App store optimisation (ASO): a guide for Australian apps

What is app store optimisation?

ASO is the store version of SEO. You change what your listing says and shows so it appears for the right searches and turns more visits into installs. It has two jobs: be found, then be chosen.

Be found means your words match what people type. Be chosen means your icon, screenshots and rating make the install an easy yes. Apple’s own notes say the same. The text fields feed search, and the screenshots and icon are there to encourage the download.

ASO is cheap compared to ads, but it isn’t a one-off task. You can edit your listing with every release, and both stores let you test changes.

How does App Store search rank apps?

Apple says search results are based on text relevance and user behaviour. Text relevance means matches for your app’s title, subtitle, keywords and primary category. Apple also says the secondary category is indexed. User behaviour means downloads, ratings and reviews, and more.

Apple doesn’t publish weights or a formula. Treat any blog that claims exact percentages as a guess.

Apple’s review rules ban packing metadata with trademarked terms, popular app names or prices to game the system. Subtitles can’t reference other apps or make claims you can’t verify. Apple may change keywords it considers abusive.

How does Google Play search work?

Google Play gives you three text fields: an app name of up to 30 characters, a short description of up to 80 and a full description of up to 4,000. The short description is the first text people see on your listing.

Google warns that repetitive or irrelevant keywords in the name, short description or full description can lead to app suspension. So write for people first. Use the words they’d search once or twice each, in sentences that make sense.

Quality counts here too. Google says apps that cross its Android vitals thresholds are likely to be less discoverable. The overall bad-behaviour thresholds are a user-perceived crash rate of 1.09% of daily users and a user-perceived ANR rate of 0.47%. Google checks the last 28 days of data.

How do I choose keywords for my app?

1. Write down the problem in the words a customer would use. Not your internal feature names.
2. List 30 to 50 candidate phrases. Include what the app does, who it’s for and the job it replaces.
3. Search each one in the store. Read the top results. If they’re all big brands, the phrase is hard. If the results are mixed or off-topic, you have a gap.
4. Check the Australian store. Spelling and wording differ, such as “takeaway”, “ute” and “footy”, so search from an Australian account.
5. Put your strongest phrase in the name or subtitle. Put the rest in the keyword field without repeating words.
6. Change one thing at a time and give it a few weeks. Search ranking moves slowly, so a change on Monday is rarely visible by Friday.

Free tools such as App Analytics in App Store Connect and the Play Console show how many people find you through search. Paid ASO tools estimate search volume, but those numbers are modelled, so use them to compare phrases and not as facts.

How do I get more people to install once they find me?

Search brings visitors. Your product page decides how many install. Apple shows the app name, subtitle, rating and up to three screenshots or previews in search results, so those few pixels do a lot of work.

• Lead with the benefit. The first two screenshots should show the main job done, with a short caption.
• Show real screens. Screens that don’t match the app set the wrong expectation.
• Make the icon simple. It’s the smallest thing you’ll design and the one seen most.
• Use a short preview video only if it shows the app working in the first few seconds. Apple allows up to three previews per localisation and device size.
• Write the first lines of the description for a skimmer. Put the main benefit up front.

How do ratings and reviews affect ASO?

Apple says ratings and reviews can influence how your app ranks in search, and they show on your product page and in search results.

Ask at a natural high point, after someone has finished something they wanted to do. Don’t ask at launch or in the middle of a task. Use the system review prompt, and reply to reviews, especially bad ones. A fast, calm reply often wins the reader, not the reviewer.

Fix the cause of bad reviews. Crashes are the most common. Our guide to app maintenance costs explains why an app that isn’t updated starts to break as phones change.

How do I test changes to my store listing?

Apple’s product page optimisation tests alternate icons, screenshots and app previews. Each version goes to a share of randomly selected users, and the results show in App Analytics. Apple doesn’t say whether tests change search ranking.

Google Play store listing experiments can test the icon, feature graphic, screenshots and, in a localised test, descriptions. You can run one default graphics experiment or up to five localised ones at the same time, with up to 2 variants against your current listing. Google suggests testing one asset at a time. Experiments stop automatically after six months.

Apple’s custom product pages give you extra versions of the page, each with its own URL. They suit ads, social posts or a QR code on a flyer, where you know why the person is arriving.

What are the common ASO mistakes?

• Stuffing names and subtitles with keywords. Both stores’ rules can lead to rejection or removal.
• Leaving the keyword field half empty, or spending it on words already in your name.
• Using the same listing for every country. Check the Australian listing on its own.
• Treating the store as a launch task. A listing that never changes falls behind.
• Ignoring crashes. On Google Play they can lower your discoverability. On both stores they produce bad reviews.
• Relying on ASO alone. Pair it with a plan for how to market your app.

Do I need to pay for ASO help?

Not at first. Fill every field carefully, write an honest description, show real screens and watch the store analytics. That covers most of what a first-time app owner needs.

Paid help makes sense when you have many locales, a large keyword set or a team that changes the listing often. It doesn’t replace a good app. If your product is hard to describe, fix that first.

If you are still planning your app, put the store listing in your app brief. Name, subtitle and screenshots are cheap to get right on day one. If you want help building and launching, see our mobile app development service, or ask about ongoing support once the app is live.

Common questions