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ASOGrade Guide

How to Find Low-Competition App Store Keywords

A practical step-by-step method for finding App Store keywords with real search demand and low enough difficulty to rank for — without guessing.

Why low-competition keywords matter for most apps

The instinct when starting App Store keyword research is to target the biggest, most-searched terms in your category. The problem is that those terms are dominated by apps with years of installs, thousands of ratings, and enough ranking weight that a new or mid-stage app cannot displace them regardless of how well-crafted the metadata is.

Low-competition keywords solve this problem: they are terms with real search demand — enough that ranking in the top 3 generates meaningful organic installs — but with a difficulty score low enough that you can actually earn those positions with a well-targeted metadata update and normal organic growth.

These terms exist in every category. They are the specific, niche, or slightly unfamiliar phrasings that users do search but that the major apps haven't fully captured in their own metadata. Finding them systematically — not by luck — is the core skill in practical ASO.

Step 1: Build a candidate list before scoring

Keyword research begins with ideation, not data. The data tells you which ideas are good — it cannot generate ideas for you. Start by assembling the longest list of candidates you can before worrying about scoring.

Sources to work through: your competitors' App Store subtitles and names (the words they chose publicly reveal their targeting strategy), App Store search suggestions (start typing your core term and read what Apple suggests), user review language (how do users describe your app's benefit in their own words?), Apple Search Ads keyword suggestions (when setting up a campaign, Apple suggests related terms — you don't need to run the campaign to harvest the suggestions), and your own feature set vocabulary (what does your app actually do, described in 20 different ways?).

Aim for at least 50-100 candidates before you start scoring. The scoring pass will eliminate most of them, and you need a wide enough net to have meaningful options after the cut.

Step 2: Score every candidate for popularity and difficulty

Once you have your candidate list, run each term through a keyword scoring tool to get two numbers: popularity (0–100, Apple Search Ads demand signal) and difficulty (0–100, how hard it is to rank based on who currently holds the top spots).

The interpretation of these scores is straightforward in principle: you want keywords where popularity is meaningful (above 25 as a working threshold) and difficulty is accessible (below 60 for most apps; below 45 if you're early-stage). The high-popularity, low-difficulty zone is where low-competition opportunity lives.

Score everything, including terms you think won't work. The surprising ones — terms you'd have dismissed without data — are often the best opportunities. A counterintuitive phrase that happens to have 40 popularity and 20 difficulty is worth more than the obvious category term at 65 popularity and 80 difficulty.

Step 3: Filter for the high-demand, low-difficulty zone

After scoring, sort your candidate list by difficulty (low to high), then look at what's in the bottom half of the difficulty range. From that filtered set, sort by popularity (high to low). The terms that survive both filters — low difficulty and acceptable popularity — are your low-competition keyword targets.

A practical filter that works for most apps: popularity 25 or above, difficulty 55 or below. Adjust the difficulty threshold based on your app's current authority — a brand-new app with under 100 ratings should target below 40; an app with 10,000+ ratings can aim at 60+.

Reject terms below 25 popularity regardless of how low the difficulty is. A perfectly accessible keyword with almost no searches generates almost no installs, even at a top-1 ranking. Low competition only matters when paired with real demand.

Step 4: Check competition in secondary storefronts

If your primary market's difficulty is blocking the terms you want, run the same candidates in secondary storefronts. The same keyword in Germany, Brazil, or Canada will often have similar popularity (if the market has real demand for your app category) but significantly lower difficulty — because fewer well-established apps have targeted those markets.

This is not a workaround — it's the expected behavior of a global marketplace with uneven competitive density. The US App Store has been in existence since 2008 and has attracted the most optimized apps and the most competitive metadata. Markets that developed later have compressed competitive histories.

Running your keyword research per storefront is not extra work for its own sake — it reveals where the effort-to-result ratio is highest. Two hours of metadata localization into German, aimed at terms that score 35 difficulty rather than the US equivalent at 65, may generate more organic installs than months of US optimization fighting entrenched competition.

Step 5: Validate the terms are actually relevant

Before finalizing your keyword selections, manually search each candidate in the actual App Store. Look at the results: do apps in your category appear? Is your type of app a sensible answer to that search query? If the search results are filled with apps in an unrelated category, users searching that term probably want something you're not.

Relevance validation prevents the trap of chasing technically low-difficulty keywords that describe the wrong user intent. A keyword with difficulty 20 is worthless if the users searching it want a game and your app is a productivity tool.

After this manual check, finalize your selection. The terms that survive all five steps — candidate, scored, filtered, checked in secondary markets, validated for relevance — are your low-competition keyword targets. These go into your metadata in the highest-weight positions your character budget allows.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as 'low competition' for App Store keywords?
A difficulty score below 55 is generally considered accessible for an established app. Below 40 is accessible for earlier-stage apps. The threshold should be calibrated to your app's current authority — your rating count and tenure in the store. A new app should target below 40; one with significant ratings can aim for 55-60.
Can low-competition keywords actually generate meaningful install volume?
Yes, in aggregate. A single low-competition keyword at top-3 might generate 3-8 installs per day. Twenty such keywords generates 60-160 installs per day — comparable to a single high-competition broad term that took much longer and more effort to achieve. The key is building a portfolio of low-competition terms rather than expecting a single term to drive everything.
How often should I repeat this process?
Before every metadata update, which for an actively optimized app is every 4-8 weeks. The competitive landscape changes — terms that were hard to rank for 6 months ago may have opened up as a dominant competitor changed their strategy, and new terms emerge as search behavior evolves.
Should I include both short and long keywords in my research?
Yes. Short keywords ('habit tracker') are the high-volume terms — worth understanding even if you can't rank for them yet. Long, specific phrases ('sobriety habit tracker', 'ADHD habit tracker app') are where the low-competition opportunities often hide. The App Store keyword field is individual words, not phrases — 'habit' in the field matches 'habit tracker', 'habit journal', and any other phrase containing the word.

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