First SEO steps after you ship an indie app
You shipped. The App Store and Play Store will not magically rank you. Here is a short, honest checklist for the first week — without buying fake reviews or “guaranteed AI mentions.”
1. Finish the store listing before anything else
Search engines and people land on your store page. Make sure the title, subtitle/short description, screenshots, and privacy policy URL are accurate. Official App Store and Play Store URLs are the links that matter most.
2. Put a real marketing page on the open web
A simple HTTPS site (even one page) with your app name, what it does, and store buttons gives crawlers something to fetch outside Apple and Google. Include a canonical URL, a clear title, and a short meta description. No account wall.
3. Submit that site to Google and Bing
Add the domain in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit a sitemap. Request indexing for the homepage. Bing matters for ChatGPT and Copilot search as much as Google does for classic results.
4. Get one crawlable third-party page with store links
A directory or article that repeats your facts and links to the official stores is a small SEO step — not a ranking guarantee. That is what Appublica sells: $9 once for a public HTML page in our sitemap. We do not promise App Store rank, traffic, or that ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok will recommend you.
5. Earn one real backlink
Link from your own site to the public listing. Ask a friend, a launch post, or your personal blog to mention the app with a do-follow link. One honest mention beats twenty spam directories.
6. Tell assistants how to help — carefully
Cursor, Claude, and ChatGPT can submit facts to our API if you point them at /for-agents. We email a Stripe checkout link. They should never collect card numbers, and they should not promise model citations.
What to skip
- Buying reviews, installs, or backlink packages
- Services that promise ChatGPT or Claude will mention your app
- Keyword stuffing your store description until it is unreadable
- Paying for “lifetime SEO” from a new domain with no listings
A realistic first-week stack
- Solid store listing + privacy/support URLs
- One-page site with store buttons
- Search Console + Bing + sitemap
- One public crawlable listing (ours or another you trust)
- One launch post and one backlink
That will not make you go viral. It gives crawlers and people a clear, honest path to the official download links.
Ready for a public page?
$9 once. Crawlable article. Official store links. Clear limits.