OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Keywords and search engine optimization have been considered important for a long time in the online world, particularly for ranking in the search engines on the first few pages so people can actually find you.
But these principles and tools are also important for your book page on the retail stores. They make up a critical part of the meta-data which is crucial in the discoverability of your book. I also realize this might sound like gobble-de-gook so I will explain further using the example of my non-fiction book, and also my novels, because keywords can also be important for fiction authors.
Although I am wary of anecdotes, because they have no statistical value at all, I do want to share the sales figures for my non-fiction book. Written as a labor of love, it has never sold very well (like many first books) and now I focus on fiction, so I barely mention it. As my worst selling title, it is a good example to use. Here's the background.
I spent 13 years as a miserable IT consultant, unhappy with my work for many reasons and so I embarked on a journey to find work I could be passionate about. The journey of how I found it (and how you can too) is encapsulated in my book: Career Change: Stop hating your job, discover what you really want to do with your life and start doing it! That's the title that I adopted in Dec 2012 after I rewrote the book and also updated the cover. The previous title was How to enjoy your job … or get a new one, and was first published in 2008.
At a purely gut level, I hope you can see which title is better 🙂 but as we go through, you will also note the keyword shift.
What is a keyword anyway?
A keyword is a word or phrase that is associated with your book.
It's based on the words that people actually use to search online and this is a crucial aspect, because often the language you use online is not the language customers might use. For example, many of us have claimed ‘indie author' or ‘indie publishing' but to a new author who is not yet in the tribe, they would only recognize ‘publishing' or ‘self-publishing'.
Importantly a keyword is not just one word and that is critical to remember as you go through the following process. For example, my thriller novel Exodus is associated with the keyword “ark of the covenant” and my non-fiction book with “career change”.
(1) Brainstorm words and phrases
First, make a list of all the words and phrases that are associated with your book. For fiction that will include themes, places, things and anything concrete you can hang your book off.
For Exodus, I might consider keywords: thriller, action adventure, exodus, ark of the covenant, israel, freemasons – as those are the themes of the book and people searching for those things will be interested in it.
For my non-fiction book Career Change, I tried: career change, what should I do with my life, career help, hate my job, career match, career books, choosing a career
(2) Check the usage of keywords in the search engines
Google has a Keyword Search Tool that you can use to discover what search terms people are using and what is most popular. It is primarily used for people wanting to bid on advertising terms, but we can use it as an indication of interest, as well as a verification of the kind of language people use when searching.
As related to my book on Career Change, I tried the following:
* How to enjoy your job – 5400 global monthly searches
* Changing careers – 27,100 global monthly searches
* I need a career – 60,500 global monthly searches
* Choosing a career – 40,500 global monthly searches
* career change – 165,000 global monthly searches
For each search term, Google will recommend a whole load more options. Look through that list and write down anything else with a high number of searches. (Don’t worry about the Competition column as that is aimed at the advertising crowd.)
(3) Check the usage of keywords on Amazon
Amazon doesn’t have a specific tool to check keywords but it does have an auto-populate tool that enables you to see a drop-down of specific words or phrases. Just start typing something in and you’ll get a drop-down. Make sure you’re in the Books/Kindle store if you want to narrow the search down.
Go into Amazon and start typing in the word/phrase you want to check.
My example with career change is shown right.
You can see that I typed in ‘career c’ and it came up with everything that fitted with that. This can help you with deciding on topics or titles, particularly again with non-fiction.
But the principle is the same with fiction. You want the most commonly used keywords in your meta-data.
You should find that some of your keywords from Google don’t even show up in the Amazon listing, so discard those and focus on those which appear in both lists.
[I’d like to acknowledge Michael Alvear who featured this technique in ‘Make a Killing on Kindle’ which is a book I can only recommend with a caution as I definitely don’t advocate fake/bought reviews which he also includes in the book.
With any kind of marketing tactic, please be authentic, honest and consider the value to your customer.
Feel free to read his advice, but as with my own advice, please weigh it up against your own situation and don't assume the same things will work. This is a constantly shifting environment.]
(4) Add the keywords into your metadata
For non-fiction authors, you can use this technique to decide on your book title, and indeed, I changed mine based on the keyword search. This can make a huge difference to appearing in search results and significantly impact your success.
Although I don't have a full year for each title, you can see the difference between January 2012 and 2013 (a huge month for career change books). I changed the title mid Dec. I also changed the cover but not the price. Remember, this is basically a ‘write-off' book for me and not something I market in any other way at all, so any sale is a good sale!
My book sales rank rose within days after the key word changes and now the book ranks on the first page of Amazon.com for the keyword ‘career change’.
Changing a fiction title to include keywords is far more unlikely, but there are two more places to include keywords.
Description: You need a description any time you enter information about your book, so make sure it includes some of your keywords, BUT as a primary rule, ensure that it is people-friendly and not just a list of keywords. More on creating a book description that rocks in this interview with Mark Edwards on secrets of Amazon metadata.
Keywords: On every publishing site there is also a place to enter keywords. This is usually 5-7 keywords/phrases that are associated with your book. Just type in the ones you want to use based on your research.
NOTE: if you don't have control of the publishing process you won't be able to access these keywords, but you can do the research and advise your publisher of what you think is the most appropriate.
The most effective usage will be if the keywords resonate between the title, description and keywords box, ticking all three boxes of metadata.
You can also use these keywords for marketing purposes as well, for example, use them in a guest blog post title, or as part of your website.
OK, I know things like meta-data, keywords, search engine optimization, algorithms and stuff can blow people's minds, but it is an important part of being an indie author!
Please do leave any comments or questions below. Have you done keyword research? Has it made a difference to your book?
India Drummond says
Thanks so much for sharing this. I’ve been thinking about doing this, but always felt it was too much trouble and wouldn’t really make that much difference. Today I’ve decided to get off my backside and give it a try.
I decided to add a description of my series, hoping this would give me a chance to use phrases like “fantasy book series” more naturally. As you said, it’s a fine line between using useful search terms and “keyword stuffing”, which reads as forced and search engines eventually punish. I also learned how to add HTML formatting tags beyond what’s obvious (like H1 tags). It should be up next week… I just hope I haven’t messed it all up! XD
Thanks so much for the article! Gave me the prompting I needed to make a change.
JJ Toner says
Hi Joanna, This article was very helpful. I tried the GoodleAd search for some keywords for my WWII spy story, The Black Orchestra. The top scoring phrases were “german ww2” and “ww2 german” and “ww2 fiction”. I used these in Amazon and discovered that my book is buried under a mountain of others. I’m sure I can use your instructions to good effect.
I also listened to Mark Edwards in your podcast and found that equally helpful. Thank you. JJ
JJ Toner says
Hi Joanna. Me again. I took a look at Edwards and Voss books on Amazon (US). Couldn’t see any obvious keywords in the two blubs, apart from “internet sensation”. Also, the covers of the two books are almost identical (?).
These two books don’t seem to be selling well in US. One is #500,000, the other is #200,000 in the selling list. My own experience has been the reverse of this. My books sell (small numbers) in US, but my UK sales are close to zero. I’ve never understood why, as I write in the Queen’s English, with no concessions to US spelling or phraseology.
Joanna Penn says
Hi JJ,
Mark & Louise’s story is an interesting one 🙂 They self-published and made it to #1 on Amazon UK with their thriller. They sold so well that the books got bought by a big publisher, who then made them take the old page down and now the Amazon page is all controlled by the publisher – Mark no longer has any choice on that 🙂
In terms of ranking, you also have to remember that rank goes up and down, so a book that hits #1 on Amazon today will be quite different in rank 2 years later. Ranking now is no indication of past success. They also sell better in the UK because they have a primarily UK publisher who pushed the books here in WHSmith, Asda etc.
Mark Edwards says
Hi Joanna and JJ
It’s true that our sales in the US have always been very low! Even when we were No.1 on Amazon UK and not doing anything different on .com and .co.uk our sales were pretty terrible in the US. The same is true for many UK authors and I don’t know why!
Joanna is right about how we aren’t able to choose our own keywords these days – but I strongly advocate following Joanna’s advice.
I am going to self-publish a new novel soon (just editing it) and will see if I can make lightning strike twice – in the UK at least 🙂
Linda Bahnan says
Another blinding article, Joanna! I’m taking your advice on board. OK; the book’s only been on Amazon a week but I’m alert to all the help I can get.
Francene Stanley says
I checked on Amazon, but with a small publisher in charge, I can’t find any reference to keywords. This is a very interesting post, which I’ll sahre on fb and twitter.
Joanna Penn says
It’s all done in the ‘back end’ of the KDP upload and Createspace etc so your publisher would do that for you. Try asking them what they have used.
Katie M. John (Author of The Knight Trilogy) says
Thank you. One of the most useful blog posts I have come across for a long time.
Kevin Booth says
Thank you, Joanna!
This is a wonderfully clear post on what, for me, has been a murky issue for a long time. While I’ve always used keywords, I’ve never felt I was very successful with choosing the best ones or inserting them in the right places. I’m off to experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes!
M. Louisa Locke says
To help Francine out, and those of you who are traditionally published, you can probably figure out what key words that have been used (or not used) for your book, by going to the categories your book is in (listed at the very bottom of the product page under Look for Similar Items by Category). When you get to that list, put in a key word you think (or would like) your book to have. (By doing this with categories rather than the whole Kindle store, you get small enough lists to scan through to see if your book is there.)
For example, I went to mystery-women sleuth-and put in “Victorian Mystery” one of my keywords and my 2 books showed up on this list. I then put in “Gilded Age mystery” (a key word I did not use) and my book did not show up. While this is a slow way to determine your keywords (I would just ask my publisher first), it also helps you determine what keywords you think you might want to use. Since Victorian mystery turned up 34 books, while Gilded Age turned up only 7–all by the same author, this tells me Victorian mystery is a better key word because it produces better results from the readers point of view–so it is one they will probably use more often.
As Amazon has dropped using tags, having the right keywords becomes even more important to ensure that readers who are browsing for certain topics can find your books.
Mary Louisa
Paula says
such a simple but handy article, and very timely too, since I am pulling together keyword data for a book I’m planning to publish over the weekend. I didn’t know about the ability to look up keyword usage on google. That was awesome! Thanks for the tips!
Heather says
Okay, this is an awesome article. I’ve been told to look up keywords and look at the Google Analytics site, but nobody has ever told me what I should be doing with them and the site doesn’t exactly make sense to the untrained person using it. Is it very similar for blogs or do you incorporate that into the tags?
Dave says
Hi Heather,
For blogging purposes don’t worry about keyword meta-tags, Google no longer uses them. You’re better off including the keyword within the headline and content. Also include it in the meta description field, this is used by Google as the snippet under the search result.
The keyword meta tag field, whether filled in or not, will have no impact whatsoever on search results.
Matt Cutts of Google explains why in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU
JJ Toner says
I tried this. I identified ‘WW2 German’ and ‘German WW2’ as 2 key phrases used in Google searches and in Amazon kindle searches. I changed the blurb for my book on Amazon. It now starts with the phrase WW2 Germany. I changed the book title on Amazon, adding the bit in brackets, It now reads The Black Orchestra (A WW2 German spy thriller). I wrote a blog called WW2 Germany – What the German People Knew.
The result? Someone bought a copy of one of my other books!
When I search for my book on Amazon, it’s very difficult to find. Searching using the keywords, it doesn’t appear at all in 18 pages of books. Even searching under my own name it doesn’t show up! I’ve asked Amazon to do something about this…
JJ Toner says
I checked on Amazon again, since my book title includes the word WWII, not WW2. Makes no difference. I serached for all 4 combinations. German WWII produces 23 eBooks; German WW2 produces 83; WWII German produces 23 and WW2 German produces 83. My book never appears in any of these listings. What am I doing wrong?
Joanna Penn says
Email comment from M.Louisa Locke:
Dear JJ
Did you change the keywords that you get to list when you upload your book to include these terms? These keywords are crucial. It is my understanding that having these terms also in title and product description helps push your book up higher on the lists under this keyword search, not necessarily get you on the list. So if you didn’t actually put these terms as one of your seven keywords–this may be the problem.
In addition, I would look and see if World War Two gets more books listed than WW2 or WWII. Which ever turns up the largest number of books when you put the term is, probably means this is the key word combination that is used most-and therefore the one you should try to use.
Finally, you might need to give it some time. Any changes I make in keywords and categories sometimes takes several days to show up in the store.
Mary Louisa
JJ Toner says
Hi Mary Louisa. Thanks for those suggestions. To answer your questions: I did put “WW2 German” in when I reloaded the book to change the title to The Black Orchestra (A WW2 German Spy thriller). But then I changed the title again to The Black Orchestra (WW2 spy story). The first change resulted in 4 immediate sales and 1 more the following day. The second change produced another sale last night. I also went through the same exercise for my Irish detective thriller, which is now called St Patrick’s Day Special (Irish Crime). In GoogleAds (arts and entertainment, world wide) “Irish” showed 13.6million hits. “Crime” showed 16.6million. Sold one of these last night as well. I’m hoping for another sale or two in the next week!
salerosa says
Very clever Joanna and your sales increased up!
Mike Hyman says
A great article, Joanna. Choice of keywords is important as is deciding whether they should appear in the title, subtitle, description or entered keywords — these are not all given equal weight when searching on some platforms. I regularly submit ebooks to Amazon, Apple and Kobo and I’m constantly frustrated by the difference in the metadata supported between the services. For example, Amazon allows 2 subject categories, Kobo 3, and Apple many more than that. Amazon allows 7 keywords/phrases; Apple and Kobo don’t allow any — it is therefore probably prudent to ensure that the keywords you select appear in the title and/or description.
I worked with systems for storing and processing bibliographic metadata for nearly 35 years before biting the bullet and starting my own ebook publishing business — Collca. From my experience the whole issue of metadata is one of the ‘black arts’ of publishing, bookselling and libraries.
Suzanne Anderson says
Joanna,
Thank you for this post! I’ve gone in an adjusted the keywords on both of my books. I can’t wait to watch the results.
As always, many thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Suzanne
JJ Toner says
I forgot to add: I am having difficulty seeing/finding The Black Orchestra on Amazon.com. It isn’t showing up on my author page, and if I search for books using my author name, that book is missing. I’m having the same problem on my laptop. I emailed amazon and they said everything looked fine. They had no problem locating the book using several searches. They suggested that I clear my cache. I did this and rebooted several times on both computers without success.
Mike Hyman says
Hi JJ, I just tried searching for The Black Orchestra on Amazon.com and it came up straight away in a title search, in an author search and in your author list. I’m based in England, btw.
JJ Toner says
Thanks for checking, Mike. I can’t understand why my searches don’t work. And when I do find the book, by putting in a direct link, I get “pricing information not available”. I think I’ll go for a long walk. 🙂
Mike Hyman says
Hi JJ, I can at least explain the “pricing information not available” message. When you display a detailed record for a Kindle ebook it displays this message if you are connected from a country that should use a different Amazon Kindle store and therefore cannot buy from the amazon.com Kindle store — I get it because I ought to be using amazon.co.uk. It’s all to do with International rights to ebooks.
It’s rather anomalous that if you succeed in display the book in a list on Amazon.com it will show the US price there! The Black Orchestra is $3.85; St Patrick’s Day Special is $3.91.
I hope you enjoy/ed you long walk.
Kristi Ambrose says
For those that are interested in learning more about Google, Keywords, SEO, etc. Please take a look at a few of the books I have on Amazon – I think they would definitely help those that are confused about keywords!
This one is about Google Panda (and your website): http://amzn.com/B009N06LQK
These two are about promoting your book and website/company on Facebook and Twitter. You can get one and one or both for cheaper: http://amzn.com/B00926FH1K
And this one is going to help you figure out what keywords you need to use not only for your website, but for Amazon and other websites as well. Its all about keyword research and it includes some free and paid tools to help you WITH keyword research: http://amzn.com/B008VWL8WS
Thanks
Kristi
Joanna Penn says
Thanks for sharing Kristi – a whole book on the subject will be useful for those people who want to take this further (since I’m not going to turn techy on this site and post on this again for a while!)
Doreen Pendgracs says
Great post, Joanna, and the 2nd one I’ve come across today telling me that I should be using the Google Keyword Search tool. I will definitely do so, as I can see what a difference it has made in your own marketing efforts. Thanks for continuing to share such great info.