Using keywords in your KDP books is very powerful.
And when used correctly in combination with things like good cover designs,
you can go a long way to getting your books ranked on the first page of the
Amazon search results,
which frankly is where you want to be if you want to make decent sales with your
books.
So in this video I'm going to show you what I think is the correct way of using
keywords in your books to give them that best chance of being on the first page.
And I say the best chance because we're still dealing with the Amazon search
algorithm. And so although nothing's certain,
it's about giving your books that best chance. So let's get straight into it.
So when you log into your KDP dashboard, you're faced with this page.
So the first thing you need to have done is to have built a list
of keywords and it would look something like this. Now if you don't know what
I'm talking about or yet haven't built a list of keywords around your book,
then I suggest watching the previous video that I did to this,
which I'll leave a link to down in the description where I go through my whole
process of doing keyword research to finding those best keywords,
for your books.
So from that video you would know that we build a list of keywords like this and
then I choose keywords with 1000 search results or less because from
experience I found that using those keywords gives our books the best chance of
getting on that first page because there's not a huge amount of competition.
So I've created a book in this example,
let's say it's a word search book for kids.
And so looking at these lists of keywords here, I may say, okay,
I've created a word search book with animals in,
so I'm going to use this keyword animal word search for kids with
1000 Amazon search results and I'm going to use this as my main
targeted keyword. Now as I've said in that other video,
when you start to make sales with a keyword like this,
it will then start over time, it can be many months,
but it will start to rank for more competitoive keywords.
And so sales will hopefully build up over time.
So this is going to be the main keyword. So that would be the title of my book.
Now the title has to also be on the spine or
cover of your book.
Now I would recommend putting it on the front cover of your book for a couple of
reasons. One is,
customers when they search for a keyword like that and basically keywords are
search terms so that customers type into the search bar on Amazon.
If they see that search term on the front of a book,
their eyes will be drawn to it and straight away it's something that will
attract their attention and hopefully they'll click on your book to find out
more. And also,
this is something I've thought about but I haven't seen discussed
anywhere and that is the question of whether Amazon
uses any sort of image recognition in its search
algorithm. That is,
can it detect the text on the front cover of the book?
Because things like Google,
they're a search algorithm and they detect text.
And so when ranking things like websites, you know, images,
graphics with text on can be indexed and go somewhere to getting say a website
ranked on Google.
So it may be that's also a factor in terms of books
and if it isn't at the moment, I'm sure it will be in the future.
So it's worthwhile taking advantage of that now or potentially taking advantage
of it. So book title, animal word search for kids,
I'd recommend putting that on the front cover of your book.
So now we come onto the subtitle. Now what I do here is I pick
one or two related keywords from my keyword
list and write something with a variation on those other
keywords.
So if I go back to the list and we scroll down or have a look lower down,
I'm starting to see things like word search activity books for kids. Okay,
so activity books could be something we could use. We've also got puzzle.
So puzzle books, that's an idea.
And also I noticed there we are kids word search book ages six to eight.
So if your book is targeted towards a particular age group,
you may want to put that in the title.
So scrolling down and taking into account what I've just seen,
I would probably come up with something like this.
So I'd put it in a descriptive word. I like to use things like awesome, cool,
choose whatever you like. Children's animal
word search book,
kids puzzle book for ages
six to eight. So you can see what we've done here.
We've basically got in another keyword,
which is children's animal word search book.
And then we've also got in kids puzzle book.
Now that would be a very competitive keyword, but who knows, in the future,
if we are starting to get sales,
we may rank somewhere on that first page for these more competitive
keywords.
Now another small note on the title and subtitle in that it's
important to get the capitalization of your words correct.
You can see here the words that I've capitalized.
It's important to get the spelling correct and also
punctuation and grammar if English is not your first language then you can use
tools like Grammarly,
which I highly recommend because there's nothing more off putting to a
potential English speaking customer than to see these sort of
errors that really stand out. So just a word on that.
Next we come onto the description.
Now the description isn't indexed by Amazon, but it is indexed by Google.
So there is always that chance that your book could appear on the Google
searches.
And in fact some of my books do and I'm sure I do get traffic from Google to
my books on Amazon.
But it's useful still to use keywords in the description.
It does help with the customer experience.
So if they're reading something that resonates with what they're looking for,
you've got a better chance of making a sale.
So I'd put something like a fun word
search book for kids,
ideal for ages six to eight.
And I would probably add more text than what I've written there.
And what I often do in my descriptions is put in some bulleted lists.
So click on this icon here for a bulleted list and these will just be pure
descriptive elements about the book.
So it might be things like matte cover,
8.5 by 11 inches,
120 pages and so on. You get the idea.
So basically get in a few keywords, within the description,
make it longer than what I've written there, make it descriptive. And you know,
remember you are selling your product to a customer.
It's like a little mini sales page. Okay,
next we come onto these seven keyword boxes.
And this can often or sometimes causes a lot of trouble for potential
publishers. What do we put in here? Well you've got two options.
You can either put in things like single words into these boxes or you could put
in some of these search phrases that you've found and you've
got in your keyword spreadsheet.
So you might put in something like animal word search for kids.
Now we already have used that in the title,
so it's up to you whether you want to use it again in the seven keyword
boxes. I often don't.
And then next we put something like children's word search book
and so on.
And so you'd fill that with seven search phrases. I don't do it this
way, I use single words and this is how I do it.
So in the first box I tend to put in words related to things like book.
So it might be book journal, notebook, paperback.
If you're doing a hard cover, you might put in hard cover here and so on.
And I'd often use the first two lines or first two boxes for that.
Then I'd put in the target of the book. So it might be mom, dad,
grandma, grandpa. For this book it would be kids, children,
son, daughter, girl, boy. Now some people ask me,
how many words can you put in each box?
Well what will happen is if you put in too many, it will just stop.
You won't be able to put in anymore.
So there's no particular figure on the number of words.
It will be the a certain number of characters,
I don't remember what it is. So you can just keep typing until you fill up the
box, then go to the next box. So I might put in grandson, granddaughter,
and so we're filled up that box. So I'd go on to the next box granddaughter.
So just think who your target audience is.
And in here I might also put in things like age as well.
So six to eight and also put that in words, just correct that.
Then in the next row I tend to put in variations on the
descriptions of the book. So we've got puzzle activity.
Now you, again, you will notice some of these words are repeated in the title,
subtitle. That doesn't matter. I mentioned compendium before.
The only reason I picked that is because I just remember as a kid always getting
these big, uh, bumper books of puzzles and they will,
we're always called something like a compendium of puzzles,
but it may be a term that some people use in some countries. So I'd stick it in
there. And we'll put in animal and so on.
And then in the next box I tend to put in words related to gift,
gift ideas, presencts, that sort of thing.
Think about why people would be buying a particular book like this.
So it may be birthday, Christmas as well. So putting birthday,
Christmas, gift ideas, present,
holiday, travel.
People often buy puzzle books if they're going traveling on a long,
long journey. And again, you can see we've come to the end of that line.
So I'd go on to the next line.
And so you could see how I build my keywords in these seven keyword
boxes.
And it seems to work because Amazon will use combinations
of these words in different orders when they're indexing your book with
regards to keywords.
So that's your book now fully optimized for the keywords that you
want to target. And that in combination with things like a
good description,
good book cover that attracts customers to click on the book can go a long way
to giving your book the best chance of ranking on the first page when a customer
does a search for a particular product. Now, as I mentioned earlier,
having a list of keywords that you want to target really is pretty
much vital. And so you need to start with keyword research.
If you don't know how to do that,
then I suggest watching this video next on how I do my keyword
research with free tools. Thank you much for your time.
I hope you found that useful. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
And until next time, goodbye.