Lesson II: Picking Keywords
Now that you know a little more about how keywords work, it’s time to pick some. You can use a tool like Publisher Rocket, which we like for keyword research, or you can use the autocomplete on Amazon and some googling and brainstorming. But first, you have to pick some to work with. Here is a list of things to consider when looking for keywords:
- Character Roles — Is your main character a homemaker or a father or an only child? People will actually search for things like “Haunted House Horror With Children” because they want the story to be extra scary and horror is much scarier with children involved. Or they may search for “Haunted House Horror Without Children” because they don’t want to be too scared. Any role that your characters play can be a potential keyword.
- Gender — Searches for “Cozy Mystery Female Protagonist” are a real thing. The gender of your characters can really matter.
- Jobs — What your characters do for a living may also matter. “Thriller scientist” is a search term that actually gets some traffic.
- Age —You get the point now. Any character trait can be a potential keyword.
- Setting — The time, place, season, setting, country, city, or any other part of the setting can be important to readers. Some people only want to read sci-fi stories that are set in deep space. Others only want to read mysteries that are set in small towns.
- Themes — Friends to lovers, coming of age, revenge, redemption, and a host of other themes can be great search terms, especially for romance.
- Feel — Apocalyptic, cozy, futuristic, optimistic, hard-hitting, noir, anything that isn’t in your categories or description can be a good search term.
- Tropes — Any tropes that you include that are important to your genre can be good keywords. Check our list of tropes for your genre for good potential keywords. Readers love searching for things like “thriller virus” or “thriller post apocalyptic.”
Assignment:
- Brainstorm at least twenty keywords based on the book you picked at the end of the previous lesson — Use the list above to help. Stick to single words and single concept phrases for now. “Old heroes” is a single concept phrase, whereas “old heroes enemies to lovers” is multiple concept.
Viewing:
- Watch the Publisher Rocket Basics video — It is a highly recommended tool, as finding good keywords is only one of its uses
- Watch the videos below to learn how to use Publisher Rocket and Amazon’s own autocomplete to streamline your keyword process
Using Publisher Rocket to Find and Expand Keywords
Using Autocomplete to Find and Expand Keywords
Creating Combos And Excluding Negative Words
Start by taking out the trash and finding the gems. This will get rid of any words that you are sure aren’t going to work to bring in people who will buy your book, and it will give you a list of the keywords that you think are really great for you.
We want to find the gems, words that we definitely need to include, because they are going to be the center of our search for combinations. So we can further narrow our list by finding combos that complement our gems. If we know that “friends to lovers” is one of our keyword gems, then we can use Amazon’s autocomplete to find more keywords that people search for along with “friends to lovers” and combos that we think will bring in long tail searches.
If your romance book includes a surfer, or a police officer, or two cheerleaders, then including those things with “friends to lovers” can generate some excellent long tail search results.
Now we can take the remaining words and look for combos. Because a good combo is the most valuable way to fill a keyword box. If your fantasy story is also funny and includes LGBTQ themes, then “funny lgbtq fantasy” gives you three good combos in addition to the three words together getting a few searches. “Funny lgbtq” is a search term that might bring in buyers, as is “lgbtq fantasy”. Both terms are well targeted to the audience of a book like this and will appeal to likely buyers. And while the words ‘funny’ and ‘fantasy’ are separated by a word, they are in order and will help for other long tail search terms.
If one of your other keyword boxes includes “clever puns and jokes” then a search for “funny fantasy with clever jokes” is likely to bring up your book and someone searching for that term will be a likely buyer. So, not only do we want our keywords to work together within an individual box, but we want them all to work together. You’ll have to consider how important it is to have particular keywords next to each other, in a particular order, and in the same box. Testing later can change your mind about these choices too.
Now it’s just a puzzle. How many good combos, including the gems, can we fit into those seven keyword boxes? Remember that each extra word in a box dilutes the others, but only slightly. So don’t pack in unnecessary words, but definitely add in any word that makes a useful combo. If you have a gem combo, like “enemies to lovers lycanthropy” that appeals to your readers really well, and none of those words are in your title or description, then it should get it’s own box.
You can also exclude certain combos by using quotes. This should only be done to exclude searches that might hurt your conversion rate. Otherwise they are a negative. When in doubt, don’t use quotes.
If you are writing cyberpunk stories, and they include computer viruses and biological weapons, you might want to put quotes around those two terms so that searches for “biological virus” don’t bring up your book. People who search for “biological virus” are usually not going to buy a cyberpunk book.. Another example might be if your book includes right wing terrorists and high angle plane descents, you wouldn’t want the term “right angle” to bring people to your book, since those people are probably searching for books on geometry or carpentry and they won’t buy, which hurts your conversion rate.
Assignments:
- Using the skills you’ve learned, assemble as many viable keyword phrases as you can
- Pick the seven best and add them to your book listing.
- Retain the rest — You will use them later on
Protected: The Key To Keywords — Free Course