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The game's website should be on its own domain

Domain names are cheap, and so are webhosting services. You can get decent webhosting for under $10 per month. So putting your game's website on a blogging site like "mygame.blogspot.com" will immediately communicate to the visitor that it got to be a cheap game if the developer can't even afford a domain name for his game.

Ideally your game's website should be hosted on a domain like www.mycoolgame.com - find a name for your game for which there is also a free domain name! Don't let this be an afterthought!

As an alternative, if you already have a gaming-related domain with your blog and other content on it, you can host it on that blog. For example www.mycoolblog.com/mycoolgame is acceptable and actually can be beneficial if your blog's content is about making and playing games. If your blog is just for your friends to show off your latest party or even your wedding pictures, don't put your game in this light. But if you have several games on the App Store and blog about game development and playing games putting all your games in one spot might actually help selling the other games.

Don't forget to add links in your App that leads to your homepage if that is how you intend to crosspromote your apps.

Use a CMS (Content Management System)

I've always used Wordpress since i created my first blog. It makes blogging and creating pages so much easier - if you get past the initial learning curve. There are other CMS (Content Management System) solutions out there, for example Joomla. Pick what you like but if you have no preference at all, don't waste time and just use Wordpress already. It's easy to setup and has the largest community.

Use an easy-going CMS theme on your website

When you have setup your CMS the first thing you should do is to change the default theme. It's ugly and even if it isn't it signals to others that you're not investing in the blog. Your theme should be easy-going, meaning it should have all the necessary features like a sidebar and a search form. It should also not violate good web design principles. It doesn't have to be different or special - website users care more about ease of use, accessibility and of course to quickly find what they're looking for.

Personally i use the iBlogPro theme from Pagelines. It's amazing how many people started congratulating me on the great website design! It does give off a professional look and feel and that's what you should be aiming for, too! Pagelines also offer other themes and iBlog is also available as a free "lite" version.

Don't worry too much about SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Don't waste too much time reading and following SEO (Search Engine Optimization) recommendations. Build a nice blog with great content first and foremost. Secondly, remember to repeat your keywords. Instead of "the game is about" keep writing "Super Cool Actionhero Game is about" - it may sound repetitive, your teacher may frown upon you but your readers won't care and for the search engines it's fuel to drive up your pageranks for certain keywords.

As an example, take a look around my website and notice how often i use the phrase "cocos2d" or "cocos2d for iPhone". This lures in the search engine crawlers to stay a bit longer on your website. (Ok, they don't actually stay longer but they'll rate your site higher for these keywords).

If you are blogging, make sure you tag your posts. Tagging is very easy in Wordpress. There are "suggested tags" and "clickable tags" plugins for wordpress which you can click after you've written your blog post and it will generate a list of tags for you. You just need to click on the most relevant tags and be done.

Everything else you read about SEO is not important to you. Instead, spend the time to actually make your blog known. Write to other developers and ask for backlinks. When you comment on other people's blogs, make sure you add your website to the comment.

Most of all: write interesting stuff! If your website only hosts a few pictures of your game you don't have to optimize it for search engines - instead make sure you send out Press Releases and contact other blogs and reviewers to get them to link to your website. This is much more effective than SEO.

If you have nothing to say, don't blog!

Nothing looks worse than your last blog post being over 12 months old. If you publish a game to the App Store and you have a site for it on your blog but you didn't even care to make a blog post announcing the game's release, then you should rather remove your blog posts altogether.

Better advice: start blogging!

But the better advise is actually to start blogging! And make it interesting. It may seem like there's nothing new to say on the Internet - but in fact whenever you read something noteworthy re-post it with your own thoughts. There are always people for whom this is still news and they'll be happy they found it through your blog. Especially if you keep writing these posts.

Enable Comments

There is no reason on earth why you wouldn't want to enable comments on your blog! Some even say a blog without comments is not a blog.

You need feedback and you need to allow for it. Yes, enabling comments invites spam. Install Akismet on your Wordpress blog and it'll catch 99% of that spam. Spam is not a good reason not to enable comments.

Some may be worried that countles blog posts with "0 Responses" may seem like a blog not worth visiting. The truth is: most blogs are not worth visiting except for that one post. And then it would be a shame if comments were disabled. My GamingHorror blog received maybe 5 comments overall in the first year. I'm running it since 2007 and I still don't receive comments for most of my blog posts. But i always know i hit a nerve when the comments arrive. So not getting any comments on your blog posts is not negative, only few blogs can actually expect to see dozens of comments on each of their posts.

Reduce visible comment spam

It saddens me to say but there's actually one thing you can do to reduce the amount of comment spam visible on your site. It doesn't stop it from coming in though but it'll hold it in moderation. Wordpress allows you to add comment filters under Settings -> Discussion:
"When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be held in the moderation queue."

So why does that sadden me?

Because the one string you should add to that box is:

@gmail.com

Sorry gmail, and sorry gmail users. I think you deserve a better email provider than one that is so persistantly associated with comment spam. I do check my blogs comments whether they are really spam but that might take a while. If you enter any non-gmail email address your comment will appear promptly on my blogs.

Your forum is overdone

I don't think it makes sense to have a forum for your game or games on your website, unless the users really need to talk about it on your website. Don't let the App Store's "Support" link fool you into thinking that you need some sort of Support Forum. A simple contact form suffices.

Moreover, if you think you have to have a forum for whatever reason - start small. Don't create sections and subsections for every imaginable aspect covered in your forum. Start with a "General" section and a description that invites users to post about anything in this section. Only create new forum sections if there have actually been several forum threads created which revolve around the same general topic.

A forum with many subsections and most of them empty puts visitors off. Where should they post? And should they even bother if every section only has 2-3 threads? One forum section with 10-20 threads looks much more inviting!

Comments (1)

1. AggroPanda
   May 6, 2010 14:15

   Some great advice in this post. I'll definitely be blogging about my next game right from the start. Last time I started way too late, by which time I had very little to say.

   Keep up the great work.