Competitor keywords can show you opportunities that your own keyword research may miss. Instead of guessing what people search for, you can study the terms that already help competing apps get discovered.
This matters because your competitors may use words and phrases you have never considered. Some may describe specific features, problems, or benefits that users actively search for. Finding these terms can give you new ideas for improving your app store visibility.
Competitor research can also help you spot keyword gaps. These are relevant search terms that competing apps rank for but your app does not. Once you find these gaps, you can decide which terms make sense for your app and add the strongest opportunities to your ASO strategy.
Tools like ASOMobile make this process easier by showing which search terms competing apps appear to rank for. Instead of copying another app’s strategy, you can use this information to discover relevant opportunities and make smarter choices about your own competitor keywords.
Competitor Keywords: Key Takeaways
- Competitor keywords can reveal search terms your original keyword list missed.
- Keyword gap analysis shows terms competing apps rank for that your app may not.
- Long-tail keywords can provide more specific opportunities than broad app category terms.
- Relevance matters more than simply copying keywords from a successful competitor.
- ASOMobile can help compare competing apps and uncover possible keyword gaps.
- Track keyword rankings after changing your app metadata to see whether your strategy is working.
ASOMobile Helps Mobile Publishers Identify Keyword Gaps Across Competitor Apps
A seed keyword is a broad, basic search term that describes your app or topic and is used as a starting point for finding related keywords.
A keyword list built from seed terms and category browsing is usually incomplete. It represents the keywords a team already knows about, not the ones actually driving traffic to apps in their space. The gap between those two sets is where most keyword opportunities live.
Finding that gap requires looking at competitor apps, not just category lists.
Why Seed Keywords Are Not Enough
Seed keyword research starts with the team’s own understanding of the app — what it does, what problem it solves, and what users might search for. This is a reasonable starting point, but it is bounded by the team’s own vocabulary and assumptions. Users don’t always search in the terms that product teams use internally. Competitors don’t always optimize for the obvious category terms.
The result is a keyword strategy that covers familiar ground thoroughly but misses the queries that real users type when they find competitor apps — queries that may be more specific, more use-case-driven, or more category-specific than the seed list includes.
Keyword gap analysis closes this gap. It compares the keywords a team is targeting with the keywords competitors appear to rank for, and surfaces terms competitors index that the team does not.
What Keyword Gaps Can Reveal
Gaps are not all equal. Some gaps represent keywords that are directly relevant and simply missing from the metadata. These are the highest-priority targets — terms the app could reasonably rank for but hasn’t included.
Other gaps reveal how competitors position their apps differently. A gap might show that a competitor ranks for feature-specific terms (“expense report auto-sync,” “receipt photo OCR”) while the team’s metadata uses only broad category terms (“expense tracker”). This reveals a difference in positioning: the competitor communicates specific features, while the team communicates the general category. Which approach works better depends on the market, but seeing the gap makes the choice visible.
Some gaps represent brand terms, competitor names, or highly competitive keywords that aren’t practical to target. Filtering these out focuses attention on the actionable opportunities.
Long-tail gaps are often the most valuable for apps still building visibility. A term like “offline habit tracker no subscription” has lower volume than “habit tracker,” but it has higher specificity — and a team that includes it in the keyword field. At the same time, top apps may rank for it without competition.
How ASOMobile Supports Competitor Keyword Research
ASOMobile’s competitor keyword research tools let teams analyze which keywords competitor apps appear to rank for, compare keyword coverage across multiple apps simultaneously, and identify terms that are common to top competitors but absent from their own metadata.
Teams can select two to five direct competitors and run a keyword gap analysis to surface terms those apps rank for at significant positions. ASOMobile provides visibility into competitors’ keyword coverage and ranking patterns that manual research — checking competitors’ metadata and guessing what they index — cannot replicate at scale.
The output is a prioritized list of candidate keywords: terms that appear in competitor keyword profiles, have meaningful search demand, and are relevant to the app being analyzed.
From Keyword Gaps to Metadata Actions
Finding keywords is not the end of the process. Each candidate keyword needs a relevance check: does this term actually match what users will find in the app? An irrelevant keyword that ranks may attract downloads from users who immediately uninstall — which damages conversion and retention signals.
After the relevance check, candidate keywords need to be clustered and prioritized. Which terms are most strategically important? Which have the best combination of demand and competition level relative to the app’s current visibility? Which fit into existing metadata fields without displacing higher-priority terms already indexing well?
The final step is implementation and tracking. Add selected keywords to the appropriate metadata fields, document what changed, and monitor whether rankings for those terms appear within the expected timeframe.
Keyword gap analysis is one of the most practical forms of competitor research available to ASO teams. It turns competitor metadata into a map of opportunities — not to copy what competitors do, but to find what’s relevant and reachable.
FAQ
What is keyword gap analysis in ASO?
Keyword gap analysis identifies keywords that competitor apps rank for, but your app does not. It compares competitor keyword coverage against your own and surfaces terms that are potentially relevant to your app but currently missing from your metadata. This expands keyword research beyond seed terms and internal assumptions.
How can competitor keywords improve app visibility?
Competitor apps in the same category often rank for terms that reflect real user search behavior — including terms a team hasn’t considered targeting. Adding relevant competitor keywords to metadata can help an app appear in searches where it currently has no presence, expanding organic reach.
Can ASOMobile help find keyword gaps?
Yes. ASOMobile’s competitor analysis tools let teams examine keyword coverage across multiple competitor apps, identify terms those apps rank for, and compare against their own keyword set. The result is a list of candidate keywords with relevance and demand data to inform prioritization.
Should app teams copy competitor keywords?
No — they should identify which competitor keywords are also relevant to their own app, then assess whether those terms match their metadata, content, and user intent. Including irrelevant keywords to mimic competitor coverage can attract the wrong users and hurt conversion and retention signals. Relevance should drive every keyword decision.
How do teams prioritize keyword opportunities?
By assessing three factors for each candidate keyword: relevance to the app’s actual content and use cases, search demand in the target market, and competitive difficulty relative to the app’s current visibility level. Terms that score well on all three factors are the highest-priority additions. Terms that score well on only one or two require more careful evaluation.
Competitor Keywords: Final Thoughts
Competitor keywords can reveal valuable search opportunities that seed research alone may miss. By comparing your app with competing apps, checking relevance, and focusing on realistic keyword gaps, you can build a stronger ASO strategy without simply copying what others do.
Tools like ASOMobile can make this process faster by showing where competing apps are gaining visibility and where your own keyword coverage may be weak. The goal is to use competitor keywords as a source of ideas, then choose the terms that truly match your app and your audience.
Related Reading: Want to take your competitor keywords research even further? Learn how MozBar can help you analyze competing websites, uncover useful SEO data, and make smarter optimization decisions. Read our MozBar guide to discover how to use this powerful SEO tool to improve your research and rankings.
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