What To Do When ASO Goes Wrong

Imagine this. You have great rankings for your app or game, it showed up in the first listings of every app stores, and you are receiving a huge amount of traffic that was generating downloads, conversions, in-app purchases, emails, phone calls, and leads. Then something unusual happened, and you’re not quite sure what or why, and your leads including sales dried up. You check your app analytics reports and see a drastic loss in traffic. Now, you feel worried. You check your app rankings, and they’ve gone down. At this point, you’re not just worried, you are alarmed and terrified. How could this have happened? Moreover, what can you do to fix the problem and get all your leads and sales flowing again?

Note: If you have the same dilemma above, then you’re not just a victim of lost ASO rankings, but also of ranking obsession. Your ranking is a vital ASO metric, and you could be focusing on your aso rankings to the point where it’s a bit counterproductive. That being said, your ranking is still important, so let’s continue.

ASO Rankings fall for many reasons. It can be by a mistake that could have been prevented. It may have less to do with what you are doing than what your competition is doing. In most cases, a drop in aso rankings is the natural result of an intentional action on your aso strategy. Here are eight reasons you might experience a drop in ASO rankings and what you can do in each scenario.

You are tracking the wrong rankings in your ASO Strategy. This 2016, there has been a shift towards the “natural language” when it comes to searches on the App Stores, and that is, people typing, or increasingly speaking, keyword phrases or terms into App Store search engines, rather than just using one or two keywords. If you are only tracking relevant keywords, it might be that your keyword strategy is not up to date. These people who are looking for you are using long tail keywords or phrases, and you need to update your keyword strategy as soon as possible.
App Store Ranking Dance. It is ok for for ASO rankings to fluctuate. Not just from a day to the next, but from a computer to another, a particular location to another, or based on many other various variables. Apple and Google are constantly testing every variables they can detect by changing app store search results. This is why it’s counter productive to focus more on specific app store optimization rankings. Your ASO firm or expert may give you an aso ranking report, but if you checked the rankings on your own machine they may be different, mainly because the report sent to you was run from a different machine or computer. Or because the aso rankings have changed since yesterday, but the Google or the Itunes dance is the only logical explanation for small drops in appstore optimization rankings.

4. New app or game. If you just launched a new game or app, you can expect your ASO rankings to drop, regardless of what you do to launch it, and regardless of how much better the new app or game is, in terms of ASO, than the old one. To limit the drop in aso rankings make sure, a good aso strategy or plan is in place. I know some companies who went out of business after that major aso mistake. Make sure the new app or game is well optimized prior to launching it. Also, prepare yourself for the worst as the rankings will inevitably drop, at least temporarily. Generally, the ASO rankings will recover within three to four weeks, if not quite a bit faster.
5. New app or game no longer. You launched an update to your app or game and its ASO rankings went down, it came back up quickly, even higher than they were before, but now they have gone back down again. Or maybe you launched a new game or an after, and after a few weeks or so, it shot to the top of the app store rankings in its category, and then dropped back down–big time. This is a common occurrence. The important thing here is to be patient, and invest in best practices “App Store Optimization”. Long term rankings require continuous and long term work.
6. Low-quality app or game. Many companies made the mistake a few years ago by investing on reskinned apps or games. Now, with various updates made by Apple and Google, their app store search engines are now seeing “spam apps or games”. These are of low-quality apps or games which is why they tend to drop rankings in the app stores or disappear entirely. Google and Apple wanted us to make that extra effort to develop a quality app or game.
7. Wrong ASO firm or practitioner. Resorting to a low quality ASO firm, or a company whose expertise isn’t in the ideal place to provide high-quality ASO results is not an option. Why? You may end up losing everything as your company or app business rely on your aso strategy. It is a must that you employ the best aso firm or expert to provide the best practices for your app store optimization strategy.
8.Competitors. App Store Search engine rankings are a zero sum game – take note of that. For any given keyword, if one app’s ranking improves, at least, one other app’s ranking must go down. This is part of why ASO services are ongoing, rather than “fly by night”. Your app or game is never fully optimized, because your competitors are constantly improving their own apps or games. It’s a never ending climb to the mountain, and the only way to stay or be on top is continuous ASO effort.
9. iTunes or Google PlayStore update. Thousands of experts are employed at Google and Apple who are working to improve their app store search algorithm. This algorithm is updated numerous times each year (randomly, with most of the updates being significant and disruptive, while the rest are just minor in impact. The point of the matter here is, when Apple or Google makes an update, the changes in ASO rankings affects those apps who are not in compliance negatively. To avoid death by Google or Apple update, follow their guidelines as best practices, and engage only in Legit ASO tactics.

This is the path to good ASO rankings that will generate traffic this 2016.