How do Smaller Apps Use ASO to Rise in Fitness Category?

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, app 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.

In this blog, we take a look at how apps in the Fitness category leverage ASO to improve their app store rankings and become a success story for organic growth.

1. Weight Loss: Workouts From Home

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 March 18, 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 March 22 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.

Overall report showing the keywords driving the installs Weight Loss Workouts From Home in the Apple App Store in the USA

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.

Gain insights into the seasonality trends in the Health & Fitness category to boost your app visibility

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 12 when its title used to be “Fit – Workout & Fitness.”

The app changed its branding and title to Fitness Coach on the 1 March. Soon after, the app’s momentum and movement in the category got a push. The app jumped 400 places in the Health & Fitness category to reach# 1 by April 8.

Movement of Fitness Coach by Lumi through its category in the Apple App Store in the USA

Following the metadata update, the app started to gain rank on a wide variety of keywords – including “fitness coach,” “fitness and workout,” “women fitness,” “fit coach,” etc.

On March 16, 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 App Store, US.

3. Zombies, Run!

Zombies, Run! is a fun and apocalyptic way to get your fitness in during the pandemic. 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 April 7.

They made no visible change to their metadata during this period. However, the app gained a lot of traction on April 6.

On Twitter, the company reached out warning users they were experiencing unusual high traffic.

AppTweak’s 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 App Store, US.

With this increase in installs, the app increased its rankings on relevant keywords like “running apps” or “workout games.”

Read these valuable tips to optimize your app’s metadata using AppTweak;s keyword research tools

Due to the high velocity of downloads on April 7, 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 App Store, US.

These examples show 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. It goes to show that any app can make itself a top ranking app in its category by investing in effective ASO strategies. With an ASO tool like AppTweak, you can then analyze and understand keywords and their movement.