Increase Sales-Part Three-The Importance of Keywords and How to find the right ones

Happy Monday to you! Thanks for stopping by for the 3rd
installment of my ebook series. Last week, we took a tour of the best places to
get a stunning premade cover for under $25. This week, it's all about the
search terms.





Finding Keywords




I'll assume everyone knows what they are and the basics of
what they do. If not, here's
a solid article on it. Basically, keywords brought you to my post. If you
look at the bottom, you'll see the words I chose when I put this article up.
I'll bet you see something familiar, right? Keywords. They bring the readers to
you.




So, how do you find the perfect set of keywords that will
lead new readers straight to your book? I use the Google
Keyword Search tool. I start with one word at a time that fits my book's
description and I browse through the lists, seeing if there's anything I
overlooked. For example: Dark Fantasy. It has a low
competition but also a low search rate. Not a great keyword even though my book
is sitting in the top 5 for that category.





 

So, how can you tell
what Keywords are the best to use?




You want the words with the smallest competition and the
highest search amount. The Google keyword tool shows bars or exact numbers-you
can refine the search too and also star it and then download it to your files
so you'll have it even when you're not online.




Good Keywords will be what an actual reader would type
in to find that kind of story. It's nice enough to know that it's a romance
story but if you narrow it down a bit more, you'll see better results. The
competition on "romance novel" is high but on "stories of love", its low. Look
through the search results to the very end. Diamonds are often under the other
crap.




This tool also shows the last 12 months of popularity of
the word. If it only jumps for the seasons, pass it by or you'll only have good
results for a few months of the year. You're looking for something that has
good hits all year long.




Cost per click. That data line shows how much the
average customer is paying for online advertising on that word. The higher the
cost, the more popular the word is and that will show you if it's in demand or
not.







So, how can I get my
already chosen words to rank higher?




SEO, baby. In the blink of an eye (usually less) a search
engine will scroll millions of pages for what you want. How does it know what
to show? Yes keywords but how does it pick which page using those words will be
shown? By keyword density, a huge part of SEO. Here's a fast break down:




If you don't use your keywords in the blurb, title,
description, and first few pages, your words will rank low. If you use them in
these things, search engines (Even the Amazon giant) will measure how densely
you've placed them and show your page based on that. The internet average is
one time use for every 100 words of text. No one knows exactly for Amazon but
it's been suggested that twice that amount will draw solid attention.





On the downside, these same search engines are always
watching for spammers and if you use the same words too many times, you'll be
flagged for it (Without warning or notification) and your page will be ignored.
A 2-3% keyword density is ideal.





For a more in-depth explanation on SEO and keyword density
(Highly recommended if you're serious about improving sales.) check out this article.






Don't feel like doing
your own hour's long research?




There are people who will do it for you, myself included.
Please look at this and use the right sidebars for other offers if mine doesn't
appeal.





Tip of the week:





Search engines take a long time to crawl the Net for
updates. Once you make the changes, be patient. Google sometimes takes 6 weeks
to come back around.


 

Next week is the beginning of Amazon month. I've been a
bestseller more than once on the mega-book mart called Amazon and I'll be
sharing a few of the secrets I've learned. First, we'll discuss how to increase
sales with your Author Central account, even if you already have everything
filled out correctly.





 

Ours is a rough ride
that stops for no one. If you want it, jump hard!






Until next week,

Angie


















"Seven very gifted survivors are destined to rebuild their country after a nuclear apocalypse...If they can stay alive long enough to find each other."

The Survivors: Book One

Now FREE on:

iTunes
Amazon
Kobo Books
Google eBooks
Author's Website