Help CenterJust like going into a bookstore to pick a book, Amazon has categories that seek to help customers find the right product faster.
However, with over 14,000 categories and sub-categories for books alone, this can be tricky, and not just for buyers. As a seller, finding the right category when listing your low-content book on Amazon can be difficult, because the Amazon KDP website is somewhat dated and the category tree is rather hard to navigate.
This can be time consuming. But it doesn’t need to be.
What are Amazon categories and why are they important?
Amazon KDP categories, briefly put, are the placement of books into a class or division that has shared characteristics. For example, If you were to create a low-content book that’s a guest book for weddings and it appeared under the category “Architecture”, the chances of being found by your customers are highly slim. This is why picking the right category is one way of optimizing your listings.
What is the KDP Categories module and why should you use it?
The Categories module appears on the left-hand side menu of Book Bolt. When you click on it, you’ll be able to type in a seed keyword and press “Search”. It will tell you what categories you need to use on Amazon in order to get discovered faster. The results will bring back the different categories available and how relevant they are to your seed keyword. You can find this without spending more than five minutes sifting through all the categories. What you’ll also note when using this tool is that the categories are ranked in terms of relevance. They get less relevant the lower down on the list you go.
The Categories module also enables you to niche down by eliminating certain words. Simply type in a minus (-) modifier to subtract off certain words that aren’t relevant to your search. This will exclude everything that you don’t need and it will leave you with categories that make the most sense.
Now that you know how to use the Categories module, it’s time to look at how you can optimize your listings. Even if your listing is absolutely flawless and you’ve done absolutely everything right until this point, having it listed under the wrong category can be detrimental to your overall efforts.
This is because no one will find you in the right place and when you’re not present in the right place, your listing’s optimization is less than ideal.
Finally, it’s important to note that the KDP Categories module is one of the last things to do before actually listing a low-content or no-content book. It is there to make sure you don’t make a mistake at the last second and to ensure that your product is placed on the “shelf” that it belongs to.
How to optimize your listings using the KDP Categories module
Say that you’ve got a low-content puzzle book for Sudoku. All that you’d need to do is type in “Sudoku” as your seed keyword in the Categories module and you’ll get the following results: Nonfiction -> Games -> Sudoku. This is 100% spot on and it only took a few seconds to type in and get the results back. Yes, there may be times when you’ll need to use modifiers, but again, these are quick and easy to exclude and you’ll still be able to find the right category within minutes. All this as opposed to sifting through the 14,000+ categories on Amazon, wondering which category is right for your low-content book.
As a result, categories play a critical role in the optimization of your listing. When optimizing a listing, you need to look at it holistically. You have to look at all the factors that are involved in its optimization so that you can make the most out of your sales. Although it may seem an often overlooked fact, picking the right category is one of the most essential things you can do to get in front of the right audience. By selecting the wrong category, you will not gain visibility of your product by the right customers. In addition, when Amazon customers see your product in an incorrect category, you could turn them off from purchasing because of the irrelevance of your categorization.
An example of this is if you enjoy crime or fantasy books. You go to a bookshop or a library to look for an interesting fiction book to read only to find that that space has been infiltrated by non-fiction encyclopedias or books on learning a particular language. This is not only incorrect in terms of categorization, but can make you feel confused and wonder what is actually going on. There’s a certain order in most things, and when such an order is not followed, it can lead to user frustration and an overall level of disorganization.
Wrapping up
We all have to contend with the fact that the Amazon category tree is difficult to navigate. Attempting to manually sift through thousands of different categories can be a time consuming and painful process. This is where Book Bolt’s KDP Categories module shines. It enables you to accurately pinpoint the right category to use for your low-content book in a matter of seconds. All it takes is typing in your seed keyword and pressing “Search”.