If you publish with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) you’ll see a section on the first page when you go to set up your book called “keywords.” There are seven slots for you to fill in with relevant keywords that will help your book show up in the correct searches. This post will discuss how to choose the best keywords for your book!
Why Keywords Matter
If you know anything about SEO (search engine optimization), you know the importance of having the best possible words and terms in the correct places in order for people to find your content. For example, words used in the title of an article, a URL, the alt text of a photo, etc. help search engines (like Google, YouTube, and, yes, Amazon) know what your content is about.
Say, for example, you are looking for a recipe for vanilla cake. You’re probably going to Google something like “vanilla cake recipe.” You’ll get loads of hits and recipes to choose from, all of which have the term “vanilla cake” in all of the places listed above (title, URL, alt text).
Now consider if some silly blogger posted a vanilla cake recipe, but titled it something like “What I Baked For My Son’s Birthday,” used a URL like “what-I-baked,” etc… You’d probably never find that recipe in your search, even if its the best vanilla cake recipe out there, because it isn’t optimized for search engines!
Why Keywords Matter for Books on Amazon
Just like with any other piece of content on the internet, the landing page for your book on Amazon will show up in searches. If you use the most relevant keywords possible, the Amazon algorithm will reward you and your book will show up higher in searches! This will likely boost your sales simply by making your book more visible to readers.
Having the right keywords attached to your books will also allow the readers who are most likely to jive with your book find it. This is important because the “right” readers (the people who are interested in the type of content you write) will likely leave you good reviews, recommend your books to others, and otherwise support you.
On the other hand, if you use irrelevant or incorrect keywords, the “wrong” readers (readers who are less likely to actually enjoy the contents of the book) may try out your book and dislike it and leave bad reviews.
How To Choose Keywords
KDP has a nice page discussing their keywords and how to use them, but we’re going to dive a little deeper here! I’ll be focusing on choosing keywords for a romance novel since that is my genre, but these tips are applicable to all genres.
The first thing to keep in mind is that the most powerful “keywords” are the ones in your title, subtitle, and genre/category! So making sure you file your book under the correct genre (KDP allows you to choose two, but you can also email them to add up to ten) is hugely important. You may have also seen authors release a book with a subtitle like “A Romantic Comedy” or “A Sweet Small-Town Romance.” This is super smart keyword optimization!
The keywords you enter into those seven slots on your book’s setup page then become important. These keywords are where you can get more specific about what people will find in your book to attract the right readers!
Keep these aspects of your book in mind when coming up with keywords:
- Tropes (workplace romance, second chance, fake dating, billionaire, etc.)
- Themes (forgiveness, redemption, revenge, etc.)
- Setting (small town, city, tropical vacation, etc.)
- Time period (historical, contemporary, etc.)
- Steam level (clean, sweet, steamy, open door, closed door, fade to black, etc.)
- Intended audience (adult, new adult, young adult, etc.)
Below are the categories you’ll see if you go to the “romance” section of the Kindle book store. These give you some great ideas for the types of words you want to sue in your keywords!
So if you’ve written a funny, steamy book about a peppy social media influencer and the grumpy contractor who’s building her dream home in LA (ooh, this is giving me ideas!), some of your keywords might be:
- Grumpy sunshine
- Romantic comedy
- Los Angeles
- Social media influencer
- Adult open door romance
You can also go to Amazon and start typing in a trope, setting, steam level, etc. and see what auto fills. This can help guide your keywords!
Do’s and Don’ts of Choosing Keywords
Here are some do’s and don’ts of choosing KDP Keywords:
Do:
- Do use more than one word in each keyword slot! These are called long tail keywords. Each slot allows you to use up to 50 characters, and you shouldn’t be afraid to use them.
- Do put words in the logical order. Keywords should feel natural to read. Keep in mind that Amazon will use all variations of the words, so if your keyword is “funny romantic comedy” and someone searches “romantic funny book,” your book will still show up.
- Do choose words that are relevant to the contents of your book. If you’ve written an angsty contemporary romance, don’t use “romantic comedy” as a keyword just because that genre is hot right now. It will work against you – less people will click on your book and it will move down in searches.
- Do be specific, but not too specific. This can be a tricky line to tread. If your keywords are too broad, you’ll get lost, but if they’re too specific, no one will be able to find you!
Don’t:
- Don’t keep repeating words that are already covered by your title, subtitle, genre/category, or other keywords! This is called keyword stuffing and it will work against you. A little bit of repetition is OK, but if you’ve used the word romance in every slot, you’ve gone too far.
- Don’t use other titles, authors’ names, etc. This is not the place for comps! Again, keywords should be relevant for YOUR book, and someone else’s name or book title is not.
- Don’t use sales terms like free, bestselling, kindle unlimited, etc., time sensitive terms like “new,” or subjective statements on quality like “best.” Amazon doesn’t like it and will ding you.
- Don’t use strong words like “sexy” or “erotic.” Unfortunately, Amazon isn’t a huge fan these types of books and will ding you for those terms, so stick with “tamer” words like steamy or open door.
- Don’t use quotation marks.
I hope these tips give you some ideas to start coming up with keywords for your book in KDP! Everything I wrote above informed how I chose my current keywords, but I am always learning new information and tweaking them as needed. If you have any additional tips, please leave a comment below!
