Amazon Keyword Research: A Complete Guide to Boost your Book Sales

You’ve poured your heart and soul into writing your book, and now it’s time to share it with the world. But simply uploading it to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) won’t guarantee sales. To make your book discoverable to potential readers, you need a powerful tool: Amazon keywords.

Keywords is one of the key aspects of Amazon algorithm that helps you optimize the book sales page. The article will help you understand the significance of keywords and the research process to find your book’s right keywords. 

What are Amazon Keywords?

Amazon keywords are the magic words that bring your book to the attention of eager readers. Just like you use Google to search for information, people use Amazon to find the products they desire. If you’ve written a sci-fi masterpiece about aliens and think simply using “alien” as your keyword will cut it, think again. Your ticket to success lies in strategically chosen keywords that boost your book’s visibility.

Steps to Research & Find the Right Amazon Keywords

When it comes to Amazon keyword research, long-string is your friend. Long-tail keywords, consisting of more than one word, are the secret sauce. Imagine you’re on the hunt for thrilling books; you wouldn’t just type “thrillers.” Instead, you’d search for “best thrillers of all time” or “top thrillers of the last decade.” Amazon allows you to use seven of these long-tail keywords when you publish your book.

Amazon keywords for authors have to be long-string. You might be wondering what is long-string concerning keywords. Long-string or long-tail keywords include more than one word; they are short phrases. 

When you publish your book in KDP, you are allowed to give seven long-tail keywords. It is always better to research and find more keywords since you can use the rest in book descriptions, review pitches, etc. Now, let us look at how to research and find the keywords for your book. 

1. Find keywords that People are Searching for.

Firstly, you need to know what type of books people are searching for on Amazon. To know that, open Amazon.com, and select “Kindle Store” from the menu that appears on the left side’s search bar.

Once you select the option, type in the word or phrase to which the book belongs. For example, if you have written a self-help book, type in the word self-help and look at the suggestions shown below.

These long-tail keywords that appear as suggestions are the popular keywords with which people are searching. All the recommendations you see below need not be used, but it is a good way to start. 

Note down these suggestions on your notepad or Word doc so that it is easier to find them all in one place. Remember, while trying to figure out the keywords to follow the Amazon keywords guidelines as well. 

2. Find Keywords from “Also Bought” Section

When you search for a specific book on Amazon, below that book sales page, you can see the section, “customers who bought this item also bought.” You need to pay attention to the books that appear in this section as well.

Browse through this section, and you would notice that there are books almost similar to your book or belong to the same type.  It means people who are looking for these books might be interested in your book as well.

So, browse through these titles and note the titles, authors, and keywords used to get a list of popular keywords searched by the users. 

Keyword Tools to Use

The steps mentioned above would have given you a list of keywords that can be used for your book. But before you make the final call, you need to know if there are substantial searches for the keywords you have found.

There are numerous tools available to find the total number of searches for each keyword received for each month. You can use any of these tools to make an informed choice:

1. Keyword Tool

It is a free tool that generates keyword ideas for you. You have to type in the particular word into the search bar, and it will give hundreds of long-tail keyword suggestions and also the search volume for each long-tail keyword. You would have to purchase the pro version to know the data like search volume.

2. Google Keyword Planner

It is a free keyword tool ideal for keyword-targeted Amazon ads. It might not be much helpful in deciding the long-tail keywords for your book. But you can anyway use it to get many keyword ideas and later filter the relevant ones from the list.

3. Keywords Everywhere

It is a browser plugin that is much easier to use. After installing the plugin, you need to enter the keyword in your Amazon search bar. The data, like search volume, etc., will automatically appear next to the search suggestions. You can check the data and choose the top keywords for your book.  

Doing keyword research and finding the right keywords for your book is a demanding job. But it is critical to do it to rank your book higher and be seen by thousands of Amazon users. You have invested so much time and effort to write the book, so it is only right to give the book the recognition it deserves. Keyword research ultimately decides your book’s success, so take that step and make your book the next bestseller.