Settling In
If you're in charge of your app's organic performance, you know just how important every step of the ASO cycle is. AppFollow provides you with tools that accompany you every step of the way: from market analysis and keyword research to reporting your performance to your team – we've got you covered. This guide will walk you through the features that cover your ASO workflows, saving you time and adding structure to your routine. We're so excited you're here! 👋
Before You Start
Some of the features in this section require integrations with an app store. Your account admin will help with setting these up. If you’re in charge of managing your account setup, we recommend circling back to our guide on Getting Started: Prepping Your Account (for Admins).
Market Research and Competitive Analysis
The first step to being ahead of the competition is knowing your competition. When you need to get a feel for different app platforms and locales, as well as get a grasp of the overall market benchmarks, competitive analysis becomes a time-consuming task. We're here to change that.
With the help of AppFollow, you're ready to dive into high-level market and competitor stats at any moment. We recommend starting your ASO lifecycle here.
- Start by running a health check for your own app's performance. Right away, you'll be able to compare it to your competitors on the Compare Discovery page. In addition, this tool will help you answer the following questions:
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- Who are the market leaders?
- How strong is their organic power and brand power?
- In which countries do they perform best – do they target major locales or small countries?
- What are the industry benchmarks, and how does our performance compare to them?
- How visible are our competitors' apps in the stores?
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- Keep an eye on updates to competitor apps to understand the reasons behind changes to their performance. The App Update Timeline will let you know about any changes to an app's name, description, graphics, and more. You'll also see if they start promoting any changes to their features and targeting new keywords.
- Set up a customizable Smart Alert to be notified via Slack, Telegram, or email whenever an app is updated or featured.
Keyword Research
Once you have a good feel for the market, it's time to create your semantic core. The semantic core is a set of keywords and key phrases that describe your app in the most precise and clear way. Keywords selection is a basis of semantic core creation; that’s why it’s important to choose the most relevant ones for further promotion. Thinking up a whole list of keywords manually takes up a lot of time, and it's easy to miss important and promising requests. Our Keyword Research tools take the guesswork out of this process and help you create a strong semantic core.
- Let's get familiar with the Keyword Tracking section. This is a collection of all our keyword research tools. For example, the AI Recommendations tab uses precise algorithms to show you which keywords are promising specifically for your app. Other tabs in this section will help find the keywords you're already ranking for, the ones that bring you the most downloads and impressions, and keywords suggested by the store.
Keywords are added per app and per country. This allows you to create highly relevant semantic cores for different apps and locales. Make sure to select the required app and country in the Keyword Tracking filters.
- To get an understanding of top-ranking keywords, navigate over to the Keyword Spy tool. With the help of this tool, you can analyze your competitors' keywords and get new ideas for optimizing your own strategy. Whenever you see a keyword you want to add to your semantic core, just click on the plus sign next to the keyword.
- Now, let's learn a bit more about store search mechanisms. The Keyword Live Ranking simulates the store search, with a bonus: you'll see related suggestions for every keyword you search for. You can start tracking these keywords right away or click on the apps that use those keywords to analyze how relevant they are.
ASO Progress Analysis
By this point, you'll have an impressive selection of tracked keywords. Now it's time to head back to the Keyword Tracking page and scroll down to Keyword Rankings.
You can sort the table by effectiveness, popularity, difficulty, rank, and more. This is a great place to manually review your keywords and your first step to analyzing keyword performance. In this section, you can group keywords, add notes to them, and perform your daily analysis tasks. The data you find will help you understand which keywords you'll want to keep an eye on, and which ones are currently off your radar.
Use the "Translate" toggle to translate keywords into English automatically.
The Keyword Intelligence tool gives you a tangible perspective on the value of your ranked keywords. If you've ever wanted to put a price on a keyword – this is the place. You'll see the share and the exact number of organic downloads a keyword brings to your app, allowing you to understand its value better.
ASO Results Analysis
Your ASO efforts can be measured by a set of KPIs. These are the metrics that tell you whether your strategy is working, and it's also the bottom line you can show managers and executives so they could appreciate the business impact of your work.
Let's head over to the Organic Traffic Dashboard – an all-in-one ASO performance chart that will help you evaluate your results and share them with your team.
You can analyze both country-specific and worldwide data in this view. Make sure to adjust the filters to see the relevant information.
Impressions & Downloads
The goal of ASO is to increase the number of downloads an app gets through the search channel. If this number is growing, you're on the right track. Use the Downloads section to understand your organic download volume dynamics.
Find more details in Traffic Channels Analytics.
Organic Conversion Rate
The conversion rate shows you how many impressions converted into downloads. After you ensure that your app is visible to a user, they still need to decide whether they'll download it. This is a valuable metric for understanding how the content of your app's page (such as app icons and screenshots) affects the likelihood of a new download.
Keyword Trends
Your goal is to grow the number of indexed keywords for your app, so you'll want to pay special attention to keyword movements. When you select a specific country on the dashboard, you'll see how keyword positions improved over time. In addition, the Organic Keyword Trend chart shows you the distribution of ranked keywords, which helps you evaluate how you're growing your top positions.
Search Visibility
The easier it is to find your app in the store, the harder it is to find your competitors. Improving your Search Visibility Score helps you get (and stay) in the lead.
Store Performance Index
The Store Performance Index serves as a high-level metric for your app's performance. You can use this index to learn how well your app is doing in the store overall on a scale from 0% to 100%. The higher the Store Performance Index, the better your app is performing.
Next Steps
Now that you've analyzed and optimized your ASO strategy, it's time to go back and refine it again. Our tools allow you to circle through the research and improvement stages quickly and however often you need.
Whenever you're ready, just head over to the dashboard to share your performance with your management. Finally, create an ASO Email Report to review your changes as you sip your morning coffee, or set up a Smart Alert to get instant updates throughout the day. ☕️