because you already identified those as your most important keywords. So, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Love it, man. Robert says, “So, do we need the H2 tag in Google?” It’s something I was talking about because obviously Google SEO and H2 tags. What do you think? I don’t think it’s necessary anymore, but I love your thoughts on it. So, Google changed how they read the

description so much. So much over the last what, like year and a half? It used to be incredibly important. But now I I would still use it because I like the idea that when you read something that was that is well optimized, it’s also very it’s a pleasure to the eyes. And so, as a person, I like breaking things for people to read. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s going to help you as much these days. I think Google is just so sophisticated when it comes to that. And the from what I’ve seen, the

value of the description is kind of shifting in many ways. So, um it’s not a terrible thing. Yeah. So, it used to be like bolded, but I think and I could be wrong on this, but right here So, this is what Sorry, Robert. Robert was talking about. So, we used to use H2 tags in here. You can’t see them. Used to be bolded and do things like that, but now it feels like they stripped all the HTML. So, even if you put a bolded text, it doesn’t show up bolded anymore.

It doesn’t on some devices, right? I think some devices still show it. Okay. Maybe it’s just my end I don’t Yeah, but it’s it’s possible that I’m also thinking of older devices. Right. We actually have a whole tool for for keyword density and we we take we used to take that into consideration, but we don’t anymore. Love it. Okay. Specifically. Nerks got a lot of questions. He says, “Email marketing strategies, can they really help grow an app?” Absolutely. I love email marketing. I think it’s one of the best ways to do marketing these days.

But it’s very different and very very challenging to build that sort of momentum unless you do a whole bunch of threads on Twitter and you and you promote them. And at the end you say you should subscribe to my newsletter. Yeah. I do a lot of that promotion. Notice from an app perspective to one recent app that I downloaded and I was checking out and I was like, “Wow, they’re doing really great.” I signed up I signed up I downloaded, you know, I gave them my email address. I wrote the first email I got was welcome. Second email which probably was sent at the same time is save 20% off and it was a

check save check out too on the web. And so I I like those strategies. I would if that’s the first email I would do an app marketing just if they didn’t subscribe hit them with the 20% offer or 25 hit them with a discount. I think we have such a short window when it comes to apps to try to get a user to subscribe and really just pay attention to our app. And so I would do that’s the first email I would send a welcome quick little introduction and then just hit them with an offer right off the bat.

Interesting. Yeah. I would I would do the exact opposite. Yeah. Totally opposite. I would just say hi. I would say let let’s talk if you need me I’m here for you. Then wait a little bit and see how they actually get to use the app and then try to push them try to nudge them to the right to the right place like, “Oh, you’re not using this really cool feature. Why are you not using this really cool feature?” And then at the end uh try to maybe get them with a discount. I I don’t personally love discounts which which is funny up until maybe 2 years ago we didn’t do it we only did the one discount a year that

was our Black Friday deal and that was big. But after that I realized that it it is helpful but it you should be you should be using it very um very specifically surgically I would say when it comes to offering discounts. But uh interesting. Yeah. I mean I won’t we’re running out of time. So I won’t we can do a deep dive later on. Okay. I have no idea what time it is. So it says That’s why it’s easier sometimes just being Start small could also be related to

very niche, low competition, but relevant enough keywords. Yes, so Mhm. What’s That’s it. That’s how I get on. We did it. Yes, is that right? Okay, here we go. Yulia says, “Hello guys, why isn’t the app ranking for keywords in its name, but it’s ranking for more competitive keywords in its title? What is the ideal amount of keywords in subtitle for a new app?” I know you got some thoughts on this. I’m really interested to hear stuff from you. Um I do. So, it really depends. It’s all about the competitors, those top apps.

That’s That’s the make it or break it for whether you will rank. It’s less about the popularity, it’s less about the other things, it’s more about the performance. The popularity, I mean, the keywords will allow you to be considered for ranking, but it’s not necessarily going to push you all the way up. It’s going to help you go all the way up, but it’s not going to be the only determining factor in that. And that’s why you have to know what the competition, and I call those keyword competitors because it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re competitors. It’s just whoever is sitting at the top for the keyword that you actually want to target. But, beyond that, it’s um

also all about how you approach optimizing for that. So, both of those things is where I would start. I like it. And then, Robert says, “I didn’t I’ve never even tried this. When you use H2 tags in your titles, I should rank better.” I’ve never done it, Robert, in the titles or subtitles. I’ve only done it in the description. Have you done it in the titles? I don’t think you can. Okay. Yeah, I don’t think you can, either. No. No HTML does. I mean, he’s pushing us. He says, "What?

Is there something new with ASO that he doesn’t know about?" Is there something new? Well, well, well, Robert, tell us tell us what you know, and we’ll we’ll go from there. The localization is usually my my finest trick. My finest trick. I can talk about very very like little nuanced things. So, for example, and this might be something you’ve read already, but there is a bug in the in Apple’s algorithm specifically that when you use the Unicode characters like the ampersand or em dash or any of those like fancy kind of non word modifiers, it is registering as one when you put it

in, but it’s actually registering as two because of how unicode works under the hood. And for ASO purposes, you’re putting in more than 30 characters. So if you if you’re maximizing, you’re putting more than 30 characters. So if you’re using 30 characters thinking, yes, I did it. I managed to squeeze all my keywords in, your last keyword is going to get chopped off. It’s hilarious when you see it in action. So that’s that’s a small bug that’s really annoying that took me a long time to find. Yeah, like that. Robert, what’s new is those new localizations. Really pay attention to

those localizations. I think people are messing up when they use those localizations. Your title in all the different localizations should be different all the time. You should have different keywords in every single title and subtitle. They tend to have the most weight, and so you should have very different keywords, very different titles in all these different localizations. Don’t copy and paste all of this. We did have a question here from somebody. Katan says, "The DPR score,

does it work outside of the US market?" Yeah, absolutely. It uses the estimates the download estimates from outside of the US and the ratings. So it’s not outside of the US, it’s whatever country you’re actually in. So Indonesia, Vietnam, any of those. All right, we got a lot of questions here. Robert, all right, Robert, I got you. Do you have any from LinkedIn? Look, look, we’re going crazy on LinkedIn, too. Do you have any stats that ratings are the most powerful for iOS? Oh, I have a whole I have like a hundred plus keyword teardowns. Go into our

resources section, look at the keyword teardowns, you’ll see it one time after the other. So yes, a ton of data. This is the topic I want to talk about. If we are stuck in the top 10, Ariel, any tips on how do we get it to the top three? So Abdoer asks, "I’m stuck on top the 10th position for a specific keyword, how can I rank it up for that keyword for US police monster? That is a very interesting keyword. Uh so, it’s it goes back to the same uh question from before from Yulia, I believe. It it’s really about what are

those top apps doing? So, 1 2 3 4 5, what what is happening over there? And the top 10 is kind of a special area of search results. Below the top 10, it’s kind it’s a little bit more messy. It’s a little bit more wild. It’s a little bit more you can get ranked without really things the right way. You’ll just get thrown into it because the algorithm has that cutoff around the 10th or 12th position. But, the top 10 or the top 12, those become a little bit more challenging. So, you really have to do things right. You have to have the keyword in your name. You have to have the right number of ratings. You have to

not have any duplication. If you have any duplication, duplication is evil. And for those of you who don’t know, when you use a keyword more than once in the name, subtitle, or keyword list on the Apple side of things, in any of them, so it can be twice in the name or once in the name, once in the keyword list, what the algorithm will see is only the last instance of that keyword. And because weight for keywords is applied from left to right and all of them are joined together, you’re going to get the least amount of weight. So, when you duplicate keywords, you’re not really helping. You’re not really screaming louder than anyone else. You

really just ruin it for your app. So, to get from the top 10 to top 5, top 4, top 3, you really have to do things right. And you have to see and right means in comparison to what the top other apps are doing. Yeah. So, that’s how I would go about it. The what I would say Abdur to is I’m going to do a a full-blown ASO workshop soon. It’s going to be paid. So, full disclosure. I’m not I’m but I’m going to give away everything. There might be some black hat strategies you need to

utilize to get into the top 10. But, I won’t cover that now. But, I’m just saying. All right. No black hat. Black hat is evil. Black hat is evil. Uh there’s actually more black hat than people think on the App Store, but black hat is again a double-edged sword. Yeah. You guys decide what you want to do. I’m just telling you what works in the space. What you’ve seen. What I’ve seen, exactly. That’s the best way of putting it. So, we said, “Which version would rank better for Hello World and My Name, Hello World or Hello World colon have a great day?”

I don’t I don’t even know what this means. Well, here here I can take this over if you want. I used to do this. This is a 2019 trick that I a friend of mine told me. If you just put like keyword density, like the exact match in your title, so one of our clients we put music by itself in the Spanish Mexico title and we were able to do it. Sometimes you can’t do it because Apple has unique App Store names and stuff like that. So, you need to put That’s why you see these unique codes that Ariel was talking about or you see a plus sign or like an explanation mark, but by making by having it just by

itself, it did help our rankings. We were number two for the term music right under Apple Music for a weekend. So, that’s what he’s saying, like should I just Oh, yeah. exact match? That’s what I’m trying to test again to Khalid. And so, in the Vietnamese localization, Spanish Mexico’s localization, all these localizations that helped the US App Store, I I am testing again, once again, to just put an exact match on the keyword that I’m targeting. Yeah, it’s uh I call that focus. I write about that a lot. It’s It used to be a

lot more powerful on the App Store side of things. On Google, I think it’s also still It has It carries some weight. Um it’s a little bit less powerful now just because enough people know about it and It also enough people make the mistake of not putting keywords in their name, which kind of puts focus on whatever they do put in their name. So, again, it depends on and who’s at the top. That’s why I like Keyword Inspector. I just see everything straight up. I love it. All right, guys, let’s move on to the next segment of our show and if we’re going to take a look at some apps. So, if you want us to take a look

at your app on a future live stream, just go to appmasters.com/audit. appmasters.com/audit. And we like to start off every app audit segment with some dad jokes. All right, Ariel. Okay, I’ll just say I’ll start by saying that I’m terrible at this. I have many skills, but dad jokes is not one of them. But, you know, if I wanted to get If I wanted to get creative, I would ask you, “What is brown and sticky?” What? A stick.

Not really helpful. That really ties it together. What is brown and sticky? A stick. All right. So, my daughter, for Father’s Day, gave me a bunch of jokes and she’s like, “Did you read them?” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’m going to read them now.” All right, Ariel. So, That’s real dad jokes. That’s Go. You’re going to win this. All right, Ariel, what did the plate say to the other plate? What? Tonight, dinner’s on me. There you go. All right, put S if you thought my joke was better, put A if you

thought Ariel’s joke was better, and then we will play for something. So, we’ll do like a live teardown or some teardown where we’re going to really sit down with you. And then we’ve got Deep Pion. Deep Pion wants us to take a look at his app. It’s a trivia app where you can learn I guess you can earn some stuff. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a It’s in the Indian country right now, so I’ll I’ll change that. Just make it US, but I think that’s also that that’s a good point to start with. If you look at an

app with a fresh set of eyes and you’re not sure what it does, the algorithm’s probably not going to know what it does either. And even if it does, humans might have that challenge. So, that’s like step number one. Zoom in on what does the app do. And what when I do these on my live stream, I get the exact same thing. I look at it and I’m like, “What is this?” I don’t get the icon. I’m not entirely sure what these keywords mean. Like, I’m not an algorithm. I didn’t even get one one vote. Not even one vote. Please, someone, just one.

Okay, I get it. You were going to win. I said that before, but still. Uh Okay, so who’s starting this? Me, you? How do you want to do this? Yeah, you can start. You’re the guest. Uh okay. Lucky guest. So, trivia earn and grab your game code. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very competitive set of keywords. Trivia is fairly competitive and kind of everything else is not really a keyword. So, earn I don’t think anyone looks for just earn. Grab is another word that would get ignored for most people. Your

is the same. Your word gets dropped anyway cuz it’s a stop word. So, at the end of the day you’re really left with trivia on this and we just talked about focus. So, it’s like an unversioned version of an an unversioned an unfocused version of a trivia. And that’s what I see here. So, to me that would be step number one. Try to zoom that in or focus that a little bit and figure out what is it really that the app is trying to sell for me and for the algorithm. Yeah. So, it looks like redeem game credits for So, it looks like you can

play trivia and get gift cards. That’s what it seems like. That’s why I needed to go into the about this app and it was I don’t know what the game code is all about, but there there’s a bunch of these type of apps. You know, we worked with one where it was a match three game that you can win gift cards. So, I would make that known. That’s your big thing. And look, I think look, you’re right. Like the the bold is showing up here, but it’s not showing up on online on the website, but the app version on my phone it is

showing up the So, what we’re talking about Robert and the H2 tags here like using the H2 tags does show well. So, it’s showing up well. But yeah, I agree with you, dude. Like gift cards, earn gift cards, win gift cards. This is what I would do. Like play and win just win what? Like you know, play trivia and play what? Gift cards? Yeah. Exactly. I think the way you said it before, your one sentence explanation, that was perfect. It was spot on. That should be the name or at least that should be the the short description of this case. I don’t know what game code is, but

Maybe that’s a thing. Maybe that’s a like an known thing. Maybe it just has volume, too. All right, we could just check. Yeah, maybe. Google Play. Take a peek there. While that waits, let’s get into the app itself, shall we, Ariel? Let’s take a look. What’s What’s it doing? All right. I’ll put it on your pretty face and then I’ll I see. I’m the cover for everything

that’s happening under the hood. That’s what That’s what getting being a guest I just throw you under the boat and just I’m totally into it. I can swim. You did get one vote, but everything is play clean slate. Thank you, MD. I appreciate it. Just trying to keep my dignity here at some level. I did say this is not what what something that I do. Thanks, Mary. Thanks, Adrian. Kay, that’s my cousin. I don’t know what she’s here for. Hey, you have family in the audience.

That’s different. I I Hang on. Hang on. Let’s take a quick break. I’m going to call my mom. We’re going to make sure that I get the whole family on this and then definitely winning. Uh love it. All right, I’m going to sign in with Gmail. How do you feel about needing to sign in so early in the process? I hate it. How do you feel? Yeah, same. It’s like, why? I know. Like, why? I don’t even know what how to play it yet. It’s like, want to save your currency? You know, save your points? Like, get me to play first,

in my opinion. What points? I don’t even know anything. It’s funny. I was talking with a friend A friend of mine just released a really cool app that you It’s It’s like a a music teaching app, but not how to play music or anything like that. It just It teaches you about music in general and about genres of music, and it They take a song every day and they decompile it and they give you all the background and all the instruments that were used and all the actual microphones. If you’re into music, it’s really cool. And they have this deck that takes a song and breaks it up into all the different all different tracks. So, you can hear the

just the just the drums for example, or just the first guitar, just the bass guitar. And one of the So, I did this with them, and the first thing was, “Oh, just give us your phone number so we can create an account for you.” Like, account for what? I just want to learn about music. But, okay, you’re my friend, so I’ll give that to you. And like, “Okay, give me your email.” Like, okay, where are we going with this? Like, “Oh, just verify your email.” Like, okay, for real? Like, I’ll continue because I know you, but that’s where I’m I’m going to stop. And then at the end it was like, “Now agree to our terms.” Like, come on, man. Come on.

What were you thinking? Who’s going to do this? Yeah, this is I couldn’t even find the email. That’s so DP DP on I don’t know I don’t know. Okay, win big. Okay. Oh, man, this is busy. Yeah, sometimes a lot going on. Also, what do you win? I’ve not seen any indication. Do I win money? Do I win I’m sure I win something cuz I know it’s win it’s big. Get correct answer ability once. Are you actually going to do it? Okay,

let’s win. Uh let’s try it. Let’s I don’t know, you know, let’s They filled out the form, they waited. Do you do them in order? Yeah. They have a long list. They have like a 6-month wait. Yeah. I do one list per live stream and I randomize them. This way it’s a little bit more fair. Oh, what about for the person that’s been waiting 6 months, Ariel? I don’t know what’s happening here. I’m just watching an ad. So, you’re welcome. guy just came out of the out of the screen, right? Is that what happened?

Wait, this is an ad. Oh. This is all an ad right now, so I don’t know what it’s going on, really. Of course it makes sense that an app that gives you money for playing games also shows you ads. Before you win money for playing games. Before I even got to play. All right. After you put in your email address, we’re solo. Okay, let’s guess the celebrity. Image loading failed. Do you want to continue? Does it mean we win? Oh my god, bro. Like I can’t even

I do have to say it sounds like I’m really negative about this app. I’m not negative about the app. I’m negative about the experience. I think experiences are something that we as as makers always have a chance to make it better. So, it’s not that it’s it’s bad. It’s just that the experience is no good. And it could be just something’s up right now. Oh, maybe you think it’s your internet or something like that? Maybe. But I guess this is we can earn money in doing random stuff. I’ve seen apps like this, so don’t mind it. I think it’s a little unclear. There’s everything going on.

Maybe even I don’t know. It’s I don’t know the category enough for me to give you much more feedback than Here’s a an interesting thing that I noted. I’ve been looking at apps from made in the US and made outside the US. And this is both for apps and for web apps, too. And I noticed that apps made by developers outside US are a little bit busier. There are more than in the US we have this mentality that there should be only one thing, like one main focus on the screen and every screen should have its focus. And I don’t know if that’s the case outside. I don’t know why that is. It’s just an observation,

so I could be totally wrong here. That’s a good point. pool is is not as big as I would like for it to be to say explicitly this, but I’ve seen this in a bunch of things where there’s just a lot going on and it’s kind of like, yeah, why not? What’s the problem? And for me it’s like, no, no, no. One thing. One thing. One thing. Yeah, I like one thing, too. I think it works really well. So, there you go. Some US feedback. Uh we can start a survey and we can earn some money. So, I’ve seen apps like this get paid that the the more popular ones

are like surveys. Get paid to fill out surveys. Yeah, or watch ads. Yeah, or watch ads. So, a thing on the web back like 20 years ago. It was huge. man. I I I I was in college during the net zero days where you have a big old banner for internet. Yep. You get paid for that. All right. I’m that old. Old joke from AppMasters, that’s my son trolling me. Just found your podcast, Ariel. So, you got a new subscriber. I have a podcast, I have a YouTube channel, I have a newsletter, I have two newsletters. Well, I won the first round.

You don’t have a dad joke trophy. So, round two, Ariel, you want to You want to go first or you want me to go first? Uh I’ll go first. I mean, you’re going to win this anyway, but I kind of let’s stick with colors. What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? What? A carrot. I like it. All right, Ariel. Hey, Ariel, we started renovating our house, and the first floor is going really well. It’s really well. But, the second floor, well, that’s another story. There you go. All right. Put S if you

thought my joke was better, and then put A if you thought Ariel’s joke was better, and we’ll put Noah’s troll as a the round two. So, this is Jamie’s app. We’ve got this app. She wants everywhere where you can mainly improve conversion rates, okay? So, we’ll take a look at that app. Here we go. Ooh, interesting. Ooh, I got some A’s. Yes. I might do any of this. I’m just just going to put it out there. Uh what do you What are you thinking right now?

Anything that we should be looking at? So, I think starting starting at the top, uh what what is What does the icon mean? I I do like the shape. Right. But, Like, what does this mean? Cuz a plus can mean so many things in so many different contexts. I think we need a maybe a little bit more. So, that’s one area that I would optimize. And for app store optimization, that’s kind of a secondary thing, because first you want to get found, and then you want to get the downloads, but still. Yeah. I You know, what we found is just

putting the word math might will it improve. So, like, the past guest was like put Bitcoin. It was a crypto wallet, and can put Bitcoin and he saw an improvement in downloads. So, just put math if it’s a math app. Yeah. Now, there’s also one more thing that I I’ve talked to a bunch of developers who have experimented with putting body parts in it like a finger or a set of eyes or something to humanize the icon and it’s kind of challenging in an icon. It’s a lot easier in a in a screenshot, but that

really gave them a boost because people look at the icon expecting something really easy to process. And if you do that and you humanize it, you can increase conversion. Oh, I really like that tip. I like that. And there. I don’t know what this app does. Is it a math trainer? Like what is it? Again, we have no idea. Like we don’t read. So, it’s kind of like in this quick math, like I don’t really like this screenshot, Jamie. I would put like what is this? Lead with your main keyword. If it’s mental math, math trainer, like lead with it, make it big

and bold in here. Yeah. And um I I think ultimately the first and second screenshots are the most important screenshots. So, you want them to also be the simplest, not in terms of UI. So, the first screenshot looks very very bare and I I see what’s going on up there, but I know it because I I look for these things. I think for the most for the most part people don’t. So, quick math, is it a calculator? Is it going to give me the tool I want or is it going to teach me about it or is it going to have fun with it?

Uh use your lean into your keywords here, but spend time thinking about what is like the most important thing that your app does, not a feature, a set of features, uh a benefit, uh something. What am I going to get out of using it? And quick math could be a calculator, could be a whole bunch of other things. And then try to show that to me, but the showing is less important in my opinion unless you’re showing very specific features. And I did a I did an event with a guy an ASO expert who was working with very like heavy low-level types of apps, the kinds that are for

professionals that are really expensive. And he tried all the stuff that we do, and he said none of that works because the the very professional crowd, they care about one feature, and they’ll pay the 60 bucks a month for one feature. Yep. And so, if you’re that kind of an app, don’t take what I’m saying now as a thing you should do. But, there’s like seven apps that do this. So, for the most part, people who come into the App Store, they’re not that professional. They’re not looking for one thing and have a a company credit card to pay for it. Those do you have to really help

them understand what’s going on and right up front like as quickly as possible. Yeah, I mean, we took a look at this app, see what their screenshots look like. Oh, man, this really does have everything in one shot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, like, if you’re if mental math is your main keyword, just because you kind of have it everywhere, then maybe even just calling it that out. Like, you can see mental math cards. Like, do math in your head faster. If that’s the primary benefit. Yeah, exactly. I love that. Yeah, you think about these so quick.

Oh. It’s like you do this for a living or something. You’re making me blush. All right, let’s get into the app. I’m being fed information from your studio team. Uh Okay. I don’t know why these went away. Hmm. So, you can see I’m looking at lots of apps. I wonder why. Uh I thought I had this app. Where the heck did it go? Okay. I thought I already downloaded this app.

Where is it? I can’t Oh, there it is. Yeah, there we go. You can find the icon. That’s so important. If you have an icon that stands out, that would be it. Um this does There’s a comment in the chat about this looking like a bolt. I completely agree. Now I can’t unsee it. So, thank you, Eric. I just now all I see is a bolt. See, best mental math trainer. Like, you could throw that in your screenshot, Jamin. Focus on getting more reviews. I mean, you have this App Store review, and you kind of promote it in your screenshot, but honestly, it looks like you have no reviews right here. So, like

you know what she looks in my opinion. Okay, let me go. And I think that’s one of the That’s one of the problems with not using a tool like Keyword Inspector. You go into the App Store and you see the total number of ratings you have. You’re like, “Oh, I have some ratings. I’m going to be fine.” But those are not the ratings. That’s not the number that’s being used for App Store optimization. Yeah. Ooh, that is a lot. with the prices here. Yeah, what what is Did that just come up? Before we even got to play a game. Yeah, which I don’t mind, but You You know, I I

I really I I hate it with passion. Cuz it’s kind of like you download I downloaded this app not to be sold to. I downloaded to solve a problem that I have. At least show me that you’re going to do it for me. Prove to me I need to pay you. And it it goes for 99 cents or a million dollars, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not going to read this whole thing. I’m just going to delete this app and move on to whatever is next in the search results. And I’m not saying that in a mean way. to I’m going to challenge you in a bit. We have seen that during the onboarding process is the best place to put this paywall because most people who buy will

buy within the first you know, 40 let’s 48 hours of downloading your purchase. So, you want to highlight this during your onboarding. I just think it could be done a lot better. Like Yeah, yeah. You can increase the price to 10 bucks a year and you know what I would do is I would have different options, Jamie. But like you got to you got to change your paywall around a lot. So, I’m not saying don’t introduce your paywall very early into the app. I think you should into the experience. I think

just that when it’s the first thing you see, especially if it comes after allow sending notifications or let me track your location or app tracking transparency. To me, that’s just a way to get a user to leave because most apps are free these days. So, if in the search results that they came from, they saw three apps that kind of look like they would make sense and they’re starting at the top, they’re already thinking there are alternatives. Let me try them before I do this. But, also something else that I’ve I’ve seen um a lot of developers really love showing the the paywall really early on. And if you talk to other people in the industry like Jake

from Superwall, he will tell you that you have to do it. And I don’t think so. But, if you look at the numbers, they do give you a higher conversion rate, but your churn is going to be higher later on cuz unless you really hook them, they’re going to think they got screwed. And that’s uh something that depending on your app, depending on the amount of money, could be faster or slower. If it’s $6 a year, maybe you’re not going to see it as much. But, if it’s $30 a year, you might. Yeah. Yeah, that the UI needs some help, but it was a little bit hard. Like, you should just pop this up if you can,

Jamie. Like, don’t make me press into it because it honestly it looked like a blank screen. That’s what I thought was happening. Like, where am I I just hit this and I was like, “Incorrect. What do you mean incorrect? Just show this. Like, can’t this be the default? It has to be the default.” Okay. You got a lot You got some work to do, Jamie. So, great app. Building it. I’m sure you’re just I don’t know what you know you were doing, but great app. But, you got to build it a little bit more. Okay, let’s take a look at the most important thing. So, since Noah’s, Eric

said S. Somebody keep score for me. Mary says hi to Noah. K says S. So, it’s tied right now. 3 4 5 6 6 6. I would say 6 6. That’s my score. Okay. Ariel, okay. Lowly elevating. Okay. We’re going to have to do a tiebreaker round. I do want to make sure we answer all these questions. tools

Abdul says it’s Appfigures. What is the least expensive plan we can try these figures with App Radar? I’m I’m sure he’s talking about Appfigures. Appfigures feels a little bit more expensive than the other platforms. What What you think, Ariel? You want to tackle this right now? Sure. So, the earliest plan, the easiest plan to get into app store optimization with us is Monitor, which you can get for it’s in the 40s, especially if you do it on the annual basis, a little bit less. I think ultimately, if you’re trying to compare plan over $5 or $10 or

$30, if if you’re not going to make way more than this by using the tools, then you’re probably not doing it right to begin with, or you may not need the tools, and there are other opportunities that you can leverage that don’t really relate to ASO. So, we charge the the most affordable rates that we can. We’re not VC-backed. All the money we make comes back to us, and we invest it into growing. We’ve been around for 14 years, so that seems to be working. But, it’s all about for us building the right tools and making sure that we can get them in the hands of as many people as

we can. And you can see by the spread, we start as low as possible, and we go up, so we have that wide range. Monitor is the is the one you can start with. I usually go for Optimize, that’s where you get most of the Keyword Inspector stuff, and Grow is where you get all of the Keyword Inspector stuff. Yeah, all of it. Um you know, like I do deal with this, too. Like, we’re spending money and time building an app, but yet we we’re like completely cheap when it comes to actually marketing it. And like, bro, you’re like, you know, I’ll talk to people like, “Yeah, you know, I spent 50,000 building this app.” And I’m

like, “Okay, how much you charge?” “Oh, $500 a month.” They’re like, “What? That’s way too expensive.” And like, “Yo, you just spent like 50, you know, you just spent all this money on building it, but you don’t want to you don’t want to give it the love and care it needs to grow it, so.” But, for a few hundred bucks, you can actually turn it from a $50,000 failure to a $50,000 investment. So, that’s really up to you. Yeah, I love it. Okay, there’s a lot of questions about ASO, but I think we kind of covered it. It’s the same answer. The Sohaib says, "If I learn 500 downloads, how will I find keywords

where I can compete? Maybe there are so many others who have a little more downloads than me." He’ll get the downloads now. It’s what we talked about earlier. Go to the Keyword Inspector, find the ones that are low competitive, and put them in their title And it’s not about keywords even. It’s not about downloads even. So, if you have the number of downloads you have is really just the power of number of ratings you can have. It’s the multiplier for number of ratings. That’s what you have to think about. If if everyone starts thinking about more ratings are the currency, ratings are the currency, you have to think about I have a 30 new ratings a month. That’s

your problem, not the 500 downloads. And that’s where DPR becomes very handy. You know, one thing I’ll cover here is So, I have figured out a way to hack the ratings game. We just launched a brand new app. It’s ranking number two for keyword. So, it does work right now, okay? I’m not going to reveal anything besides what we’re doing. It’s just I did the keyword research. I found that this keyword works, right? Like I did it like, “Oh, low competition.” All that stuff. We have 100 something, 150 ratings right now.

What I did was I have the rating prompt after the paywall, okay? Okay. And because our app, we have no cost associated with new users. I made the I have a lifetime offer, which was $150. I made it free for a couple of days. I ran it on a site called AppAdvice, which I’ve been using for 10 plus years. They covered it. I know them well, so they were we were the first app. Shout out. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Jen. And the she did it. We got about 12,000 downloads Oh, wow. And 150

plus ratings. So, as next suit. So, that’s is what we’re going to be covering in our ASO workshop. I’m going to break it down everything. And now, Ariel, I feel like I have an app that looks good, that has the ratings, that has the keywords that I’m going after. Now I go, right? Like now I can run Apple Search Ads. Now I can do everything I can because Socratic, like I don’t know how long you’ve been around, Jamie. Let’s take a peek. So, you’ve been around a few months. You know, I’ve been around for two weeks. I’ve got 156 ratings. You’ve got zero.

This is how I try to prep a new app to make it look like it’s been around and it has some social proof in there. I think that’s great. I think that’s gold right there. Thank you. Gold right there. All right, Ricardo says, “Does the grow find your competitors based on keywords you use?” Yes. about Uh that, too. So, we we have a few tools in the platform that you can use. We have a tool called uh keyword suggestions. And keyword suggestions does exactly what you think it does, and it does it in a very clever way. It

under the hood scans all the keywords in the App Store. For each one, it finds the top results, and then for each one of those finds all the keywords, and for all the keywords finds all the top results, and then matches, creates associations between apps. So, apps that appear across different searches for different keywords, it groups together. This is all AI, not ChatGPT stuff, just like old-school AI. And uses that to give you suggestions based on what it’s seeing. So, if you have very uh popular competitors, you’re going to get stuff that’s kind of a little bit more generic. If you have competitors that are very uh niche, you’re going to get

the very niche stuff. And you can use all of the filters in there again to do all that sort of sorting and filtering. And from there, you can also go into uh keyword inspector and look at the top results, look at their ratings, and then find more keywords. It’s actually really cool. Yeah, I like it. So, like, is there a difficulty score or competitive score that you’ve seen is the one that we should try to go after? Like, you know, is it 50? Is it okay? Is it you know, like, do you look at that at all? This competitiveness? Yes. Yes, and it’s mostly what I what I

do is I do it in context. So, when I look at a set of keywords, and so, what I will do from here, for example, is sort by popularity and try to go through the list by popularity and then kind of also look at the competitiveness. I look at it a little bit less at this stage because it’s kind of a rough. I’m trying to just find ideas. I’m trying to pick off all the things that work and then track them with that plus button, bring them into the uh keyword performance report. There, I try to look at it within my own context. So, I picked off all the keywords that I really like,

which is the least competitive, And that’s where I use the competitiveness score in a in a less defined way. I use it more of a if the most competitive keyword is a 78 and the least competitive is a 50, then I’ll go for the 50 if that makes sense popularity-wise. So, it’s kind of a secondary way to filter for me. Yeah, and this is one of our apps that we have. It’s not making money, but like I am trying to figure out a way to start ranking better for certain keywords. And we’re what we’re doing is essentially giving up on rain sounds. And this will

be a case study later if it all works. But I have some intel that all right, there’s this new keyword that I found running some tricks that I know. I’ve been able to make that keyword rank. And so, I’m like, okay, now I can probably theoretically rank it for my keyword. So, I’ll be breaking down some of these strategies soon enough. Cool. So, the website is called Appfigures.com. Appfigures.com. Ariel’s been in the space for a very long time. I’m surprised we have never done this,

Ariel. So, thank you so much for coming on. Like if you’re using for an ASO tool, go check them out. Really cool stuff. And I really really this is I’m not just saying this cuz he’s here, but this is a really cool keyword inspector. Cuz it gives you everything that you need. How many downloads they’re getting. Are they running ads? What are their new ratings? When was it released? Like an app like this that’s been around for 12 plus years. I’m not going to beat Tim. Sorry. Tim’s got a very footful good hold on rain and rain sound. So, I get it. I’m moving on. So, we had

actually like hey, I top 10. I sometimes I just move on. Like you’re rain sounds. I I got to move on. I’m not going to beat Tim. Why am I going to beat Tim? I’m going to move on. Yeah. And I think that’s one of those things where you just have to know that needs to happen. You have to be as critical about these things because you can just say, no, no, no, I’m going to try more. It’s just it’s not going to work. And there’s data to suggest why. Go find the other place where it’s going to work. And then spend all your effort there. You’ll see much more in terms of downloads and eventually also money.

Yeah, I love it. Are you one more joke or you want one more as a closing? I’ll do one more, sure. Let’s do one more. I think everyone is waiting for a third round. This one has nothing to do with colors though. Why don’t eggs tell jokes? Because they’ll crack up. I like it. Erl, I never thought I’d be the type to have a beard. But then it just grew on me. All right. That was very Thank you, Sammy, for all the jokes. I appreciate it. She and wrote it, too.

So, there it is. And who on your brother who said, “Owen see you that master. How dare you?” These are your sister’s jokes. All right, Toy Wee, we’re going to close it out on this. I’m wondering if ASO can assist in getting revenue for like scattered scanning PDF apps. I’ve noticed people who release these apps get thousands of money. Is it better to be there aggressive marketing? I think This is a scattered question, but I think I have an answer for this one because I tweeted a couple weeks ago. I I’ve been tweeting every week an app

that you don’t think makes a ton of money, but is making a ton of money. And we have new data on our website. The panel that you opened and came from the right in one of the previous tools is actually available to everyone and across many different pages on our site. If if you go in the top, there’s a search bar actually. And you can type in the name of any app and you will get data for it. Even if you don’t have a paid App Figures account. So, if you look for a PDF Oh, okay. I was going to look for PDF because this is where the money is.

But something like uh I don’t know all the PDF apps and I don’t know which one you talked about. What about I love PDF? Let’s try it. Yeah, let’s see what we got. So, at the top you’re going to see Yeah, those two numbers. And that those two numbers are available for everyone. The chart below is locked and you need a grow account or one of those but for the demographics and everything else. But the numbers up top, the monthly totals, that everyone gets. So, I’ve been just putting stuff on Twitter because some some stuff are just mind-boggling. There’s a a plant identifier app that was making 7 million

bucks a month. Isn’t that mind-boggling? That’s crazy. So, one of the ones that I did a few weeks ago was a PDF scanner. And for those of you who don’t know, the iPhone, almost every native iPhone app, the notes app, and the files app, and a few others, will give you that. They’ll give you like a scanner app that will turn your image into a scanner. Not exactly a PDF, but similar. And so, the answer is yes. There’s obviously money and they were making a lot of money, I shouldn’t say. Even, or I should say, even though it’s a native feature of iOS, which means people don’t

just know about it. So, yes, people will go into the App Store, their intent is to find a PDF scanner. They’ll just put a PDF scanner in. So, I think there’s definitely money in it if you do it right, but I would also look into really everything that you can do. You really need to look at organic, at paid. You just have to make sure that the economics are there for paid. And like we said before, find those exact match keywords. Don’t do broad match. Don’t do smart searches. Don’t do any of those.

Yeah. And there you can kind of like turn on all the channels you have because if you know that people are coming to the App Store with this intent, PDF scanner, and you know that others are making money, you can definitely make money. You don’t need to burn money in order to make money. Yeah, I love it. This is really cool. Look, you can do I love PDF and you can see the popularity. I went into the full prof file. Man, this is worth paying for. Look at Look at all this stuff. Like honestly, you can see the trends. Here’s what I look for, Ariel, and this is what the data I’m using. Weekends, not so good. So, maybe what I like to

try to do is run an App Store guys campaign maybe on a Saturday. Yep. Right? Get myself ready for that Monday lift. So, I’ll run it on Saturday where the downloads and intent is very low anyways. Give away these downloads, give away the free stuff that’s not performing, and then get ready for my peak days. If I’m launching PDF scanner, this is how I’m using this data. You can see that they’re popular in Brazil by countries as well. So, it’s not even the US that paying attention to Brazil as a hot market. So, it’s like gives you all that data when you’re building before

Here’s what I think Ariel. This is me being in the business for like 10 plus years, building apps for like 12 plus years. I’ve had some many failures and a couple of success from the AppStore. But, I don’t care anymore what my idea is. Mhm. I’m letting the keywords dictate. Because for me personally, I like to try to rank well for these keywords and have it on autopilot. Right? We have an app that’s making about 8 to 10,000. It’s on autopilot. I don’t have to do anything. That’s impressive. It’s download. Right? And so, we I’m trying to replicate that. Essentially, I

want I’m letting the ASO and the keywords tell me what to build next versus me figuring out I want to build this app idea. I think it’s super smart and it it cuts both ways. If you have a an idea, you can use the keywords to help kind of focus that idea. But, if you know that you want to build something, you’re trying to build a business at the end of the day. If there was one specific app you wanted to do, you would have done it already. If you’re trying to get ideas, you’re getting ideas for your business and the business needs to grow. Think about it like a business. Yeah. I love it. Okay. We got a

Pernap says, “Hey Ariel, new Appfigures dashboard looks great.” Hello. That’s awesome. Love it. Goofoot, “For new app published on stores launching and ads companion is necessary.” I don’t think it’s necessary Goofoot, but I’m going to break that down in a li- in a future live stream live workshop in a month. So, we’re we’re planning the date out. We We think we got a date and I’ll keep you posted on that. And then Sam says, “Please share experience with ChatGPT.” Gotcha. All right. Ariel, anything else

that we want to cover before we say goodbye? No, I think we covered it all. I think we’re way over time, which is good. It just means there are endless questions. There were, dude. I love it. And uh yeah, exactly. That’s what I love to do. I love talking to people and I love it. I love helping. So, it makes sense. This is great. Ricardo wanted round three. We gave you the round three. round three? Wait, who won round three? Who won round three? Put some comments in there. We had completely forgot. We just joked around about it. Ariel. You got to You got to break I know. You need this. We need a tiebreaker.

All right, I’m going to do a plug one more time while you guys vote one last time. It is atfigures.com. Ariel’s got a great YouTube channel that you guys should check out. I’ll link that into the show notes. And if you Well, Ariel, if the audience wants to connect with you in any other way, do you want to send them anywhere else? Uh I’m on Twitter. Ariel Michaeli is my is my handle. I’m also on all the other new things that are happening these days, but on Twitter is where you’re going to find me. I’m also LinkedIn with my name and I am on Where else? I’m on YouTube, youtube.com/atfigures.

And you can email me, ariel.m@atfigures.com. This may be a big mistake, but you know, email me. It’ll be fun. I love it. All right, do that. All right. And then George gave me an S. Ricardo said he won. So, I let’s just say I won that one. And then Sam says, “When are you going to come back?” Well, we’ll decide that, too. Whenever you have me. Well, you have an open invite, my friend. All right. Next week, we’re going to talk to George and we’re going to talk about ASO as well. We’re going to talk about how alternative UA channels, which I love, and some of the UA channels that are

specific to your categories as well. He’s got great experience with ASO. So, if you like this theme, we’re going to talk about that with George next week as well. So, we’re live every Friday. We’re going to be back. I don’t think I’m going anywhere every Friday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific. Ariel, thank you so much for coming on doing this. Thank you for having me. This was awesome. This was a blast. I hope people enjoyed it. They did, man. There’s a lot of activity I couldn’t even get through. Thank you guys for watching. We’ll see you every Friday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific. Have a great weekend. Bye. Bye-bye.