8 Proven Tips to Strengthen Your App Store Connect Keyword Strategy

Apple requests a list of keywords that best describe your iOS or Mac software when you submit it to the software Store. Apple uses this list to determine where and when to display your app in search results. Even though there are other ways to get found in search results, it's crucial to include as many keywords as you can because they will carry a lot of weight in your ASO.

However, the text box can only hold 100 characters. Not even words, but characters! That doesn't adequately explain your app. Fortunately, there are methods to optimize this list in order to maximize the value of those 100 characters and utilize unpromoted aspects in Apple's search algorithm.

App Store Connect Keyword Optimization

The App Store's internal Full Text Search system uses sophisticated search matching to transform the list of keywords you supply into search phrases that customers enter into the App Store. It's smart, to put it briefly. Because of the engine's ingenuity, we have multiple chances to obtain more keywords than the initially suggested 100 characters.

Entering "complete" search words into the text box is how many developers start. An unoptimized keyword list for a shopping app might look like this, for illustration purposes:

Buying sneakers, purchasing accessories, purchasing sneakers, purchasing sneakers, shopping, sneakers, sneakers, and shopping apps

Let's examine every possible approach to optimize this list to add more words.

1. Divide search terms into individual words and remove duplicates.

The engine takes care of generating a variety of search terms from your keywords, which is one of the most crucial improvements. This implies that you can enter the components of the search query instead of the entire term. For instance, the phrase "buy sneakers" can be divided into the words "buy" and "sneakers". The phrase "buy sneakers" will be automatically generated for you by Apple.

After you have separated all of your terms, make a list of them and eliminate any duplicates. Repeated words are simply ignored by Apple; they are not given any more weight. The best value for your money can be found here. For our example, let's examine what that looks like:

purchasing, sneaker, sneaker, purchase, app, accessories, and footwear

Almost a half of the 100 characters have been reduced to 63. More keywords can now be used, and you'll be able to create combinations you might not have previously.

However, we will further optimize this.

2. Eliminate Every Space

You can save a few characters by omitting the spaces between keywords because no human will be reading this list. As long as you use a "," Apple will recognize your keywords as distinct terms. You can simply add one or more more keywords to what you save in gaps.

Our example's character count was reduced to 56 by removing all of the spaces after the commas, which saved 7 characters. However, there is still more to extract.

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3. Avoid Using Multiple Words

There's no need to add that to your list of keywords because Apple's algorithm is advanced enough to handle term pluralization. This implies that we can remove the term "sneakers" from our example, saving an additional 8 characters and reducing the character count to 48.

Nearing completion!

4. Remove Stop Phrases

Some terms are completely filtered out by Apple because they are too general. Words like "app," "the," and "most" (see the whole list below) are all seen by Apple as "stop words" and are totally disregarded. We used the word "app" in our example. Eliminating it will reduce our character count to only 45 and save us an additional 3 characters. At 100, we got started. Not even half.

5. Avoid Including the Name of Your Company, App, or Category

When determining keywords for your app, Apple considers the name of the app, the name of the developer, and the category the app is published in, in addition to the keyword list in App Store Connect. Because of this, you can exclude all of those from your list of keywords, saving a few extra characters without sacrificing functionality.

6. Make Difficult Words Simpler

Users typically don't want to input (or even consider) complex keywords, and searches on the App Store are typically brief. Take the time to look for substitute phrases that are shorter, more informal, and generally simpler if you have any that are complex (and most likely lengthy as well).

7. (Avoid) Using Every Character

There should be plenty of characters left over after you optimize your list of keywords. If it doesn't detract from your primary keywords, go ahead and do it! Spend some time using all those characters, even if it means using less important keywords as long as they are really close. By doing this, you increase your chances of being noticed because Apple's algorithm will have more factors to take into account while processing your keyword list.

8. Bonus: Start with your most crucial keywords.

Similar to the name and subtitle of the program, the location of the keyword in the list is crucial. Keywords toward the top of the list are more important to the algorithm than those near the bottom. Because of this, your list should start with the most crucial terms and finish with either long-tail search terms or keywords that aren't highly competitive.

Once you understand the fundamentals, optimizing your keyword list for App Store Connect shouldn't be too difficult and will yield notable results fast. We strongly advise taking a few minutes to complete it.

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Stop Words in English for ASO

This is a detailed list of stop words that Apple doesn't use. It would be a waste of characters to include any of them in your App Store Connect keyword list, so be sure to remove them.

a, about, above, after, again, against, all, am, an, and, any, app, are, aren't, as, at, be, because, been, before, being, below, between, both, but, by, can't, cannot, could, couldn't, did, didn't, do, does, doesn't, doing, don't, down, during, each, few, for, from, further, had, hadn't, has, hasn't, have, haven't, having, he, he'd, he'll, he's, her, here, here's, hers, herself, him, himself, his, how, how's, i, i'd, i'll, i'm, i've, if, in, into, is, isn't, it, it's, its, itself, let's, me, more, most, mustn't, my, myself, no, nor, not, of, off, on, once, only, or, other, ought, our, ours, ourselves, out, over, own, same, shan't, she, she'd, she'll, she's, should, shouldn't, so, some, such, than, that, that's, the, their, theirs, them, themselves, then, there, there's, these, they, they'd, they'll, they're, they've, this, those, through, to, too, under, until, up, very, was, wasn't, we, we'd, we'll, we're, we've, were, weren't, what, what's, when, when's, where, where's, which, while, who, who's, whom, why, why's, with, won't, would, wouldn't, you, you'd, you'll, you're, you've, your, yours, yourself, yourselves