Solo iOS Growth Diary — Vol. 6: ASO with No Budget (Keyword Landscape for Memo Apps in 2026)

S O L O i O S G R O
W T H D I A R Y VOL. 06 ASO with No Budget Keyword Landscape for Memo Apps in 2026 How a solo dev ranks with $0 ad budget — by mining the ghosts of dead apps. aso 2026 indie ASO ghost keywords speakerdeck.com/simplememo · x.com/simplememofast · 2026-06-16

Solo iOS Growth Diary · Vol. 6 · ASO with
No Budget 02 / 35 The 12-week promise 01 Battle-tested patterns From a solo iOS founder shipping in public. 02 Real numbers, no mythology Cost, ranks, conversion — measured and printed. 03 Anti-thesis every volume Three counter-arguments per topic. Survival > fashion. 04 Reproducible tactics Copy-paste moves over inspirational quotes.

No Budget 03 / 35 Today's roadmap 1 The budget reality Slide 04–05 2 The surface you control Slide 06 3 The 2026 algorithm shift Slide 07–08 4 Mine the ghosts (thesis) Slide 09–10 5 Ghost keywords · the Captio case Slide 11–12 6 Title / subtitle / keyword field Slide 13–14 7 The keyword landscape Slide 15–17 8 Conversion & new surfaces Slide 18–20 9 Anti-thesis — three counter-punches Slide 21–23 1 0 Playbook + Honest Scoreboard Slide 24–32

No Budget 04 / 35 You can't outbid a funded team. So don't play their game. In 2026 the App Store ranks on relevance, conversion, and retention — not the size of your media budget.

No Budget 05 / 35 The budget reality · what ASO actually costs a solo dev Enterprise stack $1,000s/mo Sensor Tower · AppTweak (Atlas AI) · data.ai Built for six-figure marketing teams — irrelevant to a solo app. Indie stack ~$25/mo Appfigures (rank + revenue) + free competitor reading Enough to track ranks and read what rivals already tested. Your whole budget $99/yr Apple Developer Program — the one mandatory line item No ad spend required to rank. This deck assumes exactly this. Apple Search Ads is an auction you lose on the terms you most want. The no-budget play is to not enter it — and win where money can't bid.

No Budget 06 / 35 The surface you fully control · 30 / 30 / 100 Three text fields are all the App Store gives you. They are also the only ranking lever a $0 budget owns completely. Title 30 chars Highest ranking weight. Brand + your single most valuable keyword. Subtitle 30 chars Second-highest weight. Primary value prop or a secondary phrase. Keyword field 100 chars Invisible to users. Comma-separated, NO spaces. The discovery engine room. F I E L D R U L E S • Singular only — Apple auto-matches English plurals • No spaces after commas (every char counts) • Never repeat brand / Title / Subtitle words — credited once • Fill all 100 — unused chars are wasted discovery Weighting order is real: a keyword in the Title outranks the same word in the field. Spend the 30s first.

No Budget 07 / 35 The 2026 algorithm · a two-engine system Metadata gets you into the race; behavior decides whether you stay. The direction of travel is away from pre-install signals and toward post-install quality. E N G I N E 1 · R E L E V A N C E Gets you into consideration • Title / subtitle / keyword field • Semantic match to the query • In-app text & screenshot captions The part a $0 budget fully controls. E N G I N E 2 · B E H A V I O R Decides whether you rank & stay • Conversion-from-search • Install velocity • Ratings • Long-term retention Won on product, not ad spend. ▶ Relevance is necessary but no longer sufficient. The pre-install era (raw keyword match + download count) is closing; what you keep matters more than what you buy.

No Budget 08 / 35 Why retention is now a ranking lever Apple's 2024 App Store Transparency Report (released May 2025): re-engagement dwarfs acquisition. Weekly, across the store — Redownloads ≈ 1.9 billion / week New downloads ≈ 839 million / week >2 : 1 redownloads outpace new downloads The $0 lever Ranking rewards apps people come back to. You can win that on product, not spend — and an indie can move retention faster than a giant can.

No Budget 09 / 35 “ Mine the ghosts. Win the long tail. — Solo iOS Growth Diary · Vol. 6

No Budget 10 / 35 Reframe: you don't buy ranking, you earn it Paid UA buys installs. Ghost keywords + conversion buy rankings. The funded playbook bids on head terms and buys volume. The no-budget playbook claims terms money can't defend (dead apps'), then earns the conversion and retention the 2026 algorithm actually rewards. 30/30/100 the only surface you fully own 2 engines relevance, then behavior >2:1 redownloads vs new installs $0 ad budget that still ranks

No Budget 11 / 35 What is a ghost keyword? Ghost keyword (n.): a search term with persistent real intent whose primary app is dead or discontinued — so the competition has collapsed, leaving low difficulty and high conversion for whoever shows up. The canonical ghost · Captio (one-tap "email yourself") ~14 yrs served as a beloved one-tapper Oct 1, 2024 cloud service shut down 2025 removed from the App Store; servers off 2026 the term is still searched — by no one's app Captio leaned on the Gmail API; when that dependency broke, the app went — its searchers didn't. "captio alternative" is now uncontested intent. A dead app is a frozen acquisition pool: real demand, no defender.

No Budget 12 / 35 The ghost-harvesting loop 1 Inventory the graveyard List discontinued / EOL apps in your category and their brand terms (Captio, the abandoned "note to self" cluster). 2 Confirm intent still lives The brand term and its "alternative / replacement" long-tails are still queried by orphaned users. 3 Check it's uncontested The dead app no longer ranks or defends the term. Competitor research is where opportunity hides — a dead rival's is free. 4 Claim it, answer it honestly Put the term where weight is highest, then literally answer the query on the product page so conversion follows. This is ASO an indie can run on a $99/yr fee: pick uncontested intent the funded tools ignore because the volume is too small to matter to them.

No Budget 13 / 35 The 100-character field · rules that actually move ranks D O — c o m m a - s e p a r a t e d , n o s p a c e s , s i n g u l a r memo,note,email,reminder,quick,capture,todo,journal,diary,idea,scratchpad,checklist,widget 90 chars used · no wasted spaces · every token is a distinct match surface Singular only Apple auto-matches English plurals → "note" covers "notes." Adding both wastes ~6 chars. No spaces after commas "memo,note" not "memo, note." A space is a character you paid for and threw away. No brand / Title / Subtitle repeats Each word is credited once across all fields. Repetition buys nothing. Fill all 100 Unused characters are unbid discovery. There is no penalty for a full field. The field is invisible to users — so it's pure ranking signal. Optimize it like code, not copy.

No Budget 14 / 35 Title & subtitle · the highest-weight 60 characters These two fields carry the most ranking weight and are the only metadata users actually read. Each character is a ranking AND a conversion decision. T I T L E · 3 0 c h a r s · h i g h e s t w e i g h t Simple Memo: Email to Self 26 / 30 S U B T I T L E · 3 0 c h a r s · s e c o n d w e i g h t Quick note, capture & reminder 30 / 30 Title = brand + the one keyword that you most want to rank for — nothing decorative. Subtitle = the value proposition or your strongest secondary phrase, in plain user language. Never duplicate words between them — Apple credits a term once; spend the space elsewhere.

No Budget 15 / 35 The memo-app keyword landscape · 2026 Keyword cluster Rel. intent Difficulty Status The play captio alternative / replacement High* Low ~7 GHOST Own it outright email yourself · note to self Medium Low–Med GHOST-ish Answer it literally quick note widget · lock-screen memo Medium Medium LIVE tail Earn via a feature Obsidian iPhone · Obsidian iOS Medium Med–High LIVE+growing Adjacent — ride it note taking apps (head term) High High · 250+ apps CONTESTED Don't fight head-on GHOST = dead app, intent persists, low competition (claim it). LIVE = healthy, growing cluster (ride the long tail). CONTESTED = funded incumbents (don't burn weight). * High intent within the niche, modest absolute volume — exactly why a funded competitor ignores it and a solo dev can own it.

No Budget 16 / 35 Ghost vs live vs contested · how to spend weight GHOST Dead app, intent persists, competition collapsed. Claim it in the highest-weight field you can. Lowest difficulty, highest conversion — the orphaned user is looking for exactly you. LIVE A healthy, growing cluster owned by a strong ecosystem. Ride the long tail; don't expect to own the head. Be a credible adjacent option, not a pretender to the throne. CONTESTED Funded incumbents defending broad head terms. Don't burn your 30-character real estate here. You'll rank ~#140 and learn nothing. Walk away. The whole skill is allocation: put your scarce, high-weight characters where competition is lowest and intent is real.

No Budget 17 / 35 The long tail is where a solo dev wins Public ASO data for the note category (ASOTools): the head is a crowd; the winnable zone is specific and low-difficulty. target zone vol 20–80 · diff <50 difficulty → volume → notes (head) note taking apps · 34/16 captio alternative · ~7 34 / 16 "note taking apps": volume / difficulty 250+ related apps; ~150 with 1,000+ reviews 28% of productivity apps use notes/calendar/tasks 20–80 healthy volume target · difficulty < 50

No Budget 18 / 35 Conversion is the second engine Relevance gets you shown; conversion-from-search is what the algorithm rewards next. And the assets that convert are increasingly indexed too. Search result first 2 screenshots + caption text ▶ Tap → product page one benefit per shot, not feature soup ▶ Install conversion % = the signal ▶ More visibility algorithm promotes what converts ▲ Caption text is indexed Screenshot caption OCR began indexing in 2025 — write captions for search, not just for looks. Custom product pages can rank CPPs became keyword-linkable in 2025 and the cap doubled to 70 — tailor a page per query cluster. Screenshots rank indirectly They don't carry keywords; they carry conversion, which is what lifts you. Reported developments, 2025; treat as direction-of-travel, not Apple-published spec.

No Budget 19 / 35 Ship a feature, mint a keyword surface An overlooked no-budget lever: every named, searchable capability you ship opens long-tails you couldn't rank for before. SimpleMemo's 2026 example — on- device voice input. Tap the mic ▶ “…” Speak ▶ |abc Live text at cursor ▶ → Send N E W L O N G - T A I L S T H I S U N L O C K S voice memo · dictation note · hands-free notes · speak-to-text memo — terms the app simply could not match before the feature existed. WHY IT'S A REAL DIFFERENTIATOR Transcription is on-device (Apple SpeechAnalyzer, iOS 26) — a fact you can state plainly in metadata, and the kind of specific claim AI search rewards. F A I R P R I N T Requires iOS 26 and a supported device / language — the mic is hidden where unsupported, so the new keywords only convert for eligible users; the first use of an uncommon language downloads its model once. Don't claim a surface your users can't reach.

No Budget 20 / 35 AI search rewards the clearest answer The headline 2026 shift: LLM-driven discovery reads intent and semantic relevance, not just literal keyword matches. That helps the specific, honest indie — and punishes the stuffer. Intent over match Semantic models infer what a query means. "app like captio" can surface you even without the exact string — if your metadata clearly says what you are. Tags are built from your text Apple's metadata-derived App Store Tags are generated from your own words. Clean, specific metadata is the AI's input — not its casualty. Be the obvious answer Write the literal answer to the query on the page. AI discovery and human conversion reward the same clarity. Keyword stuffing is dead; the keyword field is not. The input to the AI layer is still your text.

No Budget 21 / 35 Anti-thesis 1 · "Paid UA scales faster." They say: “Forget fiddling with keywords. Run Apple Search Ads, buy installs, and let paid user acquisition scale you past the indies still hand-tuning metadata.” Reality: It's an auction you lose on the exact head terms you can least afford 2026 discounts bought installs that don't retain — they dilute the signal Paid amplifies a product that already converts; it can't replace one Ghost terms compound rank earned organically keeps paying after spend stops $0 can still rank because relevance + retention aren't for sale

No Budget 22 / 35 Anti-thesis 2 · "Keywords are dead — it's all brand & AI now." “Nobody types keywords anymore. AI search and brand recognition decide everything — the keyword field is a relic.” W h a t ' s a c t u a l l y t r u e : Stuffing is dead, the field isn't AI penalizes keyword soup but still reads your metadata to understand you. Tags come from your words App Store Tags are auto-generated from your text — so the text still decides placement. Brand must be earned An unknown indie has no brand yet; ghost terms are the fastest way to earn the first searches. Semantic ≠ keyword-free Models map queries to meaning — meaning you supply through specific, honest wording. The clearest answer wins Both the AI and the human reward the page that literally answers the query.

No Budget 23 / 35 Anti-thesis 3 · "You need a $1,000/mo tool." E N T E R P R I S E - O N L Y A S O “Real ASO needs Sensor Tower or AppTweak. Without enterprise keyword data you're flying blind.” • Priced for six-figure marketing budgets • Irrelevant to an app covering a $99 dev fee • Optimized for the head terms you can't win anyway • Their data ignores the small-volume ghosts T H E S O L O S T A C K “~$25/mo + free reading covers a solo app. The leverage is the pick, not the tool.” • Appfigures (~$25/mo): ranks + revenue + downloads • Free: read competitors' live titles & subtitles • The edge is picking uncontested intent • Big tools skip it — the volume's too small for them

No Budget 24 / 35 What changes in 2026 — and what doesn't C H A N G I N G ( r e p o r t e d ) • More ads in App Store search results — phased rollout from March 2026 (UK → Japan → global) • Custom product pages doubled 35 → 70, and can rank organically • Screenshot caption text is being OCR-indexed • AI-generated App Store Tags influence browse placement N O T C H A N G I N G • Organic relevance + conversion + retention still decide free rank • The 30 / 30 / 100 fields are still your controllable surface • Uncontested intent still beats expensive intent • A $0 dev can still win the long tail — arguably more easily More paid surfaces raise the value of the organic slots you can still win for free. The thesis holds.

No Budget 25 / 35 Where no-budget ASO is the wrong call Broad, paid-defended head terms "notes," "to do." Incumbents with ad budgets own these. Don't burn your highest-weight characters there. Going multi-geo all at once Each locale is its own keyword field and language. Win one market before you localize the field. A product that doesn't convert/retain ASO amplifies a good app; it can't rescue a leaky one. Fix engine 2 before chasing engine 1. Trademarked names of LIVE apps Harvesting a dead brand is fair game; bidding on a live competitor's trademark invites rejection. A solo memo app hits none of these on day one. Know the edges before you cross them.

No Budget 26 / 35 Playbook · Step 1 of 7 Inventory the graveyard List every dead / EOL app in your category and its brand terms. These are your highest-ROI keywords. H O W Captio · "note to self" one-tappers · any "service discontinued" app → collect brand + "<brand> alternative". W H Y A dead app is a frozen acquisition pool: real demand, no live defender. Start where money can't bid.

No Budget 27 / 35 Playbook · Step 2 of 7 Map intent × difficulty Score each candidate; keep volume 20–80 and difficulty < 50. Drop the head terms you can't win. H O W Plot diff (x) vs volume (y); keep the low-diff / real-intent quadrant; discard "notes", "to do". W H Y Allocation is the whole skill. Spend scarce, high-weight characters where competition is lowest.

No Budget 28 / 35 Playbook · Step 3 of 7 Spend the highest-weight real estate first Title (30) = brand + the one keyword that matters. Subtitle (30) = the next phrase. No duplication. H O W Title: "Simple Memo: Email to Self" (26). Subtitle: "Quick note, capture & reminder" (30). W H Y A word in the Title outranks the same word in the field. Don't waste the 60 you read on fluff.

No Budget 29 / 35 Playbook · Step 4 of 7 Pack the 100-char field correctly Singular forms, no spaces after commas, no Title / Subtitle repeats, no brand name. Fill all 100. H O W memo,note,email,reminder,quick,capture,todo,journal,idea,scratchpad,checklist,widget W H Y The field is invisible — pure ranking signal. Optimize it like code, not like copy.

No Budget 30 / 35 Playbook · Steps 5–7 (convert, mint, measure) 5 Design for conversion — it's engine 2 First two screenshots + caption text carry the search conversion the algorithm now rewards; captions are indexed. You can rank into the result and still lose. Conversion is the second, decisive engine. 6 Ship features that mint new surfaces Each named capability opens long-tails you couldn't rank for before. Update metadata the day you ship. Roadmap is ASO. The cheapest new keyword is the one your newest feature just made true. 7 Measure the loop, not the vanity number Track ranked-keyword → install-from-search → 7/30-day retention. Optimize the weakest link. A #1 rank that doesn't retain decays. The loop, not the rank, is the asset.

No Budget 31 / 35 Honest scoreboard · SimpleMemo ASO $0 Apple Search Ads spend, lifetime $99/yr total marketing spend (the dev fee) 100/100 keyword-field characters used 31 keywords ranked top-10 (US) ~62% of installs come from Search ~41% 30-day retention — the engine-2 number Best ghost term: "captio alternative" — #1, difficulty ~7. Head term "note taking apps": not in top 100 (we don't fight it). ~5 months to first organic #1. Self-reported, 2026-Q2.

No Budget 32 / 35 Where it broke (so you don't have to find out) 2025-08 Keyword stuffing wasted characters Stuffed "note,notes" and other plurals. Apple already matches them — ~9 chars burned for zero gain. Trimmed to singular. 2025-09 Clever subtitle zero search intent Led the subtitle with "think out loud." Pretty, unsearched. Swapped for an intent phrase; search installs rose. 2025-11 Chased the head term ranked ~#140 Spent a month forcing "note taking apps" into the subtitle. Never cracked the top 100. Reverted to long-tail + ghosts. 2026-02 Feature-dense screenshots low conversion First two shots crammed every feature → weak search conversion. Rebuilt to one benefit each; caption text indexed; conversion recovered. Pattern: every loss came from copying the funded playbook — stuffing, head terms, feature-soup. The wins were specific, honest, and small-volume.

No Budget 33 / 35 What to copy, what to skip C O P Y • Inventory dead-app brand terms — own the ghosts • Spend Title / Subtitle on highest-weight real intent • Fill 100 chars: singular, no spaces, no repeats • Design the first two screenshots for conversion S K I P • Bidding head terms a funded team will outspend • Stuffing plurals / spaces into the keyword field • Cloning a LIVE competitor's trademarked name • Going multi-geo before you've won one market

No Budget 34 / 35 Dead apps don't take their users with them. Be the answer their search still returns. What's the deadest app whose users you could still serve? — @simplememofast

No Budget 35 / 35 Next week · Vol. 7 V O L . 0 7 From Refugees to Renewal — Converting Orphaned Users Thesis: speak the dead app's language first. How ghost-keyword traffic becomes retained users — and why orphaned communities (including PKM users) convert when you meet them where they were left. F O L L O W speakerdeck.com/simplememo x.com/simplememofast New deck every Tuesday 22:00 JST. P U B L I S H E D Vol. 1 · From EOL to Encore Vol. 2 · Speed Is The Feature Vol. 3 · Email-as-Sync Vol. 4 · The Outbox · Vol. 5 · AES-GCM Vol. 6 · ASO with No Budget ← you are here

Solo iOS Growth Diary — Vol. 6: ASO with No Bud...

Solo iOS Growth Diary — Vol. 6: ASO with No Budget (Keyword Landscape for Memo Apps in 2026)

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