ASO for subscription apps: keywords, promo text and pricing-free copy

You run an app with auto-renewing subscriptions, such as a habit tracker, a language app or a fitness plan. Each install is worth more than a paid-download sale, so a keyword that brings ten qualified installs matters.

• Intent mismatch. Keywords that bring curious installs without the problem you solve produce trials that do not convert.
• Promotional text treated as a keyword box. Apple states promotional text does not affect search ranking and should not be used to display keywords.
• Prices in the description. Apple recommends avoiding specific prices in the description because pricing is already shown and the text can become inaccurate.
• Ratings drag. Ratings and reviews can influence how an app ranks in App Store search, so a rating dip hurts discovery as well as conversion.

1. Add your app and the apps your free trial users compare you with as Competitor.
2. On the board, prefer keywords that describe the problem, such as "track water intake", over broad category words. Mark Swap keywords where you already rank top 10 for terms nobody searches.
3. Check volume and difficulty together with the verdicts. A Push keyword with solid volume and difficulty below 80 is a better bet than a Hard head term.
4. Run Optimize for your top three languages. Use the proposed name and subtitle for search, and edit the promotional text separately for conversion.
5. Treat promotional text as the place for a current offer or feature news. Apple states it can be updated at any time without a new version; see the promotional text answer and the glossary entry.
6. Re-run the board after each metadata release to see which Push keywords moved.

The search volume guide explains what the 0 to 100 estimates mean.

• No paywall or retention analytics. Use your own analytics and App Store Connect for those.
• No review management. Ratings matter for ranking, but LocalASO shows rating counts of competitors, not a reply workflow.
• No trial A/B testing. Product page experiments live in App Store Connect.
• Estimates, not search counts. Volume and difficulty derive from rating counts of ranking apps.

Write one change to the subtitle and one to the keyword field, ship, and compare ranks a week later. Download LocalASO or see pricing; the price is one payment, not another subscription on your own bill. Related reading: utility apps and entering the Japanese App Store.