ASO in 2025. Guide to positioning your app on the App Store and Google Play and increasing downloads
Mobile applications continue to grow at a dizzying pace, despite always being in the spotlight with debates about their saturation and viability. In 2024 alone, there were nearly 137.8 billion downloads worldwide, reflecting a massive and extremely competitive market (Business of Apps, 2024). This, coupled with the complex context in which we live, where achieving visibility is a challenge, makes it essential to adopt strategies to stand out, attract users and increase conversions in a sustainable way.
In this scenario, App Store Optimisation (ASO) is positioned as one of the most effective strategies for improving the organic performance of an app. ASO is a process that consists of optimising an app in app stores (Apple App Store, Google Play Store and Microsoft Store) with the aim of improving its visibility, positioning, increasing conversion rates and boosting organic downloads. This translates into greater exposure for our brand and, therefore, higher revenue. In other words, ASO is essentially SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for apps.
Before diving into the present, let’s take a brief look at the past.
History of App Store Optimisation (ASO)
In 2008, the launch of Apple’s App Store revolutionised the way we use our mobile phones. In the same year, Google also launched its Google Play store for Android devices, and in a short time, the market became very crowded and extremely competitive.
This is how the concept of ASO began to take shape around 2009, clearly inspired by SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but focused on the internal search algorithms of app stores. Today, it is a comprehensive and key marketing strategy that includes visual elements, user behaviour and advanced analytics.
Key factors for improving your app’s ranking
Before designing an ASO strategy, it is essential to bear in mind a key premise: as with SEO, this is a long-term process that requires time, constant monitoring and continuous adjustments to adapt to market trends in order to achieve sustainable and scalable results.
To implement an effective ASO strategy, we must understand and work on all the direct and indirect factors that influence our app’s positioning. These factors are divided into two main groups:
- On-metadata: this includes editable elements within the app listing, such as optimising the title and subtitle, descriptions, icon, keywords and visual elements within the listings. These elements have a direct impact on visibility and conversion rates.
- Off-metadata: refers to external factors that indirectly influence the app’s ranking, such as review management and incentives, ratings, mentions in the media or blogs (backlink strategy) and competitor analysis (competitive ASO).
ASO vs SEO: How are they different?
Although ASO (App Store Optimisation) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) are, as we said at the beginning of the blog, conceptually very similar, they have different characteristics that make them unique.
ASO focuses on optimising mobile applications to improve their positioning in app stores, such as the App Store and Google Play, in order to generate downloads. SEO, on the other hand, seeks to optimise a website so that it appears higher in search engines such as Google and Bing, with the aim of attracting qualified traffic.
Both, therefore, aim to position and improve organic visibility. However, the main difference lies in the search channel: ASO operates in controlled app download ecosystems, while SEO takes place on an open web. This in turn means that the positioning criteria and algorithms responsible for each are very different.
For example, in SEO we talk about on-page factors (keywords, structure and tags) and off-page factors (backlinks and domain authority). In ASO, these translate into on-metadata factors (title, subtitle, keywords, icon, screenshots, etc.) and off-metadata factors (number of downloads, reviews, ratings and backlinks). Both strategies share key elements such as the importance of the title, but in ASO other elements such as download volume become relevant.
Without a doubt, both digital marketing strategies are complementary and excellent for ensuring visibility, improving sales and achieving long-term loyalty.
How to prepare an effective ASO strategy for the future
It has been proven that ASO is no longer just a matter of keywords, but that we must also take into account:
- Continuous A/B testing: we must test the icon, descriptions and visual elements. The stores themselves allow you to carry out these experiments and there are also paid tools such as Storemaven to help you do so.
- Adaptation to voice searches and natural language: searches are becoming increasingly conversational, and the keywords we include in our app must reflect how users actually search for us.
- AI-based personalisation: Apple and Google are using AI to personalise search results, so we must segment our audience well and use keywords that are relevant to our clusters.
- Data-driven strategy: we must make decisions based on data, not intuition. To do this, there are tools such as AppTweak and Appfollow that help us extract deeper insights.
- Integrate UA (User Acquisition): to improve visibility and accelerate the organic effect, we must use paid campaigns on Apple Search Ads and Google UAC.
The key to the success of any app
At this point, you are probably already aware that ASO is not a one-off task, but rather a continuous process of optimisation, analysis and adaptation. Furthermore, the current competitive environment favours a living strategy that requires constant testing and adjustments in line with algorithm developments and user behaviour.
Whether you are just getting started in the world of ASO or already have experience, 2025 brings many challenges and opportunities to refine your strategy. You need to be creative, analytical and, above all, adopt a user-centric approach. Only then will you ensure that your app is not only visible, but also downloaded, used, shared and recommended.
