One of the most common questions I get asked is,
what tools and software do I use for creating and researching the books that I
publish on Amazon? And in particular, what keyword research tools do I use?
So I'm going to answer that by giving you the top five KDP keyword research
tools that I use on a regular basis when doing the research for my
books. Now, what is the aim of keyword research? Well,
first thing is it helps us find out what customers are actually searching for on
Amazon because the keyword is essentially the search term that customers type in
to the search bar when they're looking for something to buy.
So we want to find out what that actually is.
Then we use keyword research for finding the competition of a particular
keyword. I.e.
are there a lot of other publishers publishing the same book as the one we are
planning on publishing ourselves? Then we can use it to look at the popularity
of a particular keyword.
So find out those search terms have been searched for a lot.
And at the end of the day,
keyword research saves us a lot of time rather than just publishing
a book using trial and error to see, you know, what may or may not sell.
It helps give us that intel,
that information in the first place and save us a lot of time just messing
about with books that are not even going to sell in the first place.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start off with the more simple keyword
research tools that I use and work up towards the more complex tools.
Now, when I say more complex,
it just means that these tools give us more information. Now,
I don't recommend you go out and and buy or subscribe to all five tools at
once. What I normally suggest doing, particularly if you're just starting out,
is start off with the more basic tools and then slowly
work your way up as you become more experienced and as you start to make
money, which you can then invest in some of these tools.
So let's get into this. Now, the first tool that I actually use,
which might be a surprise to some people, is not actually a tool at all.
It's actually Amazon itself.
But Amazon can give us a lot of important information if we know where to look.
So the first place that we start is in the search bar on Amazon and we put in
a general search term that someone might be looking for such as adult coloring
book. And what Amazon gives us is all these suggestions here.
And these are useful for two reasons. One,
Amazon is telling us what people are actually searching for and also
customers will tend to click on these suggestions,
especially those suggestions towards the top.
Now what we can do is once we get these suggestions,
what I normally do is write them down in a spreadsheet and then start to put
these suggestions into the search bar as well. So for instance,
we could put in for women and now you'll see that we start to get even.
More suggestions.
So now we're getting more insight into what people are actually searching for.
So you can build up a list of these suggestions.
But another important feature of Amazon is that when we hit search
and the top left here, it will give us the number of search results.
And here it says 30,000. That's a lot.
It means there's a lot of competition for this particular search term.
So it may be something that you don't want to use or if you were maybe planning
on running ads, it may be something you would consider.
Now I have done videos on how I do keyword research,
particularly with this technique, which I'll leave a link to down below.
And this particular tool, using Amazon,
is ideal if you're starting out it can give you a lot of information and
insight into what people are searching for. When I started out,
even though I'd done a lot of keyword research in the past when building
websites,
I didn't do any keyword research at all. And I used to watch videos where people
say, oh, you know, it's the first thing I do. And I'm like,
well what are you actually doing? I don't quite understand it.
And it really took me about nine months to a year to really understand the
importance of doing keyword research. So,
the next tool that I use is a Chrome plugin and this is a plugin called AMZ
Suggestion Expander.
Now this is a free plugin and what it does is it gives us all these other
suggestions here,
which are also search terms that customers are typing into the search
bar on Amazon.
So it can save us a bit of time rather than going through all these suggestions
that Amazon gives us,
it can give us a lot more search terms keywords as well.
So it just means we can build a much bigger spreadsheet. Now
they do do a paid version of this,
which is AMZ suggestion Expander Pro and I find this
useful for one main reason and that is you can click on download keywords
here and it will download a spreadsheet of these keywords and it gives us this
information here,
which is the approximate number of Google searches per month for a
particular keyword.
This is just useful to know because if you find that keyword does have a lot of
Google searches per month, it can give that keyword a bit of extra strength,
give it an indication that this is a popular keyword.
And so we can get this list here of all keywords that people are searching for
on Amazon and if you click on these links here,
it just opens that particular keyword in Amazon.
So it can save you a a bit of time if you are looking at the number of search
results.
So I find this very useful bit of a time saver and you can do this
with the free version.
You just don't get the opportunity to download all the keywords,
but you can still get those keywords.
Now the second tool I use is also a Chrome plugin called
Keywords Everywhere. Now this is not a completely.
Free tool,
you do have to pay for search credits here for a hundred thousand search
credits,
it's $1 a month or I think you can just get the $12 billed annually.
And I find that these credits last quite a long time.
Now if we click on the plugin,
we can see we've got all these other features here, which I have to be honest,
I haven't really looked to in great depth and I've currently got 1,284
credits left.
But what this tool does is when we do put in a keyword in the search bar,
it gives us this information here,
which is approximate number of Google searches per month,
the cost per click on Google for advertising that keyword.
This is the competition ranking.
It appears to go from zero to one with one being the highest.
And also if we hover over this graph, it gives us this little table here,
which is the estimate of the number of Google searches per month by each month
in the last 12 months. Okay,
so now we come on to the more complex tools that gives us a bit more
information and there's one piece of information that is very,
very useful and that is knowing the actual number of searches
per month on Amazon for a particular keyword. Now,
in order to get this information, you do have to pay for it,
you do have to pay for a tool or piece of software to get this information.
And the first one we're going to look at is Publisher Rocket.
Now this is not free, but it is a one-off payment.
There is no subscription and it's currently $97.
And what I like about this particular tool is that you're not overwhelmed with
information.
So you've got these other functions here like category search competition
analyzer, but what we're interested in here is the keyword search.
So if we just put in adult coloring book hit go get 'em rocket,
we'll see here we've got this list of search terms or keywords and what we
can do is click on these magnifying glasses and get additional information. So
this gives us all useful information, average number of pages in a book,
number of competitors,
average monthly earnings for books in these particular niches.
But this is what I like this information here,
the estimated Amazon searches per month.
We can get a good idea of the popularity of a keyword and not just
relying on the Google searches per month,
which is a sort of a a roundabout way of of looking at the
popularity of a keyword. And from that and from the number of competitors,
this particular tool will also give a competitive score,
a hundred being the highest amount of competition.
So as far as this tool goes,
the one-off payment to get this information on the Amazon searches I
think is very valuable.
And so we come onto the fifth and final tool, which is probably the tool.
That will give us the most information of all and that is Helium 10.
Now this is subscription software and it gives you access to all these
tools. Now the three main tools that I use are these ones here, Cerebro,
Magnet,
which I'll show you what those two do in a moment and also the keyword tracker
tool.
What that does is it monitors the ranking of my
books for particular keywords.
And that's quite useful because if you're wanting to make changes to your books,
whether it's a cover interior, your keywords,
you can see how those changes affect the rankings of your books.
Now this tool isn't free and it's subscription software and so you
can get the starter, which is $29 per month,
gives you more limited access,
but it does give you access to the important keyword research tools.
I'm currently on the platinum subscription, but if you were starting out,
I would just go for the starter. So here we have the magnet keyword research
tool. So let's put in adult coloring book again,
get keywords.
Now what this tool does is it gives us a whole lot
more keywords,
which can be a good or bad thing depending on where you are in your
publishing career. But you can see here for this one keyword we've got
7,542 keywords.
And for this it gives us that important information which is vital with these
sorts of tools. And that is the search volume on Amazon.
And also it gives us the Magnet IQ score,
which is just the the the competition score. And in this case,
the higher the number, the lower the competition.
And basically what it's doing is just uh, conveying this information,
the ratio of search volume to competing products and providing that as a
single overall score. And this box here,
the word frequency is also useful in terms of filling out the seven
keyword boxes when you come to upload your book to the KDP
platform because you can use these individual words in your seven keyword
boxes and you know that these are popular words,
keywords that people are actually searching for in relation to the overall
adult coloring book keyword. Now the next tool that I said I
used was this, which is Cerebro.
Now this is what's called a reverse ASIN Lookup tool.
What does that do? Well, if we go over to Amazon search for Adult coloring book,
take a look at one of these books, copy the ASIN,
go back to Cerebro, paste that in, hit get Keywords,
it will give us insight into the keywords that this
book is actually ranking for. So in effect,
using this tool,
we can steal the keywords that our competitors are using to
rank on that first page of Amazon.
So again, this is very useful indeed.
And so you can see here like adult coloring book Spiral,
although I don't think that was a spiral book.
It's ranking at number one on that first page of Amazon.
And you can see here from this organic rank list,
you can see where it's organically ranking for all these particular keywords.
So you can take these,
do research on them or maybe just use some of these
keywords yourself in your book in terms of naming your book in
terms of using them in the title subtitle of your book and using components of
those keywords in the seven keyword boxes.
So you get both of those tools when you do subscribe to Helium 10 and that
keyword ranking tool as well.
And access to some of these other tools which I don't think are as useful for
us KDP publishers. So my advice
at the start, particularly if you are starting out on this publishing career,
is keep it simple.
Just start with the basic Amazon search bar,
then maybe add in keywords everywhere or AMZ suggestion expander.
And then after a bit of time when you get used to using keywords,
when you find that they're helping you get your books ranked,
then start to use those tools that give you more information like
Publisher Rocket or Helium 10.
What I would advise against doing is comparing the numbers you get
from each keyword tool.
So you may find Helium 10 maybe for adult coloring book says there's
50,000 searches per month.
You may find Publisher Rocket says there's 30,000 searches per month.
And I get people coming to me going, oh yeah, one says this, one says the other.
What's actually real? Well,
they're probably both correct from the algorithm that they're using,
but what I would suggest doing is not comparing the two figures but instead
comparing the figures within a particular tool. I think that's
much more useful. So keep it simple.
I wouldn't recommend going getting all those tools at once.
Work your way up as you get more experience and you start to earn more money.
Now if you are new to this KDP low content book publishing
business,
then what I suggest doing is starting with my book tutorials playlist here where
I go through all the steps of creating and publishing, uh,
your first book on Amazon. I hope you find that useful.
Thank you much for your time. It is very much appreciated.
Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. And until next time, goodbye.