The Secrets of ASO: Why New Apps Should Avoid Big Keywords

In the previous post, I talked about the various promotional activities I’ve been involved in since the launch of PlayDoz. One of the most time-consuming and interesting aspects has been ASO, or app store optimization.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve delved deeper and realized that there are countless nuances to this field. It’s not just about “filling in a few words and uploading some images”; it’s a game with its own set of rules. This article specifically discusses keywords, providing examples of what I’ve encountered or understood.

100 Characters: More Isn’t Always Better

Let’s start with a basic fact: the keyword field in the App Store is limited to 100 characters. It’s separated by commas, and if you exceed this limit, you can’t add more.

This limitation is based on the language region. In the US, it’s 100 English characters, with an average word length of six or seven characters, plus commas, which means you can realistically fit only a dozen or so words. In regions like China and Japan, each Chinese character counts as one character, allowing for many more words within the 100 characters. Therefore, the approach to keywords for the same app can vary significantly across different language regions.

Most people’s first reaction, like mine, is to cram in as many words as possible, especially high-traffic terms like “puzzle,” “games,” “brain,” and “free.” No one wants to miss out on any of them.

However, this approach is misguided for new apps. Here’s why.

New Apps Have No Chance with Big Keywords

The search ranking in the store doesn’t just consider whether your app matches the keyword. It also evaluates a host of other factors: download numbers, ratings, review counts, and retention rates. For a new app, all these metrics are zero.

Take the keyword “puzzle games” as an example. In the US, this is one of the most popular terms in the puzzle game category. If you search for it, you’ll find that the top-ranking apps have thousands, even tens of thousands, of reviews. They have already proven themselves for this keyword: people search for them, click on them, download them, and retain them.

When your app enters the scene, even if it seems more relevant to “puzzle games” based on its description, the store has no reason to rank you higher. You lack the data. The result is usually a ranking beyond 200, which is essentially the same as being invisible.

Worse yet, this keyword takes up 12 of your precious 100 characters. You’ve traded a prime spot for zero traffic.

Finding Smaller Keywords from Big Ones

Does that mean big keywords are useless? They are useful, but not for ranking; they serve as a starting point.

The correct approach is to: first identify the highest-traffic keywords in your category, then dig deeper to find more specific variants with less competition.

Continuing with “puzzle games,” if you dig a layer deeper, you find “free puzzle games,” “offline puzzle games,” “puzzle games no wifi,” and “relaxing puzzle games.” Each of these is more specific than the parent term, has slightly less traffic, but also less competition. Apps with only a few hundred reviews start appearing in the top ten, indicating that a new app has a chance to squeeze in.

Once you get in, even if it only brings in a handful of downloads each day, some of those users will leave reviews. As reviews accumulate, the overall weight of your app increases. With increased weight, you can then go back and target those bigger keywords, and at that point, you’ll have data to support your efforts.

Smaller keywords are the stepping stones, while bigger keywords are the goals. The problem for new apps is trying to leap directly to the goal and ending up falling short.

For Keywords You Can’t Compete With, Create a Separate Page

There are also situations where you really want a specific keyword, but the competitors ahead of you are ones you can’t beat in the short term.

Apple provides a tool called Custom Product Page (CPP). You can create multiple different store pages for the same app, each with its own screenshots, promotional text, and preview videos.

Here’s how I use it. In PlayDoz, there’s a water-sorting game, and games like “Water Sort” are a distinct subcategory in the store, attracting a lot of searches. I created a separate CPP for it, featuring screenshots that only show the water-sorting gameplay, and the copy focuses solely on water sorting. Then, I bought the keyword “water sort” on Apple Ads, directing the ad traffic to this CPP.

When people search for “water sort” see my ad and click through, they land on a page dedicated to water sorting, which has a much higher conversion rate than seeing a “collection of 13 games.”

More importantly, there’s the next step. When Apple sees that people searching for “water sort” consistently click on my ad and download my app, it will associate that keyword with my app, and the organic search ranking will rise accordingly. This is based on my own observations; Apple hasn’t explicitly stated this, but the effect is indeed there.

In this case, the ads are not buying users; they are buying the store’s recognition that “this app is related to this keyword.”

Text in Screenshots Counts Too

Lastly, let’s discuss an often-overlooked aspect: screenshots.

App Store screenshots typically feature a prominent line of text explaining what the screen depicts. This text serves two purposes.

First, it may be indexed by the store. Many ASO practitioners have observed that the text in screenshots can be considered a supplementary source of keywords. I can’t confirm this from Apple, but given how tight the 100-character limit is, even a little extra weight is worth considering the text in screenshots as keywords rather than just writing a random slogan.

Second, users find it more acceptable. This is certain. When a person scrolls to your store page, their attention span is measured in seconds. They won’t read the description. They look at the screenshots. A screenshot with an image and a line of text, “Water Sort: Pour the same colored water into one bottle,” is far more effective than three paragraphs in the description. The combination of images and text is much more digestible than pure text.

So now, when I create screenshots, my first step isn’t to choose the prettiest images but to list the keywords this set of screenshots should convey, and then find suitable images to match.

This is More Interesting Than I Thought

Before diving into ASO, I thought it was a tedious task of filling out forms. After a few weeks, I realized it’s more like playing chess under a system of unspoken rules. You make a move, wait a few days for feedback, adjust, and then make another move. Every decision has its logic, and this logic can be validated.

For someone used to coding, this “feedback, logic, and verifiability” aspect is incredibly addictive.

You can play PlayDoz on the App Store, Google Play, and playdoz.com. If you’re also working on ASO and have discovered any insights I haven’t, feel free to share!