How many keywords should I target?

Focus a handful of high-opportunity terms in your title and subtitle; use the keyword field for the rest. Breadth without focus rarely ranks.

Do keywords differ by country?

Yes. Research each storefront separately — difficulty and demand vary a lot between countries.

Should a new app target head terms or long-tail?

Long-tail first. They convert better and are easier to rank for while your rating volume is low; reach for head terms as the app matures.

ASO Keyword Research for the iOS App Store

Keyword research is where ASO is won or lost. Target terms that are too competitive and you waste your limited metadata; target terms nobody searches and you waste it differently. The job is to find the narrow band in between — real demand you can actually rank for.

1. Seed a candidate list

You cannot score keywords you have not thought of, so start wide. Good sources:

Your own app — the words you would use to describe what it does.
Competitors' metadata — their titles, subtitles and descriptions are a free keyword list. The apps ranking for a term are telling you which words they bet on.
Autocomplete — start typing a term in the App Store search and note the suggestions; they reflect what people actually search.
Adjacent categories — the jobs your app is hired for, not just its category name.

2. Score every candidate

For each term you want two numbers: difficulty (how entrenched the incumbents are) and traffic (a demand proxy built from public signals, since Apple publishes no search volume). Then let opportunity — traffic gated by difficulty — do the prioritizing. A high-traffic term you cannot rank for is not an opportunity; a low-difficulty term nobody searches is not either.

3. Separate head terms from long-tail

Head terms (one or two words) have the most demand and the most competition. Expect to win few of them early.

Long-tail terms (three or more words) are searched less but convert better and are far easier to rank for. A new app should lean long-tail, then reach for head terms as its rating volume grows.

4. Place the winners

On iOS the fields carry very different weight:

Title (30 chars) — the strongest ranking signal. Reserve it for your single best opportunity term plus your brand.
Subtitle (30 chars) — the second-strongest. A second cluster of high-opportunity terms.
Keyword field (100 chars) — comma-separated single words, no spaces, no repeats of anything already in the title or subtitle. Apple combines fields to match phrases, so you never need to repeat words.

Never duplicate a word across fields — every repeat is a wasted character. Drop plurals and stop-words; Apple handles those.

5. Re-run per country

Difficulty and demand shift market to market. A term that is saturated in the US can be open in Germany or Spain. Research each storefront you localize for separately rather than translating one keyword set.

Track your own app — free to start

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