I wanted to know how hare it was to find jMonkey if one does not know it yet, and its not as easy as I expected. Especially indi-developers will probably pick the engine they use this way and thats what this community makes so great so I think its very important to do some SEO here.
This page here always is in the top search results and does not even mention jMonkey as a possibility:
Do you guys use Google Analytics for the jmonkey page and the code page? I would realy put some effort in this, it canāt be that such a professional engine is not easily found by developers looking for it. (The same also applies probably for the other target platforms)
I already added some hints about jMonkey in stackoverflow questions etc where I thought it was missing but I think there should be put some more effort into this. I donāt say spam everywhere that jMonkey is the best open source game engine in the world, just make sure it can be found. What do you guys think?
hmm, thatās unfortunate. I donāt know much about SEO, but we could use a lot. I checked your searches and went to page 6 and gave up trying to find jme =/
I think some posts on forums, like java-gaming, could help. And in those links you posted.
We do probably need some help from @erlend_sh for this too, he is quite knowledgeable in this area.
EDIT: I have also noticed at conferences and at IGDA meetups that no one has heard of JME. I did a pod cast with some devs and mentioned it to help spread the word, but none of them had heard of it either. Partially because Unity is the big engine out there, and why use anything else? Oh yea, it aināt free. But people donāt seem to know there are alternatives. That being said, the lack of console support for JME is a showstopper for many development teams.
A few thinks Iād like to recommend that could contribute to a bit better google results:
add meta keyword/title/description to every page, in case of topics maybe it would be a good idea to use the tags that users have provided etc.
if no sitemap has been uploaded to google yet, this might also be worth doing
maybe use more common names, for example āAboutā might be better to link to a page called āAboutā instead of http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/introduction/ (this is on homepage)
it might be worth mentioning a little more on the About page, like android.
Also, I donāt know how different domains are linked in search engines, but it might be that hub and front page might not be seen as one site, which is a shame as I suspect hub gets quite alot of search hits, which arenāt count for the jmonkeyengine site, though Iām not at all sure about thatā¦
You find jME when you enter things like ājava game engineā or ājava openglā or ājava 3d engineā. jME isnāt specifically an Android engine and in fact its kind of just waiting for Android to grow up to a full desktop computing experience. For a long time jME3 wasnāt even compatible to Android. So I think the āandroidā bias here screws it up a bit. I donāt see Unity in these searches either FWIW.
@normen said:
You find jME when you enter things like "java game engine" or "java opengl" or "java 3d engine". jME isn't specifically an Android engine and in fact its kind of just waiting for Android to grow up to a full desktop computing experience. For a long time jME3 wasn't even compatible to Android. So I think the "android" bias here screws it up a bit. I don't see Unity in these searches either FWIW.
Mobile gaming is growing bigger than any other gaming sector in the last 2 years. Dont underestimate the importance of mobile games for the future, I think now would be a good time to emerge as the de facto open source standard for creating mobile (3d) games.
As far as the website goes, weāre running WordPress, which is fairly SEO optimized to begin with, and weāve got an SEO plugin that includes a sitemap to go along with it.
If you want to see jME3 pop up in more mobile-related search results, keep on doing what youāre doing. Add jME3 to lists like the ones you mentioned, comment about it in blogs and engine reviews and so forth. You donāt have to wait for our permission, but by all means let us know about it and we can add to it when necessary.
One great way to get jME3 on the āmobile mapā would be to make tutorials for it. If someone searches āhow to make a game on androidā and finds a jME3 tutorial among the top results, weāre golden. Iām still getting acclimated to a new job (or rather, having a job) so Iām a bit pressed for time (bet you havenāt heard that one before!) so I donāt get to do as much buzz-work as Iād like to.
Never hesitate to ping me about these things though, your help is greatly appreciated.
Mobile gaming is growing bigger than any other gaming sector in the last 2 years. Dont underestimate the importance of mobile games for the future, I think now would be a good time to emerge as the de facto open source standard for creating mobile (3d) games.
But we arenāt. People choose engines where they can port their app to iOS.
