Keywords
How to do App Store keyword research
Collect ideas, score them for popularity and difficulty, and pick the keywords your app can actually win.
Updated · 2 min read
Good keyword research answers one question: which searches can this app rank for, that enough people make? Popular keywords dominated by household names are out of reach for most apps; obscure ones bring no one. The work is finding the middle.
1. Collect ideas
- Describe your app the way users would. What problem do they type into the search box? “budget planner”, not “personal finance management solution”.
- Apple’s search suggestions. Type a seed word into the App Store search box and note the autocomplete suggestions. They come from real searches.
- Apple’s top search terms. Apple Ads publishes the most searched terms per storefront and genre each week. What they tell you.
- Competitors. Look at the names and subtitles of the top apps for your main keyword, and which other searches they appear in. Competitor analysis.
- Your reviews. Users describe your app in their own words.
2. Score every idea
For each candidate, you want three numbers:
| Measure | Question it answers | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Popularity | How many people search this? | Apple’s popularity score for top terms; otherwise an estimate from autocomplete and results |
| Difficulty | How hard is it to reach the top 10? | How established the top 10 apps are (ratings, reviews) and whether they target the term in their names |
| Your rank | Where do you stand today? | Your position among the top 200 results |
3. Choose realistically
- High popularity, low difficulty: the best finds. Put them in your name or subtitle.
- High popularity, high difficulty: worth targeting only if you already rank in the top 50 or have many ratings.
- Low popularity, low difficulty: long-tail terms. Individually small, together they add up; use them in the keyword field.
- Low popularity, high difficulty: skip.
Look at who ranks in the top 10 for each finalist. If every result has hundreds of thousands of ratings, a new app won’t break in soon. If the results are loosely related to the search, there is room for an app that matches it well.
4. Check at scale and per storefront
The same keyword can be crowded in the United States and wide open in Germany or Brazil. Check your shortlist in every storefront you care about, ideally in one pass. asorocket’s bulk research checks up to 1,000 keywords across storefronts in the background and shows your rank for each.
5. Use the results
Write your name and subtitle around the strongest finds, fill the keyword field with the rest, then track the rankings after your release.
Related questions
How many keywords should an app target?
Your name, subtitle and keyword field hold roughly 15–25 words, which can combine into many more phrases. Track 30–100 keywords to see which of those phrases you actually rank for.
Are long-tail keywords worth it?
Yes, especially for newer apps. They are easier to rank for and usually show stronger intent.