App Store Optimisation (ASO) for Google Play & Apple Stores: An SEO strategy

Michael Holloway • 1 April 2025

App store optimisation (or ASO) is an area of SEO which can often be overlooked but, just like regular search, app stores have algorithms to serve users the appropriate apps for what they are searching. If you’re not targeting the right keywords for the service your app provides, then you’re not going to appear when searched for, or drive downloads.

This is an issue one of our clients was having, their app was there in both the Apple App store and Google play store, but they were missing some crucial elements in their listing, hampering their visibility.

How we approached this ASO challenge

Our first step was to review the current keyword performance and opportunities for the client which was crucial in understanding the key queries we needed to reinforce and target for enhanced performance. The use of the SEMrush Mobile App Insights extension was essential for gaining access to relevant app store data throughout the initial optimisation process, all the way through to assessing our final results.

This was followed by a thorough audit of the app listings for our client using our standard Hookflash App Store Optimisation audit format. Our ASO audit ensures we capture all of the key app listing considerations in line with best practices for both Apple and Google’s app stores, such as: reviewing titles, subtitles and descriptions for keyword enhancement, consideration for user ratings, reviews and review responses, graphics and app updates, with longer term reviews for technical deep linking enhancements.

This thorough checklist gives us a complete set of insights into where issues lie as well as where our greatest missed opportunities may be.

What we found from our ASO review

The client was missing some crucial elements to their listings with some quick and easy optimisations available, as well as longer term projects which involved more dev work such as deep linking.

As with all of our SEO and ASO audits, effective prioritisation considering client resource is key to driving results, so we broke these recommendations down into actionable priorities. These primarily focused on effective keyword targeting in key listing sections; titles, descriptions / subtitles and dedicated keyword fields.

How this data driven approach drove immediate app performance improvements across Google & Apple

This effective prioritisation and optimisation drove +17% improved app visibility across all keywords but most importantly across our primary target sets we saw a +60% increase in visibility for transactional queries, +57% visibility for direct service queries, and +46% for supporting queries.

If you have an app which isn’t performing, get in touch for our ASO services to see how Hookflash can help!

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