The Guide to Keyword Research for Mobile Apps

Hundreds of new applications are downloaded daily. There seems to be no single problem for which a program has not been invented. And if in 2008, when the App Store came out, any simple calculator or flashlight could get millions of installations, now there is no free traffic. And you have to delve into analytics and search algorithms to attract an organic audience. The concept of search engine optimization for mobile apps — ASO — comes out of this need.

The main task of the specialist is to attract organic traffic.

How an ASO specialist can influence search algorithms:

• text optimization (keywords);
• graphic optimization (graphics, icons, screenshots);
• social metrics (ratings, reviews).

There are now many software products for optimizing mobile applications. Such as AppFollow, ASOMobile, and others. But working with keywords is always broader and can include any services to collect search terms. Let's look at how you can run keyword research with Serpstat.

What is the best source of information for keywords? Google.
Does Google have data on iOS and Android apps? Yes.
Bingo! That means you can use Google to collect and analyze keywords. And here's how:

All Android apps can be found at this URL:

• https://play.google.com/store/apps?hl=en

And all iOS apps are at this:

• https://www.apple.com/app-store/

Now let's extract all the keywords by which these subdomains are ranked. I will search for keywords as follows: I go to the tab "Domain Analysis" → "SEO Research" → "Subdomains". In the search box, I enter the domain google.com and check the results.

I find the play.google.com subdomain in the list and go to the keywords that this subdomain ranks for in Google. We get 29.5 million keywords, the top 10 of which include "mail for outlook", "snapchatting", "youtube downloads free" and others.

Of course, I could have searched for the play.google.com subdomain right away, but I wanted to show you the process of searching for subdomains (I'll get back to it later).

Now let's look more deeply. Let's say I want to run an Android app to learn German, so out of a million results, I am only interested in those that relate to the phrase "German". I set this up in the filters:

I'm still not satisfied with the result, because my app is a language-learning guide, not a translator or dictionary. I'll add a few more keyword filters and specify "learn German", "learning German", "self-study German" in the content:

So, I got a lot of ideas for keywords that are perfect for my subject matter. The results also have information about the frequency of use of each keyword ("Volume") and the cost per click in U.S. dollars ("CPC").

I can use this information for a more detailed analysis as well. The last column called "URL" has links to applications that rank for a particular keyword.

To dig even deeper, I'll add some filters. I am interested in applications that:

• contain in the keyword "learning German";
• are in the top 10;
• have a search volume of over 100;
• cost less than $2 in AdWords.

Now I have an idea for Android keywords that I can add to the list and use to promote on Google Play. Thanks to the filters I use, I know for sure that these keywords are inexpensive on AdWords. I can definitely find a useful keyword among them.

Using such filters, Serpstat found 28 ideas for keywords in exact match. Now you can check the volume of queries and find the most suitable variants, with which you can get to the top of Google play.

I advise you to study in detail the possibilities of all the filters and play with their combination. The logic of the filters is described in more detail here.

Look through each keyword on the list and gather the most appropriate options. Export the spreadsheet in your preferred format and use the results to promote the mobile app.

This analysis works for both Android and iOS apps, in the case of page analysis https://www.apple.com/app-store/ or the apps.apple.com subdomain.

I already have information about which apps are popular on google in my chosen sector. But I will go further; I need to investigate my google-play-SEO to the end :)

I'm going to use a real-life example to illustrate the process. I've chosen two German learning apps that are ranked by Google. Let's say they are learngerman.dw.com and Duolingo.

To get information about the selected applications, I go to the Google Play Market page and look for a link to the official site under "developer contact details".

I have two domains to analyze and compare:

• learngerman.dw.com
• duolingo.com

Now you can start analyzing your competitors. I will enter each domain and look for its keywords:

You can use filters again to find the most relevant phrases in Google. To do so, I will apply two filters:

• keywords that contain "learning German",
• exclude branded queries.

This gave me a list of more than 38,080 keywords. Now I can explore this list in more detail and choose the most appropriate options for my application.

Serpstat allows you to compare keywords of both sites. In addition, it groups common and unique phrases for each domain.

To analyze keywords in organics, I select "Domain Analysis" → "SEO Research" → "Domain vs Domain" from the left menu and enter the domains of the selected sites in the search bar.

Serpstat showed that learngerman.dw.com ranks in the organic with 26.33 thousand keywords, of which 19.89 thousand are unique (which Duolingo doesn't have), and duolingo.com ranks with 1 million, of which 4.45 thousand are common keywords for the two domains.

Common keywords are displayed in the table below by these parameters:

• the position of each site for a particular keyword;
• volume (the average number of queries in a search engine keyword per month);
• the cost of the keyword in AdWords in U.S. dollars;
• The competition of keyword in contextual advertising in percentage.

In addition to common keywords, Serpstat shows keywords unique to each domain. They can be exported and also used to promote your application.

To use the tool to search for keywords in contextual advertising, go to the tab: "Domain analysis" → "PPC Research" → "Keywords".

To study the contextual advertising for the site duolingo.com, I entered the domain into the search box and analyzed the results. If necessary, you can add filters.

Since Serpstat works with Google databases in 230 countries and Bing US, I will search for keywords in local applications.

Duolingo.com has German, English, and Spanish versions of the site. How do I know that? Let's go back to the "Subdomains" tab. I'm not interested in the duolingo.com subdomains themselves, but in the keywords they use to rank in searches. I enter the domain into the search and click on the link on the right to see a list of keywords for the German version of the site.

Now I filter and use all the keywords for the desired region. I took the German version of the site, so in order to see all the keywords in German, in the menu of databases, I select the Google search database for Germany:

If you want, you can go further: find Spanish keywords and their combinations, apply filters to them, sort and do the same with other languages and regions.

But I'll stop here and summarize :)