Keyword research (ASO)

Apple states an app is searchable by its name, subtitle, keywords and company name, and the keyword field holds only 100 bytes. You cannot include everything, so you must choose.

1. Collect ideas from your app's features, competitors' listings and customers' words. See competitor keywords.
2. Check relevance. Remove anything that does not describe your app. Irrelevant terms are prohibited.
3. Estimate demand with search volume.
4. Estimate competition with keyword difficulty.
5. Check your rank per country; see keyword ranking.
6. Place the winners in the right fields and re-check later.

Apple does not publish organic search counts. LocalASO's volume and difficulty are 0 to 100 estimates derived from the rating counts of the apps ranking for a keyword, not Apple search counts. It checks 52 App Store storefronts, each in the local language.

LocalASO turns the numbers into verdicts. Swap means you rank in the top 10 for something almost nobody searches; Dead means volume is very low; Hard means difficulty is 80 or more and you are outside the top 10; Push means you rank 4 to 20 with solid volume and difficulty below 80; Maybe is everything else.

A hypothetical habit tracker lists 40 ideas, drops 12 as irrelevant, scores the rest and keeps eight "Push" or "Maybe" terms for the keyword field.

Follow the full keyword research guide or open the LocalASO keyword research docs.

AI tools can propose terms; see AI keyword suggestions and the Model Context Protocol.

Per-language work is in keyword localization, and the basic unit is the keyword.