Monday, September 16, 2019

Author Toolbox Blog Hop: Finding Keywords for your Amazon Book Description




#AuthorToolboxBlogHop
Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog and to the Author Toolbox Blog Hop #AuthorToolboxBlogHop which meets every third Wednesday of the month to share resources and tips for authors. Thanks to Raimey Gallant for hosting this venture. 

Please join us to learn more about the craft of writing and to meet bloggers who are dedicated to helping each other become the best writers possible. Click here to visit other blog hop participants.
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Finding Keywords for your Amazon Book Description

Keywords
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay 
Keywords are very, very, very, very important for readers to discover your books, blogs, writings and your book descriptions at online booksellers. These words are words people type into the Google search bar to find sites/books related to what they are looking for. These words are the targets used in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.


SEO is a robot (bot) that combs thru every page of every thing online. When it spots a keyword like "cozy mystery" (yes, a keyword can be more than one word and can be a "long-tail" keyword,( a string of words e.g. a cozy mystery located in Michigan), the bot recognizes it when someone types "cozy mystery" into the search box. When your keyword pops up, the SEO bot directs the searcher to your book. 

Hopefully you'll figure out that golden keyword that will bring your audience to your book. However, that is quite unlikely, so you need to have a lot of golden keywords and change them often if you can. With traditional publishing, the publisher has to do that for you. If you're an indie publisher, you can experiment with different words.


When you consider there are 8-9 million books floating around in amazon land, you need a way to let people know one of those books is yours. Keywords do that. If a mom or teacher types in "good books for girls age 12," her search will pull up my non-fiction book, Girls Succeed! Of course, it may be on page 75 of the search because Nancy Drew, the Boxcar Kids, and for some reason books about lawyers show up too. But out of 9 million books, even if you're #212 on the list, at least you have a chance someone will see your book. Reviews help you get noticed and ranked better on amazon, but that's a whole other topic.

The FREE tool I'm sharing today, Keywords Everywhere, helps you know how many folks use that keyword for searching and offers related words too. Besides the volume of people searching globally or in one specific country every month, it also tells you the CPC and the competition data.

KE explains all that jargon below.

Search Volume: This is an average of the total searches that people have performed for this keyword per month over the last 12 months. For e.g. a search volume of 1000 means that people have searched for this keyword an average of 1000 times every month for the last 12 months. 
NOTE: I choose keywords with a volume of about a1000-10000 searches. Below that means it's not used much, but again it could mean you might rank in a small niche with not as much competition. More than 10,000 searches a month means there is a LOT of competition making it more difficult to reach a good ranking.
CPC: The cost per click (CPC) is the amount that advertisers are paying for a single click for this keyword in Google Adwords.
Competition: The competition is a gauge of the number of advertisers that are running ads on Google AdWords for this specific keyword. The number goes from 0 to 1, with lower values signifying less number of advertisers and higher values signifying more advertisers.

Take a peek at how this all shakes out on your computer screen. I searched "life story writing" since I am at the moment putting together a journal for folks interested in writing life stories. 





















In the screenshop above, the top left arrow is pointing to the keywords automatically generated when you type a search word(s) into the search box. Notice, next to the keywords is the information about the volume, CPC, and competition for each word.


Keywords and information from the search word box

Not only do we get these keywords, but in the image below notice the arrows on the right side of the page. More keywords that are related to the word in the search box. Plus another bonus, a section for People Also Search For with information for you. These are actually more searches done by readers.
Related keywords and People Also Search For keywords
are also available on the right side of the page!





















Keywords Everywhere tool is added as an extension to your Google or Foxfire browser. Follow the steps in the video below to help you install KE and to learn more about it. 


VIDEO: Tutorial on Keywords Everywhere





Many programs for finding keywords are available both free and paid. I am only beginning to learn about them.

I've seen several reviews of this program and all have been favorable as a good tool for those of us just getting into researching keywords and finding that golden nugget that will put your book in front of readers. 

Do you research keywords for your title, sub-title, and book description? If so, what method do you use? If you've tried KE, please give us your opinion of it. 

Click here to visit bloggers participating in the blog hop. You may pick up some new author tools to use too!

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Thanks for stopping.



11 comments:

Jacqui Murray--Writer-Teacher said...

That looks great. I've spent a lot of time trying to pin down keywords to no avail. I'll give this a shot.

Juneta key said...

Cool. I added the extension I will be trying it out.

Kerry A Waight said...

Will definitely be revisiting this post when my book is published. Thanks.

Marsha said...

Hey, JQ. Will definitely check this out more thoroughly. I'm woefully lacking in understanding of these important things. Thanks so much for all your educational posts. Appreciate you. :)

Brigitte Kirady said...

Great information! Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely have to check this out once my book is ready to be published. I think this will really come in handy. Thanks!

emaginette said...

Keywords and SEO confuse the crap out of me. No one--ever--has explained it in nice simple terms I can understand. With some it's all stats, charts, and polysyllabic words that might was well be a foreign language. Others suggest a more trial and error approach.

I'm very tried of feeling stupid, but I still don't get it. Doubt I ever will. :-/

Anna from elements of emaginette

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

This is one of the least confusing explanations of keywords. My publisher does a pretty good job, but I could help too.

Susan Says

J.Q. Rose said...

Thank you everyone for your comments on this post. Glad it was helpful and new and still a bit cloudy for others. It's taken me a long time to understand, but they are absolutely necessary to get your books out in the world. Just think about your book and ask yourself what you would type into the search box to look up that book. Maybe that will help with those are still trying to understand it.
I appreciate your feedback. I'm sorry I can't answer each comment because I'm in Canada this week enjoying the Canadian Rockies and have only limited wi-fi. Hope this goes out to you.!!

Raimey Gallant said...

This post is so yummy, I want seconds. Thanks for sharing, Janet. I am saving this in my book marketing folder for future reference.

Anonymous said...

It's a little early for me to be thinking about keywords just yet but I'll definitely keep all of this in mind when the time comes! Thanks for the guide :)

jamesridleyy said...

Great!

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