ASO advice usually reduces to "put keywords in your title." That's a small part of it, the two stores work differently in ways that matter, and the highest-leverage work is usually conversion rate rather than keywords.
Here's the practical version for both stores.
The two stores index differently
This is the most important thing to understand, and most guides gloss over it.
Apple App Store uses a dedicated, hidden keyword field — 100 characters, invisible to users, that you fill with comma-separated terms. Your app description is not indexed for search. Writing keyword-stuffed description copy on iOS accomplishes nothing except making the listing worse to read.
Google Play has no keyword field. It indexes your title, short description, and full description. Keywords need to appear naturally in copy that users actually read — so the description has to serve two audiences at once.
That single difference means the two listings should not be identical.
| App Store (iOS) | Play Store (Android) | |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 30 chars, indexed | 30 chars, indexed, heavily weighted |
| Subtitle / short description | 30 chars, indexed | 80 chars, indexed |
| Keyword field | 100 chars, hidden, indexed | Does not exist |
| Description | Not indexed | Indexed |
| Review turnaround | Typically 24–48h | Often faster |
| Listing experiments | Product Page Optimization | Store Listing Experiments (A/B) |
Using the fields properly
Title (both, 30 characters). Your strongest signal on both stores. Brand plus your main category term — Wavelength: Habit Tracker beats Wavelength alone, because nobody searches your brand until they know it exists.
iOS subtitle (30 chars). Indexed. A second, different value proposition — don't repeat title words, you gain nothing.
iOS keyword field (100 chars). The rules that matter:
- Comma-separated, no spaces after commas — spaces waste characters
- Never repeat words already in your title or subtitle; they're already indexed
- Singular only — Apple handles plurals
- Skip your category name, it's already applied
- Skip competitor brand names, which risks rejection
Apple builds phrases by combining your terms, so habit,tracker,daily,routine can match "daily habit tracker" without you spending characters on the phrase.
Play short description (80 chars). Indexed and shown prominently. Highest-leverage field on Android.
Play full description (4000 chars). Indexed. Aim for your main term appearing naturally a handful of times across the copy — enough for relevance, not so much that it reads as spam. Google demotes keyword stuffing, and users bounce off it.
Conversion rate is the neglected half
Ranking gets you seen. Conversion turns impressions into installs. And conversion rate feeds back into ranking on both stores — an app that converts well from search gets shown more.
Most teams pour effort into keywords and almost none into the assets that determine whether anyone taps Install.
Screenshots are the single highest-impact asset. Specifically the first two, because that's what appears without scrolling.
- Lead with your strongest benefit, not a login screen
- Put a short caption on each — most people read captions and never study the UI
- Show the app doing something recognisable, not an empty state
- Design for the thumbnail size actually shown in results, where fine detail vanishes
- Localise them for your significant markets; translated screenshots reliably outperform English ones
The icon is your only asset in every surface. It must be legible at small sizes. Test it at actual size on a real device against your competitors' icons, not zoomed in on a monitor.
A preview video helps for apps where motion explains the value — games, creative tools, anything with a workflow. It's optional and a bad one is worse than none.
Ratings and reviews affect both ranking and conversion, heavily. Prompt for reviews after a positive moment — a completed task, a successful result — never on launch, and never mid-task. Both platforms provide native review prompts; use those rather than a custom dialog.
Research that isn't guessing
Store autocomplete. Start typing in each store's search and note the suggestions. These are real queries, ordered roughly by volume. It's free and it's the closest thing to ground truth available without a paid tool.
Your competitors' listings. What's in their title and subtitle? They may have tested it extensively.
Your own search terms report. Apple's App Analytics and Google Play Console both show which queries surfaced your app and which converted. This is your best data and most teams never open it.
Your reviews. Users describe your app in their own words, which is frequently different from your marketing language — and closer to what people search.
Paid ASO tools give volume and difficulty estimates. Useful at scale, unnecessary starting out.
Test properly
Both stores support listing experiments, and this is where real gains come from.
Google Play Store Listing Experiments run genuine A/B tests on icon, screenshots, and descriptions with statistical significance reporting.
Apple Product Page Optimization tests up to three variants of icon, screenshots, or preview video.
Change one thing at a time, run to significance rather than stopping when the numbers look good, and expect most tests to be flat. That's normal. The occasional clear winner on a first screenshot is worth all the flat ones.
What to do first
- Get title and subtitle / short description right — biggest ranking effect for least work
- Fill the iOS keyword field correctly (no spaces, no repeats, singular)
- Redo your first two screenshots with benefit captions
- Turn on review prompts at a genuine success moment
- Read your search terms report and adjust to what actually converts
- Then start running listing experiments
Steps 3 and 4 typically move installs more than anything in steps 1 and 2, and they're the ones most teams skip.
A realistic caveat
ASO improves discovery for an app people want. It does not fix retention, and it does not create demand. If installs are healthy but users churn in a week, ASO isn't your problem and optimising it further just buys more people to disappoint.
Launching or growing an app?
We build iOS and Android apps and set up the store listings, analytics, and experiment loop that follow. Talk to us about app development.