A significant portion of the ad challenge class I wrote about last week involved getting down and dirty with my metadata. I wish I could make it sound sexier…if I could only find the right keywords. Ha! Let me give it a try. Here are some examples of keywords that displayed in the drop-down menu when I typed in the phrase “sexy story,” into the Amazon search menu:
sex story graphic novels
sexy short stories to read before bed, free
sexy short story collection
sexy romance novels best sellers 2022
sexy anime woman pics free
sexploitation
sexy booty
sex comics anime
sex manga adults
When I placed my book up on Amazon for the first time, I felt overwhelmed. I couldn't even remember the seven keywords I'd picked for my book. I had to go back and check. After looking at them, I realized one was repetitive with one of the three categories I’d selected. Bryan Cohen from the ad school suggested you not use the same words you used for your categories as keywords.
To clarify, keywords are words a reader on Amazon might use to search for a book. If you'd like to get an idea of the kinds of phrases people are searching for in your genre, you can go on Amazon and conduct some searches.
You want to do this so you won't be tracked by Amazon. In Safari, you go to the file menu and select private window; on Chrome, select incognito window. Then go to Amazon, go to Kindle ebooks, and put in the word dark romance or whatever keywords you are thinking of using for your genre.
The following options appeared in the drop-down menu:
dark romance books for adults
dark romance books
dark romance mafia
dark romance fantasy
dark romance college
dark romance with noncon
dark romance age gap
dark romance kindle unlimited
dark romance alpha
You can select other secondary searches you discover as you go along like I did. Dark romance mafia, for instance, gave me another drop-down menu with different keywords. From there, I tried Dark Romance organized crime. You also might want to look at specific books and authors while you are there. Also, look at purchased or viewed books like that book. It is essential to see which authors and books our novel aligns with because we can use them for advertising keywords in the future. We can also see what categories this author is using. Study their book descriptions and cover, especially if they are a best-selling author. The idea here is to learn. Yes, this takes time. The tropes and the settings the author discusses in their book description contain keywords, and you can unearth them as well. How many books do they have in their series? What year did they publish the first book in the series? How about books two, three, and four?
Amazon keywords are critical because they:
· Place your book for relevant searches. With no keywords attached to a book, very few people searching on Amazon can find it.
· Help your book get into special Amazon Book categories. Specific sidebar categories on the Kindle Store are only accessible if a particular keyword is attached to your book.
· Will help Amazon market your book without you paying for it. If you pick the right keywords, the books will sell, and Amazon will display your book higher in the search results for those keywords and others.
Now you can see why keyword selection isn't something we can take lightly. These tiny words and phrases are essential in targeting readers — if we choose wisely. So let's talk about how to identify keywords. To build our keyword list, think about the following:
· Specific genre
· Character type (tropes and roles)
· Plot themes
· Settings
· Story tone.
One way to see if your keyword is good enough is to see if Amazon is already paying attention to the keyword. If they already suggest the whole phrase, you are on to something that already works. All you have to do is put the first word or two and see if it is already using the phrase. If it is it will bring the rest of it up. Don't be afraid to borrow from that KDP help page again. You can use your category's sidebar to brainstorm keywords: For example, in the Romance category, you can refine your search results in the menu on the left to search for Criminals and Outlaws.
You could also use the program Publisher Rocket that we've discussed before for suggested keywords and the competitiveness of each one. It is important to pick keywords that enough people search for, but not too many other authors use. If it's a highly competitive keyword, you'd have to outsell all the other books who also selected that keyword, to have your book appear in the search or, if running ads, bid at a higher bid. A too-competitive keyword is a bad thing. It means your book will seldom or never come up when people search for it unless you sell tons of books or you’d have to bid high when advertising. Your wouldn’t want contemporary romance as a keyword for instance. According to Publisher Rocket contemporary romance is a highly competitive keyword. A mid-range keywords would be better. However, if you tried contemporary romance enemies to lovers, that came up low competition but not enough searches. Don’t give up, going further down on Publisher Rockets list is enemies to lovers adult. That will give you what you need, low competition and high number of searches. The catch here, your book needs to fit that keyword. No sense in selecting a keyword just to have someone click on it and not buy your book because the keyword doesn't match your book description. Your book will become irrelevant, and if you pay per click, you'll pay for a click and won’t get a sale.
Your keywords or phrase can be up to fifty characters long. You can have several in one line, but be careful here. For instance, you may want your keyword to be dark romance suspense. There are exact and phrase keywords. Exact means someone types in dark romance suspense precisely as you have written, and up your book pops. Phrase match means when the person searches, they input something similar. For instance, the person searching plugs in dark romance or suspense romance. This could turn out badly for you. Even though Amazon might want to bring up dark romance books, that keyword is a highly competitive search keyword. According to Publisher Rocket, this term has 4813 searches a month which is great but competition is fierce with 1000 or more authors using this keyword to identify their books. This means if a reader puts this into the search menu, the chances of your book appearing during a search is low.
When readers search, Amazon turns up both exact and phrase keyword matches, but it gives a little bump to exact matches. Try to use exact matches in your keywords when you can. However, this isn’t always possible because these shorter phrases are almost always more competitive. Therefore it is sometimes better to use longer keyword phrases to get your book into more searches, but don't go overboard with keyword stuffing. Most people suggest using a mix of both, long and short keyword phrases.
Here are some Amazon rules about what not to use in your Amazon keywords:
· Names of other authors
· Titles of other books
· The word best selling
· Anything not related to the content of your book
· Advertisements or awards
· The word sex or anything to do with non-consensual sex
· Profanity of any kind
· Pandemic-related (the word Covid, pandemic
· Anything anti-LGBTQ
· Subjective data about your book, best of all time
· Anything misleading or false
· The word book
· Intentional spelling or punctuation mistakes
· The name of Amazon programs, KDP
· Anything with quotation marks
If you don't have Publisher Rocket but want to search for information about a book this site can help: BkLNK.com.
· Go to author tools.
· CATFINDER
· Plug the ASIN # from Amazon
· Push Enter
· Then scroll back down, and you should have all the relevant data about the book. You will have plenty listed to cut and paste into a spreadsheet you save about book categories, potential keywords, etc.
Publisher Rocket is the best software package for not only seeing categories but for finding them and keywords. It's also great for locating books like yours and viewing sales figures, although it’s not foolproof. It can only show sales on US Amazon, and if an author sells in Canada, AU, or the United Kingdom, it seems unable to track them. If an author sells wide or off their website, it cannot follow these sales.
To conclude, pick keywords that are accurate but not too competitive. Pick other books that your book could sit on the shelf with, that you can compete with sales-wise, and check out what categories their books are under. What kinds of words do they use in their book descriptions (tropes, settings, etc.) that can be used as keywords. And try to use longer phrases in some of your keywords. Once you like what you see on your paper, test your keywords on Amazon using an incognito window. If it works by displaying books primarily like yours, you could proceed with changing your keywords. I hope this helps you with your keywords. If you have other thoughts about keywords, please leave a comment.
Last Monday, I saw the Barbie movie with my two teenage granddaughters. I loved it. I thought about writing a piece about the film because it touched on so many romance tropes and themes, but then I came across this article in the New Yorker, and I thought this says pretty much everything I'd want to say about Barbie and Barbie Land.
A heads up…I won't be publishing on the week of August 21. I'm taking a needed vacation to North Carolina. After I return, I have a guest author scheduled. I'll give you more information later. Have a wonderful week!