What Is ASO in Marketing and SEO?

ASO stands for app store optimization. Somebody is working to get an app found inside an app store, the way SEO gets a website found in Google. That is the whole definition.

The acronym does not explain itself. It mostly turns up on an agency service list, sitting between SEO and PPC like a third thing you might be missing. How to research keywords for an app listing is answered elsewhere on this site. Where to find them. How to weigh them. Where they go. None of that gets repeated here.

Instead this page is about the difference nobody mentions when the two sit beside each other.

The ASO Task List Rhymes With SEO

Read a list of ASO tasks and it looks familiar. There is a title with a character limit. A description underneath. Then a set of keywords somebody has to choose. Screenshots doing the job a page layout does. Reviews sitting below all of it. Then a ranking, for a query somebody typed.

Anybody who has done SEO recognizes every item. So the two get filed together, and mostly that filing is correct. The instincts travel.

Only one thing does not travel. It appears on no task list.

One Search Engine Does Not Get Paid When You Do

Think about where Google stands when a plumber ranks first in the ordinary results for a repair job in Calgary.

Somebody searches. Google shows the plumber. Then the plumber drives out and invoices six hundred dollars. Google receives none of it. Not a percentage, not a fee, nothing at any point. Whether that job was worth six hundred or six thousand makes no difference to the company that ranked it.

Now the app store. Somebody searches. The store shows your app. Then the customer pays for something inside it. The store takes a share of that payment.

Not out of everything. Sell physical goods through an app and the store mostly stays out of it. Notice what settles that. Nothing about relevance. Rather what you sold, and where the paying happened.

How large a share has moved around over the years. It gets argued about in courtrooms. None of that matters here. The shape matters, never the number.

Google ranks you, then walks away from the transaction. Meanwhile an app store ranks you and is standing in it. That distinction matters for anyone weighing paid exposure, and the answer on SEO marketing follows the same logic.

The Store Is a Party to the Transaction

That reads like a complaint about app stores. It is not one. Rather it explains the part of ASO that puzzles people arriving from SEO.

Search optimization on the web runs into rules about relevance. Do not stuff keywords. Buying links is out. Nor may you publish one page twice under two addresses. Every one of those asks whether the result deserves its position.

ASO carries those rules too. Then it carries a second kind, and that kind is not about relevance at all. Rules about what you may charge for. Where a payment is allowed to happen. What you may tell a customer about paying elsewhere.

None of that touches whether your app answers the query. Nobody’s web page gets demoted over which payment screen a customer ended up on. Nobody ranking that page had money in the outcome.

So the rulebook is longer. Also the extra chapters are not about search.

Somebody Will Point at Google’s Own Ads

Fair enough. Google sells advertising, and much of it sits above the results.

Only look at what the money buys. Space on a page. Google gets paid for the click. Then the sale happens somewhere it cannot see. The plumber’s six hundred dollars stays the plumber’s.

An app store is not selling the position that way. Instead it takes a share at the far end, out of the sale itself. Those are different arrangements. The second is not unique to app stores either. Marketplace search runs the same way, since a shop ranking its own sellers is a shop first. What it is not is how Google works, where nearly everybody learns this trade. Ad infrastructure gets murkier from there, and the truth about Google Ad manager rarely comes up in that first conversation.

Two Questions, and Only One Is About You

Here it stops being a curiosity.

Optimize a web page and you are answering one question. Does this deserve the visitor? Get that right and the rest follows, because nobody ranking you wanted anything further out of it.

Optimize an app listing and two questions are in the room. Does this deserve the searcher. Then, separately, does this fit the way the store earns. Mostly those answers agree. A good app people install and keep is good for everybody.

They come apart at the edges, though. Business models routing payment elsewhere. Anything sending somebody off to finish up elsewhere. Whatever sits close to something the store sells itself.

Nothing about those cases is a relevance problem. Yet they are where ASO advice stops sounding like SEO advice. Somebody who has only optimized web pages has never had to meet the second question.

What ASO Borrows From SEO

Now the reassuring half, which is the larger one.

Most of keyword research transfers intact. Finding the words real people use. Weighing what you can reach against what is worth reaching. Writing a title leading with what somebody searched for. All of it is the same job in a different room.

So does the discipline underneath. Watching what people do after they arrive. Rewriting content that is not working rather than defending it. Reading reviews as information rather than a verdict.

The craft stays the craft. What changes is the room you practise it in.

Where the ASO Argument Stops

None of this makes ASO a worse deal. Plenty of app businesses do very well out of it. A store brings them customers they were never reaching alone. Meanwhile a share of something beats all of nothing.

Nor is any of it a claim about how a store decides rankings. Nobody outside those companies can settle that, so this page will not pretend to.

There is a plainer limit as well. Plenty of businesses asking what ASO means have no app. The acronym turned up on a proposal or a job posting, and it sounded like a gap. Should you sell a service in a city, ASO is not a hole in your marketing. Rather it is a discipline for another product.

Working With SEO Company To-The-TOP!

The question turns up often enough here in Calgary. Somebody reads a service list, counts the acronyms, then asks which apply.

Often the answer is fewer than the list suggests. To-The-TOP! has been doing search engine optimization since 2007. A good deal of a first conversation often goes on ruling things out. Doing keyword research for a business with no app needs no app store in it. Where paid traffic makes sense, a Google Ads campaign is the plainer route. No guarantees, and three to six months stays the realistic range for organic movement. The To-The-TOP! portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached. Budget questions come up early too, and where SEO expensive fits into that conversation gets answered plainly. Owners ask about return on the work itself, and the verdict on SEO business profitable rarely comes down to one number. Other formats come up in the same conversation, and video marketing in SEO in plain terms is one of them. Platform choice comes up before any of this starts, and the straight answer on WordPress or Shopify depends on the business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ASO stand for in marketing?

App store optimization. It is the work of getting an app found and installed through search inside a store. The name is built the same way SEO is. That is why the two sit beside each other on service lists.

Is ASO the same as SEO?

Nearly, in the mechanics. A title, keywords, a listing, reviews, then a ranking. What differs is that the store takes a share of what your customers pay you. Google does not. That puts rules in the ASO rulebook having nothing to do with relevance.

Do I need ASO for my business?

Only where you have an app in a store. A service business with a website has no listing to optimize, so ASO has nothing to work on. Ordinary search engine optimization is the discipline there.

Does ASO help my website rank on Google?

Not directly. An app listing lives inside a store rather than on your site. Some store pages do turn up in ordinary results, though that is the store’s page ranking rather than yours.

Can the same person do both?

Frequently, yes. The research and the writing carry across well. What has to be learned separately is the second rulebook, since nothing in web search prepares anybody for rules about payment.