💡 How to rank for a keyword?

The million dollar question every app marketer likes to solve for is "specific keyword ranking".Each of the following levers have an impact % on the final ranking.

• App Title
• App Description (Short & Long)
• Ratings
• Reviews keyword topic
• In-App Purchases
• App Update Cycle
• Download velocity & app retention
• Editor's choice badge

🛠 Quick fixes to fix your rank on the store.

• Include the target keywords in your app title.
• For example, if you are a dating app → Include "Dating" in your app title.
• You should also check what keywords users are using in your app reviews for inspiration.

• Explain your product in the short description.
• Always include your core keywords into the short description.
• If title is the most important, the short description is next in the priority list.
• Use this tool if you want to create simple play store copies.

🤞🏼 Did this playbook add value?**Click here to tweet about it,** takes less than 10 secs. Would mean the world to us & push us to launch newer playbooks ♥️

• Long description checklistHave you ever red app description on the play store before downloading the app?I haven't met a single human being who has read the description.

Long description's only job is to give the Google Play Algorithm the signals it needs to index your app. (Index → Understand the context of what your app does in plain english).- It should be easy to understand & well structured.- Repeat the core target keywords for atleast 4-5 times.- Use bullet points to showcase different features / use cases.- Download this template to create your long description.

[Long Description examples to take inspiration from](<https://www.notion.so/Long-Description-examples-to-take-inspiration-from-42944965746e4e1096b0b44cb876da5f?pvs=21>)

• Create in-app prompts for capturing positive reviews & ratings.Identify happy flows in your app & push the android native Google Play In-App ratings prompts. This feature is out of the beta & available to implement worldwide. Please note, the ratings volume does matter, so try to get a positive review from every happy user of the app.
• 🎯 Make sure you show these prompts to users who show a positive review intent.  For example, Uber should show this ratings prompts when someone rates their ride experience as 5/5 or 4/5.

• Google's in app ratings prompt flow.
  
• Myths around download velocity & solving for app retention
• This is long standing myth around download velocity. Having worked on apps with 50 million plus downloads, I assure you there is little short term upside with download velocity onto your play store rankings. So anyone trying to game the play store algorithm with huge traffic using paid ads to drive up the rankings is going to fail in the longer term.
• After speaking to 400+ app marketers, we got a strong qualitative signal that retention is the holy grail of strong positive signal for play store ranking.
• Watch out your D0 uninstall rates (anything above 50% is poor | anything less than 20% is great). Focus on long term retention rates too, they will impact the revenue signal to the algorithm if you offer in-app purchases.

🕹 How to create a converting Play store listing?

→ 80% of the impact on conversion rate is going to come from just 3 things.

• Traffic source
• App title & screenshots
• Trust elements (Ratings + Reviews + Editor's Choice)
• Some nuances that you can action right away 👇🏻

🎯 Understand, tweak & scale the traffic source.

There are four core traffic sources to the any play store listing.

• Google Play SearchWhen a user searches a specific keyword on google play store search bar.
• Google Play ExploreThis happens when either of the following happens.

1. The user is on play store homepage/ category page.
2. The user is on a similar app store listing page.

‍

**Google Play Search**

      **Google Explore**

      Google Explore

  **Google Explore**

• Google ads→ Users landing onto the play store from an Google Ad.
• Third party ads→ Users landing onto the play store from FB/IG/Affiliates.→ Tip : Use "utm_source" across all ad links to get channel wise funnel on play console.
• Referral links→ Users landing onto the play store from referral programs.

Acquisition source / problem solving

You should optimise the play store listing marketing pitch for the acquisition source which brings the higher volume of users + who retain on the app. For example, Google ads brings 80% of your new users and they retain better than other channels, focus on improving the conversion rate for Google ads.

📲 App Title + Screenshots

Show users what will happen when they install the app, period.

App titleTitle will largely be based on your core use case keyword.Few examples for different categories vs core keywords.

Dating apps → Tinder : Match, Chat, Date - Your wayCommute apps → Ola, Safe and affordable ridesShopping apps → Myntra Online Shopping AppDelivery apps → Zomato - Online Food Delivery & Restaurant Reviews

You get the drill. If your core use case is in the title, your users will glance and understand that your app does this X thing.

Step 1: Optimise it for all mobile screen sizes

‍Updated all screen sizes as per Play guidelines. Think of average mobile screen size of your ideal customer.

The example on the left shows a 5.2 inch. Think through text font size on screenshots.

Step 2: Show what's inside the app. Sell the future.

‍Gamings apps do a great job at this. Checkout the example on the right. Learn how they show what's inside the app without the need to download it.

Step 3: Give a strong incentive hook to drive urgency.

‍Check how on the left the events & offers from Battlegrounds Mobile are shown. The offer talks about a deadline too.

🔥 Additional nuances around play store screenshots.

1: Make sure all of your screenshots have non-blurred images. This might sound basic but even top apps sometime miss this quality check.
2: The first 3 screenshots are the most important ones. Less than 20% of the play store visitors will even scroll more than 3-4 screenshots.
3: Always, remember, always run A/B experiments what's working → what's working today will change tomorrow. So keep experimenting.
4: If your app has constant offers, keep updating your offer's section → this gives you additional real estate on the play store listing page plus helps you get additional traffic.

Step 3 : Trust elements (Ratings + Reviews + Editor's Choice)

Ratings & ReviewsWe have already covered how you think through ratings using native Google Play In-App ratings prompts. Another nuance is to solve for the first review that comes up on store landing page.

This first comment is super critical to build trust. This is harder to crack and I won't sugarcoat this but get an intern or someone on the team operationally to make sure this first comment is positive. If you get a negative review as the first one, try to solve for that user and turnaround the review.

Editor's choiceThis ever harder to crack but worth the effort. Google will typically curate editor's choice awards every now and then & there is hardly any science to this. Every other blog will try to come up with some random 50 step approach.

Here's what works → If your marketing team is running ads with Google (which I am sure they are), you will have an engagement manager assigned. Use them to speak to Google Play team in India. Understand how does their calendar looks like - do they have a curation coming or phase of editor's choice? It's really depends on what category of app you are building and why should you buy chosen for editors choice. If you have a user's choice / editor's choice award already, make sure you have this in the screenshots.

Here's an example from Calm.See how the editor's choice is something you can't miss.

That's all for now. Go, execute now!