In short
App Store keyword research means finding the search terms people type and placing the right ones in your title, subtitle and hidden keyword field. Pick terms with enough popularity and low enough difficulty, favor long-tail phrases, and track your rank over time. AppHitlist shows keyword popularity and difficulty, but popularity is a score or an estimate, not an exact search count.
How does App Store search find your app?
App Store search matches what a person types against the text of your listing. You control three fields most: the title, the subtitle and the keyword field. The keyword field is a hidden box of up to 100 characters that only you can see.
In general, words in the title count most, then the subtitle, then the keyword field. Apple does not publish its exact ranking rules, so treat this order as a working assumption. Ratings, downloads and how well an app keeps users probably matter too.
Space is tight, so every character has to earn its place. The title and subtitle also face the customer, so they must read well as well as rank well. The keyword field is invisible. Use it for extra terms you could not fit elsewhere.
What are popularity and difficulty?
Popularity tells you how often people search for a term. Difficulty tells you how hard it is to rank near the top for it, based on the apps that already hold those spots. You want terms with decent popularity and difficulty that is not crushing.
Be clear about where popularity numbers come from. Apple does not hand out exact search counts. Apple Ads, Apple's own advertising service, gives a relative popularity score. Tools that can't read that score estimate popularity from other signals, such as search suggestions.
In AppHitlist, Keywords shows popularity and difficulty for a term. Popularity is the latest US Apple Ads score, or an estimate from search suggestions when no score exists. The page marks which one you are seeing. Neither is an exact number, so use them to compare terms with each other, not to forecast installs.
Why should you chase long-tail keywords?
A short, general word such as planner is searched by many people and fought over by every large app. A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific phrase such as meal planner for two people. Fewer people type it and fewer apps compete for it. The people who do type it know what they want.
For a new app, this is usually the easier way in. You can rank for a narrow phrase with few ratings, and each small win shows Apple and your customers what the app is about.
Think about intent. Someone searching a general word is browsing. Someone searching for a specific job is ready to install. A listing that matches a precise job often converts better than one that matches a broad word, even if the term is smaller.
How do you build a keyword list?
Work from broad to narrow, and write down every step.
- Write ten seed words: the problem, the user, the job and the object, in the words a customer would use.
- Type each seed into App Store search and note the suggestions that appear. They show what people actually search for.
- Open your five closest competitors and copy the terms from their titles and subtitles.
- Read the 1- and 2-star reviews of those apps for the words users use to describe the problem.
- Score each term for popularity and difficulty, and drop the ones that are too hard for a new app.
- Place the best terms in the title and subtitle, and the rest in the keyword field without repeating a word across fields.
How do you track ranks over time?
A keyword list is a hypothesis. Rank tracking tells you whether it is true. Pick ten to thirty terms you care about, in the same country, and check where your app lands for each of them on a regular schedule.
In AppHitlist, you add your own app under Your Apps, choose the keywords to track and see where it ranks in App Store search. Ranks update once a day. Write down every change you make to your listing, with its date. A rank move only means something if you know what changed before it.
Expect rank to move slowly. Changes to your metadata can take a few days to show, and one day's rank is noisy. Judge a change by the trend over a week or two, not by one reading.
What mistakes do beginners make?
Most early mistakes come from treating keywords as a trick instead of a description of the app. Avoid these:
- Stuffing the title with words, which makes it unreadable and hurts conversion.
- Using competitors' brand names in your metadata, which Apple does not allow.
- Chasing only the highest popularity and ignoring difficulty.
- Repeating the same word in the title, subtitle and keyword field, which wastes space.
- Changing everything at once, so you cannot tell what caused a rank move.
- Forgetting that other languages and countries have their own search habits.