Selecting the Right Keywords in Amazon as a Self-Published Author

Hey there, aspiring author!

Have you ever wondered why your brilliantly crafted articles or books aren't getting the attention they deserve?

The secret might lie in something seemingly mundane yet incredibly powerful: keywords. Let's explore keywords and why choosing the right ones is important for being seen in the long tail.

What Are Keywords?

Imagine the Internet as a giant library, and search engines like Amazon, Google, or Bing are the librarians.

When someone looks for information, they type in keywords to find the most relevant books or ideas. They're the signposts that guide search engines to your digital doorstep.

Keywords are directly related to your chosen niche—the audience you’re trying to reach who might be interested in your writing.

Drilling Into the Long Tail

Keywords are often more than just one word (they’re more often a phrase) and can be broad or narrow. A broad keyword would look like an overall reaching subject:

• Travel Books

• Fantasy Novels

• Military Science Fiction

These broad, highly competitive terms are generally meaningless as a tool for finding your book. It’s like browsing Fantasy Books in a bookshop, except that section is 40 city blocks alone. Your book’s in there somewhere, but nobody will find it.

Instead, relevant keywords drill into the long tail. They get more specific.

• Dark Fantasy Novels

• Dark Fantasy Short Stories

• Novels Featuring Female Protagonists

Notice the influence of understanding your niche here. Your readers use special terms and vocabulary related to their interests to help drill into the long tail.

For me, much of my fantasy writing is connected to role-playing games. Fantasy readers and Gamers of all stripes are my niche, so I might drill deeper into my niche using their vocabulary.

• Dark Fantasy Novels Cleric

• Fantasy Novels Paladin

• Books About Red Dragons

These are more relevant keywords that draw my audience to my work. They’re less in demand as a keyword, and fewer people search off of them, but they’re also less competitive. Fewer people are willing to bid (pay money) on those terms.

Make a List of Relevant Keywords

Start by considering keywords and phrases most relevant to your writing and work. For me, my keywords might look something like:

• fantasy short story

• dark fantasy short story

• fantasy series

• strong female lead fantasy

• dark fantasy book series

• free short stories fantasy collections

• fantasy books about witches

• fantasy witch books

When brainstorming keywords, think like a book consumer. How will people find you in the long tail? What will they be searching for? The more granular the phrase, the deeper it gets into the long tail.

Not all keywords are created equal. Some keywords are worth more than others. In the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you must understand two metrics about words: the demand (frequency) of the phrase and its competitive rank.

• The demand for a keyword represents the frequency of use; how often it gets typed into Amazon.
  

• The competition for a keyword represents what people will pay for that valuable real estate. Competition reflects how many people want to be featured first in the search results for a high-demand keyword.

For example, if you take the keyword “fantasy novel,” you’d find it has high demand and competition. It’s frequently entered into Amazon.

The price for that keyword is very high (this concept is related to Pay-Per-Click advertising, but conceptually, look at the problem as real estate — everyone wants that space, and there are people with big budgets willing to pay for the position.

But how do I know if a keyword/phrase works? How many searches per month are there for “fantasy witch books” anyway?

Using Keyword Analyzers

How do I know this? I must use a keyword analyzer. Here’s “fantasy novel” using Google’s Keyword Analyzer.

Look at the Average Monthly Searches (Demand). Although competition is high for both, there’s fewer searches for the “dark fantasy short stories” than “fantasy novel", and the bid price for the “fantasy novel” is notably higher. This is the effect where “dark fantasy short stories” is more niched. It’s going deeper in the long tail.

If there’s a lot of competition, you’re likely to be drowned out in the noise of other search engine results or from parties willing to pay to be in front of you. Because of that, you have to get closer to your niche. Just look at an Amazon Keyword Tool’s result on “fantasy novel”. This is Publisher Rocket, by the way. Dave Chesson has a great novice-level program for SEO work on Amazon.

Almost 28,000 people search for that phrase on Amazon in a given month, it returns 500+ pages of books, and it’s highly competitive, scoring 67/100 on a competitive score. Yikes.

From a PPC point of view, I’m paying less for “dark fantasy short stories” than “fantasy novels” because there are fewer monthly searches; it’s less expensive real estate. But it digs deeper into the long tail and speaks to my niche, the audience I’m after.

Finding the Sweet Spot

But here’s the catch: if you use generic or incredibly obscure keywords, you'll be in a queue behind thousands of others or in a dark, dusty corner where no one thinks to look.

The art, then, is in finding that sweet spot—keywords that are specific enough to stand out but common enough that people search for them. Something with medium demand. Ah, take a look at this.

So here we go. Closer to my niche (short stories rather than novels), more demand (100-1k searches/mo) at negligible costs. This is basic keyword research, telling me:

• “Fantasy Novels” are at the head of the tail. It’s the most searched term and the most expensive piece of real estate to rent. The competition drowns me out, and my PPC budget will quickly be eroded.

• “Dark Fantasy Short Stories” is more obscure and maybe more attractive in terms of cost, but there is little demand. Few people search for this phrase on Google in a given month. My PPC budget is more cost-effective, but I will wait a while for people to come around.

• “Fantasy Short Stories,” however, is the sweet spot. It gets more traffic, so there is medium demand, but the cost is negligible (tiny in this case). My PPC budget is more cost-effective, whereas my website or book is being seen in search results more often at a lower cost.

Therefore, according to Google, “Fantasy Short Stories” should be one of my keywords!

Well, maybe.

This is an Amazon Keyword Tool result.

Now, my Amazon tool isn’t so sure.

On Amazon, less than 100 people type it into their search engine, and the value of a 7/100 as a competitive score suggests few are trying to hone in on it. Still, that’s good for me! No competition!

But let’s go back to one of my previous ideas, Dark Fantasy Stories.

Okay, look at that! A relatively low 23/100 competitive score with a reasonable level of searches per month - 950 people typed that into Amazon in one month. To recap:

• Fantasy Short Stories - Good with Google Search.

• Dark Fantasy Stories - Good with Amazon.

So where should I use them?

• In product descriptions and keywords in the Amazon listing? Yes. Maybe I’ll try “Fantasy Short Stories” for a while before replacing it with something else.

• On my website? Yes.

• As meta descriptions for books? Like, in the subtitle of a book? Yes.

• On blog posts like … er, this one? Yes.

Tools like Google's Keyword Planner, third-party Amazon A9 keyword tools, or other SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools can help you find similar terms people are searching for, their popularity, and their competitiveness. Sometimes you have to pay for these things.

You should be prepared to pay for information that makes you more competitive, but good news: Google Keywords can be used for free.

R