How Important is Your App’s Title for ASO Purposes

Why are you reading this post?

Did it have anything to do with the title —one that communicated the target niche and basic idea of the whole post, at a glance?

Title is the most important piece of metadata for customers, and this came straight from the head of Google Play’s head Jain. Titles are the first point of contact for your audience. It communicates intent. And if it does so effectively, it dramatically increases chances of the visitor landing on your website, and in our case: on your app’s landing page.

Only then can they read the description, see the snapshots, and view the reviews, and ofcourse download and install the app. Hence, your app’s title is a crucial component of your efforts for App Store Optimization. However, there are certain myths and wrong assumptions about the best methods of leveraging your app’s title for better ASO.

The Problematic ASOs

Many ASOs have decided to switch their title to “better adapt” to the high ranking searches. The routine goes something like this: try different variations of the title with different keywords. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.

Instead of increasing your ranking, it can backfire.

Therefore, in this post, I will discuss about the importance of app’s titles and how frequently changing them could make you lose users.

The Oldest Myth —Changing Your Title Often as an Exercise in Adaptability

I think we’re too influenced by Darwinian ideas about adaptability. The myth is: that it is important to change your title often because it allows you to leverage high-ranking niche specific apps. This overlooks the way how customer reach (via social and search) works. Once word gets out for your app, people will talk about it: using its name and title.

Given that your app garners momentum, a lot of clones are likely to appear and try to hijack your apps energy. Now if you keep changing your title, how will people find the right title from the list of apps in the search?

Changing the title will affect the words used to communicate or refer to your app. Keeping in mind that these exact keywords are most likely to be pasted into the app store search, you are ruining your chances of being found.

Pick a title and Stick to It

This raises the question: how do you create a title that you can stand by?

It’s a stressful question, like choosing a domain name for your website and brand: once you have invested in it, there is no going back. So spend time making the title right the first time.

Here’s how you can do it:

Slice it Short

You have just 25 -30 characters for your title. That’s equal to this sentence. Lengthy titles will get cut and are likely to be missed. Being the most important metadata on the app store, why would you want to get it chopped.

But what about the part that will get chopped? The character length can go up to 80 characters, and so it is up to you to use the remaining characters to target other, secondary keywords.

Get Creative

App store searchers find apps either navigationally or categorically.

Now put your creative hat on full burner and target them both!

Stand Out With Uniqueness

You want to remain abreast of the morass of bandwagon apps that keep on coming, ad nauseam… Make the title unique, one that is memorable and succinctly offers a punch line for the app experience.

In Conclusion — Be Keywordy, But Avoid Stuffing

You must have heard it SO many times by now, and I feel clichéd repeating it: because people still do it. Avoid stuffing keywords. As long as you avoid irrelevant or repetitive keywords in the title, and the descriptions (promotional and normal), you will stay out of the algorithm’s hunting hounds.

All the best!

This blog post is based in the advice given by successful app entrepreneurs in the App Entrepreneurs and Marketers Group. Stay tuned for more informative and insightful posts from us!