Are you Visible?
In a related post I asked that same question when it came to visibility on the web whether that be a blog or a website you created. But really this is a question that every person that is selling or promoting their content should be asking. Anyone in business knows that you need to put your product out there for others to buy. Although I typically don’t associate writing to being a business, in many ways it is. You have a product you’re trying to sell. You need a place or platform to sell. You rely on customers to buy the product to generate sales. And to draw more customers you need to market your product effectively. Same thing applies to writers selling on various platforms.
Visibility- Why it matters?
Due to a growing demand to shop online, Amazon has and still is the most popular platform to sell and buy products. Reasonably any writer that is serious about visibility will want to be found there. The problem is that because of the mass volume of products particularly books, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out. If your intended audience can’t find your book, your book will fade into oblivion no matter how good you think it is.
It’s key to remember that your book will not appeal to everyone. And that’s OK. Everyone has different tastes. That’s why when you’re thinking of marketing you already need to have in mind your target audience and tailor your marketing to appeal to them. Once you have an intended audience and a high quality product you need to position your book in front of them. But how do we do that?
Keywords
One main way is through keywords. Keywords are search terms that can be used to describe our book. The keywords should be reflective of the actual product as well as the niche market you’re targeting. In fact keyword searches are one main way customers come across your books on sites like Amazon. Although easily overlooked, choosing the right keywords is essential to your visibility on sites especially on Amazon, where sales rank determine where you fall in the page schema. As a writer you want to be one of the top results or at least on page one.
[image error]Google search result
To illustrate why this is important, think of when you are typing a question or topic on Google. Usually a person will click on the top results. Why? Because 1) It’s what our eyes see first and 2) We assume it’s relevant. However if we don’t see what we’re looking for we continue to scroll down the first results page. Rarely do we continue scrolling to the next page unless none of the results proved to be helpful. Same thing with books. The lower your sales rank, the more scrolling readers have to do to find you. If your book is buried on page 7, chances are competing books will catch the reader’s eye instead of yours. If you want to be visible, readers should be able to easily find your book. Don’t make them work for it.
How to Choose the Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords is a lot harder than it appears. You really have to think what type of book you’re selling and what sets it apart from others. Here are some important questions to consider.
What is the genre/subgenre? (cozy mystery, teen romance, Alt/historical, Sci-Fi/dystopian, etc)
What is the intended age of the target audience? (e.g. children, middle grade, YA, or adult)
What is the subject matter of the book?
How would others describe your book? Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Think about what terms they would use to describe your book. That’s key because those same terms are what they’re entering in their searches!
What are popular keywords others are using with similar books? What’s currently trending?
The last bullet points may be harder to answer because it feels like a guessing game. After all you can’t read people’s minds. Let’s not forget that humans are complicated creatures and hard to predict at times. Therefore keywords are in constant flux. This requires you to do some homework to minimize some of the guess work. That’s why people are literally paying for online services just to find keywords to optimize their sales rank. After doing some research on the topic I realized I needed insider knowledge to help me choose better keywords.
The good news is that there are keyword research tools out there. Some of those resources will cost you money but you can find free keyword research tools by doing a Google search. Some of them like SellerApp will give you a free trial for a week before you are expected to pay to continue to use their services. Tools like SellerApp track the search volume of the keywords you enter which is a great indicator for how popular that keyword is. They will even suggest similar keywords to the ones you enter allowing you to see which ones are trending among similar products.
You will discover that many keywords are not a single word but rather a phrase. Use those as your keywords. If you are using Amazon you can choose up to 7 keywords. KDP Select recommends using relevant keywords. At the same time, authors are advised against using the same words in the categories you picked out. Think of your chosen category as a keyword in itself. You want to make every keyword count and cover as many different keywords as possible.
Do you want to be visible? I know I do. I’ll admit I was one to overlook keywords only to put myself at a greater disadvantage. But the good news is we don’t have to stay invisible. Nor do we have to take a stab in the dark about choosing the right keywords. There are ways to make our books more visible and have them in front of the people that would appreciate them the most. While there are many more factors to increasing your visibility as a writer than choosing the right keywords, this is a great step in the right direction. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll be the best seller in your category. There’s more factors at play than I can elaborate on in this post. But if you choose the right ones, users are more likely to run into your book.
Additional Resources
If you’re looking for more information on this topic I recommend David Gaughran’s book: Let’s Get Visible (2nd edition). This is a great resource for every indie writer trying to get their works out there on Amazon. He also released a third edition: Let’s Get Digital that’s also worth checking out entitled: Let’s Get Digital.
***Stay tuned for future posts where I dish on what keyword research tools you should consider.***
