So I've been in the app industry for around half a year and I still don't know how exactly ranking higher for your app will help increase downloads. That sounds like a question with an obvious answer but this is what's going through my mind so hear me out:

Unless your app is ranked within the top 100, no one can see it in the featured categories. So even if my app jumped from 400th to 300th place, would there really even be a difference in downloads? And I'm saying 400th to 300th in ranking in my specific category. Indie developers like me don't even come close to ranking for the overall category.

So far, the only usefulness of trying to get a higher rank is to get featured or something like that, but big companies have tons of money to throw on marketing...so the chances of any indie developer getting featured is rare.

The only thing that I can see ranking being good for is to rank for your keywords so that when someone searches for that word, your app will hopefully appear in the top 10-25 results. Can anyone confirm my thoughts or add anything else that I might have missed out on? How exactly do users find your app if you're not in the top 100 app in your category?