Keywords are a valuable tool to get on an Amazon’s bestseller list.
Doing a relevant keyword search for your book takes a few steps to accomplish and it will be worth it in the long run of your book sales.
- Do a keyword search ‘Incognito Mode’. In Google Chrome, right-click on the Google Chrome icon and a list should appear. Click on ‘New Incognito Mode’. Type in ‘Amazon.com’ in the search bar (or whatever Amazon site you want to search in). Then start typing words you think would be a good fit for your book–the top 5 – 10 words/phrases that come up on the lists below the word you have entered are good keywords as that list pertains to what people are searching for. You can also add phrases to the keyword search, such as: fantasy for kids; fantasy books for children, kid’s fantasy, etc. This is a long and somewhat painful process, but the reason you’ll want to search ‘Incognito Mode’ is because if you search on your regular browser your own search history will be included, which isn’t accurate as to what other people are searching for. Note: Other browsers, such as Firefox, will have ‘New Private Window’ instead of ‘Incognito Mode’ listed, but I have found Google Chrome to be the best for private browsing mode.
- Search the book descriptions of the top 10 – 20 books you’ve found in relevant categories on Amazon and you’ll probably find that many of these books have some of the same keywords in their book descriptions–you’ll want to take note of those keywords, especially if the book is doing well in a category.
- You’ll want to find at least 10 – 15 great and excellent keywords to ad to your own book description.
If you want to advertise on Amazon (by manually adding keywords) and need to find those valuable keywords, follow the above procedures and a few more steps to your search by doing the following:
- Find good keywords by searching for books and authors on Amazon that are writing in your genre/categories and performing well; add those titles and author names that are showing up in the top 20 books in relevant categories.
- Search for up to 1000 keywords (which is the maximum Amazon allows in advertising campaigns) instead of just 10 – 15 words that you would use for your book description and, of course, those 10 – 15 words you found should be included in your advertising campaign.
- Review and update keywords in your campaign every 6 months or so–take out non-performing keywords and add new keywords from your new keyword search.
Note: Updating a current campaign’s keywords is better than starting a new campaign because the current campaign will keep track of well-performing keywords.
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I have been running Amazon Ads for my bestselling book for about a year and a half, and the ad has been running at the 1000 keyword max for the last six months. Recently, after searching for some new keywords that might perform better than the 200 or so keywords (out of the 1000 maximum keywords running in the ad) getting no hits I was perplexed on how to take out keywords that weren’t performing well and add new keywords that may perform better. Amazon doesn’t give a straightforward answer to this problem on their advertising help page.
In case anyone else is having this problem, this is Amazon’s answer I received after I wrote to them about the issue:
Once your ad is live, you can edit the budget, cost-per-click, duration (the end date for a running campaign, or the start date for not started campaign), and keywords (Sponsored Products only)
To edit your campaign settings:
1. Sign in to your Amazon Advertising account at advertising.amazon.com with your KDP credentials.
2. Select the campaign you want to edit by clicking on the name.
3. Click the “Targeting” tab and click on the keywords checkboxes you want to delete and then click Archive to delete the keyword.
4. Click Add Keyword
5. Click “Save”
I hope this article helps you with the mystery of keywords.