9 Ways to Boost Your App Ranking to Top in Google Play Store

25,000 and counting...

Do you know what that is? That's the approximate figure of the number of apps in the Google Play Store with thousands of apps launching rapidly in every category and sub category.

With this, getting your app identified is one of the biggest issues faced by app publishers nowadays.

If you are in the same place, it's highly important for you to understand the various methods of boosting your app's visibility and increasing the volume of downloads from the Google Play Store.

So let's stat from scratch:

App Store Optimisation (ASO) is a process of optimising mobile applications to rank higher in the Google Play Store. The more the visibility of your app will be, the more will be the chance of frequent downloads. So, ASO is the secret weapon to rank your app in the top search.

To make you understand better, we're breaking down the various components that can affect your ASO:

1. Understand your Customer and Market Competition:

The first thing that you need to figure out for implementing an ASO strategy for your app is analysing your customer and its needs and knowing your niche in the market. Market research plays a very significant role here. For a clear understanding, ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s the basic lingo used by the users of your app?
• How would your users describe your app?
• Why would a customer download and use your app?
• What is the USP of your application in comparison to your competitors?
• What all keywords are your customers targeting on?
• How can these keywords give you an edge over your customers?
• Which keywords must be more prominent that will better highlight the USP of your app?

2. Picking the right set of keywords:

Once you have addressed the above questions, the next step is to brainstorm the keywords for your app - it could be anything which is relevant to the application and its features. Some of the important points to remember for keyword optimisation are:

Find the highly searched keywords but not particularly the competitive ones.

If your application is similar to some of the popular apps already in existence, use their

names as well in the description of your app.

You can do it with a keyword suggestions tool – for example, AppKeywords.io or TheTool.

A study by SENSOR TOWER reveals that the optimal number of times to repeat a keyword in an app store product page is five; this will maximise the likelihood of ranking for that particular keyword.

Any additional mentions have little or no effect on the ASO of the app.

3. Choose a Suitable App Name:

Having an attractive and unique name of your app isn’t just for the purpose of branding. To get better results with ASO, include all the pertinent keywords in the title itself because it’s the name which will heavily affect the app store search results.

4. App Description:

There are two types of description required for an application: a short and a long description.

As far as the short description is concerned, you have a character limit of 80 characters and you are required to include all your keywords in this.

Make sure you describe the core functionality of your app in this, so that the users are clear about what they are downloading.

Next is the long description which is of maximum 4000 characters. Keywords play a dominant role in the long description as well, but never repeat a keyword more than five times.

However, most users only read the first few lines of your description and so it’s highly important to make it very interesting and captivating for engrossing their minds to read further.

Also, try to accommodate all the relevant information in these lines itself and spend time coming up with an engaging lead to your description.

5. App Ratings:

The role played by app ratings is very crucial. The higher the ratings of your app, more are the

chances of its higher ranking.

For better ratings, your app must be of good quality. Some important points to prevent bad reviews on your app are:

• Have an email address where your users can reach you for their complaints and queries.
• Have a website for support.
• Have frequent up-gradations to your app.
• Rectify the bugs in your app.
• Always ask for a second review after you have solved their issues.

Please note that a nicely worded rating component within your app makes it more user-friendly and increases the ratings and reviews of your application, thus increasing the overall app's rating.

6. Screenshots and Promo Video:

Though visual elements such as screenshots and videos don’t directly increase your search ranking in the app store, they do have an impact on the conversion rate to download, which will ultimately affect your rank.

Your screenshots must highlight the best features of your app and must supplement your app description. This will help you to engross downloaders who don’t prefer reading texts.

In the Google play store, you can attach a maximum 8 screenshots. However, only the first two to three screenshots will appear in the gallery, so make sure your first two or three screenshots are highly enthralling so that it drives the potential users to look for more of them.

7. Localize, Localize, Localize:

App publishers should translate their app’s title, description, and screenshots into their local

languages as well. This will make your app more user-friendly and will help users to easily associate with it.

8. App Uninstalls:

It’s not just reviews and ratings of the app that reflects its quality, but also the quantum of users who stop using your application. It’s also a matter of fact that the Google play store tracks the app uninstallation rates in order to assess the quality of an application.

9. Escalate App’s traffic with External promotion:

It is a matter of fact that the more traffic you drive to your app listing, the higher it will rank in

search results. To drive more traffic to your application, you must have a worldwide presence so that you are easily recognisable among your competitors.

You must build your presence online, by using various social media platforms and content blogs, soliciting press and reviews, and investing in online advertising.

CONCLUSION:

The process of App Store Optimisation never stops. These tips are just a few of a lot

more strategies that you can use to optimise your app and have deeper market penetration.

However, if you implement each of the above-listed tips you will be definitely better than 95% of the app developers in the market.