The Value of Keywords

When I was finishing up the final edits of Shadowed Strength, I started furiously downloading books about publishing through Amazon’s KDP program. The books I read all had one common denominator- the importance of keywords.

Keywords are the “key” to readers finding your book. Selecting the proper keywords is crucial to a new, undiscovered author. You’re starting to build your fan base, so discoverability is the main point you should focus on when publishing. If readers can’t find your book, they can’t read it. It’s as simple as that.

When picking your keywords, you want to choose relevant words that are searched most often by your target audience. Make sure that they compliment each other, but are not too similar. You can use Amazon as a guide.

Here is an example of what I mean:

My book is in the young adult paranormal/fantasy romance genre. When choosing keywords, I was very careful to stay within my genre and did not choose words that were repetitive. For instance, I considered “paranormal romance” and “YA paranormal romance.” Both fit, but I chose “YA paranormal romance” because it had the first one contained within it and it was longer. It’s like I got three keywords in one. Amazon only lets you choose seven, so you have to get the most bang for your buck.

Here is how you use Amazon to your benefit:

Go the website and click on the category for books or kindle books.
Type in you first keyword.
Look at the drop down menu to see the top ten words searched.

For example, when I type in “paranormal,” I get these keywords:

paranormal romance, paranormal romance for adults, paranormal books, paranormal mystery, paranormal erotica, paranormal romance books, paranormalcy, paranormal investigation, free paranormal romance kindle books, and paranormal dating agency.

So the number one keyword searched with the word “paranormal” is romance, so I write that down as one of my keywords because it fits my book and it’s the most searched.

I repeat this step with the word “young adult.”  Young adult fantasy and young adult romance are numbers five and six on the list, so I write those down as possibilities. I can get even more specific, for instance, by typing “young adult” and going through the alphabet to see what pops up high on the list for my genre. For example, when I get to “young adult p,” young adult paranormal romance in number one on the list.

The steps are repeated with other keywords like “teen, YA, teenage, paranormal, romance, and shifter.” I end up with a list of about thirteen top searched keywords, but I have to pick seven. So I try to use seven keywords that are not too repetitive, but end up containing most of the top-rated keywords I found.

The ones I pick are: YA paranormal romance, shapeshifter, young adult ebooks, fantasy, fiction, teenage romance, teen love

I used my seven keywords to get as many words in as I could without being overly repetitive. I didn’t want to use YA paranormal romance and young adult paranormal romance, even though they are both high on the search list, because they are too repetitive and I would have been wasting a keyword.

Another tip is to get as many of your keywords as possible into your book description, without being obvious or sounding amateurish. I chose not to do that because of the nature of my book- I didn’t want to sacrifice the characters secrets and ruin it for the reader, so I only added some keywords into my age disclaimer:

“**This is a YA Paranormal Romance intended for teens and adults 16+ due to language and sexual situations.”

You see that I have YA, paranormal, romance, teens, and adults. This will help my book come up more often when readers search these words. This is why you sometimes see books that have titles like, “Such and Such Book- A Shifter Paranormal Erotic Romance.” Keywords in the title will definitely make your book more visible, but I don’t care for this approach. As a reader, when I see books with that type of title, it just turns me off. But that’s only my opinion.

I really hope this post is beneficial to all my fellow indie authors. If you are interested, my favorite book regarding this subject is this one. The author actually has website where he (and his team) have gone through every keyword and have found the top searched words for each one with each letter of the alphabet. He basically did all the work for us. If you buy the book, or download it for free through Kindle Unlimited, you get the password to enter the website and it’s all listed out for you. If you don’t want to take the time to do it yourself, I would suggest checking this book out. There was a lot of other helpful information in there as well.

Thanks for reading!

Wendi