ASO for Indie developers. Part 1.

ASO for independent developers, also commonly referred to as indie developers, is an entirely optional process. How can analytics and optimization help in developing an excellent mobile game? And the correct answer will be - most likely, not at all. But suppose you look at it more comprehensively. In that case, games are not created in a vacuum. If we consider the influence of trends and tendencies, the competitive field, and, most importantly, arranging a meeting between users and our fantastic game. And this is where mobile analytics tools and ASO optimization come into play.

In short, we can easily create and develop a game without ASO, but optimization is impossible for it to be found and installed.

I think this is why almost every mobile application analytics platform has its own plan: a set of optimization tools that will help an Indie developer optimize the developed game.

Mobile games and users

Let's see where mobile games get users from. According to the analysis of traffic sources, the leading resource is search, 48% of users install games from search.

Therefore, search engine optimization is the key to installs. Since we are here thinking about optimization for indie developers, this is not about large advertising budgets; therefore, focusing efforts on organic traffic is the right strategy.

The assumption that the target audience for mobile games is all gamers is overly confident. There are games where more than half of the players are women, and there are games for children, so targeting gamers in general is difficult and inefficient. Therefore, the first thing we look at is our competitors.

• Open sources - advertising creatives. We remember the open repository from the App Store. In addition to successful and working options, we can find unsuccessful examples. Also, suppose we started research before developing the game (which is the most correct strategy). In that case, we can examine the interfaces, colors, and schematic solutions of competing games and conclude in our favor.
• Game and app stores. Studying stores at the moment of inspiration and analysis is a must-have for any interested party. And if we are talking about independent developers, they are generally marketers and targetologists,  very versatile specialists.
• Social media. Advertising and promoting games on social networks has recently become commonplace; people no longer talk about it. However, using them to better understand your target audience and users is a must.

The study and analysis of mobile game user behavior is a vast section filled with analytical data and indicators. Still, we will discuss something else when considering the target audience in relation to game optimization. Instead, it’s about how they search for a game, what words to use to describe the search query, and what the store will show them.

Therefore, we will direct our primary efforts in working with competitors precisely on this: how they optimize their games, how they find users, and what we discover we will apply in our ASO strategy.

Any mobile app marketing effort should start with positioning our game for discovery. ASO plays a strategic role for Indie developers; we set ourselves the goal of maximum organic traffic with limited budgets. Indeed, unlike large companies, the developer relies solely on their own strength, and in this case, they must master the principles of optimizing apps and games.

When discussing optimization, it’s worth clarifying the key points.

1. Identification of competitors. We can do this ourselves - fortunately, app stores and industry reviews are available. Or take the path of least resistance and work through analytics.
2. Working with keywords. We need to find and evaluate how users will search for our game. In other words, we must think like users and act like developers. We are the ones who know the functionality and main features, and analytics will help us understand the users.
3. Generation of metadata - we will use keywords on our game page on the store. Thus, we will draw an analogy for stores - what our game is about, and for what search queries it should appear in the search results.
4. Visual elements. Once the user has found us, they should now want to install us. Our icons, screenshots, and video should convince them that this is the game they desire.
5. Performance analysis - in addition to the release and implementation of metadata, we must understand what we ended up with. For which keywords and on which stores do we appear? What is happening with our competitors, and have we missed any exciting segment of users? Thanks to analytics, we can easily repeat the cycle of actions from the beginning, but not from scratch, focusing on the market.

ASOMobile and ASO Indie

In fact, it sounds much scarier than it actually is in practice. A wide range of tools and analytical platforms is available to us, making the optimization process simple, understandable, and efficient. They also forgot to add 'budgetary,' which is very important within indie development.

There is an idea for a game - PVP, post-apocalyptic world, zombies, shooter. This idea already incorporates keywords that describe the style, type of activity, and direction in which we should proceed next. We type “zombie war” into the App Store search bar and select a game as an example and the basis for ASO optimization. Thus, clarity and a practical approach will prevail in our case of optimizing an indie game. Mobile analytics offered by ASOMobile is a unique package solution for Indie developers - a plan of the same name. We will review all the tools and see what we can obtain.

We chose Zero City as the basis for the optimization example.

The next step is to decide on the geo, i.e., the country where we will optimize our game. Let's be apparent right away: here, we are talking about localizing the page of our game, not about translating the gameplay itself. You can read about the role of localization here.

Localization - USA.

Platform - iOS (analytics makes it possible to carry out localization for two stores).

Link to the game - Zero City

So, we have everything to go through all the steps of text optimization of our future game. Add a link to the game and country, and let's go!

Collecting keywords

Please note that, based on this link, we are already starting to collect keywords, thanks to analytics tips. Keyword Monitor is the first tool where analytics automatically takes us after adding a game.

There are already semantics here, i.e., search queries (26 keywords and phrases). We will see our search queries here, which can be collected thanks to other analytics tools.

We will not delve into detail on Keyword Monitor for now, as this is only the initial stage. After working with the keywords, we’ll return to this; please note that everything you can find and add will be stored here.

Please note that the wide variety of tools is distributed across sections. For now, when generating data for optimization, we will focus on the ASO section.

Almost every tool we turn to has a Competitors tab - this is understandable, as the competitive field forms the search results in stores. It would be beneficial for us to identify who our competitors are and what keywords they are indexed for, as we want to achieve the same results. That's why we will proceed to the Keyword Check.

Keyword Check

A tool that will show us an analysis of any search query - traffic volume, competitors, store tips. We can use it to identify and add our leading competitors to our analytics because ASO optimization will occur based on the competitive field. To do this, we enter the most general key from the name of our game, which underlies optimization, as a search query and get the result - not only query analytics but also a list of competitors.

We add them to analytics. This way, we can enter all the popular queries that interest us and create a picture of our competitors.

As for popular search queries, Trending Searches will show us trends and tendencies, including free and paid categories, as well as the longest-lived and most popular search queries.

We can also examine data for any month to determine if there is any seasonality in popular queries. This will enable us to predict and consider market influences on our optimization strategy.

Now, back to our keywords and the following tool that is difficult to underestimate: App Keywords. It is the one that shows us the indexing by keywords of any application, i.e., we see for what search queries our competitors are shown, in what place, as well as analytics of these keywords (how many users are looking for such a key, how popular it is, how many apps and games are already indexed by it, etc.).

App Keywords

A tool in every ASO specialist's kit, let's see why and how we will use App Keywords for our optimization.

This is what the list of keywords our game is indexed for looks like - the basis for optimization, with over 2,000 queries. Don’t be surprised if you see queries here that are entirely unrelated to the game; indexing is not limited to keywords indicated in the metadata. For many reasons, this is why it is essential to engage in text optimization. After all, without it, our game can show for completely unrelated requests, but no one will find it for those we need. But first things first.

App Keywords enable us to add relevant keywords to the semantic core. What keywords are we interested in?

• Relevant, that is, those that describe the functionality of our game, its style, target audience, etc. Checking for relevance can be done in the following way - you need to look at the search results for this query, and if our direct competitors are there, feel free to take it into our semantic core. Then we will have the opportunity to clean it and analyze it.

• Keywords that users are searching for. So, those search queries that have traffic. Please note that every keyword in App Keywords has this metric. Let’s immediately point out that search queries such as 'game' and 'strategy game' are extremely popular, which means high competition. However, this does not mean we must avoid them; we incorporate them into our work.
• Those by which competitors are indexed. To do this, go to the Competitors tab and add all the keywords that interest us.

Having added all the keywords we think are suitable, we don’t stop and use the following tool - Keyword Suggest.

Keyword Suggest

It’s immediately apparent from the name that we will work with tips. Remember the search mechanism on the app store: we enter words, and the store immediately offers us everything that we have previously searched for on this issue, just like Google. But since they were looking for it, these are relevant and suitable keywords. Analytics makes it possible to work with all store tips in one click. Let's see what we can gather from the zombie keyword suggestions:

By reviewing queries, we will significantly enhance our semantics with hints. These, by the way, are arranged in alphabetical order and even include numbers. What else are good tips? Users will not manually enter long search queries, but happily click them in the tips. So, we confidently add everything that fits into our keyword pool.

Keyword Select

We continue to search and expand our semantic core. The Keyword Select tool will show us queries similar to those we entered for analysis. These may be the most popular queries among users, and we will identify similar ones, enabling us to cover a broader range of search queries in our optimization. If we have any doubts, we always check the search results for the presence of competitors.

Please note that we will not brush off shooter requests, not with zombies, but with aliens. Users looking for a shooter will have a choice, but who will be in the lead role may not be so important. Additionally, this approach allows us to understand the popularity of the shooter query within our semantic core. This will be useful to us in the future.

Keyword Finder

A tool in which you don’t need to analyze anything - it works based on the queries that are already in analytics. That's why we won't use it first.

We add everything suitable to the semantic core, while also checking dubious keywords for relevance using search results.

Spy Explorer

It's time to go and look at the competition. Spy Explorer was created to allow us to conveniently compare our game with a competitor or two competitors.

This can serve as a source of semantics, as we can analyze keywords, expand our semantic core, and compare positions and the number of indexed queries.

Keyword Monitor

We collected 165 key queries with all tools in Keyword Monitor

Now, we have several more options to expand this list - analyzing suggestions for each word.

And now, we can move on to analysis.

Semantic core analysis

After we have used all the available tools for collecting keywords, it’s time to analyze them, look for other possible clues, and arrange the core conveniently for further work.

1. We sort the keywords by traffic indicator and exclude those with an indicator of 0 or -. For speed and convenience, you can use the traffic filter.
2. We verify words for relevance using search results or logical analysis. For example, the Warcraft or For Kids keys are clearly out of context; let’s use a word filter and delete all related search queries.
3. We sort the core by traffic. There are convenient color filters for this, which allow us to conditionally divide our semantics into three zones - we mark keys with a high traffic indicator in green, average value ones in orange, and the rest of the semantics in yellow. Colors can be chosen randomly; the main thing is that it is clear to us.

As a result, our semantic core acquired its final form, and 92 queries remained; all of them fit the functionality of our future game and are popular among users.

The difference in the generation of the semantic core for the App Store and Google Play

In this practical case, we looked at how to collect semantics for iOS games and apps. For Android, we will do precisely the same. There is only one metric that will be different - Apple Search Ads. It exists only for iOS games and applications, serving as an additional guide and source of semantics when there are very few search queries in a niche, allowing us to find ideas in advertising from competitors. So, compiling a semantic core for Google Play is just as easy as for the App Store; there is only one thing: you must compile it separately without using one semantic core for two stores. Many studies discuss the differences in user behavior, including how users interact with apps and what they look for in app stores. Based on our practical experience, the semantic core for the App Store is consistently different from that of Google Play.

This concludes the first article in the ASO series for Indie developers. However, as a result of the publications, we will have detailed instructions on optimizing a mobile game, both independently and with the help of ASOMobile analytics. In the following publication, we will examine the process of creating metadata for our game.

Optimize and achieve your goals💙