3 Top iOS Entertainment Apps: ASO Keyword Improvement Tips

It may be a little surprising but not all top apps rank well for their keywords. Some apps may be successful because they spend a ton of money on advertising, some because they have brand recognition or others may have just gone viral. Regardless of the reason, just because an app is successful, it doesn't mean that the publisher is maximizing its organic traffic through App Store Keyword Optimization.

In this post we will look at three successful apps in the Entertainment Category and how they can improve their keywords. We hope that you can apply these lessons to your app and get more downloads through search traffic. After that, we will take a look at one app in this category that is doing a really good job of optimizing their keywords and how you can see the specific keywords they are using.

Audiobooks from Audible

This is one app that enjoys a lot of brand recognition and presumably a fairly large marketing budget, so it is therefore not so focused on App Store Optimization. But as you will see, if they made just a few small changes, they could increase their search visibility and get even more downloads.

When we spy on their keywords, we find that they are only using two keywords in their keyword list. Just to be clear, these are the keywords that are not already in their title.

But if they did want to start optimizing their keywords, what are some good ideas? If we spy on the keywords of other audio book apps such as Audiobooks, we find some great ideas that could be tested. If you have a smaller audiobook app, optimizing for keywords is one way that you could get a foothold in the market, since mega apps like Audiobooks From Audible don't optimize their app keywords.

StumbleUpon!

The StumbleUpon! app is currently ranked #18 on the Category Leaderboard, but it could benefit from a little keyword tuning. Here are the keywords that they are not ranking in the top 10 for. They do have other keywords that they are ranking well for.

To get some fresh keyword ideas, let's turn to the Review Analysis Tool. Near the top of the list is a great looking keyword: "interests." Since StumbleUpon! helps users find amazing content centered around specific interests, this might be a great keyword to start using.

What does the data say? When we use the Keyword Research Tool, we find that this keyword has a very low iPhone Difficulty Score, Traffic is pretty good and there are not a lot of competing apps. So it is something that StumbleUpon should consider testing.

In addition, their app title is a little plain. Adding a few carefully placed keywords to their title could help them rank for those tougher keywords that they are not ranking in the top 10 for.

Slacker Radio

This app is currently #10 on the Sensor Tower Leaderboard. However, Slacker Radio does have room to improve their keywords. A lot of room.

If we look at their keyword list, they do not rank in the top 10 for any of their keywords. We also took a look at keyword phrase combinations (which are usually easier to rank for) such as "talk radio" and "pop radio." The result is slightly better, but not as good as they could be.

When we look at the difficulty scores of their existing keywords, they generally rank better for iPad keywords because the keywords that they have chosen usually have much fewer iPad apps, as you can see in the iPhone/iPad Apps columns. Since the iPhone is harder to rank for, we will make it easy and look for the Difficulty Score of the single iPhone keyword that they rank best for and use that as our measuring stick. For detailed information on how to pick keywords, read our guide.

In this case, it would be "alternative." This keyword has an iPhone Difficulty Score of 2.2 and the app ranks #31 for that keyword. Therefore, Slacker, Inc. would want to experiment with keywords that are around that Difficulty Score or less. They may have to go for a lower Difficulty Score to get this app in the top #10, but this is a good starting point.

So where can they find better keywords? Again, let's look at their app reviews. As we scroll through the Review Analysis Tool, an interesting keyword that comes up is "variety." Users generally like the variety of music that the app provides.

But is it a good potential keyword? This is what the data on this keyword looks like. As you can see, the iPhone Difficulty Score is really low and there are not too many competing apps on both the iPhone and iPad.

The bonus is that this keyword gets a pretty good amount of traffic. So this could be one of the keywords that Slacker, Inc. tests. They might also consider adding keywords to the title of their app to improve the search rankings.

Spotify

Now let's take a look at an Entertainment app that is really on top of its App Store Optimization, Spotify. It is very impressive, their keyword rankings are shown in the picture below. These are Clash of Clans type rankings.

All of their keywords achieve the goal of being in the top 10, with the exception of one of the iPhone keywords. But #12 is certainly close enough.

If you want to see the exact keywords that Spotify uses in their keyword list, go to our homepage and take a peek at their keywords for free.

One small improvement is that they can still add a few more keywords to their list. There are 18 characters left to add a few more keywords that they can dominate.

Conclusion

So that is a quick look at three apps that in spite of their success, still have room to improve when it comes to their App Store keywords. We hope that you have learned a few valuable lessons from where these apps could improve, so you can apply them to your app. This just goes to show that even if your app cannot compete when it comes to marketing budget or brand recognition, you can still start to build your user base through keyword optimization because even top apps are not necessarily completely optimized.

What are you struggling with when it comes to keyword optimization right now?