ASO for a publisher with many apps: a portfolio routine

You own or manage five, ten or thirty small apps, often in neighboring niches. Each app has a listing, a few markets and a keyword field that someone filled in once.

• Apps compete with each other. Two of your apps may target the same phrase, so the weaker one wastes a keyword slot.
• Uneven attention. The newest app gets work; the old ones sit with stale metadata.
• Same research, repeated. Rivals in a niche show up across several apps.
• Name collisions. Apple allows an app name to be used for one app per localization, so similar names across a portfolio need planning.

1. Add every app as My app. Add the rivals that appear in more than one niche as Competitor, once; you can then see them against several of your boards.
2. Read each board. A cell shows rank from #1 to #200, and the Losing to list shows who sits ahead of you for each keyword.
3. List the top keywords of every app in one sheet and run them through the keyword cannibalization checker. Where two of your apps chase the same term, give it to the app that already ranks higher and Swap it out of the other.
4. Plan the rank checks. Apple limits public search, so 15 keywords across 30 countries takes about 15 to 20 minutes per board. Queue the apps you care about first and let the rest run later.
5. Use Optimize per app and per language, and keep competitor names out of keyword fields; Apple does not allow names of other apps or companies there.

The keyword field guide shows how to spend the bytes, and the keyword research guide covers how to choose targets.

• No portfolio dashboard. There is no screen that ranks all your apps together.
• No team accounts. One license is one Mac; the data is local, so a colleague on another Mac needs their own license and their own boards.
• Estimates only. Volume and difficulty derive from rating counts and cannot be summed into a portfolio traffic number.
• Apple only. Google Play listings are out of scope.

If you need one dashboard over dozens of apps with shared access, you need a platform with accounts. A single operator with a Mac is exactly where a local tool fits.

Download LocalASO and add your two biggest apps first. For a mix of genres, see how game developers and subscription apps tune their boards. Pricing is a single payment.