Help CenterKeywords are the primary way of ensuring visibility on Amazon. They can be the cause of success or failure for your Amazon KDP listings. Even if you’ve created the perfect book, without the use of the right keywords, chances are that it will remain unseen forever. Why? Because it will most likely end up in the last pages of Amazon’s search results.
In order to enjoy the visibility and sales that you deserve, you must optimize your listings with the perfect keywords.
Let’s now go through that process together.
How to research your keywords using Book Bolt
Before we can talk about choosing the best keywords, it’s important to understand how keyword research works in the first place. Keyword research is the process of gathering as much information about keywords that are relevant to your products or niches as possible.
You can also perform general keyword research when you’re first starting your Amazon KDP journey. In this case, you won’t have any specific niches. Instead, you’ll be interested to find out where it’s worth focusing your attention as a seller.
In both cases, Book Bolt’s Keywords tool is your go-to module. The keywords module is designed to help sellers gather valuable insights into specific keywords.
Say you’re interested in creating coloring books. Here is how you can perform your keyword research and analyze the results.
Step 1: Run your search
The first step of your keyword search starts with logging into your Book Bolt account and clicking the ‘Keywords’ tool on the left-hand menu. Choose ‘Search’, type in a keyword and click the Search button. The keyword that you research can be related to a specific product, a niche, an audience, a category, or anything else you can think of. It could be a keyword you’ve seen in a lot of listings on Amazon. It could also be something you’re interested in and want to see how popular it is on the platform.
The tool will show details on the keyword you’ve typed in the search bar, but it will also give you insights into other, related keywords. Keep in mind that not all of these keywords are extracted from Amazon KDP and are related to books. They’re taken from the whole Amazon platform. You will need to filter out the ones that are relevant to you as a bookseller.
Step 2: Analyze the Amazon search volume
Once the result is displayed, the first column you’ll see is the Amazon search volume or the AMZ SV. This section represents how many buyers have searched for this keyword on Amazon on a monthly basis. A high search volume signals that the keyword is very popular among buyers. This means that it should definitely be in your list of potential keywords to use for your listings later on.
Step 3: Look at Google’s search volume
Next to AMZ SV, you’ll see a column dedicated to Google SV or Google’s search volume. Although Google search volume doesn’t necessarily have to do with Amazon, it does offer value. It reveals how popular a keyword is on the world’s biggest search engine and shows purchasing intent. If both Google and Amazon search volumes are high, this is a sure sign that the keyword sits on a pool of money-making potential.
Step 4: Consider the CPC section
Another piece of information that Book Bolt will reveal is the CPC or cost per click. This is another metric related to Google and represents how much advertisers pay for each click received via the keyword. The higher the CPC, the larger the number of advertisers bidding for the keyword. Put simply, these are the golden keywords that most sellers are most likely competing for.
Step 5: Check the competition
You’ll also notice a Competition section. Here, you can see how competitive a keyword is on Google based on how many advertisers there are. The levels of competitiveness are divided into ‘low’, ‘medium’, and ‘high’. You may also come across keywords that don’t show any data under the competition section. This is either because the keyword is fairly new or there isn’t enough information on it for how many people are running ads on Google for that keyword.
Step 6: Save the keywords that you’re interested in for later
As you perform research on a number of different keywords, you’ll soon realize that your data is slowly taking the form of chaos. To prevent this from happening and to keep your keyword ideas organized, you can save keywords to a list. To do this, all you need to do is click on the heart button next to the keyword in the search results.
You can access these keywords later by choosing the ‘Favorites’ option under ‘Keywords’ on the left-hand menu of your Book Bolt account.
Choosing the best keywords
Remember that the ultimate goal is to get your products in front of a well-defined target audience. The easiest way to do this is to think strategically about your keyword choice.
Keywords that have a high monthly search volume on Amazon, yet are classified as low competition, are perhaps the lowest hanging fruit. They offer a lot of potential. Such keywords offer an entry into unexplored and unsaturated niches that you can take advantage of. Perhaps your competition is focusing their efforts elsewhere, while tremendous demand is left unsatisfied.
Another tip for choosing the best keywords for your listings is to diversify them. Keywords can be classified into two main categories - long-tail and short-tail. An example of a short-tail keyword is ‘comic books’. These words are usually extremely competitive as they are broad and used by thousands of sellers.
On the other hand, a long-tail keyword could be something like ‘superhero comic books for children’. This combination of keywords is more niche, better targeted, and likely to have less competition. In other words, it’s a long-tail keyword that can help you make your comic book visible to a specific audience, leading to more sales as a result.
Closing thoughts
Finding the right keywords for your Amazon KDP listings can help you shift from a fruitless seller into a go-getter. Utilize the capabilities of Book Bolt for your keyword research and discover the best keywords that will enable you to score more sales and enjoy higher royalties.