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6 min readJuly 1, 2026

ASO Keywords: What They Are, How to Research Them, and How to Pick the Right Ones

ASO keywords determine which App Store searches your app appears in. Here's what they are, where they go, how to research them, and how to choose the ones worth targeting.

ASO keywords are the search terms you target so your app appears when users search the App Store. Get the right keywords in the right places and your app shows up in searches you'd otherwise miss. Get the wrong ones — or put them in the wrong places — and you're invisible.

This guide covers what ASO keywords are, where they go in App Store Connect, how to research them, and how to decide which ones to actually use.

What ASO keywords are

When someone opens the App Store and searches "habit tracker," Apple's algorithm searches its index for apps that have been flagged as relevant to that term. The apps that appear — and the order they appear in — are determined by how the algorithm scores each app for that keyword.

An ASO keyword is any search term you're trying to rank for. You signal relevance to a keyword by placing it in your app's metadata. Apple indexes the words it finds in your metadata and uses them (along with behavioral signals like downloads and ratings) to decide which searches your app should appear in.

Every word in your metadata is a potential keyword. The question is: which words should you deliberately target, and which metadata fields carry the most weight?

Where ASO keywords go

There are three metadata fields Apple indexes for keyword-based search. They're weighted differently:

Title (30 characters) — highest weight

The most valuable keyword real estate in the App Store. A keyword in your title carries more ranking power than the same keyword anywhere else. Your most important keyword should be here, as early in the title as possible.

Subtitle (30 characters) — second highest weight

The second most valuable field, commonly wasted on taglines. Every word in your subtitle is indexed for search. Use it for your second most important keyword — one that doesn't appear in your title.

Keyword field (100 characters) — indexed but lower weight

A hidden field only Apple sees. Comma-separated, no spaces after commas. Every word here is indexed for search, but with less weight than words in the title or subtitle. Critical rule: no repeating words from your title or subtitle — Apple indexes each word once, so duplicates waste characters.

What's not indexed for search

Your description is not indexed for keyword search. Neither are your screenshots or preview video. These affect conversion — how many people download after finding you — but they don't determine which searches you appear in.

Types of ASO keywords

Short-tail (high volume, high competition)

Single-word or two-word category terms: "productivity," "meditation," "tracker," "finance app." These are searched the most but dominated by large, established apps with enormous rating counts. New and small apps cannot rank for these.

Mid-tail (moderate volume, moderate competition)

Two to three word phrases: "habit tracker app," "pomodoro focus timer," "budget planner couples." These have meaningful search volume and achievable competition levels — the top results often have 500–3,000 ratings rather than 100,000+. The primary target tier for most indie apps.

Long-tail (lower volume, low competition)

Specific phrases with three or more words: "habit tracker no subscription," "pomodoro timer with music," "budget app shared expenses." Lower volume but very low competition. New apps can rank for these quickly, accumulate downloads from them, and use that history to climb toward mid-tail keywords over time.

Branded keywords

Your app name, your developer name, variations of them. Apple indexes these automatically — you don't need to include them in your keyword field. Adding your own name to the keyword field wastes characters.

Competitor branded keywords

Other apps' names. Targeting these is technically possible but discouraged: Apple may filter them as irrelevant, App Store guidelines prohibit misleading trademark use, and users searching for a specific competitor are unlikely to download your app instead. Low conversion, policy risk.

How to research ASO keywords

Guessing doesn't work. The keywords you think users search for and the keywords they actually type are often different. Research reveals the gap.

Step 1: Start with seed terms

Write down 5–10 words that describe what your app does. A habit tracking app might start with: habit, routine, streak, goal, tracker, daily, challenge, schedule, accountability.

Step 2: Expand in a keyword research tool

Open AppTweak, ASOdesk, or AppFollow. Set the country to your primary market. Search each seed term and look at:

  • Related keywords the tool suggests
  • Autocomplete terms (what Apple suggests when users type your seed term)
  • Competitor keywords — which keywords do your top 3 competitors rank for?

Pull a list of 30–50 candidates. Don't filter yet — just gather.

Step 3: Assess each keyword on two dimensions

For every candidate keyword, you need two data points:

Volume — how many users search this term per month. Higher is better, but volume alone doesn't make a keyword worth targeting.

Difficulty — how competitive the keyword is. Most tools score this 0–100. Scores under 30 are achievable for new apps; scores over 60 are very hard to rank for without significant download history and rating count.

The goal is high volume + low difficulty — the best keywords give you real search traffic at competition you can win.

Step 4: Check competition manually

For any keyword you're seriously considering, search it in the App Store (set your device region to the target country). Look at the apps in positions 1–10. What's their rating count?

  • Top results have 10,000+ ratings → too competitive for most indie apps
  • Top results have 1,000–5,000 ratings → achievable with a growing app
  • Top results have under 500 ratings → very achievable, prioritize this

This manual check catches cases where the tool's difficulty score doesn't match the real competitive landscape.

Step 5: Run competitor gap analysis

Find your top 3–5 competitors in your category. Which keywords do they rank for that your app doesn't appear for at all? These are your highest-priority additions — they're proven search terms (users are finding those competitors through them) that you're currently missing entirely.

Most ASO research tools can show competitor keyword rankings directly. This is the fastest path to finding keywords worth targeting.

How to prioritize which keywords to use

You have 30 characters in your title, 30 in your subtitle, and 100 in your keyword field. You'll have more good keyword candidates than space. Here's how to prioritize:

Title: single highest-volume, highest-relevance keyword that your app can realistically rank for. Put it first.

Subtitle: second most valuable keyword that doesn't appear in the title. Highest volume among remaining candidates.

Keyword field: fill with remaining candidates in order of value. Higher volume terms first, then fill remaining characters with long-tail terms.

A few rules for the keyword field specifically:

  • No words already in title or subtitle (zero benefit, wastes characters)
  • No spaces after commas (spaces eat into your 100-character budget)
  • Fill to exactly 100 characters — every unused character is a missed keyword

Localized ASO keywords

Here's what most keyword guides skip: your keyword strategy is market-specific.

The keywords that users search in Japan, Germany, or France for your app category are different from what they search in English — not just translated, but structurally different. German users search different compound words. Japanese users use different scripts and different cultural search vocabulary. French users mix anglicisms and native terms differently than German users do.

Each locale in App Store Connect has its own keyword field — completely independent of your English one. Leaving German keyword fields blank means zero visibility in German searches. Adding German keywords that are just translated English keywords means targeting what an English speaker thinks Germans search, not what they actually type.

Researching ASO keywords per language market — using keyword tools set to the target country — is what separates translation from genuine localization. And localization is what produces actual ranking movement in non-English markets.

For a full walkthrough of localized keyword research by market, see the country-specific guides:

Common ASO keyword mistakes

Using your description as a keyword strategy. The description isn't indexed for search. Keywords in your description contribute nothing to ranking. Developers who stuff their description with keywords are wasting time — it affects conversion, not discovery.

Repeating keywords across fields. If "timer" is in your title and also in your keyword field, you've wasted those keyword field characters. Apple indexes "timer" once — from the title, which has higher weight. The keyword field instance does nothing.

Targeting keywords based on how you'd describe your app. You know your app's features. Your users know their problems. Research reveals the gap — the actual terms they type, not the ones you assume they use.

Changing keywords too frequently. Apple takes 2–4 weeks to index new metadata. Updating every two weeks means your keywords never get fully indexed before the next change resets the clock. Commit to a keyword set for at least 6 weeks before evaluating.

Ignoring non-English markets entirely. Your English keyword field doesn't rank in Japanese, German, or French searches. Every non-English market with a blank keyword field is a market where your entire keyword strategy doesn't exist.

See Also