Black Hat ASO 2016

I come to you today with a warning: Beware of Black Hat ASO companies.

Not all ASO companies or providers are bad, but many of these employ ASO Strategies that are considered “grey hat” or much worse, “black hat.” This is where they promote your apps by doing things that violate the rules of the App Stores. The problem with black hat providers is that it can actually decrease traffic to your app in the long run, and even get you suspended/banned from the app stores. For example, Google penalizes an app if they detect fraudulent activities or any other type of black hat ASO method.

Some examples of black hat SEO techniques include reskinning apps (online casino games such as bingo, poker, etc.), fake downloads, fake reviews or ratings, and creating large amounts of spammy “doorway” pages to get extra app store listings. It also can include stuffing your apps’ page with keywords, and so on.

Usually, black hat ASO is just unethical, and I think the name Black Hat should have been a fair warning to you guys out there to not use the service. ASO Black hat, SEO Black hat, and black box are the same thing for seos, asos, coders as skull and crossbones were for pirates.

I do think that most ASO companies or providers offer a LEGIT service, but it way too expensive and you are better off learning ASO yourself. Google & Apple publishes information about their app stores online and there are many sites out there that will measure metrics on the kinds of things that Google & Apple look for.

The most important thing for getting traffic from the App Stores (Google Play & Apple) is to create a unique app that is really valuable.