How smaller apps use ASO to rise in fitness category
by Pratham Hans Marwaha
Former Business Developer at AppTweak
— 4 min read
The last few months have seen a change in how we go about our personal fitness. With movement restricted and people finding a way to keep up with their mental and physical fitness, downloads in the fitness category have increased tremendously. What’s unique about the development of the fitness category is the rise of smaller unknown app’s taking a battle to industry leaders.
1. Weight Loss: Workouts From Home
Weight loss: Workouts from home is a good example of how an app has made a change in their metadata to better their visibility and gain rankings on high volume and competitive keywords. On the 18th of March they made a change to their title and subtitle. The original title was Weight Loss Organic Fit and it was changed to Weight Loss: Workouts From Home. This change in their keywords helped increase the App Power from 74 on the 22nd of March to being a category leader with an App Power of 92 only 2 weeks later.
We observed that organic downloads for Weight Loss: Workouts From Home started to increase slowly after the update. The app gained top 10 rankings on keywords like ‘work out at home’ , ‘at home workouts’, ‘workouts at home’, ‘at home fitness’ and more.
We also noticed an increase in the visibility of keywords in their metadata by 80% towards the end of March. Keywords such as fitness, home, loss, weight, workout, workouts, lose weight and healthy show an average rank gain of 39 positions, indicating the change in metadata was effective.
2. Fitness Coach by Luni
Fitness Coach by Luni is the biggest success story among the apps we have observed during the covid-19 period. A relatively unknown app with a low app power of 10 as of February 12th when their title used to be Fit – Workout & Fitness. They changed their branding and title to Fitness Coach on the 1st of March after which their momentum and movement through the category got a push. The app jumped 400 places in the Health & Fitness category to reach rank 1 by the 8th of April.
Movement of Fitness Coach by Lumi through its category in the Apple App Store in the USA
Immediately after the metadata update, the app started to gain ranks on a wide variety of keywords including, ‘fitness coach’, ‘fitness and workout’, ‘women fitness’, ‘fit coach’ etc. On March 16th, organic downloads for the app started to increase rapidly as search volume for some of its top ranked keywords soared. Volume for ‘fitness coach’ for example grew from 10 in February to 54 at the end of April.
Trend in organic downloads from Search for Fitness Coach by Luni in the Apple App Store in the USA.
3. Zombies, Run!
Zombies, Run! Is a fun and apocalyptic way to get your fitness in during the pandemic. We think it’s an innovative yet hilarious way to get people to run and stay fit. The app was relatively low in its category from the start of the year, hovering with an average app power of 26.
We observed the app floating around the mid 200’s in terms of ranking through the first few months of 2020. Rankings started started to rise towards the end of March to reach #1 by the 7th of April.
They made no visible change to their metadata during this period, but somehow the app gained a lot of traction on April 6th. On Twitter, the company reached out warning users they were experiencing unusual high traffic.
Also AppTweak’s overall Keyword Report shows an increase in the volume and installs of keywords associated with their brand name ‘zombies run’ and ‘zombie run’ on those dates.
Trend in organic downloads from Search for Zombies Run in the Apple App Store in the USA.
This increase in installs did help the app gain rankings on very relevant keywords like ‘running apps’ or ‘workout games’. Due to the high velocity in downloads on April 7th, the app also started to rank for general keywords ‘free apps’ or ‘top apps’.
Trend in keyword visibility and rankings for Zombies Run in the Apple App Store in the USA.
The above mentioned apps showed how ASO can be used effectively to stand tall as an app in a competitive category. The growth track these apps have shown are phenomenal and goes to show that any app can make itself a top ranking app in its category by doing effective ASO and using AppTweak to analyse and understand keywords and their movement.