how to do keyword research for kdp

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Make Your Book More Discoverable with Keywords

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How to add and update keywords

Best practices, useful keyword types, keywords to avoid, other metadata and keyword tips.

• Sign in to KDP .
• Go to your Bookshelf and click the ellipsis button ("…") under the KINDLE EBOOK ACTIONS , PAPERBACK ACTIONS , or HARDCOVER ACTIONS menu next to your book.
• Select Edit Details for your book format.
• Under the Keywords section, add/edit your keywords.
• Go to the bottom of the page, and click Save and Continue .
• Once you reach the book Pricing page, click the Publish button at the bottom of the page.
• Combine keywords in the most logical order. Customers search for "military science fiction" but probably not for "fiction science military"
• Use up to seven keywords or short phrases. Keep an eye on the character limit in the text field
• Before publishing, search using keywords you’re considering on Amazon. If you get irrelevant or unsatisfying results, make some changes. When searching, look at the suggestions that appear in the "Search" field drop down
• Think like a reader. Imagine how you'd search if you were a customer
• Setting (Colonial America)
• Character types (single dad, veteran)
• Character roles (strong female lead)
• Plot themes (coming of age, forgiveness)
• Story tone (dystopian, feel-good)
• Information covered elsewhere in your book's metadata (title, contributors, etc.)
• Words already mentioned in your book categories (e.g. 19th Century History)
• Subjective claims about quality (e.g. "best novel ever")
• Time-sensitive statements ("new," "on sale," "available now")
• Information common to most items in the category ("book")
• Spelling errors
• Variants of spacing, punctuation, capitalization, and pluralization ("80GB" and "80 GB," "computer" and "computers", etc.). Exception: Words translated in more than one way (e.g. "Mao Zedong" or "Mao Tse-tung," "Hanukkah" or "Chanukah"
• Anything misrepresentative like the name of an author not associated with your book. This kind of information can create a confusing customer experience. Kindle Direct Publishing has a zero tolerance policy for metadata that is meant to advertise, promote, or mislead
• Brands that you do not own or that you are unauthorized to use
• Quotation marks in search terms. Single words work better than phrases, and specific words work better than general ones. If you enter "complex suspenseful whodunit," only people who type all of those words will find your book. For better results, enter this: complex suspenseful whodunit. Customers can search for any of those words and find your book
• Amazon program names like as "Kindle Unlimited" or "KDP Select"
• Customers are more likely to skim past long titles (over 60 characters)
• Focus your book's description on the book's content
• Make sure your book's metadata adhere to KDP's guidelines
• Your keywords can capture useful, relevant information that won't fit in your title and description (setting, character, plot, theme, etc.)
• You can change keywords and descriptions as often as you like
• If your book is available in different formats (physical, audio), keep your keywords and description consistent across formats

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Total KDP Select Author Earnings

June 2024

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$56.1 Million

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How to do KDP Keyword Research and Sell More Books on Amazon

KDP Keywords are essential for getting your books ranked on the Amazon searches and seen by customers. When used correctly in your book listings they give your book a better chance of getting free organic traffic from Amazon and, therefore, a better chance of making sales. We will take a look at what keywords are, why they are so important and how to do KDP keyword research to find those valuable search terms that can be used in your Amazon KDP no content and low content book listings on Amazon.

Although this article is aimed at no content, low content and medium content book publishers the same research process can also be applied if you are a regular fiction or non-fiction author or publisher.

What are KDP Keywords?

Simply put, KDP keywords are those search terms that customers enter into the search bar on Amazon when they are looking for something to buy. They are commonly a string of 2 to 3 words but can be a single word or many words depending on what the customer is searching for.

Why are KDP Keywords Important?

KDP keywords are important because if you know what customers are actually searching for you can give it to them, increasing your chances of making a sale. There is no guessing.

For example, if you know that a customer is searching for an ‘adult coloring book with animals’ then you can optimize your book listing by using that keyword or related keywords in the title, subtitle and description of your book. So now, when a customer types that search term into the search bar on Amazon there is an increased chance that your book will appear.

If your book is exactly what the customer is searching for then the greater the chance you will get that sale, provided your book is of sufficient quality and appeal of course.

The skill comes in finding KDP keywords that customers are typing into the search bar which is what we will explore in depth.

The aim is to get your book ranked high up on the first page of the search result listings when a customer searches for a product. This will get the most traffic and the most eyeballs on your book and so more chance that someone clicks on your book and buys it.

Where to Start with KDP Keyword Research

When starting out with your kdp keyword research the best place to start is the Amazon search bar on Amazon itself. This is a great starting point to do free research and will get you a lot of useful information.

After you’ve decided on what type of book you’re going to publish, or niche of your book, the first thing to do is to enter a broad search term related to your book into the search bar on Amazon.

I recommend doing your KDP keyword research on Amazon.com, the U.S. site and not your local country specific Amazon site. Amazon.com is by far the biggest market for your books, will give you the most sales and provide the most useful data. If your book is specific to your country or a different language specific country then by all means do your research on that particular Amazon site.

Now, one important point, as you can see I am searching in the ‘All’ category. There are a number of reasons for this which I covered in a video on my channel but the main reason is because this is where customers are actually doing their searches. It is unlikely they are going to go to the ‘Books’ category straight away. They would normally open up Amazon and dive straight into their search. So by searching in the ‘All’ category we get to see what our customers are seeing.

How to Find Amazon KDP Keywords

So, when you enter a search term you will notice a list appears.

These are all search terms or keywords that are related to the search term you entered into the search bar. These are gold. These are the keywords you are after.

Amazon is actually telling you what people are searching for and customers will tend to click on these keywords if they see something that matches their interest. And those keywords near the top of the list will be clicked on more often than those at the bottom of the list.

So what you need to do is open up a spreadsheet – I write all mine down on a Google sheets spreadsheet but the choice is yours. I write them down under a column called keywords. How original!

Assessing Keyword Competition

Now not all keywords are the same. Some will be more popular than others (those towards the top of the Amazon suggestion list) and some will have a lot of competition in the Amazon listings. That is, a lot of other publishers creating similar books.

An example of a popular keyword would be ‘adult coloring book’, as we’ve used in the example above. These sell extremely well, making a lot of money for their publishers, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month. The problem is that there are a lot of other publishers who also want a slice of the pie and so there are many adult coloring books listed on Amazon and, therefore, creating a lot of competition.

The chances of publishing one of these books and it appearing even on the first page of the search results would be slim. In order to get it to rank there you would probably have to run a paid advertising campaign and send outside traffic to the book from sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and your own website. And it would probably take a couple of years to get your book ranking organically.

Now take the opposite end of the spectrum, a ‘17th century french poetry book’. The competition in the search results on Amazon is a lot lower and, therefore, would be a lot easier to rank one of these books high on the first page of the Amazon searches. However, the problem is that these books are not very popular and so you wouldn’t make any sales.

So the strategy I suggest is to aim for the middle ground, to balance that popularity and competition. Find those keywords that are still popular enough that books make sales but that don’t have a large amount of competition.

How do we do this? Glad you asked.

When you enter a search term into the search bar on Amazon and hit enter you will notice in the top left Amazon tells you the number of search results.

The higher that number the greater the number of results and, therefore, competition. The converse is true – the lower the number means less competition.

So this gives you an idea of the competition for the keywords you’ve found.

So, you would then take each keyword you found, enter it into the search bar, take a note of the number of search results and enter it into a second column on your spreadsheet, labelled ‘Amazon Search Results’.

So now you are starting to build a list of keywords that you know customers are searching for and you also now have an idea of the competition – the number of search results.

What I recommend doing, at this stage, is removing keywords unrelated to your product or don’t enter them into your spreadsheet in the first place.

What is a Good KDP Keyword?

After publishing over 2400 no content and low content books on Amazon I started to get an idea of what number of search results constitutes a lot of competition and what constitutes low competition. And I came up with a simple rule:

Low competition keywords are keywords with search results of less than 1000. (And remember, that’s in the All category, not the Books category).

From experience I’ve found that if I use these keywords in my books, with 1000 search results or less, I have a very good chance of ranking on the first page of Amazon.

Those with search results of greater than 1000 are not off the table. It just means in order to rank on the first page organically you may have to start thinking about running an Amazon Ads campaign to get your book seen and make sales or running some other marketing campaign to drive traffic to your book. Eventually, after getting a sales history and building reviews your book would start to rank organically in the listings.

An organic ranking just means a ranking based on the Amazon algorithm and not dependent on ads.

Building a KDP Keyword Spreadsheet

So now you have that initial list of keywords from your first search in your spreadsheet. When you enter each keyword into the Amazon search bar to find the number of search results you will also find that more search terms appear in the suggestions. These also go down in your spreadsheet. So pretty soon your spreadsheet will begin to grow and grow.

I often use a free Chrome plugin installed on my browser called AMZ Suggestion Expander. This will give you even more suggestions when you search on Amazon. Like the suggestions Amazon gives you, these keywords are also being searched for on Amazon by customers.

AMZ Suggestion Expander is free but if you want even more functionality there is a pro version available too.

And yes, you guessed it, these also go into your spreadsheet and your list of keywords will rapidly grow in size.

You will eventually get to the point where no new keywords appear and they start repeating themselves. At that point you can stop.

Keywords Everywhere Plugin

This next step is useful but not essential. I have an additional Chrome browser plugin installed called Keywords Everywhere. Currently, with the free version, when you perform a search on Amazon a list of numbers often appear next to the suggestions.

You will notice I have some additional information and those pretty looking blue sales graphs. That is because I pay $10 for 100,000 search credits. This seems to last me a long time but how quickly you use up the credits will depend on how much research you’re doing and the plugin settings.

These numbers are the number of Google searches per month. It can tell you if that keyword is also popular in the Google searches and that just gives us some extra information. If a keyword has a lot of Google searches it can indicate that a keyword is popular and has some potential extra search traffic from Google and it’s possible your Amazon listing could also appear in the Google searches.

So, back to our spreadsheet. I create a third column and name it ‘Google Monthly Searches’. In this column go those figures. Many of the keywords you find won’t have any monthly Google searches listed at all but that’s ok, it’s just a bit of extra useful information to give you an edge over the competition.

So now you’ve created your spreadsheet using this free method and will now have a good list of high and low competition keywords.

The method can be made quicker and you can get some further information by using paid tools such as Helium 10 or Publisher Rocket , my favorite KDP keyword research tools, but they are not essential, especially when starting out.

This research has helped me get my books ranked and seen on the first page of the Amazon search results and, as a result, build consistent sales. I’ve also performed research on many different KDP low content and medium content niches and published lists of these keywords in my Gumroad shop. Some are free and some are paid for.

The next step is then to use those keywords correctly in your KDP book listings which I will cover in another post. You can also watch this video on how I use KDP keywords to get books ranked on Amazon:

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Home / Book Marketing / How To Choose the Right Kindle Keywords and Reach More Readers

How To Choose the Right Kindle Keywords and Reach More Readers

Whether you’re a famous author or this is your first book, Kindle Keywords are an important part of any book marketing strategy.

Kindle keywords allow your book to be discovered by hungry shoppers on the world's largest book market, Amazon, even while you sleep.

They help make it so that your book gets discovered without having to do major marketing . Plain and simple, they are important.

So, if you have an incredible book, but don’t know how to get it in front of the right readers, then THIS is the article for you.

• What exactly are Kindle Keywords
• How they help both fiction and nonfiction authors
• How to find profitable kindle keywords
• Kindle keyword tools that will help
• How to increase your book rankings and increase your sales

Table of contents

What are kindle keywords & how do they sell books.

• How To Find Profitable KDP Keywords
• Step 1 : Find the Most Searched Amazon Book Keywords
• Step 2 : Find Kindle Keywords That Shoppers Will Actually Pay For
• Step 3 : Check the Kindle Keyword Competition
• Keyword Example for Fiction:
• Keyword Examples for NonFiction:
• The Best Tool For Finding Profitable Keywords
• I’ve Got Kindle Keywords, Now What?

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.

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, a Kindle Keyword should be a phrase or word that:

• Shoppers actually type into Amazon
• Shoppers will actually pay money for
• 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.

In order for our book to be found by shoppers, we need to know what terms shoppers type into Amazon – otherwise, our target keywords will be useless. Luckily, Amazon created a function in their search box that guesses what you are going to type into it based on the popularity of particular terms from other shoppers typing things into it – the autofill function.

How to Do it Manually

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

• Ensure you are using Incognito mode on your browser so that your previous information doesn't affect what Amazon shows you. If you aren't familiar with this, or how to do it, then check out this video .
• Start typing in a word, and look to see what Amazon immediately pre-populates in the search box.
• 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.

An example of Step 4 is:

“Science Fiction a”…then, “Science Fiction b”…then, “Science Fiction c”…

And so on…You would do this with every letter of the alphabet – even ‘z’ – and look to see how Amazon completes your search phrase. You’d be surprised what Amazon will come up with!

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.

How to Do it with Publisher Rocket

Now, the above steps don’t tell you how popular they are; they only tell you that people type this into Amazon. If you’d like to know how many people type those words into Amazon, you’d need a tool like Publisher Rocket . Publisher Rocket will not only list all those keywords for you, it will also tell you how many people type it into Amazon – thus giving you better information.

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.

This is not just a color assigned to specific numbers. It also uses historical data and an intricate analysis system to decide if that keyword is more likely to end with a sale. So while you might see a yellow keyword even if the search volume is higher than a green keyword, you know it's still a better match to go with the green.

Use Publisher Rocket's Category Keywords Tool to Start

If you're using Publisher Rocket, you also have access to a cool feature under the categories section. Once there, you can search through various categories, find the categories that best suit your book, then look at the keywords that it suggests.

This not only helps you find seed keywords that you can plug into the keyword tool to find more, but it also helps your book rank for the appropriate category.

That's why I recommend that at least 1-2 of your 7 keywords should be category-inspired, meaning they should be keywords that confirm to Amazon that your book should be in that category.

Shoppers may type in the above words, but that doesn’t mean they’ll find what they are looking for or decide to purchase. There are some terms out there that might get a LOT of searches but just don’t get sales. That’s why this step is important.

To find out if a kindle keyword is making money, first, do a search for that keyword in Amazon. Then click on the top three books that show up for that search.

Next, go to their Amazon Best Seller Rank (ABSR), copy, and paste it into my Kindle Calculator . This calculator will convert the ABSR of a book or kindle into estimated sales that day.

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.

[clickToTweet tweet=”The right kindle keywords can make or break your book sales. Choose wisely with these steps, my friends” quote=”The right kindle keywords can make or break your book sales. Choose wisely with these steps, my friends #SelfPub”]

If you want to do this properly, you should analyze not just the top three results on your search, but all of the high-ranking books for each of your keywords. If you're doing this manually, it can take up to an hour per keyword to do this well.

To save you time when doing this, Publisher Rocket will 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.

Alrighty then…now that we know which keywords get searched and help to sell books, let’s look at the level of competition and see if we can get our foot in the door.

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.

As you can see, we NEED to beat the top ranking books (1-5) in order to benefit from the Amazon Kindle keyword shoppers. Otherwise, your keyword won’t help you.

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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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!
• 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!

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.

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.

Basically, when you find those keywords that are green for search volume and competition, you've likely found a keyword that will sell books.

This is vital information if you want to understand your competition for a keyword. Get it right, and there will be no stopping your book from ranking well for that keyword. I highly recommend you 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:

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:

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 .

Let's take a look at a Nonfiction example:

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.

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

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.

[clickToTweet tweet=”To Sell More Books, Kindle Keywords should be a FIRST thought…not an AFTERthought. #BookMarket” quote=”To Sell More Books, Kindle Keywords should be a FIRST thought…not an AFTERthought. #BookMarket”]

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.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

How important is choosing the right keyword for your book launch.

Choosing the right keyword for your book launch on Amazon is very important. Amazon has what I call the “Amazon Popularity Effect”, which is that books with higher sales and conversions gain increased visibility through a greater number of keywords.

This means that when a book sells well, Amazon's algorithm responds by associating the book with more keywords and improving its ranking for those keywords.

Consequently, selecting the most effective keywords, combined with good book launch strategies like spreading out promotions and ad cost to maintain consistent sales, can result in a much wider net of keywords to rank for.

Additionally, Amazon does give preferential treatment to newer books, so having the right keywords up front just maximizes your discoverability. You can read more about this here .

How Much Do Free Downloads Affect the ABSR?

Sometimes authors will set their book for free, in order to get more downloads. However, we've noticed that Amazon has significantly reduced the positive effects of using free downloads to increase ABSR ranking.

What this means, is that while getting free downloads might boost your ABSR for a paid book (once you free promotion ends), the effect is significantly reduced, compared to what it would have been had you have the same number of purchases as you did free downloads.

Should My Keywords Be Broad or Niche?

Recently, Amazon's algorithm has increasingly favored longer-tail keywords instead of broad keywords.

What this means, is that you should be more specific with your keywords: think “epic elf adventure” instead of “fantasy”.

To know what makes a good keyword, use a tool like Publisher Rocket to find keyword terms that might have fewer searches per month, but a more specific keyword. For example:

Even though that long-tail keyword has fewer searches, we analyze the historical and competitive history of the keyword and mark them as green if they're more likely to make a sale.

Will Keywords Get You Into Specific Categories?

Yes, picking the right keywords will help ensure you are selected for, or stay in, certain categories.

You see, even though Amazon lets you choose up to 3 categories yourself, they reserve the right to remove you from those categories, or place you in others.

What this means, is that you have to keep your book relevant. And one of the ways you do that is with your keywords.

For instance, if you selected keywords that did not match your selected categories at all, Amazon might remove you from those categories.

So if you want to be in a specific category, make sure you have keywords that match those categories and make sense for your book.

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!

• 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
• Kindle Rankings: Categories vs. Keywords
• Do You Need Keywords to Get Into Certain Book Categories?
• International Book Categories
• Amazon Popularity Effect
• The HoneyMoon Effect
• Publisher Rocket Review
• Amazon Book Sales Calculator

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

• What Are Kindle Keywords & How Do They Sell Books?

Related Posts

How to write a book description that captivates readers (and sell books), how to become an organized author, sell more books on amazon, amazon kindle rankings e-book.

Learn how to rank your Kindle book #1 on Amazon with our collection of time-tested tips and tricks.

74 thoughts on “ How To Choose the Right Kindle Keywords and Reach More Readers ”

just fyi free KWfinder is down to 2 a day

Seriously? Ah…that’s not as cool anymore. 🙁 Used to be a perfect amount for the non-seo’ers out there. 🙁

“But to completely snub this simple tactic is like the Fellowship of the Ring not using the eagles to fly to Mordor…they still got there, but only after a ridiculously long period of serious struggles and some bumps along the way.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The eagles are NOT a taxi service! They are a highly intelligent species that have free will and their own form of government! Not only that, but do you think Sauron would have hesitated to shoot them all down the moment they were spotted in the sky? The purpose of the Fellowship of the Ring and the linchpin of the entire strategy decided on in Rivendell was to destroy the Ring in a mission of secrecy!

haha…fair enough.

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How To Find The Best KDP Keywords For Kindle Ebooks And Books

Two of the most searched for phrases on our site are Amazon KDP keywords tool and KDP keyword research.

When you publish a new book, finding your best seven Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) keywords can often prove to be a challenging task. This is especially true for new authors. Even some seasoned self-publishing authors find it an arduous job.

From this, it is clear many authors are looking for help in choosing the best keywords for KDP and Amazon books. You need to understand what relevant keywords do and how to use them to help your book marketing.

Also, how they work on Amazon and how to find keywords that are the most productive for your books. The crucial piece of advice is to first understand the basics of KDP keyword research for books.

Article Contents

What are Amazon KDP keywords?

Search engines use keywords.

Google, Bing, and also Amazon want to understand what a website, web page, product, or in the case of authors, a book is about.

It is like a blog post, and it is why keywords for optimizing your product, that is, your book, are so relevant.

Each of these search engines uses similar types of algorithms to quickly analyze a web page.

The analysis of a web page takes only microseconds.

An algorithm doesn’t read the whole text as a human would do.

Instead, it looks for key phrases and repeated words.

It also looks for words that occur in the title and main heading tags of a page.

These are sometimes called a seed keyword .

You could think of them as bullet points to get you started.

SEO and Amazon keywords

You may have heard of the term  SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and SEO is now big business.

Good keyword optimization of a website or online store results in more web traffic and more sales, and the same applies to Amazon.

The best way to achieve this is through the skill of selecting relevant search keywords or phrases for your Amazon listing.

You can also include them in your book description to help your book appear in Amazon search results.

At the same time, keywords are highly competitive. There are so many businesses and people trying to get traffic from the same or similar keywords.

Think for a moment about all the companies online that are selling shoes.

The keyword shoes is obviously highly fought for, as are sandals ,  trainers , Nike, and slippers .

Corporations and businesses spend a lot of money on SEO when they create content.

Keywords are the best way to attract clicks to their websites and online advertising, so keyword competition is fierce.

To cut to the chase, the Internet runs on keywords, and so does Amazon.

That is why the selection of your seven Amazon KDP keywords is so vitally important.

If you have books listed on Amazon, you are an Amazon seller.

So you want Amazon shoppers to find your books in search results.

Amazon SEO is all about finding a specific keywords that will result in shoppers using search terms or search queries to find your Amazon product – your book.

How to choose Amazon KDP keywords

Amazon KDP keywords for authors need to be long-tail. What is a long-tail keyword ?

Long-tail keywords consist of more than one word, so in fact, they are short phrases of up to 50 characters.

Many authors misunderstand this when selecting Amazon book keywords.

Never think that an Amazon keyword for books should be only one word. It is not the case at all.

Each one of your seven Amazon KDP keywords, sometimes called backend keywords, should always be more than one word.

If you use one-word Kindle keywords in your selection, you will face extremely tough competition. As a result, your book will rank extremely low for them.

Think here of seller central merchant words for shoe sellers. The keyword shoes would be worthless.

Better selections would be sports shoes for children , summer shoes for men, or Italian leather shoes .

Real Amazon shoppers on the K indle Store rarely use one word when they type a search term.

So, the aim for you is to find short word sets that will attract people to your book.

Using long-tail, multi-word, or semantic keywords is going to bring you much more success.

The search volume or the number of people who will use the phrase will be lower than for a one-word keyword. But the keyword competition will also be much lower.

In this way, your book title will have a better chance of being discovered by Amazon customers in a product listing when they search for a new book.

KDP keywords research with Publisher Rocket (Paid)

There are many free as well as premium online SEO tools that can help you find appropriate long-tail keywords and keyword suggestions.

But by far, Publisher Rocket is the most popular KDP research tool * to find Amazon keywords and categories.

It is a KDP keyword tool that gives you real-time data showing you exactly what Amazon book buyers type into Amazon search.

The program gives you access to sales earnings, search volume, and a competitive score for each keyword suggestion.

You can search for the best keywords and categories, check competitors, and search for AMS keywords for Amazon PPC ads.

But it’s not free. It costs $97.00. However, you only pay once, and the program is updated regularly.

If you are a new author, you will need to decide if the investment is worthwhile for you.

The software is the fastest and most efficient way to do your Amazon keyword research.

You will discover a long list of keywords for books in your genre.

Using this Amazon KDP keyword generator will help you find the best seven Kindle keywords for your books and your two categories.

Both are vital for your success.

Publisher Rocket Pros and Cons

Before you consider buying Publisher Rocket *, here are some of the main advantages and disadvantages.

⇑ Gives you full access to Amazon books, ebooks, and audiobook data. ⇑ Very easy to learn how to use for keyword and category research. ⇑ One-time payment, not an annual subscription. ⇑ Regular free updates.

⇓ No free trial version. (Only a 30-day refund). ⇓ Extra clicks are required to load full keyword data. ⇓ Data is only available from Amazon US, UK, and DE. ⇓ No Linux version. PC and macOS only.

But even if you don’t use Publisher Rocket, you can use the free Amazon book description generator .

Free Amazon keyword search tools

Free tools to search for Amazon keyword ideas can help you find some usable Amazon KDP keywords.

There are too many tools to list in this article. However, you can refer to another one of our articles listing several free Amazon Keyword tools .

You can also use Google to search for a free Amazon KDP keywords tool , you will find plenty to choose from.

All of them work similarly to any keyword research tool.

You type in a word or two, and they will suggest a list of keyword phrases for you.

You are probably already using one of the best free long-tail keyword search tools and don’t even realize it.

Google your KDP keywords (Free)

Google is a great free KDP keywords tool to start looking for long-tail keywords.

It gives you suggestions for real keyword terms that people have already used to search, and it’s such a simple process to find them.

I will give you an example and use my starting one-word keyword, vampire.

It would be a terrible choice as a KDP keyword because it is definitely highly competitive.

In other words, it is already used by thousands upon thousands of other books and products.

So, here’s my search for a better long-tail keyword for my vampire title.

When the search loaded, I immediately scrolled down to the bottom of the page.

Here is the box with my first long-tail suggestions that people have used when searching for vampires.

Yes, Google can give you real long-tail keyword suggestions.

These are eight very good suggestions and examples of keywords for books.

Then I clicked on vampire history from the list above and again scrolled to the bottom of the page.

Yes, more new suggestions. Next, I clicked on vampire legends to bring up eight more keyword ideas.

I could keep repeating the process and finding new keyword suggestions.

But from three clicks that took only seconds, this quick search probably contains three or four potentially good keywords.

I would probably pick becoming a vampire , where do vampires live, and do vampires exist  to add to my research list.

But remember that these are Google search keywords and not Amazon keywords.

However, it does give you a guide to how people search for a topic and what words they use.

Use Amazon Search for long-tail keywords (Free)

Similar to Google, you can find plenty of keyword ideas from Amazon Search that people have (really) used to find products on Amazon.

It’s probably the best free KDP keywords tool.

Again, add your single keyword and look for keyword phrase ideas. Let’s do vampires again.

Once again, you have a few more keyword ideas to save.

Amazon doesn’t give you an extensive list, but by adding and to your search, you can find more alternatives.

Do your KDP keyword research

As you can see from the quick examples above, doing keyword research is not difficult.

You can use free online keyword tools, such as Google.

The only drawback of free keyword search tools is that they give only 8-10 results with no search volume data.

But whichever site, or combination of sites you use, add your newly discovered long-tail keywords to a list, perhaps in Excel or Word.

Then, when you have, say, thirty or forty, narrow down your list to the seven phrases that you think will best suit your book.

However, don’t delete or discard the others you collected because you might need to try them later.

It doesn’t matter in what genre your book is.

You can use the same process for romance, science fiction, or paranormal by concentrating on finding potential KDP keywords that are related to your book’s theme.

Keywords are always work in progress

Once you have decided on your seven best Amazon keywords and published your book, don’t think your keyword research is over. It is never over.

To make the very best of your seven keywords, you should be checking each one regularly each month in Amazon Search.

Discover which ones work best for you and which ones are doing nothing for your book’s discoverability.

At first, you might be horrified to find out that none of your keywords are working well for your book.

But relax; this is normal and part of the trial and error process of finding just the right keywords for your title.

When this happens, try more keywords from your existing list or find a few new keywords with your preferred KDP keyword tool and try again.

It might take you three or four attempts to get one genuinely high-ranking long-tail keyword, so don’t give up.

Keep your best keyword, but replace two or three under-performers again, and keep hunting for more.

SEO, keyword research, and finding the best Amazon KDP keywords for your book will be work in progress for you for a while yet.

But the effort it takes to research Amazon keywords will be worthwhile for you in the long term.

You will find perhaps four or five very strong, discoverable keywords that will continue to attract potential book buyers to your book for years to come.

*This article contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy a product or service we may earn a commission.

Related reading:  Amazon Keywords Character Limit Can Help You Improve Sales

About The Author

Derek Haines

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12 thoughts on “how to find the best kdp keywords for kindle ebooks and books”.

Many thanks Derek, very helpful!

Two thumbs up!

I am glad to get know of things I need to get know before i get published my own books, i totally hate embarassment

Awesome work!!

Do you recommend using the same keywords and categories for the Kindle and Paperback/Print version of the same book, or is it a completely new research process for each format?

You can use different categories and keywords for an ebook and paperback. In fact, it can help discovery and search by extending your searchable metadata.

Thanks for your articles, Derek. I have been fine-tuning my keywords, and would like to know how you evaluate keyword performance? When I do into my dashboard, I don’t see any information as to what searches got people to my books. Thanks!

Excellent, practical info. Thanks, Derek.

Hi,my name is Xieyang Tao, I just published my book also now on amazon for sale,but I do not how to choose keywords.

Self publishing is a tricky landscape. Landmines. You are a good minesweeper. THANK YOU.

Great helpful hints. I’m currently using KDP Sponsored Ads for both of my books. One is doing great and getting sufficient clicks and sales. While the other – not so good. I’ll try your method on the second book and see if sales pick up. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for this thorough and helpful information. I can see how knowing this is necessary. :) — Suzanne

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Amazon KDP Keywords – The Comprehensive Tutorial

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what steps to take to get keywords that will help your book get discovered on Amazon, I’m going to show you.

I’m going to show you both the long manual way, and I’ll also show you how to use Publisher Rocket to expedite this process and save yourself some time.

Why are keywords an area of focus in self-publishing?

Because it can make or break the success of your books.

Keywords aid in discoverability.

That being said, keywords will not sell your books for you.

That’s up to your book cover, description, and, of course, the content and quality of your book itself.

Let’s go!!!

Table of Contents

Glossary of Terms

Exact Match Keyword – Keyword phrases with nothing extra added. These are the exact search terms you researched. No more, no less.

Longtail Keyword – Longer keyword phrases that are more concise than your root keyword. These are easier to rank for.

Root Keyword – Your main keyword. For example, if your book is a werebear shapshifter romance, that’s your root keyword.

Amazon KDP Keywords – The Hard Way

1. Write a list of words that accurately describe your book.

If someone asked you what your book is about, but you could only use a few words to describe it, what would they be?

Don’t overthink it.

Also, don’t get too attached to these words because this list is going to change, evolve, shrink, and grow.

2. Install DS Amazon Quick View.

DS Amazon Quick View is a free Chrome extension that shows your product details (including books) on Amazon inside the search results.

Just grab the free version. It will suffice. I’ve never had to use the paid version.

This plugin prevents you from having to click on each product, visit the product page, and scroll down to find the information you’re looking for. You can see it directly in your search results instead.

Next you need to enable DS Amazon Quick View for Incognito Mode.

In Google Chrome, click the ellipsis menu (three dots) and click  Settings .

Click Extensions in the left navigation.

Click the Details button on the extension.

Toggle on Allow in incognito .

Let’s try it out!

3. Open your browser in Incognito Mode by pressing Ctrl Shift N .

Because if you use a regular browser window or tab, the results are tailored to your interests and browse history. We’re not marketing to you! So, we need to broaden our search by going incognito. It will be like you’re a brand new person!

NOTE: Don’t get obsessed with first page placement. You will not accomplish that right out of the gate. It takes time, marketing, and patience. Trying to find your book in the search results is not a good use of your time. Each person gets customized search results based on what they’ve bought before and what they’ve searched before.

Got to https://amazon.com and select Books from the drop-down menu.

4. Type the first word from a keyword in your list.

Don’t press Enter. Let auto suggest do its thing.

Jot down any keywords that are suggested that you feel apply to your book. Initially, we want 3 or 4 dozen total from all the words in your list.

If you’re in doubt about any keywords, toss them. Be 100% certain each keyword is a great descriptor of your work. If it’s not, it will only confuse customers and stifle your book sales.

The goal is to have 12 to 24 solid keywords when we’re done.

Repeat this process for each keyword from your brainstorming session.

5. Search each keyword in your list on Amazon.

Look up each keyword and focus on the number of products associated with that keyword in the top-left corner.

If the keyword search results are under 1,000, that’s great! If there are like 80,000 or over 100,000, you will want to find some alternatives.

That’s going to be a touch niche or keyword to break into.

To be clear, you can still use a keyword if there is an insane amount of search volume if the keyword is a great descriptor of your book. Keep it and ignore the search volume.

This is where you see DS Amazon Quick View do its work.

You can easily view the Amazon Best Seller Rank (ASBR) without having to open each product page to see it.

NOTE: The ASBR is based on the number of products in a given category or product type. The number of sales dictates the placement and ranking. The more sales you have, the closer your book will be to number one. The fewer sales you have, your book will be farther away from number one.

We want to see an average ABSR of below 100,000. That is roughly one sale per day.

A rank higher than that, like a million, means the demand simply isn’t there for this keyword. If your average ASBR is 100, you’re in for a heck of a fight and you may never see first-page placement.

Why do you want first-page placement?

Because who has the time to scroll through pages and pages of products? The closer you are to the top of the first page, the more likely you are to get a sale.

As you’re doing your Amazon KDP keyword research, be mindful of particularly great keywords that meet the following criteria:

• Match your book perfectly
• Have a reasonable amount of products
• An average ASBR that is between 10,000 and 100,000

That is going to translate to between 12 and 24 sales per day.

6. Clean up your list.

By now, you should have a giant list of keywords.

Separate the really good ones from the just okay keywords. We want 1 to 4 exact match keywords to use in our 7 keyword slots during the Amazon KDP publishing process.

As for the rest of the keywords, match up and pair keywords that have some type of overlap, like sharing a common word.

The key to the 7 Amazon KDP keywords is to fill each of the 50-character slots as much as you can.

Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur did a detailed cast study on this topic. You should definitely read that to get a better understanding of how to use keywords during the publishing process.

Dave and his team tested filling the keyword slots completely vs. filling them with exact match keywords. Exact match keywords are the exact search phrase with nothing else. That’s all that’s in the box. They found that 3 to 6 slots filled to the brim work well, with 1 to 4 of those having exact match keywords.

So, use up those 50 characters as much as possible. Amazon will take care of the rest.

Don’t duplicate your root keyword. Have multiple root keywords. The root keyword is your main keyword that you use to find longtail keywords.

7. Organize.

Use a spreadsheet or some other tracking tool to keep up with your keywords. I track the date I’m researching and implementing my keywords and the list of keywords I’m using. That way I can easily troubleshoot and make sure my keywords are actually holding some type of relevancy on Amazon.

8. Use the leftovers.

Don’t toss out the keywords left over from your research! We are going to use them! You can incorporate them into a variety of areas, including:

• Your book description
• Your author bio
• Everywhere!

FUN FACT: Did you know that you have a totally separate author bio for each of your books? I’m not even including the Author Central one.

If you’re not using a customized author bio for each book, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to further optimize your listing for search.

Amazon KDP Keywords – The Easy Way

I think it’s important that you understand how to find keywords the hard way. That kind of hands-on approach helps you understand the process better. It’s also free and if you’re just starting out or you are cash-strapped, you can still get the job done.

However, there is an easier way to do Amazon KDP keyword research that will save you a ton of time.

I mentioned Dave Chesson earlier. Well, he’s developed a great piece of software for doing Amazon KDP keyword research called Publisher Rocket .

I literally skip steps 2 through 5. That may not seem like a lot, but those are the most time-consuming steps.

See it in action in this video:

Now You Know How To Do Amazon KDP Keyword Research

That’s all there is to it. Once you understand everything in this article, then you can master Amazon KDP keywords. I’ll keep this updated should any new information surface.

If there’s anything you’re having trouble understanding, please let me know in the comments below, and I’ll cover it in future updates. You could help someone else having the same struggle.

Let’s keep looking forward!

A beginner's guide to Amazon KDP keyword research

• Amazon Kindle keywords are what people normally type in search to find books they'd like to read.
• Using the right keywords ensures your book appears in front of the right audience for the right search terms.
• You can find how people search for free using Amazon and Google. There are more advanced tools which can show you more advanced information, such as search volume. 

Are you a budding writer keen to start selling books online? The only thing standing in your way is a publisher. Lucky for you, nowadays you can just bypass that hurdle! Authors and intrepid booksellers can self-publish pretty easily using Amazon KDP.

It’s easy to get that book out, but harder to get eyes on it, which is why every Amazon KDP author needs a guide to finding the right keywords to put up ads for!

This guide covers all the free ways you can do keywords research (we also feature more advanced paid tools too!) and the latest best practice.

What is Amazon KDP?

Before we can dive into keyword research, what is Amazon KDP? It stands for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, and to put it simply its Amazon’s self-publishing platform.

Amazon’s KDP is one of the tools authors can use to self-publish their book online. Publishing through KDP makes an eBook available on Amazon to Kindle readers. Authors can sell ebooks, paperbacks and even hardcovers! All physical copies are produce on demand.

Another perk besides just ease and speed of publishing, is that you can earn up to 70% royalties per sale depending on the region.

To create a "Title" (what Amazon calls your book project), you'll need:

• The final manuscript which will allow you start creating your book.
• Your book cover file(s). You can publish only as an ebook, paperback or hardback... or all three at the same time!
• The book description and to pick the categories which are relevant to your book.
• Choose the right keywords so people searching for books like yours can find it!
• ISBNs are free and included with Amazon KDP. But you can still buy one yourself if you want (how it comes with a few caveats )

How long does it take to successfully self-publish on Amazon?

Books are normally reviewed and published within the day, but it may take up to 72 hours. Your book will then appear on Amazon Books and Kindle and potential readers will be able to find it!

What are Amazon Kindle keywords?

Keywords are what potential readers type in Amazon's search when looking for a book. It's the keyword phrases which have the potential to surface your book in the search results.

The better and more relevant the keywords, the higher the chance your book will appear in front of the right reader (and higher up at that!).

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.

How to know if the keywords you pick are actually good?

As mentioned, relevancy is key but there are a couple of other important aspects to it. Ideally, when choosing book keywords you'd want them to be:

• Phrases people actually use to search for books.
• Keywords which surface your book in front of people willing to buy your book.
• Carefully picked because some keywords are low competition.

Example keywords for fiction books:

If you're writing a fictional book you can use the following keyword ideas:

• Character type and/or role (strong female, single dad)
• Plot and theme (young adult, adventure)
• The tone of the story (feel-good, profound)
• Setting (time, place)
• Genre or genre flavour (epic love story, wholesome)

Example keywords for non-fiction books:

When writing non-fiction you can focus on keywords which give a flavour of what the book is about. You can ask yourself the following questions and the answers is what you can use as keywords:

• What is your target audience?
• What would the reader gain after reading your book?
• What are the main highlights and key insights?

Amazon has a pretty comprehensive list of types of keywords to avoid. Some of the advice is quite obvious but here are some things worth remembering:

• Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes.
• Avoid using subjective works like "best novel ever".
• Avoid anything that can be viewed as misrepresentative.
• Common, broad descriptive words (book, novel, ebook).
• Don't use time-sensitive keywords like "on sale", "new" or "available now".
• Don't use Amazon's own brand names like "Kindle", "Kindle Unlimited" or "Kindle Select".

If you want to delve into this, you can go through Amazon's terms and conditions .

How to find the best keywords for Amazon KDP?

Choosing the right keywords can take some time, but carefully carried out keyword research will help your book be more discoverable. Once you have started creating your "Title", you'll quickly get to this screen:

Looks like a simple form but picking the right keywords would mean your book will appear in front of the right audience, looking for books in your genre and category.

Thinking off the top of your head isn’t going to cut it, you need to collect keyword data and do some analysis.

Good keyword research can help you pick a better title, description and category for Amazon:

Find what people actually type into Amazon for free

This is the most basic, but free and powerful, way of finding potential keywords for your book listing.

Amazon search autocompletes your search as you type which can give you some ideas as to what could be popular search terms. You've probably seen it on Google and Bing too as both have this autofill function:

You can experiment with typing different keywords, and you can expand the list by starting new words with every letter from the alphabet! You may want to do this while logged out (or in Incognito mode) so that your past search and order history doesn't impact the results you see.

Amazon's own recommendations for choosing the best keywords include the following advice:

• Think like a potential reader and try to anticipate how people search.
• Combine keywords in the most logical order.
• Watch your keyword length and don't include more than seven keywords.

Make a note of the keywords you see - they can be your 'seed' keywords which can serve as basis to help find more relevant phrases.

See what people search for on Google

Another free way to do keyword research. You can carry out the exact same type of search, but this time on Google. The autocomplete is likely to show an even larger breadth of relevant keywords:

The results would also show other "Related Searches" and "People Also Ask" questions which further help you decide what keywords to use.

Feeling like you need more information and wondering which tool is used for Amazon keyword research? Keep reading. There's more to it then just the phrases.

The next section will show you how to find keyword search volumes (how often people use these keywords).

Ahrefs & Google Keyword Planner

Once you have a list of the main "seed" keywords you found using autocomplete, you can further expand the list and find more information (such as search volume) using these two tools.

Google Keyword Planner can help you find more relevant keywords and find the avg. monthly searches (it may even help you determine seasonality which can help you understand when you can expect more sales!)

Search volume data is the most fundamental metric to look at, because it tells you the most popular search queries readers are typing into Google.

Ahrefs is also very good, because you can limit your search to only on Amazon, and see search volume on Amazon specifically. This cuts out a lot of unnecessary data from Google.

Reverse ASIN lookup tools

Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a ten-digit alphanumeric code that identifies products on Amazon.

For more detailed keyword harvesting, we highly recommend using Reverse ASIN Lookup Tools. Our favourite tool to use is Cerebro by Helium10 , because it really shows a vast amount of data. Another good too lis JungleScout’s Keyword Scout .

Reverse ASIN lookup is infinitely useful, because it gets you keywords from the best source possible - your competitors.

Here’s how to use a reverse ASIN lookup to find keywords:

• Enter some seed keywords into Amazon that are related to your book.
• Make a list of the top competitors ASINs that show up.
• You can do this faster using web scraping tools.
• Enter 8-10 of these competitor ASINs into Cerebro
• Set some filters to refine your search, for example - minimum search volume: 100 and maximum word count: 6.
• Export all the data into an Excel and sort by Search Volume.
• Refine the raw keywords by relevancy to shorten the list.

Helium10 really offers the most robust keyword research tools there are when it comes to Amazon. Besides Cerebro which is a reverse ASIN lookup, you can also use Magnet, which extrapolates more keywords from your seed keywords.

For example, we entered “true crime serial killer” as our seed keyword into Magnet and got over 2000 results as shown below.

On the Helium10 free trial you can only use Cerebro twice a day. We recommend signing up for the Platinum Plan which costs $99/month because you get unlimited uses of Cerebro and Magnet with it.

Amazon advertising console

Another robust option is actually using Amazon Advertising itself! Amazon’s automatic advertising campaigns can pull in tons of keyword and keyword data in just a month. Set a decent budget for it, and let Amazon do the work.

By the end of the month, you’ll have at least 100 keywords, and the perfect metrics to judge them by. You can export all your keyword data, and filter using 3 key metrics- Click-through rate (CTR), Conversion Rate (CVR), and Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS).  We’re looking for high CTR and CVR, and low ACoS.

Using those three filters you’ll find the absolute best keywords you should be running ads for.

You may be thinking… If Amazon’s so great, why not keep those automatic campaigns running? Why bother with a manual campaign? The truth is automatic campaigns can start cutting into your wallet really, really fast.

Amazon bids very aggressively, so it’s important to shift over to a manual campaign with your best keywords so you can manage your ad budget.

Running an ad campaign for a short period of time can help you find the best keywords. Later if you decide to put some money behind the promotion of your book, you can come back and use what you've learnt!

We'd recommend Amazon KDP authors to use a dedicated Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) software, such as SellerMetrics . The tool can help research, inform bidding and help you run more profitable Amazon advertising campaigns.

How to refine, add and update keywords

If you have already published your book and want to make sure it's targeting the right keywords, you can refine your keyword list.

Obviously, finding keywords using the aforementioned tools will get you tons of results.Now you need to refine that list down to just highly relevant keywords. For that, you need to understand how keyword relevancy works.

Here’s a typical example of what we mean by keyword relevancy for a product called the Yoga Wheel:

You can follow this same principle pretty easily for books too. For example, you’ve written a non-fiction book about serial killers. Let’s look at the keyword relevancy table for this hypothetical book:

The list you end up with can be used to fill out that initial form we showed at the beginning of this guide. To edit your existing Kindle book you can follow these steps:

• Sign in to: https://kdp.amazon.com.
• Go to your Bookshelf and click the ellipsis button ("…") under the KINDLE EBOOK ACTIONS, PAPERBACK ACTIONS or HARDCOVER ACTIONS menu next to your book.
• Select "Edit eBook Details", "Edit Paperback Details" or "Edit Hardcover Details".
• Under the "Keywords" section, make the edits you want.
• Go to the bottom of the page and click Save and Continue.
• Once you reach the book Pricing page, click the Publish button at the bottom of the page.

Now you'll have a much better chance at appearing in front a better audience! Plus, you've probably learned more about how people search for your type of books! Who knows, maybe this will help you understand how to promote your book better.

How long does it take for new keywords to appear?

Once you've added and update your keywords, it can take up to 48 hours - same as other updates made to the author name, title, description, publisher, and ISBN.

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How to Choose Keywords for Amazon KDP (FAQs Answered)

You’ll hear people talk about choosing keywords for Google and Bing, but you’ll rarely hear people talk about the importance of how to choose keywords for Amazon KDP.

But as an author, the keywords you choose in Amazon are more important than Google and Bing. Why? Because that’s where the buyers are at. People go to Google and Bing to find information, but they go to Amazon to buy.

In this article, I’ll break down:

What are Amazon KDP Keywords?

• How many can I choose / use?

Why do I need keywords for my book?

Can i use different keywords for my kindle vs. paperback vs. hardback vs. audiobook vs. amazon ads, how do i find keywords for my book, best amazon keyword research tools, how to find the best keywords that sell more books, what are negative keywords in amazon, how long should keyword research take.

• Can someone set up my Amazon keywords for me?

Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) keywords are words or phrases authors use to help readers find their books on Amazon. They help Amazon’s search algorithm identify and categorize books based on relevancy and topic. Basically, these keywords make books discoverable.

Keywords are the terms readers use to search for books. Your job as the author is to find the best ones for your book.

How many keywords can I choose / use for Amazon KDP?

Authors and publishers can choose up to seven keywords or phrases when publishing their book. It’s important to choose keywords that accurately reflect the book’s content and keywords that readers are likely to use when searching for books in the same genre or subject area.

Within each of the seven keyword boxes, you are allowed up to 50 characters.

Should you use all 50 characters? Within reason, and with good sense, yes.

For a more in depth look at this, check out Dave Chesson’s interesting experiment . He concluded that readers should use as many characters in their seven keyword boxes as possible.

The more effectively you use your keywords, the more likely your book shows up in the search results. Of course, the more eyeballs you get on your book, the more likely you are to attract potential readers. The more potential readers, the more buyers. The more buyers, the more royalties. And we all want to make more money as authors, right?

Basically, you’re trying to put yourself in the mind of your ideal reader / Amazon shopper. They’re looking for a book on [insert topic]. Your book happens to be about that topic, or it has a couple chapters on that topic. Boom! You choose those keywords and use them for your book.

Yes, you can. In fact, I encourage you to use different ones for each format. It will make your book more discoverable.

With any research nowadays, you have two options: you can do it manually, or you can use a software tool.

Personally, I recommend both. Manually go into Amazon, use the search bar, and look up keywords that you think someone might use to find your book. Take note of what you see. What books come up? Which authors are featured? Who is running ads on those topics? How hard does it look to rank — are you going up against James Clear’s Atomic Habits with 78,296 reviews, or a random person with only 2 reviews?

After you do some manual searching, then use a tool like Publisher Rocket or KDSPY . This will really help you get a larger picture of the different keywords available to you.

Honestly, everything about your book should be done with keywords in mind. The title , subtitle, book description , back cover copy, and any other sales copy you write should have keywords in mind. Don’t stuff it. Don’t overdo it. But within reason, utilize the keywords in more places than just the 7 boxes in the backend of KDP.

Are there tools to help me find my Amazon keywords? Of course!

As mentioned earlier, one of the best and most basic places to start is simply test the search bar in Amazon directly. This shows you what a potential reader will see, immediately.

But to understand the data behind those keywords, we recommend Publisher Rocket for authors. They are two of the very best for Amazon KDP keyword research. User-friendly, affordable, and just enough features for the average author.

If you want to go down a notch, there are free Chrome extensions, like Also Boughts Downloader by Kindle Trend, Instant Data Scraper, KDSPY or KDROI, but they aren’t quite as robust.

If you want to go up a notch, there are other keyword research tools that exist, including Helium 10, SEM Rush, Ahrefs, Moz, and more. But for you as an author, it’s important to note, some of these advanced tools are more geared toward Google and Bing search, plus they can be more expensive.

Sometimes you’ll find keywords that seem fitting for your book, but they aren’t necessarily good for sales.

Use the filters in Publisher Rocket. See what the top 5 books in your categories are doing for keywords, then see if you can use a medium or long tail version of that keyword.

Likewise, you can use a Chrome extension tool as I mentioned above. These can scrape the data of Amazon to help you find the most applicable, bestselling keywords for your book.

These are advanced techniques, especially if you struggle with tech, but they are well worth the effort for career authors and people looking to maximize their book’s performance.

You can’t set up negative keywords in KDP on your book listing. But, you can set up negative keywords on your Amazon Ads .

When you use negative keywords, you prevent your ads from being displayed to audiences that are unlikely to be interested in your book. Why does this matter? Because it improves the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. You aren’t wasting money advertising to the wrong keywords.

For example:

If you’re writing a book for paleo diets, you probably want to include keywords like best diets, easy diets, etc. But you’d want to exclude “vegan” because paleo includes meat, eggs, etc. and someone looking for a vegan diet isn’t going to want your book.

It depends on how deep you want to go.

At a minimum, I recommend taking at least one hour to research keywords prior to publishing your book . If you take an hour to research, you’ll be miles ahead of the average self-published (and traditionally published) authors.

But if you really want to ensure the best chance of success for your book, I recommend taking a couple hours before you ever start writing your book . Then, a few months later, before you upload your book for publication, take another couple hours to hone it in even more, now that you have a finished manuscript.

If you’re writing a series or writing to market , you need to take at least a day to research your keywords and categories on Amazon. Why? Because you’re about to invest 100s of hours into writing, $1000s of dollars into editing, and you don’t want it to be a waste.

Can someone set up my Amazon Keywords for me?

Finding your keywords can be a lot of work. At selfpublishing.com , we help authors like you set up your Amazon keywords, as well as your categories. In fact, we take care of the entire uploading process to get your book on KDP. Book a call with our team to find out more .

Find the keyword research tool that works for you. Or, let our team handle the tough work for you.

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How to Make Amazon KDP Keywords Work For You

Here is something you may have noticed: indie publishing is brimming with clever, time-saving hacks. 

Some hacks will help you do your work easier and faster, and some can even help you sell more books. Certain hacks are as simple as learning current publishing trends , some are for developing a strong mindset , and others get a bit more technical…

Learning how to make Amazon KDP keywords work for you – instead of you working for them – is just one self-publishing hack we want to pass on.

If you didn’t know, you need to use special phrases or words called keywords to make your book discoverable on Amazon. While there is research needed to make the most of Amazon keywords, it’s worthwhile. They pack a powerful punch. Strong KDP keywords can lead directly to more book sales. 😲

It isn’t as easy as 1, 2, 3, though. You need to know how to find and use the most appropriate keywords to bring more sales in. To do just that, today we’ll explain:

• What Amazon keywords (KDP) are
• How KDP keywords are used
• A step-by-step guide to using keywords
• Best practices for KDP keywords

What Are Amazon KDP Keywords?

To make the most of KDP keywords, let’s first understand what Amazon KDP is.

As the video explains, KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. This is how authors self-publish and market their books on Amazon.com. Being published through KDP has many benefits, such as enabling authors to run free price promotions on their books. 

Within KDP, keywords are used to provide contextual information on the contents of a book. Amazon says that “you need keywords that accurately portray your book’s content and reflect the words customers will use when they search.” 

Keep in mind that KDP keywords are crucial to your success on the platform. Keywords have the power to make or break a buying decision. After all, inaccurate keywords may lead readers astray and make them lose interest in your book before they even get the chance to know what it’s about. 

Each book listed on KDP is capable of being associated with different keywords. These keywords serve as search terms; when a potential reader goes to find their next book on Amazon, a keyword will lead them in the right direction. As such, keywords should be true to the content of your book. You want them to accurately depict what you wrote.

Take a look at our search for “italian cookbook.” Amazon’s algorithm combed through millions of books’ metadata – including KDP keywords – to deliver us these results:

Benefits of Using Amazon KDP keywords

It’s probably clear by now that keywords are powerful. On top of attracting the right readers to your book, they:

• Make your books visible. Keywords ensure your book can be found in Amazon searches like the one screenshot above.
• Work for you, not with you. The right keywords can mean your job as an indie author just got easier. Well-chosen keywords are often rewarded by Amazon with higher listings in searches.

One of the few downsides of using KDP keywords is simply the time it takes to discover them. Your keywords have to be accurate, discoverable, and intentional. We’ll get more into using (and finding) the right keywords in our next section.

If you’ve already selected keywords and are ready to plug them into your metadata, jump ahead to our step-by-step guide .

How Do I Use Amazon KDP Keywords?

Remember in our paragraph above; we said that strong keywords are three things:

• Discoverable
• Intentional

Using Accurate KDP Keywords

Developing accurate keywords comes down to understanding what your book is about. On the KDP website , Amazon encourages authors to consider their book setting, their types of characters, the roles their characters play, any plot themes their book has, and their story tone when selecting keywords. Having a well-organized and developed plot makes it easier for both you and readers to determine the type of book you have.

Example: If you wrote a spooky story about a haunted mansion , damsels in distress , and blood-sucking vampires then these are all accurate keywords you should plug into your metadata. 

Using Discoverable KDP Keywords

If you’re going to take the time to research KDP keywords, make sure they’re discoverable. A good way to check what Amazon users are already searching the website for is to pull up a private web browser on Amazon.com. 

Example: If you’ve written a book centered on the theme of coming of age , type that phrase into the Amazon search bar and see what pops up underneath. The keywords that populate are commonly searched for, and are worth using in your metadata if they’re accurate for your book! 

If you’re still brainstorming keyword ideas, you can also use Google’s search functionality to see what internet users are commonly browsing for:

Using Intentional KDP Keywords

Finally, strong KDP keywords are intentional. They should be well-researched and proven to fit with the type of book you’ve written. It might be tempting to toss in whatever keywords first come to mind to describe your book. But the more thought you put into your keywords, the greater chance of success.

Brainstorming is a great way to find intentional keywords. Much like you’ve brainstormed when deciding what to write about, now it’s time to brainstorm what keywords fit with your writing!

Example: Consider if there are popular tropes of your genre. What do other authors have to say about their books with similar themes? Read interviews of authors in the same genre and look at any common keywords that pop up to describe books like yours.

Using Keyword Research Tools

Ah, technology. It really makes our lives easier, doesn’t it? If you want to let someone (or some thing ) else discover keywords for you, there are numerous tools at your disposal:

• Keywordtool.io

Let’s use Keywordtool.io as an example of what to expect from these services. When you go to their website, you’ll be taken to a search bar that enables you to find keywords across Google, Youtube, Amazon, Instagram, and more popular sites. 

In this use case, make sure Amazon is selected. Then type in a keyword that you’re researching. You can also select the correct department for your keyword research as highlighted below:

As you can see, this particular keyword tool reveals:

• Search volume – how many people are looking the keyword up on a monthly basis.
• Trend – how the search volume has changed over a 12-month period.
• CPC – this is the cost-per-click of the keyword on Google Ads. This is relevant to Amazon because it shows what people are paying for the keyword on Google. Typically, high CPCs mean keywords are more competitive (AKA lots of people are paying to try to claim that keyword on Google.)

The magic combination is finding keywords with high search volume and lower CPC. This is easier said than done, though. One recommendation here is to utilize niche keywords. If you’re targeting a high-volume keyword like “science fiction,” try pairing that with more specific keywords. If all of your keywords are high-volume and generalized, you’re likely to get lost in the noise of Amazon search results.

Additional tools for finding KDP keywords

Another trick of the self-publishing trade is to look at the first, second, and third books that appear in an Amazon search for keywords you want to use. Tools like TCK Publishing’s Amazon Book Sales Calculator will estimate the sales for these books. With that in mind, you can determine whether or not a book’s associated keywords are profitable.

Psst… Last thing! We suggest storing your keywords in a spreadsheet while you’re researching and selecting them. Google Sheets or Excel will do the trick. There’s nothing worse than settling on a great list of keywords and forgetting them!

How to Use KDP Keywords: Step-by-Step Guide

So you’ve researched and selected your keywords; now it’s time to plug them into your metadata through the KDP website. You should look into using your keywords in four locations. Your title, subtitle, description, and Amazon keyword boxes.

While Amazon does not officially state that it takes into account keywords in a book’s title, subtitle and description; we think it’s likely that these play some role. So, if you are able, including your keywords in any of these locations could potentially benefit your book. Of course putting a keyword in your book’s title or subtitle can be difficult, especially for fiction authors, but most authors should be able to work a few keywords into their book descriptions without too much hassle.

So, what about the Amazon keyword boxes we mentioned above? Here is the step by step process to enter your keywords.

To add keywords to your book’s metadata, first, log into the KDP website.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to see all the books stored under your KDP account – whether they’re published or unpublished.

Click “Edit eBook details” from the ellipses next to whichever Kindle book you wish to add keywords to. The same will be true for paperback or hardcover books you have listed on KDP that need to be updated.

Once you reach the details of your book, scroll down to a section that’s titled “Keywords.” Here you will see seven slots here for your keywords. We suggest using all of them!

Make sure that you click “Save and continue” at the bottom of your screen to finish adding – or adjusting – your keywords. Continue to the final screen to publish your new keywords.

Note: a previous version of this post suggested separating multiple keywords in a single box with semicolons. However, we’ve since been advised that Amazon recommends using a single keyword in each of the seven boxes. Thank you to Dave at Kindlepreneur for his clarification.

How to test KDP Keyword performance

So you’ve entered your keywords, but now what? How do you know if you book is showing up for the searches you want it to?

• First, open up an incognito or private browser window, and then go to Amazon.com.
• Next, enter one of your keywords in quotation marks in the amazon search bar, and hit search.
• Review the results. Do you see your book anywhere in the results? If you’ve entered your keywords correctly, you should.

Author Harper Daniels provides this example of how this process can work from the keyword box to search results:

“If we write a book about how to use KDP keywords we can enter into the first box – KDP keyword search process; how to choose keywords.

Once the book is published, we can enter into the Amazon Book search “KDP keyword search process” using quotation marks to ensure the book appears for that keyword phrase.”

If your book isn’t initially ranking in search results, don’t sweat it. As it can take some time for Amazon to pick up on what you’ve entered. However, if things don’t improve this could be a sign that in the next few months you should play around with different keywords. Continue to research and refine for your best results.

KDP Keywords: Best Practices

Amazon’s KDP Publishing page is a helpful resource for authors to reference while selecting their keywords. Outside of Amazon’s direct tips for KDP keyword best practices, here are a few additional do’s and don’ts to follow:

• Consider using “long-tail keywords.” These include multiple, relevant phrases (example: seaside cozy mystery ) in a keyword. But make sure to have some more general keywords in the mix as well.
• Monitor the chart performance for each of your books to see if your keywords are successful. With that in mind, book promotions that lead to sales spikes ( like Freebooksy! 👋) are going to take away from organic keyword performance by nature. 

What not to do

• While long-tail keywords can lead to success, you don’t want to overdo it.  Examples of this include adding too many phrases into a keyword. While the phrase seaside cozy mystery makes sense, something like seaside cozy mystery clean romance funny clearly includes multiple ideas that are not natural fits.
• Keywords alluding to quality (“best book ever”) or special deals (“free NOW”) need to be avoided.
• Amazon’s KDP webpage gives information on exact keywords to avoid. 

All in all, selecting keywords takes upfront work – and continued monitoring. It’ll all be worth it, though, once you see your book rising in Amazon ranks and attracting new readers. A good keyword is like a salesperson, working ‘round the clock to sell your book!

If you’re ready for additional tricks of the indie publishing trade, there’s more where that came from. Sign up for the WWM newsletter for self-publishing best practices and research.

A special thanks to Harper Daniels for their insight and contributions to this post.

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5 comments on “ how to make amazon kdp keywords work for you ”.

Super useful thanks!

Very Insightful. Thanks!

Thank you for the helpful information. I noticed that you used quotation marks around “How to Make Amazon KDP Keywords Work For You” … I am wondering if someone has found a really good keyword phrase form their research, would it be a good idea to put that keyword phrase in the KDP Slot with quotation marks around it? Thank you

Great post. Thanks!

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How to Find the Most Profitable KDP Keywords in Minutes

March 2, 2022 By Rachel Harrison-Sund

In this article, I’m going to show you a little technique that will help you quickly uncover profitable Amazon KDP keywords to get you started generating an income. I’ll be using three different tools to illustrate my technique:

• Keywords Everywhere (paid, but VERY affordable)
• AMZ Suggestion Expander (free)
• Publisher Rocket (paid)

Note: Be sure to enable Keywords Everywhere and AMZ Suggestion Expander in incognito browser windows so that your search results aren’t biased by previous searches.

Prefer to watch it? Check out my video where I walk you step-by-step through my technique.

What Are KDP Keywords?

Before we get started with our keyword research, let’s define what KDP keywords are. Simply put, KDP ( Kindle Direct Publishing ) Keywords are the search terms that anyone looking for a book on Amazon types into the Amazon search bar to help them find what they are looking for. For example, if I’m in the market for a new vegetarian cookbook I might type the search term “vegetarian cookbook” in Amazon’s search bar. “Vegetarian cookbook” is a keyword. 

“Profitable keyword” simply means that:

• Shoppers are searching for the keyword
• Shoppers are buying products associated with the keyword
• The competition to rank for the keyword isn’t too steep

How to Research KDP Keywords

To generate some great keyword ideas using Amazon, select the “Books” category and type the letter “A” into the search bar. A basic Amazon search will present a short list of suggested keywords.

When using the AMZ Suggestion Expander, you’ll see many other keywords and related search results. This will help you speed up your research process.

Keywords Everywhere shows you the search volume, but only in this first column. That’s okay, because Publisher Rocket will help you figure out the search volume later.

You’ll continue this research process by progressing through the alphabet (i.e., after you choose potentially profitable keywords from “A,” search for “B,” and so on). You’re looking for broad keywords that aren’t too competitive. “Adult Coloring Book” is an example that is way too competitive! 

Once you’ve gone through the alphabet once, start again, but this time go two letters deep. For example, enter “AA” in the search bar, check for potential keywords, then search “AB,” and so on. 

KDP Keywords Using Publisher Rocket

Publisher Rocket , created by Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur, is a great Amazon keyword tool that shows you:

• What keywords customers are typing into Amazon
• The estimated monthly search volume
• The average monthly earnings from books that are ranking for that keyword
• How many books are currently competing for that keyword
• Lower-competition categories to place your book in

Once you have your list of potential keywords, you can start plugging them into Publisher Rocket to get into deeper research. The value in using Publisher Rocket for keyword research is that typing in a keyword will give you a list of related keywords. This can be a huge timesaver, and can also help you find keywords that otherwise may not have occurred to you. 

Publisher Rocket research will help you determine whether you can compete with specific keywords. When viewing keyword search results in Publisher Rocket, focus on those displayed on the first page. Don’t worry about the hundreds—or potentially thousands—of others.

Some things you’ll want to take note of are:

• Estimated searches
• The competitive score
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank
• Covers and interiors of your competition

Let’s get into some more detail about what you’re looking for. 

Look for Estimated Searches of Greater Than 1000

I like to look for Amazon searches per month of around a thousand or more. This is not a hard cutoff, though; you can go down to just a few hundred searches per month. The thing to remember is that lower search volume usually translates into fewer sales because there just aren’t as many people looking for that specific keyword. You could potentially strategically focus on lower searches per month with the understanding that you’re probably going to have to create more books to make up for lower sales numbers.

Target Competitive Scores In The Easy to Moderate Range

While you may think that just going for the green, or “easy,” competition keywords is best, I think it’s okay to consider the moderate, or “yellow,” KDP keywords as well. The reason is that Publisher Rocket is used mostly by fiction and nonfiction authors rather than low-content publishers. 

Novels and nonfiction books are obviously much bigger time, energy, and effort investments than low-content books, which can be created very quickly. It’s a lot less risky for you, as a low-content publisher, to put something together than it is to write a 500-page novel.

Look For a Best Sellers Rank of 100,000 or Less

The Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) is a good indicator of how well a product is selling on Amazon. The lower the product’s BSR, the better its sales. I typically look for a BSR of 100,000 or less.  Even books of up to 300,000 sellers rank are probably making decent sales.

Scan the Covers and Interiors of the Competition 

I strongly recommend that you head over to Amazon so you can check out the interiors of the books you’re researching. You want to ask yourself, quite honestly, “Can I compete with these books?” Remember, you don’t necessarily need to create the covers yourself. You can outsource cover design, but the book title and cover image are the first things that will grab attention so they need to be good. For more on outsourcing, check out my article for Outsourcing the Design of Your Low-Content Books .

Now that you’ve found some profitable keywords, you’re ready to move on to creating and publishing your book! Please download my free guide, 3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day to learn more.

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8 Best Free Research Tools for Amazon KDP in 2023

Are you looking for the best free research tools for Amazon KDP? Here is the perfect guide to help you find what you need.

If you are a KDP publisher like you then you know that self-publishing research tools is the way to go. It allows you to find niches and keywords that still give profits, and it gives you more control over what to publish and what titles to use. But with so many different research tools out there, it can be hard to decide which one is right for you. That’s why we put together this list of the 10 Best Free Research Tools for Amazon KDP in 2022!

First I want to give you a heads up because there are a lot of tools out there that cost money so I will split the article up in 2 sections, free and paid options.

None of these tools are bad but the question is still, do we really need to pay for the tools or are there great free options?

What are Amazon KDP keywords?

Amazon KDP keywords are the terms and phrases that people use to search for books on Amazon. When you choose keywords for your book, you’re essentially telling Amazon which search terms you want your book to show up for. The right keywords can make it easy for potential readers to find your book, and they can also help to boost your book’s ranking on Amazon’s search engine. 

To choose the best keywords for your book, start by thinking about the terms that potential readers might use to search for a book like yours. Once you have a list of potential keywords, you can use Amazon’s keyword research tool to see how popular each keyword is and how much competition there is for each one. With a little bit of research, you can find the perfect keywords to help potential readers find your book on Amazon.

Keywords are one of the most important elements of any Amazon KDP book listing. They help potential readers find your book when they search for related topics on Amazon.com. Fortunately, there are a number of free research tools for Amazon KDP that you can use to find the right keywords for your book.

Why is it important to do keyword research for amazon kdp?

When you’re trying to sell anything online – whether it’s a physical product or a digital book – it’s absolutely essential to do your keyword research. This is especially true for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, and millions of people use the site every day to search for products. If you want to make sure your book is seen by potential customers, you need to make sure it appears in relevant search results.

And the only way to do that is to choose the right keywords. Keyword research can be time-consuming, but it’s well worth the effort. By carefully selecting the most relevant and popular keywords, you can ensure that your book appears at the top of search results and gets seen by people who are actually interested in buying it. So if you’re serious about selling books on Amazon KDP, make sure you take the time to do your keyword research. It could mean the difference between success and failure.

Here comes the 10 Best Free Research Tools for Amazon KDP in 2022.

Nr 1. amazon suggestion expander -chrome plugin.

• Easy to Use
• Plugin for Chrome
• Pro Version for More Geatures
• Shows Up Under Your Search Bar

There’s no denying that Amazon is a powerful force in the publishing industry. With over 70% of the e-book market share, it’s clear that authors need to be present on the platform if they want to reach readers. However, publishing on Amazon can be a bit of a daunting task, especially for authors who are unfamiliar with the platform. Thankfully, there are a few free research tools that can help make the process a bit easier.

The Amazon Suggestion Expander is one such tool. This online tool allows users to enter a keyword or phrase and receive a list of related terms and phrases that Amazon suggests. This is an invaluable tool for authors who are looking to target specific keywords or terms in their marketing efforts. In addition, the results can also provide insight into what potential readers are searching for on Amazon. As a result, the Amazon Suggestion Expander is an essential tool for any author looking to publish on Amazon.

How does it work?

Go to Amazon.com and type in your keyword of choice in the search bar.

And you get a set of new keywords that people are searching for in the search bar.

I have a guide on how I do my keyword and niche research here .

Nr. 2 DS Amazon Quick View -Chrome Plugin

• Pro Version for More Features

DS Amazon Quick View is a powerful, Free research tool for Amazon KDP that gives you instant access to powerful data about the Kindle store. This valuable information can help you make informed decisions about your book’s pricing, keywords,Category and more. With DS Amazon Quick View, you can quickly and easily find the Bestseller Ranking, Category Rankings, Kindle Countdown Deals, Free and Paid Categories, Reviews and Ratings for any book on Amazon. 

In addition, you can use DS Amazon Quick View to research your competition, track your own book’s progress over time, and much more. Whether you’re just getting started with Amazon KDP or you’re an experienced author looking to take your business to the next level, DS Amazon Quick View is an essential tool for anyone who wants to succeed on Amazon.

When you have done your keyword exploring with the AMZ Suggestion Expander you type the keyword of your choice and type in your keyword of choice in the search bar and hit enter. The DS Amazon Quick View will extend each object with an additional info box underneath. Search word I used was “ coloring books with cars and trucks ”

This shows us if the books in that category are selling, how popular they are and what BSR (Best Selling Rank) they have. You can also do this by going into each book but that is a time consuming job so this plugin is perfect for shortening down your research time.

Nr. 3 Soovle.com

• Regular Search Engine

What is Soovle.com?

Soovle.com is a free research tool that helps authors to promote their books on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It provides book recommendations based on the keywords that authors enter. In addition, Soovle.com also displays related searches and trending topics. This information can be used to help authors create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Soovle.com is an essential tool for any author looking to make the most of Amazon KDP.

It’s free, simple and can be used as many times as you want. Here is an example and the search word I used was “ coloring books with cars and trucks ”

Nr. 4 Answer the Public

• Upgrade PRO Option

AnswerthePublic.com is a free research tool that provides valuable insights for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors. By typing in a keyword or phrase, the site generates a list of related questions that people are searching for online. This can be helpful in developing new book ideas, as well as understand what potential readers are looking for. 

In addition, the site also provides a list at the end in alphabetical order that you can copy and download, which gives an indication what people are searching and gives you new ideas for books.. By taking advantage of all that AnswerthePublic.com has to offer, KDP authors can gain a significant edge in the highly competitive world of self-publishing.

How does it work? It works the same way as a search engine but it displays relevant phrases to your search result. I searched for “ coloring books with cars and trucks ” and it actually gave me some new ideas.

• coloring pages of cars and motorcycles
• coloring pages adults cars
• coloring pages cars disney
• coloring pages car logos
• coloring pages mustang car
• coloring pages police car

These ideas I can take into my research and see if it’s something I can use.

Nr. 5 Helium 10

• Some Features Free
• Easy to use
• One Of the Most Popular Tools 
• Cost Money Each Month

Helium 10 is a collection of research tools designed to help Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors boost their sales and royalties. The tools cover all aspects of writing, publishing and marketing a book on Amazon, from finding the right keywords to use in your book title and description, to tracking your sales rank and reviews.

Helium 10 also offers a suite of analytical tools to help you understand your readers better, including a keyword research tool that shows you which keywords are being used most often to search for books like yours. With Helium 10, you can also find out how well your book is performing in specific categories and compare your sales to other books in your genre. If you’re serious about making money from your writing on Amazon, then Helium 10 is an essential toolkit.

Why do I recommend a tool that costs money?

Actually Helium10 has a keyword free research tool that you can use for free to an extent. Its super easy and a really good tool to know about. Here is the link to their Keyword Research Tool 

Nr. 6 Kindlepreneur

Kindlepreneur.com is a website that offers resources and tips for self-publishing authors who want to sell their books on Amazon. The site provides articles on topics such as book marketing, book design, and time management for authors.

Kindlepreneur also offers a range of tools and services to help authors self-publish, including an ebook cover creator and an Amazon keyword research tool. In addition, the site provides a forum where authors can connect with other self-publishers and share experiences and advice. Whether you’re just getting started with self-publishing or you’re looking for ways to take your business to the next level, Kindlepreneur.com is an excellent resource.

Why do I recommend Kindlepreneur when it’s just a regular blog?

The thing is that they have a great free research tool Amazon KDP self-publishers. We talked earlier in this blog post about BSR (Best Seller Rank) and that we used the DS Amazon Quick View for that right? But what does the BSR mean? It shows us how much books are being sold on that particular book.  Head over to the Amazon KDP Sales Rank Calculator and type in the number you got from your book search.

Nr. 7 Kindleranker.com

• Site Seems Old 

I actually don’t know much about Kindleranker.com but what I do know is that the category section on Amazon is a mess. It’s super hard to find categories to publish your books in so I’ve searched for a good site to help me with that. I’ve been trying a few different category browsers and none of them are 100% accurate but at least this site gives me a way to know where to look for different categories and how to find them.

Here is the link for that: Kindleranker KDP Category Browser and it looks like this.

At Least this gives me some kind of direction on where to look in the browser tab on Amazon KDP. You can ofcourse look at the books you are researching on what category they are located in as well. 

Nr.8 Google Trends

If you don’t know about Google Trends you sure are missing out. Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc., based on Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.

It was launched in May 2006. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different terms over time. Google Trends also allows users to compare multiple terms simultaneously, or view web search interest by region. Users can also set up “email alerts” to be notified when topics of interest rise or fall in popularity.

On this site you can search on pretty much anything and you can spot upgoing trends to get a good sense of what people are looking for on google and youtube.

Final Thoughts

Each of these sites has great free research tools for Amazon KDP so I hope you like this blog post. All of these tools can be helpful for self publishing. Whichever tool you choose, make sure to do your research and choose the one that best suits your needs.

I think it’s important to stay ahead in your game to be able to make sales and to have these tools to help will surely increase your chances of making book sales. If you want some tips on how to niche down check out my blogpost here

What are your thoughts about these free tools? Have you ever used any of these tools before or maybe you know about more free research tools for Amazon KDP? Let us know in the comments below!

Also I am currently testing out 2 new free plugins that I think will change the research possibilities for Amazon KDP so stay tuned for that article!

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Amazon KDP Keywords: My Essential Guide to Selecting the Best Ones

Delving into the world of Amazon KDP Keywords can appear overwhelming at first. As a self-published author, I've recognized the critical role these keywords play in the success of an eBook. I've dedicated myself to understanding the nuances of Amazon KDP SEO and keyword research, hoping to guide fellow authors through this landscape.

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a leading platform for self-published authors, employs a complex search algorithm. Readers use keywords to discover books. If your book isn't associated with these keywords, it might fade into the background, remaining unnoticed by potential readers. But by investing time in Amazon KDP keyword research, you can boost your book's visibility and reach a wider audience.

In the competitive world of the eBook market, it's vital to equip your book's listing with effective keywords. Keep the principles of Amazon KDP SEO in mind, take advantage of Amazon's recommendation tool, and explore additional keyword research resources. The right keywords can amplify your book's visibility, increasing the likelihood of success.

Understanding Amazon KDP Keywords

When it comes to  Choosing Amazon KDP Keywords , it's essential to grasp the concept, as it directly impacts the visibility and success of your book in the crowded Amazon marketplace. I'll walk you through the basics, provide some keyword research tips, and help you understand the importance of Amazon KDP SEO.

Amazon KDP SEO  is all about optimizing your book's metadata and on-page content to improve your rankings in Amazon's search results. Keywords play a significant role in this process, as they help Amazon understand the topic, target audience, and relevance of your book to search queries.

The Role of Keywords in Self-Publishing

When dipping our toes into the world of self-publishing, it's easy to overlook the importance of keywords. But believe you me,  choosing Amazon KDP keywords  is an essential part of the process that determines how we fare in the ever-expanding jungle of Amazon. For self-publishers, it's important to understand the role keywords play and how we can ace  Amazon KDP SEO  to make our books stand out.

Now that I think about it, let's talk about what keywords really are. In simple terms, they're the words that readers use to search for our books. If we nail the right keywords, our books will be more discoverable in Amazon searches. Through  Amazon KDP keyword research , we can uncover the most relevant keywords that'll lead readers straight to our books.

By the way, it's important to note that we must place our selected keywords strategically. We need to insert them into:

Here are a few methods I find helpful:

Effectively Researching KDP Keywords

Now that I think about it, the first step is  brainstorming  potential keywords. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and consider what words or phrases they might type into the Amazon search bar when looking for a book like yours. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

The goal here is to find keywords with relatively low competition but high relevance to your book, boosting the likelihood of being discovered by potential readers.

By the way, our third and final step is  finalizing and testing  the chosen keywords. Perhaps you've narrowed down your list, but remember that Amazon allows you to input up to seven keywords for your book. That means you can experiment with different keywords and track any changes in your book's performance over time. Trial and error might be crucial in this process, so don't be afraid to make adjustments as you learn what works best for your book.

Strategies for Keyword Optimization

Step One: Choosing Amazon KDP Keywords

Step Three: Amazon KDP Keyword Research

Paid & Free amazon kDP keywords tools for Keyword Analysis

Publisher rocket.

One great tool to start with is  Publisher Rocket . This nifty software is specifically designed for Amazon authors and publishers, helping you to:

Kindle Samurai

Amzdatastudio, merchant keywords.

All things considered, using these keyword analysis tools for your Amazon KDP SEO strategy can help you to better target readers, improve your book's rankings, and ultimately increase sales.

About The Author

Arielle phoenix, related posts, can i sell my amazon kdp author copies, bookbaby vs. kdp: who should you publish with in 2024, is kdp low content publishing worth it, can i capture email address when i make a book sale on amazon.

How to Choose Keywords for Amazon KDP

How to choose keywords for Amazon KDP? And why is it important? Let’s go everything you need to know about optimizing the best keywords for Amazon KDP.

Main takeaways:

• Choosing accurate book categories and book keywords ensures your book reaches the right audience. Regularly optimizing your Amazon KDP keywords will help you stay current with fluctuating trends and algorithms.
• You can conduct your own market research or use tools like PublishDrive to take care of your keywords for KDP in no time.

What Are Book Categories and Book Keywords?

Before diving into how to choose keywords for Amazon KDP, let’s first understand what categories and keywords exactly are.

Categories are general terms that describe your content, such as fiction and non-fiction. They’re the shelf headings that help readers navigate to what they’re looking for.

Keywords are the words and phrases people type in the search bar when looking for a book. Amazon and other store algorithms use keywords to show the books most relevant to the searcher’s query. If one of your keywords is “how to paint a flower manual” and someone types it in the search bar, your book should pop up in the search results.

By the way, although this write-up focuses on how to find keywords for Amazon KDP, you can and should use most of these tips and tactics with other stores like Apple Books and Google Play Books.

Why Are Categories and Keywords for Books Important?

To grasp the importance of categories and keywords, you must understand the importance of metadata. Book metadata are the fields you fill out when publishing to various sites and stores, such as Amazon. It stores information about your book, including your author name, title, subtitle, description, pricing, categories, and keywords.

Accurate metadata helps search engines place your book in the right places. If your book is about how to heal back pain, your metadata fields should accurately describe the topic using categories like “physical health and fitness” and keywords like “heal back pain.” If you left it at “heal pain,” your book may show up for people searching for content on emotional pain, completely missing your target audience.

Optimizing your metadata is all about optimizing your discoverability; Choosing the best categories and keywords is vital.

So, two main reasons for optimizing categories and keywords:

• You can deliver the promise of what your book is about . If you were to mis-categorize your book as romance even though it’s horror, you’d end up not meeting reader expectations, increasing the chances of disappointed readers and negative reviews.
• You can boost your visibility in search results . You want to reach the right readers with the right category keywords. Then, you want to maximize your visibility by using the most searched keywords for books on stores like Amazon and more.

Now, how to pick keywords for Amazon books effectively? Here are the methods to know –

First, How to Choose the Right Book Categories

Decide on your categories first, then take care of your keywords. Under most publishing platforms and stores, you get between two and ten categories. You want to choose categories that accurately describe your content and, if possible, are easy to rank in. Start by exploring this list of book categories on Amazon to see which ones resonate the most with your book.

More tactics:

• Go to Amazon’s search box and type all the words and phrases that describe your book. Hit submit and get a list of books similar to yours. Go through each book and check their categories to get an idea of how other similar books are categorized.
• With your list of potential categories, check the bestsellers for each category. This gives you an idea of your competition for each category. Some authors try to rank higher in niche categories, which is one tactic you can try out. See what makes a book a bestseller .
• You can use a tool such as Publisher Rocket to generate a list of categories for you. This is, however, a pricer option priced at $97.
• See this tutorial for more on category research.

Do note that Amazon made a major change to its categories system in 2023. Previously on KDP, you had to choose from a list of BISAC categories and then fill out a form. Now, you can see a list of actual categories on Amazon and select three.

What’s more:

• 54% of the categories listed on KDP are duplicates of others. Kindlepreneur shows how books listed in certain category strings are found in different listings, but all end up under the same category. This may sound bizarre, but you don’t have to avoid duplicates since Amazon allows you to select other duplicates of your chosen category. Also, if your duplicate placement performs well, there’s a possibility of it showing up in sub-categories for both duplicate strings.
• 27% of the categories listed are ghost categories, meaning they’re not valid categories you can rank for or get a bestseller tag in. You want to avoid ghost categories. Check if a category is a ghost tag by clicking on the link in KDP and see if the page contains a title header of that category. Valid categories have category title headers, while ghost categories do not. Ghost categories will also have the category tree missing on the left side of the page.
• Amazon can change or add categories as they wish. They state in their FAQ : “The categories you add and the categories shown online may not always match. Your book may be added to additional or different categories to improve the customer experience.” Amazon’s algorithms figure out what to update via the keywords you choose.

Easily Generate Categories & Keywords for Amazon KDP

Researching metadata is time-consuming. Instead, try PublishDrive’s book metadata generator that uses AI to analyze your book. Get optimized metadata suggestions, including categories and keywords for KDP, in under five minutes. ⬇

Try PublishDrive Free

How to Perform Your Best Book Keyword Search

Finalizing your categories gives you a nice foundation to work off of when choosing your book keywords list. It’s necessary to continue with keyword research since it’s not enough to pick the keywords or language you simply think customers are using. You have to actually find out what kind of language customers – particularly your ideal customers – are using.

For example, those in the self-publishing community often use the terms “indie publishing” or “digital publishing.” But, a new author wouldn’t know this. If we were to target a newbie, we would use a more general term like “self-publishing” or “publishing.”

Let’s go over the main tactics on how to choose keywords for Amazon KDP. I suggest starting your research on Amazon’s search engine because it’s the #1 hub for digital books.

1. Book search by keywords you’re considering

Take the time to think about your book and target audience. Jot down all the relevant keywords, phrases, and language you can think of. Put yourself in your ideal reader’s shoes. Imagine what they’d search for to come across your book. Imagine what the most searched Amazon book keywords would be for your genre. Write your words in the most logical order. For example, people search for “self care books” over “books self care”.

Along with collecting general terms, find words and phrases that are as specific as possible. You want to narrow down and target your most desired audience. When you’re ready, get on Amazon and type every potential keyword into the search bar. If you get irrelevant results, cross off that keyword or revise it. Use a private/incognito browser to clear previous browsing history.

Utilize the drop-down search function during this process. Check out the suggestions that appear in the drop-down. It looks like this:

The drop-down function is great because it shows related words and phrases people search for. Make a list of these during your search. You’ll see which keywords result in books most similar to yours – those are the ones you want to keep.

If you’re having trouble coming up with keywords, think about the different aspects of your book: setting (Manhattan), character types (single mom, entrepreneur), character roles (queen energy), plot themes (empowerment), and tone of voice (feel-good, funny). Or look at book listings similar to yours for KDP keywords examples.

2. Look at your categories

With your list of book categories in hand, look for keywords that fall under your categories. Browse through Amazon’s categories and see if there are any potential ones you can use. For example, the keyword “conspiracy thriller” can be used to enter that sub-category on Amazon.

You can also use Amazon’s search bar to check for category lists, as mentioned earlier. Look for your relevant categories on Amazon’s lists and check out top-ranking books to see which keywords they use. Don’t forget to avoid ghost categories.

3. Use various tools

Similarly to category research, you can conduct keyword research on tools like Publisher Rocket. Some other tools include Google’s Keywords Search Tool, keyword.io, SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs. If you use any of these tools, filter the keywords they give you based on volume and difficulty level. Go for keywords with high search volume and low difficulty levels.

The best KDP keyword research tool is free and easy to use, which brings me to this AI-powered tool specifically designed for optimizing book metadata –

How to Use AI for Your Book’s Keywords & Metadata

You can do your own research using the tactics in this guide to guarantee your best keyword strategy. You can also use AI to make sure you don’t miss anything. PublishDrive’s AI book metadata generator will analyze your manuscript and suggest keywords along with the rest of your metadata:

It’s free to create a PublishDrive account and use the tool. You get 60 free credits, which you can use to get metadata recommendations for your first book. Using the tool is easy:

• Upload your manuscript (epub, docx, pdf).
• Wait five minutes for the AI to analyze your book, then get a list of recommendations for your book’s keywords, categories, and more.
• Refine the suggestions and export it as a pdf or go straight to publishing within the PublishDrive platform.

How to Implement Your List of Keywords for Books

Now that you’ve got your list of keywords, it’s time to implement them into your metadata. This is the most essential part of your keyword journey!

1. Add and update keywords on KDP

First off, how many keywords does Amazon allow? Up to seven keywords or phrases. To add them, go to your Bookshelf under your KDP dashboard and click the ellipsis button “...” next to your book. Then click Edit Details. Under the Keywords section, simply add or edit your keywords. Hit Save and Continue.

If you’re publishing wide , you want to keep your keywords consistent across all stores beyond Amazon. You can do that by updating your keywords on every single platform. Or, you can use a distribution platform like PublishDrive to take care of it all in one click. Here’s how –

2. Add and update keywords on PublishDrive

With PublishDrive, you can upload your book files, fill out the metadata, and distribute it to thousands of book channels at once. You can enter up to seven keywords. This will add or update your keywords across all the stores you decide to publish in.

3. Sprinkle keywords everywhere

When it comes to different strategies on how to boost book sales on Amazon and more stores, metadata is one of the first things to take care of. When people search by description, you want the search algorithms to match the info stored in your metadata. That’s why you want to sprinkle your keywords everywhere you can.

Here are the best practices:

• Add your keywords to your metadata fields, such as book title, subtitle, book description, and editorial reviews.
• Your book description is a terrific space to optimize with your keywords, as you have more space to play with. Just don’t overstuff your keywords. That’ll make you sound robotic. You want to be human-focused no matter what. Check these book description examples .
• Stuffing means repeating words or phrases. Don’t do this, as stores like Amazon can actually penalize you for it.
• Amazon treats your title, subtitle, and genre names as keywords – be mindful of those.
• Always double-check your metadata with store guidelines. Here are KDP’s guidelines .
• Do know that you can revise your keywords and descriptions whenever you’d like.
• Sprinkle keywords across your author sites: professional website, blog page, Goodreads page, Amazon’s author page, and wherever else. Social media pages work, too.

4. Keywords and other things to avoid

Here are some of Amazon keywords for books to avoid:

• Information already mentioned in your book’s metadata, like title and subtitle
• Words already mentioned in categories
• Subjective claims such as “best book ever”
• Time-sensitive language like “new” or “available now”
• Super general words like “book”
• Information meant to advertise or mislead, such as using another author’s name
• Brand names you do not own
• Quotation marks

All in all, only use relevant keywords and don’t fluff up your keywords with misleading words.

That’s it. I hope this guide was useful. Happy publishing!

Now You Know How to Choose Keywords for Amazon KDP

What next? Run your book through PublishDrive’s AI book metadata generator and go straight to publishing.

✅ Publish audiobooks, ebooks, and print books. ✅ Distribute in every market possible. ✅ Get metadata help, royalty reporting, marketing support, and more.

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Last updated on Jul 07, 2021

Amazon Keywords for Authors: Unlock Your Potential on Kindle

About ricardo fayet.

Reedsy co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Ricardo Fayet is one of the world's leading authorities in marketing indie books. He is a regular presenter at several prestigious writers' conferences, where his unique personal style has made him an instantly recognizable figure.

For any author looking to sell their book on the world’s largest marketplace, the biggest challenge is cutting through the noise of literally millions of other books to reach your target readers. This can be done by mastering Amazon keywords. In this article, we'll break down barriers and explain what Amazon keywords are, why they matter, and how to pick the keywords that will rocket your book up the bestseller list.

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Why do keywords matter on Amazon?

Amazon keywords are the specific search terms or phrases that will lead a customer to relevant listings. Most people see Amazon purely as a retailer, but at its core is a powerful search engine — not only can readers search for books and authors they’ve heard of, they can also use the site to search for new things to read. That’s where keywords come in.

Whenever an author uploads their book to Kindle Direct Publishing , they can select up to seven keywords to include in the book’s backend metadata — the data that’s not visible to customers. Each of these keywords may be an individual word or a short phrase. These Amazon keywords, along with the book’s visible metadata (title, author name, book description, etc.), help Amazon’s algorithms understand what your book is about so it can be displayed to the right customers . 

To get even more specific, Amazon keywords are critical because they:

• Index your book for relevant searches. Without any keywords attached to your book, very few people searching on Amazon will be able to find it — and certainly not the people you want to find it.
• Get your book into special Amazon Book categories. Certain sidebar categories on the Kindle Store are only accessible if you have a specific keyword attached to your book. 
• Encourage Amazon to market your book for you. If you pick your keywords wisely and therefore sell well for them, Amazon will reward you by displaying your book higher in the search results for those keywords, as well as related ones! Basically, better keywords from the outset = higher sales = a boost from the Amazon algorithm itself.

With these factors in mind, you can see why keyword selection isn't something that authors should take lightly. After all, these tiny phrases could be the key to finding your target readers — if you choose wisely. So let’s get into that all-important keyword selection process and talk about how to identify and polish your keyword ideas. 

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How to build your list of keyword ideas

To begin with, you’ll want to cast your net wide — you can (and should) refine this list later to make sure you end up with the seven best keywords possible. But where can you get ideas for your longlist? 

As a jumping-off point, Amazon asks its authors to consider the following :

• Setting (e.g., American midwest, Chinese countryside)
• Character types (e.g., superhero, doctor, single mother)
• Character roles (e.g., female lead)
• Plot themes (e.g., grief, redemption, self discovery)
• Story tone (e.g., suspenseful, feel-good)

Beyond these basics, here are some methods for finding (and testing the strength of!) your keyword ideas. 

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1. Try Amazon’s autocomplete search function

One way to find and test keywords is to see what Amazon itself is pushing. I suggests doing this by playing around with their autocomplete search function. In Incognito Mode (also known as InPrivate or simply private mode, depending on your browser), type the beginning of your potential keyword or a relevant phrase (for example, your genre or topic) into the Amazon Books or Kindle Store search bar.

If Amazon suggests the full phrase you had in mind as a possible search, you’re onto a good one: other people have searched for it before, and it already has solid volume. This technique can also help you find keywords you hadn’t thought of before, potentially branching out into whole new areas or helping you find more specific keywords.

2. Check out the sidebar of your category

If you can only come up with broad keyword ideas, here’s another way Amazon can assist you in narrowing it down. To borrow from that KDP help page again, you can use your category’s sidebar to brainstorm keywords: “For example, in the Romance category, you can refine search results in the menu on the left by ‘Romantic Heroes’ such as Vikings or Doctors. If your book is a Viking Romance, consider using ‘Vikings’ as a keyword.”

While you don't need to use keywords to get into the main Kindle Store categories anymore — instead, follow the tips in this Amazon Categories article — these special "sidebar tick categories" are only accessible by using the right keywords.

If a keyword that you’d planned to use is listed as a sidebar tick subcategory here, that’s another good sign that it has search volume (more on this later).

3. Use a keyword tool to get the numbers

While using autocomplete and the sidebar to generate keyword ideas are great for finding intuitive keywords, you’re also going to want to look at the cold, hard numbers — and that’s where keyword tools come in. 

There are a few different Amazon keyword tools out there, but we recommend Publisher Rocket as a great all-rounder. It’ll give you suggestions for longer versions of short keyword phrases (we’ll discuss why this matters later) and provide you with many helpful metrics and insights for each one.

Publisher Rocket not only gives you an estimate of keyword search volume (Amazon is pretty cagey about sharing their data directly), it also provides sales figures for the top-ranking products for that search term. This can really help you get a sense of your competition and estimate your idea's commercial viability.

As such, keyword tools are invaluable for finding ideas and testing their strength and are a worthwhile investment for any author who’s serious about cracking the keyword code. You can also use them in the next stage of your selection process too, as the stats they provide will help you evaluate your ideas against the killer keyword criteria below.

How to select your final 7 KDP keywords

Now that you’ve got your longlist of potential keywords, it’s time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Here’s what really makes for a killer Amazon keyword and what you should bear in mind when choosing between potential keywords.

A decent number of people search for it (not too many, and not too few)

First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure your keywords are terms that people actually search for. While monthly search volume is a little hard to pin down (again, Amazon doesn’t give you exact figures), those keyword tools we just discussed can give you reliable estimates.

Also, note that we say 'decent' rather than 'high' volume for a reason! Most extremely high-volume keywords will also be very competitive — meaning that you’ll have to outsell a lot of other books if you want to appear in the top 10 or 20 results. With that in mind, you’ll want to aim for some solid mid-range keywords you have a better chance of ranking for.

Your book matches the 'search intent' of that keyword

The next thing you should consider is whether your book matches the search intent of a potential keyword. If your book isn’t what a customer would have in mind when searching for this term, they aren’t going to click on it, and they certainly aren’t going to purchase it — which will send you right down the rankings and possibly affect how your other keywords perform.

Therefore, it’s best to prioritize keywords that are genuinely relevant to your book, even if they don’t have the best search volume. For example, if your book is a history of the horror genre, you might be tempted to choose the high-volume keyword 'horror book' — but really, people searching that term will be looking for authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz . You’d be better off choosing a keyword like 'history of horror,' even though the volume is a lot lower.

You can beat the competition for that keyword

If a keyword is a) fairly high-volume and b) relevant to your book, you’re off to a great start. Now, you’ll want to check how many other books are currently indexed for that keyword and ranking highest for it. You can do this easily by searching in Incognito Mode, which will prevent your previous searches from skewing the results.

Say you’re about to release a medieval fantasy book:

A quick search for 'medieval fantasy' on Amazon turns up over 20,000 results — which, for context, isn’t actually that many! The highest-volume literary search terms, like 'thriller' and 'women’s fiction' can turn up 70,000-80,000 results.

This is good news: though there’s still plenty of high-selling competition, your book could conceivably sell well with this keyword attached, especially if you nail some niche keywords within the subgenre.

Of course, you may be thinking your book is strong enough to compete in any relevant keyword, even if that keyword has 50,000+ results and 20 bestsellers on the first page. But remember, being a small fish in a massive pond is rarely a good thing — more likely than not, those 20 leviathans will eat your sales alive.

In other words, choosing a too-competitive keyword is a death sentence for visibility and traffic — so scope yours out carefully before making your final selections.

It's the right length

Again, you can select up to seven keywords for your book, each of which can be up to fifty characters long. This longer-than-expected character limit gives you the freedom to include longer keywords and keyword phrases. But should you? Let's take a quick detour into the science of keywords.

Exact match vs. phrase match keywords

First things first, let’s break down the difference between exact match and phrase match keywords:

• Exact match = when the keyword attached to an item is exactly the same as what is searched. For example, if you’ve selected the keyword 'dystopian sci fi' for your book, it will be an exact match for the search term 'dystopian sci fi'.
• Phrase match = when the keyword attached to an item is similar to the phrase being searched. For example, if your book is tagged 'dystopian sci fi romance' and somebody searches 'dystopian romance,' your book is a phrase match for that keyword.

But Amazon will turn up both exact match and phrase match keywords for a search phrase, so why does this even matter? Well, for one thing, Amazon does give a slight boost to your book if it’s an exact match to a keyword. That might suggest you should seek out exact matches wherever possible, but it’s actually a little more complicated than that.

Maxing out your keywords for phrase matches

You’ll index for slightly remixed or fragmented versions of your keyword phrases because of how the algorithm works. For example, you might enter one of your keywords as 'Edwardian romance in stately home' — which would then index for the phrase matches 'Edwardian romance' and 'stately home.'

With that in mind, consider if there are any longer versions of your keywords that you can use to provide phrase matches for several shorter versions. For example, say you’re writing a young adult romance novel involving pirates in space — a 'dystopian YA sci fi pirate romance.' While you might think nobody will search for that whole phrase (and you’re probably right), that doesn’t mean it’s not a viable keyword. It works because it’s a phrase match for several keywords that people will search (YA romance, sci fi romance, dystopian YA, etc.). 

If you choose just one of those key phrases, you’ll miss out on the others; that is, if you went with just 'sci fi romance,' you wouldn’t turn up in a search for 'pirate romance' unless you spent a separate keyword on it. Amazon can’t index you or rank you for a keyword that isn’t there, so it’s usually best to go for a longer keyword phrase to gain entry into more search queries.

There is one important exception to this: if you really want to rank as high as possible for a specific short-phrase keyword , you should dedicate one of your seven keywords to it. But as a general rule of thumb? Longer is better.

It won't land you on Amazon's naughty list

Of course, there are limits to what you can select as your keyword. According to Amazon's own guidance , here are their keyword no-nos:

• Information that’s already in your visible metadata (e.g., the book’s title or author).
• Subjective claims about the book’s quality (you can’t just tag it 'the best book of all time,' even though we know it totally is).
• Anything misleading which might cause a customer to select your book under false pretenses (like the name of another author — however, the keyword 'books like [ similar book to yours ]' would be fair game).
• Information that applies to all or most books (so don’t spend a keyword on 'book').
• Intentional spelling errors or variants in spacing, punctuation, capitalization, or pluralization. [ Note: this doesn’t include words with various translations or transliterations into English, which you can include ].
• The name of Amazon programs (like 'KDP').
• Anything in quotation marks — this will stop the algorithm from indexing you for variants, and you’ll be left with only exact match keywords. 

The consequences of breaking these rules can vary from wasting opportunities (like when you duplicate information in your visible metadata) to being penalized by the algorithms (if you name-check Amazon programs).

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So, to sum up, the things you’re looking for in a keyword are:

• Decent search volume
• Relevant to your book
• Competing books you feel you can beat, sales-wise

And to really max out the potential of your keywords, you should be using long keyword phrases and making the most of the characters available. If your keyword ideas check all those boxes and don’t include any of the Amazon no-gos above, you’re golden. 

You can (and should!) come back and refresh your keywords at a later date, so don’t worry that they’re set in stone — but a super-solid seven is going to give your book the best possible chance of success, so take your time selecting them. Once you’ve identified the seven strongest options from your longlist based on the criteria we’ve discussed, and plug them into the KDP dashboard. Job done!

For more info on optimizing your Amazon keywords and selling your book, check out our free resource How to Market a Book: Overperform in a Crowded Marke t — your one-stop shop for all things book marketing.

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KDP Keyword Research For Low Content Books [FREE METHOD]

The significance of keyword research in determining your success with Amazon KDP cannot be overstated. Regardless of the excellent books you may produce and publish, without effective targeting of appropriate keywords, you risk squandering a lot of time.

For that, you have to do keyword research, and you have to do it in the right way.

In this article, we are going to demonstrate the best way to find profitable keywords for low-content books by using free tools . We are also going to discuss the best premium keyword research tool at the end of this article.

But before that, let’s discuss what Amazon KDP is and why keyword research is important.

Some Quick Resources: Book Bolt – Best All-In-One KDP Tool Publisher Rocket – Best Advanced KDP Keyword Research Tool Creative Fabrica – Best KDP Interiors & Graphics

What Is Amazon KDP?

Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is a platform allowing you to self-publish paperbacks, hardcovers, and ebooks to Amazon’s marketplace.

The great thing about this platform is that it doesn’t charge anything for uploading books, so every artist and creator can start a book publishing business at no cost.

The platform allows creators to easily distribute their books worldwide while taking care of the manufacturing and shipping processes, and that is what makes this business model attractively passive for many entrepreneurs.

Once you publish your paperback books and make a sale, Amazon prints and ships them to your customers, and you will be paid the royalties. As for low-content (paperback) books, Amazon offers 60% royalties of the original sale price, and the rest will go for printing costs.

Why Keyword Research Is Important?

Before we get into keyword research and its importance, let’s talk about what keywords are.

Keywords are the terms that people use on search engines to find what they are looking for. In our scenario, people use keywords on Amazon to find the book they need, and you need to make sure that your book appears for those keywords.

There are general short-tail keywords that typically consist of one or two words, and there are specific long-tail keywords that include 3 or more words.

The general keywords are going to be used more often than the specific keywords, however, they will typically have more competition, and it is going to be harder to rank for them. Therefore, as you start, it’s always better to go for long-tail keywords that are not that popular but have less competition.

The ultimate goal of doing keyword research is to find searchable keywords that you could appear for on the first page of the Amazon search results, and you are more likely to achieve that with long-tail specific keywords .

The importance of keyword research is critical.

As a KDP publisher, your main job taking most of your time and effort is creating the books. But if the customers won’t be able to find them due to incorrectly targeted keywords, then things will get frustrating and you will be very likely to quit.

For this reason, you need to take the time to do the keyword research correctly , and we will show you how it’s done.

How To Do KDP Keyword Research For Low Content Books:

The KDP keyword research process consists of 3 equally important parts – choosing the right niche, getting keyword ideas, and analyzing the keyword competition.

Let’s discuss them all in detail:

1. Choosing A Niche

Every low-content book niche has its own principles, and choosing and sticking to a particular niche not only ensures that you nail those principles but also demonstrate authority as a publisher.

For this reason, you can see many authors on Amazon who only focus on one particular niche, and by that, they are more capable to produce high-quality books. In fact, often these authors even incorporate their niches into their pen names.

While most beginners will choose a niche that requires less effort to produce books in, the real success hides in more difficult niches, like coloring books , activity books, etc. It’s because the more complex the book is, the fewer people are likely to produce them. Also, books that require more work to create can be priced higher, so tapping into more difficult niches is always worth it.

But the most important thing is to choose the niche that most interests you, and by that, you will more likely to be productive and consistent.

Here are examples of the most popular and profitable low-content book niches:

• Sketch Books
• Handwriting books
• Coloring Books
• Puzzle Books

There can be plenty of sub-categories of these low-content books and there can be hundreds of other niches too.

See also: 50+ Profitable Low Content Book Niches

2. Getting Keyword Ideas

The books we have just mentioned are general books that reflect general keywords. In this process, the goal is to get plenty of specific keywords relevant to your chosen niche, and the best way to do that is by looking at Amazon’s autosuggest tab.

Let’s say we have picked a coloring book niche and we type that on Amazon.

The autosuggest will populate the most popular keyphrases that are used by customers, but the problem is that it will only display 11 suggestions, and not all of them are even relevant to us.

Luckily there are free tools that could expand this suggestion list and give us way more specific keyword ideas. One of the best tools to use in this process is a Google Chrome extension called the Suggestion Expander Tool by Self Publishing Titans

As you can see the suggestion expander tool provided a way bigger list of searchable long-tail keywords. You can conveniently download these keywords into a spreadsheet, and if you want more ideas you can add the modifier at the end for the low content book type such as the term “for”, color, style, etc.

The main goal of this process is to come up with as many relevant specific keywords as possible so you can later analyze them individually.

While Self-Publishing Titans provides a free opportunity to do keyword research, this tool isn’t perfect and there can be better free & paid options available out there. To find out more KDP keyword research tools, make sure you read our article on the best KDP keyword research tools

3. Keyword Analysis

Keyword analysis will be the most challenging and time-consuming part as you will have to carefully go through each keyword to ensure it has the potential to rank. However, it is definitely a worthy process, which will have a fundamental impact on your success, so make sure to do it right.

The premium tools, like Book Bolt , which we will discuss later, does a fantastic job when it comes to keyword research for low-content books. However, there are also some good free tools, which you can rely on if you don’t have a budget to invest.

The best free KDP keyword research tool you can come across today is another Google Chrome extension by Self Publishing Titans – KDP / Amazon BSR & Keyword Research SEO Tool . While this tool is not perfect, it can fetch some important data that is not visible to the naked eye.

To start, turn on the extension and type in one of the keywords from your list in Amazon’s search bar. Note that we are looking at the results from a customer’s perspective so you want to run a search on ALL Amazon’s departments instead of the book department.

Once you run a search, our keyword research tool will extract the data from the search results,  such as an average number of results, BSR, etc, and your goal is to make sure that the keyword matches all criteria.

Here’s what all this data mean, and what metrics you should be aiming for.

• Total Results: The goal is to find specific keywords that do not bring a lot of results. To avoid competitive keywords it’s recommended to focus on keywords that bring less than 2,000 results.
• Best Seller Rank (BSR) : This is a very important metric, which indicates the popularity of a niche. Every book that sells on Amazon has a Best Seller Rank, and the more book is selling, the lower the rank will be. The keyword research tool calculates the average best-seller rank of books displayed for each keyword. To make sure that the keyword is searchable enough by the customers, it’s best to focus on an average BSR of lower than 300,000.
• Reviews: If the keyword brings books on the first page with too many reviews, it might be hard to compete with these books. The fewer reviews books will have – the better, and it’s best to focus on keywords that bring listings with under 2,000 reviews on average.
• Price : As mentioned, Amazon will take the printing costs of your sale price, so the higher you will sell a book for, the bigger royalties you will make. Seeing similar books listed at higher prices gives you a good reason to do the same, therefore it’s best to focus on keywords that return an average price of 7$ or more. However, this metric is the least important, and you can still make money from the books priced lower if you manage to pull a higher sales volume.
• Keyword Niche Score: it is the overall score given to the keyword by taking all metrics into account. Since not all the criteria are super important for this tool, the keyword score does not have to be perfect. However, try to aim for a keyword score of 50 or above.

Besides the numbers that you should follow when doing keyword research with this tool, there are a couple of other common sense factors that you should consider:

• Check if there are any recently published books for that keyword on the first page. If you see some new books, it means that you could also rank your book on the first page quickly.
• By typing in your specific keyword, you should also see some books with similar titles. If there’s nothing much similar, it could mean that the keyword is not relevant, and no one is searching for it.

Apart from these two very helpful keyword research extensions, Self Publishing Titans offer some more free useful tools and resources, including:

• Amazon KDP Niche Finder
• BSR Sales Calculator
• Royalty Calculator
• Pen Name Generator
• QR Code Generator
• Book Category Finder
• Free Courses

In addition, the platform also gives away over 100 free done-for-you KDP interior packs  for all kinds of books. Those you can easily edit and use for your book creation.

See also: Best Sources To Download KDP Interiors

The Better Way To Do Keyword Research:

As mentioned, free keyword research tools are good for a low-budget start, but they are not the most accurate and lack some essential features. The best way to do KDP keyword research is with a premium keyword and niche research tool called Book Bolt .

Book Bolt is a fantastic and very affordable Amazon KDP tool for not only keyword analysis but also book creation. In terms of keyword research, Book Bolt has some powerful features to accurately detect profitable niches, and carefully analyze keywords.

It also allows you to spy on your competitors and steal the keyphrases that generate sales. Basically, this tool has everything that Self Publishing Titans extensions have, plus a lot more.

Here’s all that Book Bolt offers:

• Advanced keyword and competition analysis with in-depth insights
• Product database with 5 million titles and trend hunter to easily find emerging niches
• +100 interior templates that you can export and use in any size or page count
• Book cover & interior design studio with 1000s of free fonts, images & illustrations
• Puzzle book generator to create activity, sudoku, coloring, and many other books
• Listing optimization feature that allows to easily optimize listings for the best search visibility

If you decide to invest a little bit into the Amazon KDP business, Book Bolt can be the only software you need as it has everything in one place. It is also quite affordable, since the pricing is only $9.99 a month, with a 3-day free trial .

Here’s a full tutorial on how to use Book Bolt:

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