How Sensor Tower Can Help You Rank High in the App Store

A higher App Store ranking for your chosen keywords makes it far easier for people to find you.
If more people can find you, more people will download your app, right?
But how do you make that happen?
Today, we’re looking at a tool that can help you rank higher in the App Store: Sensor Tower.

Note: Sensor Tower was built primarily for iOS, but Android features are being added.

Selecting Keywords

One of Sensor Tower’s most valuable features is its App Store Optimization section, designed to help you target a strong set of keywords — essential for ranking well.
With only 100 characters available for keyword selection in the App Store, each character counts. Sensor Tower will make technical recommendations to prevent you needlessly chasing unnecessary keywords — for example, keywords in your app’s title, or plural variations of keywords you already target.
You’ll also be told when you have characters free to include more keywords, allowing you to make the most of what you have available. Sensor Tower will even recommend keywords you should target, giving you suggestions you might not have considered.
The software assigns each targeted keyword a rating for traffic levels and how difficult it is to rank. As with SEO, the more keywords you find with high traffic and low competition, the better you’ll do.
If you want to expand your audience by targeting users in different countries, you’ll find the one-click translation function highly useful; in just seconds, your app can be optimised for localised App Stores all around the world.

Review Analysis

Reviews are one of the many factors that influence your ranking in the App Store. The more positive reviews you get, the higher you rank.
Now, Sensor Tower is not able to influence reviews directly, but it does give you some helpful insights which can help you improve your app’s user experience.
In particular, it collates every review containing a certain keyword, including the average rating for those reviews. This will give you a quick indication of what aspects of your app users like, and which features not so much. These insights can also throw up new keywords for you to target.
If you make any changes to your app — if you update it or change price, for example — you can easily see the impact the change has, by looking only at reviews between two dates. If people don’t like the changes you’ve made, it’s easy to spot and gives you plenty of time to respond to the feedback users are giving you.
Could you do all this yourself? Absolutely, but Sensor Tower will save you a lot of time.

Competitor Analysis

Knowing what your competitors are doing is always useful — especially when formulating your own App Store strategy. Sensor Tower comes with a number of competitor analysis functions that allow you to keep tabs on your direct competition.
First, there’s the rank tracker: This allows you to view how your competition’s ranking has changed over time, both at a category level and a keyword level. You can put a number of competitor rankings on one graph, as well as your own app, for easy comparison.
Second, you have the Keyword Spy tool. This lets you view the keywords your competition is targeting, as well as highlighting any keyword overlap between the two of you.
Keyword Spy can uncover keywords you hadn’t considered, but more importantly allows you to make strategic decisions for your own app: if you think your competitor is weak, you can take them on directly; if you think they are strong, you can stay away from keywords they target.
The starting price of $79 per month is not to be sneezed at, but if you’re looking for a highly effective tool to help with your App Store optimisation, Sensor Tower is well worth the investment.
If you’ve had experience using Sensor Tower, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section below. Similarly, if you prefer a different App Store Optimisation tool, let us know which one and why you think it’s the better choice!