Guide

App SEO for indie founders

Published April 22, 2026 by ChannelScout

App SEO is what most people call ASO, App Store Optimization. It is the job of making your app findable when someone searches in the App Store or Google Play. Three levers control 90 percent of outcomes. Most indie founders only touch one of them and wonder why traffic is flat.

Lever 1: metadata

Title (30 characters on iOS, 50 on Google Play). Subtitle (30 on iOS, not used on Google Play). Keyword field (100 characters on iOS, not available on Google Play which reads the description instead). Full description.

Rules that have not changed: use the actual search terms users type, not your internal jargon. Include the strongest keyword in the title. Never waste iOS subtitle space on the tagline when you could be ranking for a second keyword. Put your primary keyword in the first 170 characters of the Google Play description because that is what shows above the fold.

Lever 2: visuals

Screenshots and preview video drive whether a searcher taps Install once they find you. Outcome-focused captions outperform feature-focused ones. "Find any screenshot in one tap" beats "AI-powered search." First three screenshots do 80 percent of the work on iOS because most users never swipe past slot three.

Preview video matters on iOS. A 15 to 30 second app preview lifts conversion measurably. Google Play YouTube preview matters less but still helps.

Lever 3: ratings velocity

Both stores weight recent ratings heavier than old ones. An app with 100 ratings averaging 4.6, where the last 10 ratings are 4.9, ranks higher than the same count where the last 10 are 3.8. The rate at which you gain ratings also matters: an app getting 5 new reviews a week consistently out-ranks one that got 500 in a burst two years ago.

The right ratings prompt timing is after a user hits an in-app win, not on first launch. Use native rating prompts (SKStoreReviewController on iOS, In-App Review API on Android) because they submit in-flow rather than bouncing users to the store listing.

Keyword research you can actually do

Paid tools (AppTweak, Appfigures, Sensor Tower) are thorough. Free workflow that gets you 80 percent there:

1. Write 10 phrases a real user would type to find your app. Ask a potential user, not yourself.
2. Search each phrase in the App Store and Google Play. Note which top-ranking apps dominate each term.
3. Pick three terms where the top results are mediocre or misaligned with your niche. Those are your wedge.
4. Use your title, subtitle, and keyword field to cover those three. Update every 4 to 6 weeks.

What changed in 2025-2026

iOS Search Ads results now occupy the top two slots on most queries. Organic rank three is effectively rank one for clicks. You need to either be rank one or two organic, or run a small Search Ads campaign on your top terms. Google Play has shifted toward AI-summarized results at the top of search, reading descriptions heavily. Quality of the first paragraph matters more than it used to.