Sometime in early August Apple added extra field in the app description – ‘Keywords’. It is designed so applications could be located in search by keywords specified by a developer. Once a developer adds keywords to the field ‘keywords’, words contained in the ‘description’ field becomes excluded from the search index. Only keywords, app name and developer name can be searched. And you can not change ‘keywords’ and ‘application name’ until the next update.

The smart move for those who had keyword-rich descriptions was not to add ‘keywords’ at all. The ‘description’ would continue being indexed and show up in searches thus driving additional sales.

Today, 3rd of Sept, one month later, we see that Apple removed ‘description’ from search for ALL apps, either having ‘keywords’ or not. It was expected and was only a matter of time. Should you notice other AppStore behavior do let us know in comments. Our take it will soon be confirmed by the official news. Add the keywords to the app asap! Keywords in the description don’t work any more.

P.S. If you are still not aware – don’t add competitor app names as the keywords. Apple will not let those in, you will spend 15-25 days waiting for approval only to discover this.

Tags: appstore marketing, iphone app marketing
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I gave the test to admob yesterday by spending $100 on ads that show up on iPhone and iPod Touch devices within apps that have admob code. The ad was shown 280.000 time and got 2.000 click ($0.05 per click). Now guess what?! It ended up with 5-10 app sales (based on analogy with previous sales). Which means we got less then $10 revenue for $100 spent on $0.99 priced application. My opinion – don’t bother spending $ on it.

I might publish the feedback on other iPhone app marketing methods in future if I see an interest among readership.

Tags: admob, iphone app marketing, iphone app promotion
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In my opinion, companies and people developing an iPhone application can be devided into two categories: those who want to jump into this exciting market with a new kind of app or established tech web sites or services wishing to capitalize on iPhone traffic in order to drive additional traffic to the service. The aim is the same for both groups – get more downloads of the app.

An iPhone app start ranking in category as long as it has enough daily downloads. Once the app is ranking in specific category or in overall rank (wow you lucky!) you start getting natural AppStore downloads. If the app is good – downloads will increase and thus the rankings will increase as well.

The topic I cover in this post is getting initial downloads needed for the app to start actually ranking in the relevant category of AppStore. If you don’t follow at least one of those steps below (the more the better for sure) your app will end up nowhere in AppStore and be lost among 45.000 apps available.

1. Change the release date of the app as soon as it’s approved for sale!

By default, your app is released with the date of submission. Change that to the date of approve (during 24 hours since approval). The date will be changed and the app will pup up in Recently Released list of Desktop and Mobile AppStore 2-4 hours after that. Presence on the list gives immediate downloads! As long as you go down the list number of downloads decrease. Once the app is on the page 3-4 the number of downloads from it are minimal. The only way to get back on top of that list is to submit an update to the app (can be very minor) and do the same change of date again.

2. Have a marketing strategy behind the app or hire a PR company

You need to get immediate downloads in order for the app to show app in TOP100 of category – remember?

Here is the overview of marketing methods that are generally used for the promotion of iPhone apps in order to get that initial traffic.

Important
1. iPhone app review sites (there are about ~300 of those with ~10 big ones)
2. Mainstream and tech, mobile review media
3. Social media (digg, bookmarking, commenting, twittering)
4. Press Release distribution sites
5. AppStore optimization strategy
Optional (extra cost incurred)
6. Facebook ads
7. Google Adwords ads
8. Admob ads
9. Banners on iPhone review sites
10. Other custom and sometime guerrilla marketing methods

Tags: changing the release date for the iphone app, iphone app marketing, iphone application marketing
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