Review miningStop wasting the 100-character keyword field
A space after a comma, a word repeated from the title, and singular/plural pairs - together they can eat a fifth of the field.
· 5 min read
The keyword field in App Store Connect is 100 characters and no user ever sees it. It only enters the search index. That makes it the purest inventory item in ASO: every character either indexes a word or goes to waste.
1. A space after the comma
Apple splits this field on the comma. "habit, tracker, routine" and "habit,tracker,routine" give the same result - but the first spends two extra characters. Across ten terms that is nine characters, which is another word.
2. Repeating a word from the title
Apple indexes the title, subtitle and keyword field together and combines words across them. If "Habit" is in your title, writing "habit" again in the keyword field gains you nothing.
And because of the combining, "habit" in the title and "tracker" in the keyword field already indexes you for "habit tracker". There is no need to write both.
3. Singular and plural
Apple matches the singular and plural of the same stem. Writing both "tracker" and "trackers" spends the second one's characters for nothing.
The same goes for capitalisation - the index is case-insensitive.
These three corrections win back 15-25 characters in a typical field. That is two or three more keywords; where the field is full, it is a measurable gain.