Changing keywords effects: your experiences

[Scraff]

Hi everyone,

Doing a bit of keyword research for the AppStore, I'm just about to release an update, so have chance to change keywords.

What's your experiences?

Has any changes worked well for you? (don't have to give specifics!)
What seems best, descriptive keywords eg maze, running. Category keywords eg puzzle, platformer. General keywords eg fun, free, best. Or keywords of similar games names eg birds, angry

[LiamAtDevour]

Neither Apple or Google release statistics of the most commonly searched words, but I read this article a few days ago and it seemed to have a few good hints. You may have already read it:

http://www.bianor.com/blog/iphone-ke...app-store-seo/

[developer_ost]

A couple of months ago, while working on our next CuteShot release, we decided to redesign our logo, make new screeshots and write a new description for our app. Besides, we wanted to change our keywords to optimize our app for easy search on AppStore. Judging from our experience, it's better not to use popular highly-searched words like fun or social. It's better to choose less common but still relevant word and get into top 5 results than in the top 100, right?
Besides, according to new rules Apple really handles plural forms better now, so when we tried to check keywords postcard and postcards we got practically the same results.
But while checking keywords on Russian and German AppStore we noticed that this rule doesn't work - postcard/postcards or Effekt/Effekte gave us different results, so we included both singular and plural forms.
So our advice is simply the following: choose keywords wisely. We spent lots of time searching for apps using different keywords, combining variants and comparing the results. It turned out to be not so easy as it seemed...
And what was your experience?

[BlueSpiral]

I'm interested in this as well. I've always gone on things that are fairly unique but still relevant to the game. I think it's just as difficult when choosing categories for games. Do you go for higher position in a category that's not viewed as much or take the risk of being one of many in a more popular category. Same could be said for key words.

If I was looking for a game, I wouldn't type fun or something generic like that into a search I'd want something a bit more specific as I know I'd be there forever searching through apps that weren't relevant. Puzzle for example is less generic but still broad enough, but then again if you're in the puzzle section would you search on puzzle?

Would be interesting to know what the best search words were, but once people know them they would stop being the best ones.

[Zenout]

I don't think it makes any difference :P

Of course any changes in downloads would stand out immediately for me. So for example my first app is a sand simulator... So you would imagine that many people would search for sand right?

[BlueSpiral]

Originally Posted by Zenout

I don't think it makes any difference :P

Of course any changes in downloads would stand out immediately for me. So for example my first app is a sand simulator... So you would imagine that many people would search for sand right?

When you come to think about it, the bit in bold is probably the most true. The odds on someone coming across your game by accident are very slim indeed. If it's difficult to use names of other games that yours might be similar to or if people like a certain one they may like yours as well, it makes the keyword search almost irrelevant. If nobody knows about your game, how do they search for it? If nobody knows about your game how will they type in a unique search word for it that brings yours up and very few others?

Target marketing I think is the only way to go and then fingers crossed for a review somewhere to raise your game's profile. IMO.

[batgirl717111]

Originally Posted by Zenout

I don't think it makes any difference :P

Of course any changes in downloads would stand out immediately for me. So for example my first app is a sand simulator... So you would imagine that many people would search for sand right?

maybe you could do keywords for like zen gardens, relaxation apps, etc? like try and keyword what experience the user is looking for, since they wouldn't necessarily type in "sand".

[Zenout]

Originally Posted by batgirl717111

maybe you could do keywords for like zen gardens, relaxation apps, etc? like try and keyword what experience the user is looking for, since they wouldn't necessarily type in "sand".

There are some keywords like that, but thanks for reminding me as looking trough the list I see that most are the old way of thinking... When I first designed the app over 2 years ago, my thinking was along the lines of how ideal the iPad is for a sand picture simulation (it was once called that lol). Now I think of the devices like you suggest, as Experience Interfaces!

So I digress! And would/will certainly shuffle them up when possible.