As others have pointed out, it’s a shame that Apple hasn’t made the the App Store’s search algorithm more transparent. Getting your app up the rankings is still a black art, and new apps are at a massive disadvantage simply because they haven’t been able to experiment with black-magic SEO tactics as much as incumbent apps.

With that said, I still need to get My Minutes up the rankings. This post is a collection of App Store SEO tips I’ve come across. I’ve been trying some and will be trying others as I release more updates.

In My Minutes, I use UILocalNotifications to let users know when they hit their goal for a task. iOS displays these notifications nicely when My Minutes is running in the background or when the phone is locked. But what about when the app is active?

My Minutes uses rectangular “Done” buttons in place of the standard iOS “Back” buttons. I also use the Thonburi font throughout the app, and I had a hard time tracking down exactly how to set the font for these buttons. I ended up digging through Cheddar’s source on github since Sam also uses a custom font.

My Minutes hit the App Store the evening of August 28. I was out to dinner with some friends when I received the ‘Status changed to in-review’ email from Apple. It took the reviewer about 20 minutes to make the app available for sale. My app had gone live with very little warning. That night I touched up my landing page a bit tried to get some sleep.