Hey, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps.
Today let's ask the question, "Should you use keywords in your title or should you
give it a unique name for branding purposes?
All right so today although the weather's not great we have a really
nice view of Wantage behind me, my office is down there somewhere today I want to
answer a question that came in from Twitter last week from Ben Chin
Ben said, "What's your opinion on name creation? would you use a high ranking
keyword or use a unique name for branding purposes? See this is a really
good question because this highlights the problems we have with crowded App
Store and the crowded Play Store is that we have to start naming our apps more
for Search because unless your app gets featured or you have a really good
marketing budget nobody's gonna find it. So let's say you have like a shooter
let's say you have a game that's a shooter and you want to call it, "Rain of Bullets"
or something really cool like that, you have like a nice little
storyline. Everything is perfect but then you think maybe I
should call it, "Ultimate shooter game" right for SEO or ASO purposes right?
Ultimate shooter game is a terrible name, it's a bad user experience people
probably want it like it but that's a probably a better name for search I mean
it's probably not a better name for search because shooter game is I mean
it's probably way crowded but you get what I'm saying like you're putting like
high ranking keywords and in your title just so that it ranks on the search.
So this is the catch-22 of it, you want the best user experience I mean
you're an artist so you put something out there you want to have
a really good name behind it, you want to have a really good brand but you also
want people to find it and of course the short term thing. The solution that most
of us use is the "Subtitle". So the subtitle and I talked about it is your
two app names. You have your one app name which goes underneath the icon it
goes on your title screen and then you have the one for the Play Store.
Now you're out your title for the Play Store is gonna be completely different it's
gonna be, "Rain of Bullets : The Ultimate Shooter Game" or
whatever the keywords is you're looking for right and I've never actually
released a shooter game so I know that that one's probably way too crowded.
I mean you could try to change the name just
temporarily to see if you get a bump in in downloads because people are actually
finding it. Use things like Google Keyword planner, if you have Sensor Tower
or Mobile Action use those to see what
people are searching for and which has lower competition and do something
like that. I once read a book where they said, "You should not call it
what you want to call, it call it where it's search like just say what it does
because you're not an artist writing a book." You're basically you want
it to be found and I disagree with that completely I think you want the best
user experience and if I was searching for it for searching for like a shooter
and then I typed in shooter into the google play search console and then
I found ultimate shooter game. I probably want to download it because it's just a
I mean it's a dumb title but if it said Rain of Bullets, then yeah that
might be a little bit more intriguing but it's the two of them I
mean how do you how do you rank for it and of course if you're using
advertising and you have the marketing budget then that's not so much of an
issue. You can build up that brand. Another option might be and I've seen
people do this on YouTube, where their YouTube channel is called something what
they do like a lot of programmers do this so like their channel will be
called something to do with programming and then as it gets more subscribers and
more followers and starts to get some steam then they'll change it to be more
of a personal brand thing so they'll change it to be their own name or
different name or they'll try to change the focus of it but in order to get
those first viewers they have to actually say what they do and they'll
talk about something that's very niche to what they do. So just a few different
ideas there on that because we've tried both ways we've even
changed the titles of some of our apps just to see if they will do
any better. Sometimes it does and always be that the nice
thing about a subtitle is that it's you could change it I mean you can't
change that iOS unless you release another binary but you could change it
on GooglePlay all the time and sometimes Apple will actually reject it
if it's not close enough to the title of the actual application.
Let me know the rest of you guys out there who are releasing apps and you have a
bit of success there with search I mean what is it you're doing because for me
it's the subtitle all the way.
I don't go for the whole use keywords
and don't call it what you want call it what you think the use given the
user the best user experience the problem you're gonna experience,
the problem you're gonna face is just that they can find it. So anyway that is it
for today I'll talk to you guys again tomorrow.