Whether you’re a famous author or this is your first book, kindle keywords are an important part of any book marketing strategy.
kindle keywords let hungry shoppers discover your book on the world’s largest book market, amazon, even while you sleep.
You are reading: Most searched keywords for books
They help your book get discovered without having to do a lot of marketing. plain and simple, they are important.
then if you have an amazing book, but don’t know how to get it in front of the right readers, this is the article for you.
what are kindle keywords & how do you sell books?
kindle keywords are the words a shopper types into amazon when searching for a kindle book or e-book, and therefore,are the keywords we want our book to appear when someone types it.
why? because readers are looking for what they want to buy, and the first 3 or 4 results have the best chance of selling, as we will see below.
Basically, if your book shows up when a reader searches for a book, there’s a good chance they’ll buy it and you’ll make money.
don’t you believe me? Well, what I am going to show you is not only effective, but Amazon itself promoted it. works, these tactics will help you sell more books.
Now that we know what kindle keywords are and how they are important, let’s get to it.
how to find profitable kdp keywords
Before I get into the exact step-by-step process I use to find profitable keywords for kindle, let’s talk about what makes a kindle keyword profitable in the first place.
To be worthwhile, a kindle keyword must be a phrase or word that:
- buyers really write on amazon
- buyers will really pay money for
- competition isn’t too tough
Now that we know what makes a good kindle keyword or phrase, let’s break down each of those three steps.
step 1: find the most searched amazon book keywords
for buyers to find our book, we need to know what terms buyers type on amazon; otherwise our target keywords will be useless. Fortunately, Amazon created a feature in its search box that guesses what you’re going to type based on the popularity of particular terms from other shoppers who type things into it: autocomplete.
how to do it manually
To get those search terms, there are a couple of steps you need to follow:
- Make sure you’re using incognito mode on your browser so your old information doesn’t affect what amazon shows you. if you’re not familiar with this, or how to do it, watch this video.
- select “kindle store” or “books” as the amazon category. You want to know what’s popular in your industry and not be shown products or terms that aren’t book terms.
- Start typing a word and watch what Amazon automatically fills into the search box.
- once you have found a phrase that interests you, add each letter of the alphabet to the end of your word/phrase and see what comes up.
an example of step 4 is:
“sci-fi a”… then “sci-fi b”… then “sci-fi c”…
and so on… you would do this for every letter of the alphabet, even ‘z’, and watch amazon complete your search phrase. you’d be surprised what amazon will come up with!
However, before you finish, make sure none of the phrases you have are something that violates amazon’s keyword requirements (found in the “keywords to avoid” section). Just because amazon suggested it doesn’t mean it can guide you.
how to do it with publisher rocket
Now, the steps above don’t tell you how popular they are; they just tell you that people write this on amazon. If you want to know how many people are typing those words on Amazon, you’ll need a tool like Publisher Rocket. publisher rocket will not only list all those keywords for you, but it will also tell you how many people are typing them on amazon, thus giving you better insights.
Not only does it give you the search volume data, but it’s also color coded so you know what a good amount of search traffic is.
This is not just a color assigned to specific numbers. it also uses historical data and intricate analytics to decide if that keyword is more likely to end up with a sale. so while you might see a yellow keyword even if the search volume is higher than a green keyword, you know it’s still a better match to go with green.
step 2: find kindle keywords that buyers actually pay for
Buyers may type the words above, but that doesn’t mean they’ll find what they’re looking for or decide to buy. there are some terms that can get a lot of searches but just don’t get sales. That’s why this step is important.
how to do it manually
See Also: 6 Contemporary Books With Plus-Size Main Characters
To find out if a kindle keyword is making money, first do a search on amazon for that keyword. then click on the top three books that appear for that search.
then go to your amazon top seller rank (absr), copy it and paste it into my kindle calculator. This calculator will convert the absr of a book or kindle into estimated sales that day.
If the top three ranked books on amazon don’t make money, or less than other keyword choices of yours, you now know one of two things:
- not many people search for that keyword; therefore sales are low
- people searching for that keyword didn’t find what they were looking for and didn’t buy.
Now, go through your list, iterate, and see which of your keywords are not only being searched for, but also generating sales.
how to do it with publisher rocket
If you want to do this correctly, you need to analyze not only the top three results of your search, but also all of the top-ranking books for each of your keywords. if you do it manually, it can take up to an hour per keyword to get it right.
To save you time doing this, Publisher Rocket will show you the average monthly earnings of all these best-selling books, giving you a convenient number for each keyword without you having to do any research .
okay then… now that we know what keywords are searched for and help sell books, let’s look at the level of competition and see if we can get a foot in the door.
step 3: check kindle keyword competition
If we can’t get our book to appear for a keyword or to appear at the top of the results, then that keyword won’t help us.
don’t believe me, look at this:
The above is a graph showing the percentage of buyers who click on books that rank #1-14 in search results. So if 1,000 people type “how to write a book” into amazon per month, statistically speaking, 270 will click on the book listed at the top, but only 60 will click on the book listed at number 6.
As you can see, we need to beat the top ranked books (1-5) in order to benefit from amazon kindle keyword buyers. otherwise your keyword won’t help you.
how to do it manually
So, to help you with this step, here are a few things to consider when looking at the top 10 books that show up for those results.
- book covers: An attractive book cover design is very important. if the book cover design sucks, but that book is having sales, then great! check that you can create a better cover than what is out there.
- headings and subheadings: is the keyword in the headline or subheading? makes sense? if so, know that the author is focusing heavily on this term.
- book reviews: how many book reviews do you have? Are they recent or super old? are they verified or unverified? What do they rate? Having better and more reviews than your competitors is a sure way to beat the competition.
- Book description: Book descriptions are more important than what they say. the people think. it’s what makes shoppers click to buy. Is your book description well written, or are you structuring your book description to look presentable, like my free book description html tool will help you do?
- age: newer books usually i still have a lot of love for amazon and am usually doing heavy marketing efforts. therefore, their numbers and popularity are slightly inflated. however, if the book you are competing with is years old and is still crushing it in the market, then watch out!
- author popularity: if the author is super famous or you have a great following and email list, so they are really competitive. Look at their website, the number of reviews, and the overall ranking of their books to get an idea of their popularity.
After looking at the level of competition, you should have some terms/phrases that are not only searched for and bring in money, but are not too competitive for you to use and put yourself ahead of a buyer’s market. – congratulations!
how to do it with publisher rocket
If you’re not sure how to determine how competitive something is based on the above, or if it seems like too much work, Publisher Rocket will really do all of that for you. examines the information and gives each keyword a score from 1 to 100 on how difficult it is to rank your book for that term.
Like the search volume column, it’s color-coded to give you an idea of what a good competition score looks like, with green being the best.
Basically, when you find those keywords that are green for search volume and competition, chances are you’ve found a keyword that will sell books.
This is vital information if you want to understand your competition for a keyword. get it right and nothing will stop your book from ranking well for that keyword. I recommend you take a look.
kindle keyword results for fiction and non-fiction
If you’ve done the steps above, you should start to have:
- a list of keywords
- an idea of how many people per month are searching for that keyword
- an understanding of how much books with those keywords are making</li
- an understanding of how competitive they are
let’s see what it would look like using a fiction and non-fiction example:
example keyword for fiction:
Data was collected using Publisher Rocket
In the example above, I showed how just niching down in genre can really help. Looking at the numbers we can see that something like Space Marines has a lot more opportunity than something like Sci Fi Military and still gets decent searches per month.
As a new author, targeting space marines would be much better than going to science fiction or even military science fiction. and the numbers help us with this.
but fictional keywords don’t have to be genre terms. we can point to settings, events, moods, etc. As an example, let’s just look at the difference in wizard types and how this works in the market:
Data was collected using Publisher Rocket
As you can see, just the choice of type of wizard affects our ability to be discovered, as well as our potential share of the market. Now, think about what it would be like just guessing at this instead of looking at the numbers.
See Also: Douglas Preston – Book Series In Order
This is why it is so important in our book market research. even more so if you are using this information before you start writing.
If you want to delve into fictional keywords, check out this article here.
keyword examples for non-fiction:
let’s look at a non-fiction example:
Data was collected using Publisher Rocket
As you can see, a broad term like Parenting is extremely hard. However, there is a lot of promise in targeting “toddlers” or even “ADHD.” Of if you’re someone like me, who has a strong-willed child, that might be a good one too.
For more information on non-fiction keywords, see this extended post.
the best tool to find profitable keywords
Obviously, the above steps are quite tedious. That’s why my team and I created Publisher Rocket, formerly known as KDP Rocket. this self-publishing software does exactly what we just mentioned:
in addition to helping you find keywords, it also:
- help you find the best categories to make your book a bestseller
- create profitable listings on amazon effectively and efficiently to save you time
- help see what your potential competitors are doing and what’s working
- and more
Here’s a sneak peek at finding keywords in action.
I have kindle keywords, now what?
The above were steps to research and find profitable keywords, now what?
well time to convince amazon kdp that your book should show up for those keywords when someone types them into amazon. in the world of search engines, we call it “getting indexed”.
here are 3 ways to convince amazon that your book should appear for those keywords:
1. your 7 kindle keywords: on your kindle direct publishing (kdp) dashboard, amazon will ask you to give them 7 kindle keywords where you can fill each one with more than fifty characters each (that’s fifty letters and spaces total). go ahead and put your well chosen keywords here. To learn more about this topic, check out this article.
2. The title or subtitle of your book: Having the Amazon keyword phrase in your title or subtitle is a great indication that this is what your book is about. I’m not saying you should just ‘stuff’ a bunch of words in there… no no. But remember that Kindle keywords are the words your target buyer uses when searching for your next book. I have more titles here.
3. Your Book Description: The same goes for your book description. There is a debate on whether or not Amazon checks for keywords in the description, but I think they do since their a9 algorithm used to say so on their home page. however, as I said in n. #2 above, keywords are the words your customer used to describe what he wanted, and a good book description should convince him that this is the book he wants. If amazon continues to see that when people type in a specific keyword, they buy your book, amazon will catch on and realize that you are the best product for that keyword.
by following the three steps above, you should ‘show up’ for the keyword if a buyer enters it. I don’t get much from that keyword. moreover, the book ranked #1 receives twice as many buyers as the book ranked #2.
so how do you convince amazon to rank your book #1 for that keyword so your book benefits from all this research?
well, that’s a completely different topic. Fortunately, I have a complete free pdf that shows you exactly how to do exactly that, legitimately.
conclusion
keywords are important. For your book to stand out from the crowd, you must learn to choose them strategically and ethically harness their power. (Check out Kindlepreneur’s 70 Book Marketing Tips!)
The right keyword combinations can open up new markets for you. Strategic keyword selection will attract more viewers to your book. you can use keywords to get more viewers and ultimately lead to more sales.
Find the right keywords one of two ways: use my free methods or pay once for Publisher Rocket and do all the dirty work for you. With Publisher Rocket, you’ll have instant access to a ton of incredibly valuable information at your fingertips.
Whatever method you use, use this information ethically and you’ll reap the rewards.
Bonus: Don’t forget to download my free guide to increasing your ranking on Kindle. simply click below to download and start showing your book to more customers.
more keywords and categories:
If you’re interested in more articles like this, we have a complete hub of content related to finding the right keywords and categories for your book. check it out!
See Also: 11 Insightful Books For People Considering Veganism
- how to choose kindle keywords
- 7 kindle keywords
- keyword strategy for nonfiction authors
- keyword strategy for fiction authors
- broad or niche keywords
- how to change kindle keywords and why you should
- ranking percentages kindle keyword chart: #1 vs #2
- kindle ratings: categories vs. keywords
- do you need keywords to access certain book categories?
- international book categories
- amazon popularity effect
- the honeymoon effect
- publisher rocket review
- amazon book sales calculator