Choosing Keywords That Describe Your Book (Part II: Keywords for Authors Series)
In Part I (What Are Keywords?), we learned that keywords are simply the terms people type into the search engines when they’re looking for something. In this section and the next, we’re going to talk about how to figure out which keywords you should use to bring targeted readers (and book buyers) to your site.
The hardest part about keyword research is realizing that what keywords you’d use to describe your book aren’t necessarily what the general population is going to use. In order to bring in the most visitors (or “traffic”) to your site as possible, you want to target the keywords that the majority of the people are using.
Let me give you an example.
If you’re an author, you might be inclined to market your epic adventure story as a “fantasy novel.” Anything can be a book, but fiction works are called novels, right? That’s more precise, so you’ll want to use that in your web site copy, right?
Well, according to my keyword research tool, “fantasy book” is searched more often than fantasy novel. That means it’d make more sense for you to use book in your keyword phrase than novel.
I’ll post links to online keyword research tools in the next section. Right now, let’s just worry about brainstorming some keywords.
You’re going to want to take a moment and write down all the phrases you can think of that people might use to search for your novel. This is definitely a good time to ask friends, co-workers, relatives, etc. what they think too. You’re close to your work (probably an expert on your topic), and it’s hard to remember what terms the average non-expert might use to find your work.
I’ll stick to my fantasy novel keywords and give you a few that pop into my head:
fantasy novel
fantasy book
epic fantasy
swords and sorcery
best fantasy books
fantasy adventure
new fantasy authors
Ok, now it’s your turn. Write down all the keywords you can think of for your book. I’m a fiction person, so I’m using fantasy for an example, but keywords can work for non-fiction too (actually, it’s easier to be very specific with non-fiction–when people are looking to learn something, they usually have a more precise idea in their minds of what they’re looking for than when they’re simply looking to be entertained).
If you’re having trouble coming up with possible keywords, head over to Google Suggest and play around with it. You can start typing in a term, and the tool will suggest ways to finish it.
When you’re done brainstorming your list, you’re ready to move onto Part III: Finding out Which Keywords People Are Searching.
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