iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [150]
The primary factor in your application's App Store SEO is its title. For example, our air hockey game is named Amuck Puck but it is listed as Amuck Puck—Air Hockey. This way our application can get hits for searches on its name and on the term “air hockey.” We definitely want our app to come up in searches for “air hockey,” since that is what the app really is—an air hockey game.
Tip
Check out your favorite applications and see what they are doing, and discover for yourself what really works. From time to time make a point of reviewing all of the featured and top 25 apps on the App Store for ideas on how to better market your own applications.
Keywords
Be sure to consider important keywords for your application title and description. Some people go so far as to include keywords in their company name, while others have noticed that having company and product names starting with the letter A can improve App Store search rankings and results. Be sure to search for Apps Amuck on the App Store and see our latest releases.
App Store application description
The App Store isn't perfect, but in a lot of ways it levels the playing field for everybody. It doesn't matter who you are; your application description must be 700 characters or less. That is both good and bad. It's good because none of your competition can use more than 700 characters to describe their application, but it's bad because more than likely you would prefer to have more than 700 characters to describe your application.
Not only do you have a limited number of characters that you can use to describe your application, but you can only use plain text for the description. You cannot use HTML or any other markup in your application description—but then again, neither can your competition. That means no HTML, no JavaScript, no AJAX, and no jQuery. How about bold? No. What about italics? No. Surely you can underline your text? No. If it's a text character, then maybe you can use it; otherwise, forget it.
That doesn't mean there aren't any tricks you can take advantage of. For example, it is possible to use some special Unicode characters. This allows you to include more graphic and symbolic characters in your application description. We have seen stars, squares, and so forth. It is common to see hyphens and asterisks being used in a row to create a virtual line out of text. It's true: Sometimes less really is more. So instead of trying to create advanced ASCII art in your application's description, focus on creating a well-formatted, easy-to-read description for your application.
Tip
Because you cannot include a hyperlink directly in your App Store description, consider using a URL-shortening service like http://bit.ly, which creates short URLs that redirect users to the much longer original URLs that you provided.
On sale
People love a good sale. Does anything actually sell for the manufacturer's suggested retail price anymore? It seems like products are designed from day one to go on sale. Think about how many people look forward to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the United States. Many people line up hours before stores even open and risk life and limb in the hope of grabbing some doorbuster sale items.
Similarly, many apps on the App Store seem to have a permanent “Limited Time SALE!” of “80% OFF!” Basically these applications are marketing themselves as $4.99 applications that are on sale for $0.99. Who says a limited time sale cannot last for the next 10 years? You should definitely consider having an on-sale promotion period for your applications, but maybe your limited time offers really should be limited time offers.
Videos
The App Store does not allow videos of iPhone applications. You cannot place a video demo of your application in your App Store application description, but you can add a video section to your description