key words and they're important

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So when you or your publisher first upload your book to all the various platforms in which it is being sold,  you/they will be asked to assign keywords to your book.What are keywords?
Keywords are words and phrases that describe the nature or theme of your book. 
Let's say you get on Amazon and you're looking to purchase a new fantasy book to scratch your game of thrones itch.
Well, you could type quite a few things in the search bar. Things like:
Epic Fantasy SeriesBooks similar to Game of Thrones Best fantasy series of all timeEct...
The list is potentially endless. Well if a savvy author has in fact written a series exactly like what you're looking for, and they've diligently crafted their keywords to not only match the nature of their book but also what consumers such as yourself are looking for, then their book should show up relatively high in the search results. 
Everyone's happy! You get that itch scratched and the author gets a happy, and most likely returning customer 
Now on the opposite end of that spectrum. Lets say the author didn't optimize their keywords.
They could have written exactly what you wanted and would have undoubtedly loved, but they never pop up in the search results...or they are impossibly far down the list for you to find them. 
The way that could happen is while you may have typed in something along the lines of : Epic Fantasy series, the keywords the author/publisher could have been so off the mark they end up not being displayed.  Perhaps even relegated to the wrong category. Let's say the author chooses only one keyword for his book and that keyword is 
"having dinner with chickens." 
Well the search engine will
That would be a shame for all parties involved.
So how do we/the author keep that from happening? 
It's simple, though not necessarily easy.
Keyword Research.
Keyword research allows authors and publishers to see the actual terms and phrases real customers are using to find books they want. 
To some, Keyword research may seem intimidating, and while it's simple it can also be very time-consuming. Particularly so if you are attempting to run ads. 
A typical Amazon Marketing Service (AMS) Ad should be upwards of 300 keywords to be effective.
Enter Publisher Rocket


Here's a link to Kindleprenneur's article 
In the above article Dave Chesson has already given us he teaches us the best ways to find keywords and introduces tools that make the process take seconds instead of days. 
This article is great for setting your book up for success right off the bat. Most online retailers like Amazon allow you to choose somewhere between five and ten keywords to attach to your book (Seven in Amazon's case). While five to ten keywords is a far cry from the three hundred you shoot for to run a successful ad, doing the research the normal way is still time-consuming and downright difficult to determine how competitive that keyword is. 
Publisher Rocket not only takes the time-consuming aspect out of the research, but also allows you to see how competitive your keywords are, which could give you the most bang for your buck.
From my experience, when I set up my first book on KDP the keywords I chose were much too broad. If Only was listed in the "Fiction category" and a few other giants, each of which I had to compete with a few million other books for attention. 
Now that's not to say if you optimize your keywords you'll immediately garner attention from readers, though it's possible. It will most definitely put you on the path to do so, and improve the results of your marketing efforts. After optimizing my keywords with Publisher Rocket, If Only sat in the top 100 of two of its categories for six months, reaching as high as #6 in both "Social Issues Fiction" and "Teen and Young Adult Fiction about Pregnancy," during this same time it managed to reach the top 100 in the Coming of Age category, though it never made it to the front page. 
While it no longer sits in that range a quick re-optimization of its keywords and a well crafted AMS ad could put it back to the top. While I definitely plan to do this, the bulk of my focus has been the crafting of Dice Book Publishing's namesake products as well as growing this blog.