So, you have developed an app, you’re done with testing, and you’ve completed your ASO checklist. Then, you saw steady improvements in your organic traffic, but suddenly you realized that you’ve hit a plateau.

So, what can you do next? Check and track your competitors! App competition gets increasingly aggressive as a day goes by because hundreds of new apps hit the app stores, but there are lessons to be learned here if you know what you look for! In this article, you will learn how to reduce your stress and give your app the best shot at success. How? By eliminating as many variables as possible, and this means tracking competing apps.
When you track your competition, you will understand where they are strong and where they are weak. Then you can learn from their strengths and try to exploit their weaknesses.
With ASODesk, you can do just that. It may not be a robust ASO tool but here, you can view an analysis report of your competing mobile apps, for free. Yup, you have heard me right! You can track your app side by side with your competitors to determine the best keywords for your ASO campaign.
But first, What is ASODesk?
ASOdesk is an extended analytics and keyword boost campaigns for App Store and Google Play.
It is developed to help you successfully reach your business goals: optimize your app for ASO, increase installs, decrease promo costs, and improve retention behavior.
Aside from competitor analysis, it can also help you analyze your app – thanks to its analytics feature which has been dubbed to be the most accurate data regarding search request frequency on the market. It also offers Keyword Boost Campaigns that is easy to setup and launch in just a few clicks. It also has a Monitoring feature that provides a visualization of the current situation and regular reports via e-mail and Slack. Cool eh?
In this article, we’ll not discuss every feature. We will just focus on Competition Analysis, so be sure to watch out for my future posts about other ASOdesk features.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”  – Sun Tzu
To show you how to track your competitor’s mobile app in a few easy steps, read below. I will show you what kind of information you can get after you track your competitors using ASO Desk.
Sign Up For a Free ASODesk Account

To get started, click here to sign up for a free ASO desk account.
You just need to enter basic information and a little information about your mobile app. This will help the platform to give you useful suggestions that can improve your app’s visibility.
Adding your mobile app to your ASOdesk account will automatically help you generate a free analysis report for your app. These include user installs, organic report, reviews, and so much more. Moreover, ASO desk will provide you a list of recommended keywords so you can improve your ASO.
…and of course, no credit card is required for a free account!
Note: Upon, verifying that you used in creating your ASOdesk account, you can immediately use the app.
Adding an App
Adding an app is easy. You just need to click on the New Application button to locate, search and add an app that you would use for your ASO campaign.

When you find your app, you will see some basic information about the app.
To add a competitor app, you just need to click on the competitor’s button, then click Add Competitors.

Remember, since you are using a free account, you are only allowed to track just 1 app and an unlimited number of competitors’ apps. If you want to track multiple apps, you can extend your free plan to either Startup, Plus, or Business. To know more about what you will get for each plan along with its pricing information, click here or take a look at the imagery below.

Start the Analysis and Start Tracking
Once you have an app tracked, click Competitors button located at the upper right-hand corner of the Dashboard screen.
Unlike other ASO tools, here, you need to manually add your competitor apps to start the analysis. To look through your competition in the Competitors module, then click on Add Competitors. Upon doing so, you’d be able to add a competitor app using a new application or by selecting an existing application.
To add a new competitor app, simply search using the title of the app, or simply copy and paste the app store link in the search field.

To select an existing app that you would like to use as a competitor app, in the Selecting an existing application section, just select the app from your list.
Remember, in tracking your competition, the more the merrier.

Competitor Analysis Time!
Now that you’re tracking your competitors, you will be able to see their App Profiles and much more. Keyword ranking is a key metric that shows you how your app and your competitors rank in a list of keywords that you specify or track across the app store.
What can this teach you?
Keyword monitoring can help you track & optimize your ranking in specific search results. Same way with SEO, understanding both the volume and hits for your ASO keywords can help you optimize the words you choose (ie. by choosing LSI or related keywords).
This can help you get a leg-up on your competitors if you see that certain keywords are not being used in their app name and app’s full description. Including the relevant keyword in any of these places can push you ahead of your competition who haven’t done their ASO homework.
Also, it’s critical that you monitor all your competitors to find out which keywords not found in your description are generating clicks for the apps you compete with.

We used Freddy’s Guess Quiz – FNaF Trivia Fan Edition in this example. As you can see, this app’s keyword rankings are higher than its competition. This only means that its competition did not do their ASO homework.
Word(s) to the wise: Just so you know, keyword stuffing does not work anymore. It is not just enough to pop on the top of the list. So, please be careful when updating the title, keywords, as well as the description of your app since Apple Store may take the whole two weeks to release your update. This may cause some hiccups to your business which is a big time disadvantage. Always track your competition! If you constantly monitor your app, your own keywords, as well as competitors’, you will stay ahead of the pack.
Reviews and Ratings
Track the mood of your users via the Reviews Module
What?
An app review is a comment left by the user who downloaded the app about the app.
Why is this important?
Reviews can affect your rankings. It can help promote your app, inform you of glitches, collect user suggestions and is medium to communicate with your users.
What can this teach me?
In ASOdesk, you can read all your user reviews of your app as well as your competitor apps. This can help you gain insights on what users want from the app, what they are expecting/not getting, and what type of language they are using (which can inform your ASO keyword strategy / Localization). Once you know what users’ likes and dislikes from your competitor’s app, you’ll have a better understanding and you will know how to better position your own app to that target your users. When it comes to app’s features, if you have what your competition doesn’t, give your users what they are looking for, and update your keywords accordingly.
ASOdesk allows you browse reviews for free, it also lets you export competitors or any other reports via email so you can dig deep and mine valuable keywords.
I guess by now, you have in-depth knowledge of your competitor’s app in less than 5 minutes!
Conclusion
Tracking your competitors is important to understanding why your competition is successful and where you can get a competitive advantage. If you aren’t tracking your competitors, you are missing a lot of things. Be sure to get started right now.
App tracking with ASOdesk is free, so there’s no excuse.
Sign up here