Himalaya: +58% Organic Downloads [ASO Case Study]

This blog article was written by Ambra Percudani.

If your goal is to make your app successful, one of the first steps you need to consider in your App Marketing strategy is ASO. Without a proper optimization of the listing, both in terms of keywords and visuals, any effort you make to get users to the tab may not lead to the results you expect and users finding a poorly updated listing may end up not downloading your app.

To give you an idea of how to work an ASO optimization, today I will present you the success story of the app Himalaya in the US and in Taiwan that we have worked from PICKASO, for which we increased search downloads by 58% on the App Store in Taiwan and by 47% on Google Play in the US.

Himalaya is an audio education platform that offers inspirational and motivational stories of the most extraordinary people (see the app product page). The app is available in Chinese, English, Spanish and Japanese speaking countries.

In this post, I will introduce you to the evolution of Himalaya’s app, after the first ASO optimization of the app. Keep in mind that not only keywords play a key role in the organic growth of an app, but that all the visual elements, the average rating, ratings and reviews can help to improve the conversion rate of your listing.

ASO pre-optimization for Himalaya

Before the ASO optimization, Himalaya app’s listing already had some relevant keywords, such as “courses” and “stories”, both in Google Play and App Store, so we were not starting from scratch.

In the case of Google Play, almost all the available space was used in the text fields, taking advantage of most of the characters available in the Title and Short Description. However, it had room for improvement especially in the long description, as it was not optimized in terms of keyword density and characters used.

On the App Store, although the App Name used an important high-traffic keyword such as “audio”, it did not take full advantage of the available space, leaving room for improvement to add more relevant keywords with traffic.

Keep in mind that an ASO optimization cannot be an isolated case. It is necessary to keep optimizing and adapting the listing over time, based on the results obtained, the changes in the stores, the users’ search behavior and the competition.

In general, Himalaya’s app had room for improvement, especially in the descriptions of both the App Store and Google Play. Both stores offer enough space to add the keywords for which we want our app to be positioned, so we must make the most of this space. Below are the character limits defined by both stores.

App Store

• App Name: 30 characters
• Subtitle: 30 characters
• Keywords field: 100 characters

Google Play

• New Guidelines! Title: 30 characters
• Short Description: 80 characters
• Long Description: 4.000 characters

The App Name on the App Store and the Title on Google Play are the fields that have the most weight in terms of ASO and that’s where you have to add the most important keywords for which we want to get visibility and position. The long description is only indexed in Google Play, offering 4.000 characters more to work with keywords.

ASO Keywords Research

Before making changes to the listing, we always advise you to do a keyword research, to define the list of medium and medium-high traffic keywords to include in the listing. This list is crucial, since it defines the keywords for which we want to position ourselves and appear in the search results of the app stores.

Given that in Taiwan the app has a fairly high level of downloads compared to other apps in the same category, it made sense to use high-traffic keywords because it is possible to rank for them. On the other hand, in the United States, since the volume is lower, it has been more interesting to work with lower-traffic keywords, since it would be more difficult to rank for high-traffic keywords.

As I mentioned before, ASO needs constant maintenance, that is to say that it is essential to review the keywords periodically and work on changes in the listing, so that it is always fresh and updated.

The result of the keyword research for the Himalaya app, has resulted in keywords related to “audio”, “courses” and “stories”, their combinations to form mid and long-tail keywords and some competitor keywords. From this list, we included in the listing the keywords with a medium / high search level that define the main focus of Himalaya’s app.

ASO optimizations in the listing

Once we had the list of keywords for which we wanted to get visibility and start appearing in the first search results of the mobile app stores, the next step was to define the most relevant keywords to add to Himalaya’s product page. To do so, we took into account the different impact of the text fields and the different ways of optimizing the tab in the two stores.

ASO Optimization for Apple App Store

Knowing that the App Name is the most relevant field on the App Store, we included in it all the keywords for which we want to position in Top 5. In the case of Himalaya, we took the keywords that were in the Subtitle and put them in the App Name, as they better represent the functionality of the app and they make more sense in the most important field.

In the Subtitle, we left the keywords that were in the App Name, and added another high-traffic keyword that we wanted to rank for. This way, both the Subtitle and the App Name reached 29 characters out of 30.

The keywords field offers 100 characters to include the other keywords that we could not add in the App Name and in the Subtitle. It is a hidden field so the keywords it includes are not visible to the users on the App Store.

In the promo text we added a catchy sentence that shows the benefits of Himalaya’s app, inviting users to download the app to see what they can get from it.

ASO optimization for Google Play

After the implementation of Google’s new guidelines, the Title has gone from 50 to 30 characters, like on the App Store. For this reason, we took advantage of the space available to add the most relevant keywords next to the brand name, since this field, as on the App Store, is the most important one in terms of ASO.

However, Google Play works based on keyword density, i.e. the more a keyword is repeated (obviously always with common sense), the higher the possibility of ranking for it. For this reason, in the Short Description field, we repeated some keywords that we already put in the Title and took advantage of the remaining space to include other keywords of average traffic, which also helps to define the app for the users to briefly understand what they will find.

Given that Google Play’s long description affects the ASO and that every word contained in this field is indexed by Google, in these 4.000 characters we work on all relevant keywords for which we want to be found and directly related to the app with a medium-high search traffic. In addition, we improved the structure of the current description, adding htmls, bold characters and emojis, so that it can be read more easily.

We managed to create a long description with a good density of keywords for which we want to position, and taking advantage of almost all available characters.

Results

What results did we get after the ASO optimization?

• Top 2 in the category “Books” App Store Taiwan
• Top 1 in the “Books” category on Google Play Taiwan
• +58% search downloads on App Store Taiwan
• +47% search downloads on Google Play United States
• +164% Top 1 keywords for which Himalaya ranks organically in App Store
• +233% keywords in Top 1 for which Himalaya ranks organically in Google Play

In short, we got very good results. Let’s have a look at them more in details:

Increased visibility for organic keywords

We highlight a significant increase in the visibility of Himalaya’s app in terms of keywords for which it ranks organically on the App Store. In the screenshot below, extracted from the ASO tool App Radar, we can see an increase of keywords for which we are positioned in Top 1, Top 5, Top 10, Top 50 and Top 100 from before the optimization in the first week of September until 3 months after we have seen the following results. On the App Store, the keywords in Top 1 multiplied X2.6 while the keywords in Top 10 almost doubled.

On Google Play, the following results were observed from before the first optimization until 3 months later: the keywords in Top 1 multiplied by 4,3 and the keywords in Top 10 by 8,2.

Increase in visibility for monitored keywords

On the other hand, with regard to the keywords resulting from the keyword research and which we are monitoring, on the App Store we multiplied by 2,7 the keywords in Top 1 in the United States and by 2,3 the keywords in Top 1 in Taiwan.

On Google Play, on the other hand, we multiplied by 1,4 the Top 1 keywords in the United States and by 1,1 in Taiwan, after the ASO optimization of Himalaya’s listing.

Increase in browse visibility

For both stores, we proposed a category change from “Education” to “Books”, as it is a less competitive category and also some of our competitors rank in this one. On the App Store, with this change we observed an increase in visibility for Himalaya, which, if in “Education” had not been able to rank with the change, reached a Top 33 as its best position in the United States.

While in Taiwan, it went from a Top 19 in “Education” to a Top 2 in “Books” as its best position.

On Google Play, in Taiwan we went from a Top 6 in “Education” to a Top 1 in “Books” as the best position.

And in the United States, although the visibility is much lower due to the great competition that exists in this country and that many more downloads are necessary to reach high positions in Top Charts, we also appreciate an improvement in the positions, going from a Top 497 in “Education” to a Top 242 in “Books”, and it seems that the trend is positive, so if more downloads continue to be achieved, the visibility should continue to grow.

Increase in organic search downloads

Results for App Store: Increase in search downloads by +58%

In the graph below, we can see the effect of the ASO optimization in terms of downloads. We compare the total downloads before optimization (two weeks before) with the total downloads one week after optimization. We can see that we achieved very good results in Taiwan, appreciating an increase in search downloads of +58%.

In the United States, we saw a +38% increase in search downloads, excluding the September 8 peak.

Results for Google Play: Search downloads increased by +47%

Also in the case of Google Play we considered a couple of weeks before the optimization and compared it with one week after the change. In the graph below, we can see how we achieved very good results after the ASO optimization: we increased organic search downloads by +47% in the United States, if we do not consider the peak on September 8.

Conclusions

These results are a clear example of how ASO optimization is key to the success of your mobile application. Working on the keywords that define the business in your app product page is very important: they allow stores to understand how you want to position yourself.

Thanks to the optimization we worked on from PICKASO, Himalaya managed to improve visibility both in search (getting more and better positions for the keywords worked in the on-metadata fields) and navigation (with the change of category). This new ASO strategy resulted in more organic downloads and more business for the client.

If you want to push your business and need support, we are here. With PICKASO you can discover the key to your success.