Whether you’re a famous author or this is your first book, choosing the right keywords for your book is an incredible part to getting your book seen on Amazon, and thus helping it to make more sales.

Get this wrong, and you could doom your book to be lost on the Amazon store where no one can find it – no matter how good it really is.

But get it right, and Amazon will help to show your book more often, and to the right customers, which will lead to more continuous sales.

So, how do you choose the right book keywords? Well, in this article, I will not only show you a proven step-by-step process you should follow, but will give some key insights that will help you to gain an advantage over other authors who haven't read this.

What Are Kindle Keywords & How Do They Sell Books?

Before we get into the process, it will be important that we first discuss key points to Amazon book keywords.

Kindle Keywords are the words a shopper types into Amazon when looking for a book or Kindle ebook, and thus, they are the words we want our book to show up for when someone types it in.

Why? Because readers search for what they want to buy, and the top 3-4 results have the strongest chance of selling, as we'll see below.

So basically, if your book shows up when a reader searches for a book, there's a good chance that they will buy it, and you will make money.

Don't believe me? Well what I'm about to show you is not only effective, but Amazon itself promoted it. 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.

What Makes a Keyword Good and Profitable

Before we get into the exact step-by-step process I use to find profitable kindle keywords, let’s talk about what makes a profitable kindle keyword in the first place.

In order to be worth your time, your KDP keywords should be a phrase or word that:

1. Shoppers actually type into Amazon
2. Shoppers will actually pay money for
3. The competition isn’t too hard

Now that we know what makes a good kindle keyword phrase or word, let’s attack each one of those three steps.

How to Manually Find Keywords for Your Book

If you're manually looking for KDP keywords for your book, you will be limited on what you can do. You'll be missing key data as you'll see later, but this is a process you should follow if you can't afford a tool that will help.

The key to this is we must come up with phrases shoppers actually type into Amazon (even though we won't know how many search this), guess as whether or not books are making money from it, and decide if the competition is too great.

Step 1: Find Phrases that Shoppers Search For

To get those search terms, there are a couple of steps you should take:

1. In Amazon search select “Kindle Store” or “Books” as the Amazon category. You want to know what is popular in your industry and not be shown products or terms other than book terms.
2. Start typing in a word, and look to see what Amazon immediately pre-populates in the search box.
3. Once you've found a phrase that you're interested in, add each letter of the alphabet at the end of your word/phrase, and see what comes up.

However, before you're done, make sure that none of the phrases you have is something that violates Amazon's Keyword requirements (it's under the “Keywords to Avoid” section). Just because Amazon suggested it, doesn't mean you can target it.

Step 2: Guess as to Whether or Not Books are Making Money From Those Phrases

To find out if there is a chance that those keywords in step 1 are making money, do the following:

1. Do a search for that keyword in Amazon. Then click on the top three books that show up for that search.
2. Next, go to their Amazon Best Seller Rank (ABSR), copy, and paste it into my Kindle Calculator. This calculator will covert the ABSR of a book or kindle into estimated sales that day.
3. If the three books ranking at the top of Amazon don't make any money, or less than other keyword options of yours, you now know one of two things:
   • Not many people search for that keyword – thus, low sales
   • People who do search for that keyword didn't find what they were looking for and didn't buy.

Now, go through your list, repeat, and see which of your keywords are not only getting searched, but also making sales.

Step 3: Check the KDP Keyword Competition Level

If we can’t get our book to show up for a keyword, or show up at the top of the results, then that keyword won’t help us.

Don’t believe me, check this out:

The above is a chart showing what percentage of shoppers click on the books that rank #1-14 in search results. So, if 1,000 people type into Amazon “How to write a book” per month, then statistically speaking, 270 will click on the book that shows up at the top, but only 60 will click on a book that shows up #6.

So, to help you with this step, here are some things you should consider when looking at the top 10 books that show up for those results. But you'll need to make a subjective opinion yourself on the below:

1. Book Covers: A great looking book cover design is super important. If the book cover design stinks, but that book is making sales, then GREAT! Verify that you can create a cover better than what is there.
2. Titles and Subtitles: Is the keyword in the title or subtitle? Does it make sense? If so, then know the author is targeting this term strongly.
3. Book Reviews: How many book reviews do they have? Are they recent or super old? Are they verified or unverified? What rating do they have? Having better and more reviews than your competitors is a sure-fire way to beat the competition.
4. Book Description: Book descriptions are more important than people think. It’s what makes shoppers click to buy. Is their book description well written, or are they structuring their book description so it looks presentable, like my free Book Description HTML tool will help you do?
5. Age: Newer books usually still have a lot of Amazon love, and are usually doing big marketing pushes. So, their numbers and popularity are a little inflated. However, if the book you’re competing against is years old and still crushing it on the market, then beware!
6. Author’s Popularity: If the author is super famous or has a large following and email list, then they are really competitive. Look at their website, the number of reviews, and the overall rank of their books to get an idea of their popularity.

After looking at the level of competition, you should have some terms/phrases that not only get searched and bring in money, but they won’t be too competitive for you to use and get in front of a buyer’s market. – Congrats!

Now do that over and over again until you find enough phrases to fill in your 7 KDP keywords boxes

But There is an Easier and Better Way of Doing This

How to Find Profitable Keywords Publisher Rocket

Unlike the manual process, using Publisher Rocket, you'll not only be able to find find profitable keywords faster, but you'll have more intelligent data for you to use so as to know you're making better choices on your keywords.

Let's jump in!

Step 1: See Exactly What Keywords are Working for Other Books and Use Those

Instead of having to search around, or break out excel sheets to calculate sales like we did in the manual process above, you can just see what keywords other books are using and whether they are helping to make that book more sales.

To do this, just use the Reverse ASIN feature of Publisher Rocket.

In this, you take the ASIN number of a competitors book or a book similar to yours, and hit enter. Just like that, you'll now see all the KDP keyword phreases that book shows up for on Amazon. Then you can click to analyze and see how many people a month search for that keyword.

The best part is, you can put a bunch of books through this, and find the best ones…and just with this feature alone, you can easily find the best most profitable keywords that would work for your book. No more guessing, searching or excel sheets.

See Rocket in Action!

Step 2: Research Phrases for Searchability, Profitability and Competitiveness

Now, you could just use step 1 above and be done. That should absolutely help you find what you need in order to fill your 7 KDP keyword boxes. However, there is even more that Rocket can do!

Using the Keyword feature on Rocket, you can enter in a phrase that describes your book, and Publisher Rocket will immediately get to work displaying all the different ways that phrases or phrases like it are on Amazon.

Not only does it give you the search volume data, but it's also color–coded so you know what is a good amount of search traffic with green being a good one, and red being not as great.

But it actually goes further than just ‘bigger number gets better color.' Rocket usually historical sales information to let you know which keyword phrase is more likely to end up in a sale. That's why you might see a keyword phrase that has more searches, but shows a red, while a phrase with less has a green.

Another way this tool helps is that it will also authomatically show you the Average Monthly Earnings for all of these top-selling books, which shows you one convenient number for every keyword without you having to research anything.

If you're not sure how to figure this out how competitive something is based on the above, or it seems like too much work, Publisher Rocket will actually do all of that for you. It looks at the information, and gives each keywords a score from 1-100 on how hard it would be for your book to rank for that term.

Try it For Yourself

Like the search volume column, it's color-coded to give you an idea of what a good competition score is, with green being the best.

But, it does more than that. It also tells you how many searches those phrases get, how much money books make that rank for that phrase, and even gives you the competition score (a score of 1-100 with 100 being super hard to rank for).

Basically this feature does all of the manual steps discussed above, in seconds.

Check it Out!

Kindle Keyword Results for Fiction and NonFiction

If you've done the steps above, you should start to have:

• A list of keywords
• An idea of how many people per month search for that keyword
• An understanding of how much books are making for those keywords
• An understanding of how competitive they are

Let's see what that would look like using a fiction and nonfiction example:

Keyword Example 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 for Science Fiction or even Sci Fi military. And the numbers help us with this.

But fiction keywords don't have to be genre terms. We can target settings, events, moods, etc. As an example, let's just look at the difference of types of Wizards and how this plays on 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.

That's why this is SO important in our book marketing research. More so if you're using this information before you start writing.

If you want to dive deeper into fiction keywords, check out this article here.

Keyword Examples for NonFiction:

Let's take a look at a Nonfiction 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 on nonfiction keywords, see this expanded post.

Need Help with Your Keywords?

Take my full featured video course on how to select the best keywords and categories for your book.

Take the Course

The Best Tool For Finding 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 talked about:

Along with helping you to find keywords, it will also:

• Help you find the best categories for your book to be a bestseller
• Create profitable Amazon Ads effectively and efficiently saving you time
• Help see what your potential competitors are doing and what's working
• And more

I’ve Got Great Keywords for my Book, Now What?

The above were steps to research and find profitable keywords, so now what?

Well, it’s time to convince Amazon KDP that your book should show up for those keywords when someone types them into Amazon. In the search engine world, we call this “getting indexed.”

Here are 3 ways to convince Amazon your book should show up for those keywords:

1. Your 7 Kindle Keywords : In your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) dashboard, Amazon will ask you to give them 7 kindle keywords where you can fill each to over fifty characters each (that's fifty different letters and spaces total). Go ahead and put your well-chosen keywords here. To dig deeper into this subject, check out this article.

2. Your Book Title or Subtitle: Having the Amazon keyword phrase in your title or subtitle is a great indication that your book is about that. 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 shopper uses when looking for their next book. I’ve got more on titles here.

3. Your Book Description: The same goes for your book description. There is debate, as to whether or not Amazon checks for Keywords in the description, but I am of the belief that they do, since their algorithm A9 used to say it on their homepage. However, like I said in #2 above, keywords are the words your customer used to describe what they wanted and a good book description should convince them this IS the book they want. If Amazon continues to see that when people type in a specific keyword, they buy your book, Amazon will wise up and realize, you’re the best product for that keyword.

To Sell More Books, Kindle Keywords should be a FIRST thought...not an AFTERthought. #BookMarketClick To Tweet

Doing the above three steps, you should ‘show up’ for the keyword if a shopper types it in. But like you can see on the rankings chart above, if you aren’t ranking #1-5, then you’re not getting much out of that keyword. Even more so, the book that ranks #1 gets 2x more shoppers than the book that ranks #2.

So, how do you convince Amazon to rank your book #1 for that keyword so that your book benefits from all this research?

Well, that’s a completely different subject. Luckily, I have a full free pdf that shows you exactly how to do exactly that, legitimately.

Conclusion

Keywords are important. In order to make your book stand out from the crowd, you must learn how to strategically choose them 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 drive more viewers to your book. You can use keywords to gain more viewers and ultimately, make more sales.

Find the right keywords one of two ways: either use my free methods, or pay once for Publisher Rocket and have all the dirty work done for you. With Publisher Rocket, you will have instant access to loads of incredibly valuable information at your fingertips.

Whichever method you use, just use this information ethically and you will enjoy the rewards.

BONUS: Don't forget to download my free guide to increasing your kindle rankings. Just click below to download and start getting your book in front of more customers.

More Keywords and Categories:

If you're interested in more articles like this one, we've got a whole hub of content related to finding the right keywords and categories for your book. Check these out!

• How to Choose Kindle Keywords
  • 7 Kindle Keywords
  • Keyword Strategy for Non-fiction Authors
  • Keyword Strategy for Fiction Authors
  • Broad vs Niche Keywords
  • How to Change Your Kindle Keywords and Why You Should
  • Kindle Keyword Ranking Percentages: #1 vs #2
• How to Choose Amazon Categories
  • Kindle Rankings: Categories vs. Keywords
  • Do You Need Keywords to Get Into Certain Book Categories?
  • International Book Categories
• The Amazon Algorithm
  • Amazon Popularity Effect
  • The HoneyMoon Effect
• Tools
  • Publisher Rocket Review
  • Amazon Book Sales Calculator