You get seven keywords to pick for your book, but which ones are the best ones? Maybe it's better to start with which ones are the worst ones.
The words in your title and subtitle already count as keywords. In fact, the words in your title hold more weight than any other location such as the description or keyword box.
So the perfect seven keywords to pick aren't the same words that are in your title. Amazon will simply ignore repeat words.
The title “The Best Recipes for Paleo Diets” would not benefit at all from using any of the following keywords:
- Best
- Recipes
- Paleo
- Diet
It wouldn't hurt to use those repeat words, but they're taking the spot of a word that could be useful.
Since Amazon has a spell checker in its search bar, using common misspellings frequently won’t help, either. Recipes is the same as recepis. Avoid using misspellings since they are autocorrected by Amazon.
Another thing to avoid is plurals. Mouse and mice are the same word. So are fork and forks. Amazon connects a word and it's plural together. So list a word however you like (singular or plural) but only list it once.
You also can’t use trademark words or author names, Amazon can choose not to list your book or simply remove the offending word.
The proper use of those seven keywords is to compliment your book’s title. With the above example, a good seven would be:
- Top
- Food
- Lose Weight
- Nutrition
- Primal
- Cookbook
- Meals
The words you pick are also in logical flow, meaning they hold more weight the closer they are to the first word. For example “top” is ranked more important than “meals.”
Thanks to Janet Ruth for your help with picking the perfect keywords for your book. To check out Janet Ruth's books on writing click here.