Start with the boring rule: Apple already has your title

Apple can read your app name and subtitle. If your title is Budget Tracker and your subtitle says Bills & Money Goals, your keyword field does not need budget, tracker, bills, money, or goals again. That space is gone forever, and you only had 100 characters to begin with.

This is where a lot of indie apps lose before they start. They write the keyword field like a tag cloud: budget,tracker,money,bills,expense,finance. It feels safe because the words are relevant. It is also wasteful because the visible metadata already carried the obvious ones.

  • App name: 30 characters, strongest visible keyword real estate.
  • Subtitle: 30 characters, visible in search and useful for new intent words.
  • Keyword field: 100 private characters, comma-separated, best used for missing pieces.
  • Description: useful for conversion, not a place to force Apple keyword rankings.

A bad keyword field and a better one

Say the app is called Budget Tracker and the subtitle is Bills & Money Goals. A weak keyword field would be: budget,tracker,bills,money,expense,finance,spending,saving. The first four words are repeats. The rest are broad enough to throw you into brutal results.

A better field might look more like: envelope,receipt,debt,paycheck,household,cashflow,planner. This is not magic. It simply adds new words Apple can combine with the title and subtitle: budget envelope, receipt tracker, debt tracker, paycheck budget, household bills, money planner.

Notice the difference. The better version does not chase every possible finance term. It chooses a few words that create realistic phrases a small app might actually compete for.

Use combinations, not stuffed phrases

Apple can combine words across your metadata. That means you usually want ingredients, not full phrases. For a focus timer, focus,pomodoro,timer,deep,work wastes less space than writing focus timer,pomodoro timer,deep work timer as if Apple needed every phrase spelled out.

The point is coverage with intent. If one word creates three useful combinations, it earns its place. If a word only exists because the category sounds important, cut it.

  • Remove spaces after commas unless a space is part of a term you intentionally need.
  • Use singular/plural carefully instead of assuming both are necessary.
  • Do not use competitor names or trademarks in metadata.
  • Do not waste characters on words already in the app name or subtitle.

The indie app sweet spot is usually narrower than you want

New apps love head terms: notes, fitness, photo, music, sleep. The problem is that the results are usually full of giant apps, Apple features, old winners with thousands of ratings, and brands that can absorb weak metadata because they already have demand.

Smaller apps need the side doors. Not sleep, but toddler sleep sounds. Not workout, but gym workout log. Not planner, but morning routine planner. These searches may be smaller, but the user knows what they want and the competition is less ridiculous.

Appfigures' keyword teardown style is good at this: it looks for the overlooked opportunity, not the biggest shiny keyword. That is the habit to copy, not the wording.

  • Look for phrases where the top apps have weak screenshots, old reviews, or vague subtitles.
  • Prefer user intent over category vanity.
  • Use all 100 characters, but only after the words are relevant.
  • When in doubt, test the phrase in the store and inspect the apps actually ranking there.

Quick 10-minute audit

Open your title, subtitle, and keyword field in one note. Highlight every repeated word. Delete repeats from the keyword field first. Then ask what useful phrases you can create with the space you just got back.

If the replacement words do not describe your app, your buyer, or the job the user is hiring the app to do, they do not belong there. Relevance beats cleverness. Always.