Remember when I said that your book title has two jobs and two jobs only:

1. To sell your book
2. To help your book get discovered through search engines

Well, it’s time to talk about those search engines for a hot minute.

You have hundreds and thousands of books to compete against. You know it, and so do I. So, how do you expect users to find and purchase yours, given that it’s a veritable needle in a haystack? By using keywords in your title and subtitle whenever possible, that’s how.

Amazon, the world’s largest bookstore, operates like a search engine.

Amazon book keywords are the words users—ideal readers—enter into the search bar when searching for books on the Amazon marketplace, expecting Amazon to display books relevant to their queries. These keywords can consist of a single word, a set of long-tail keywords, or sometimes even a complete phrase.

If you’re writing a book about conflict resolution, for example, think:

• Conflict
• Conflict management
• Book on resolving conflict at work
• How do I resolve conflict?

As such, Amazon keywords for books play a crucial role in boosting the visibility of your book listing on the platform. The more often your book shows up against a set of keywords, the more impressions it gets and the higher your chances of making a sale.

Placing relevant keyword search terms in your book’s title helps Amazon understand and categorize it. Therefore, you must find efficient keywords to help your book be found.

Picking keywords for Amazon is more complex than choosing the most popular ones from some secret list. You have to do some research to find them.

To come up with the best keywords to include in your title and/or subtitle, start with a list of words you think accurately describe your book.

Then head over to Amazon, keeping several factors in mind when you type some of the options into Amazon’s search bar. The first is the number of search results associated with a given keyword.

If I enter the keyword “conflict resolution” into Amazon’s bookstore search bar and hit enter, books that match this keyword will appear. At the very top of the page, I’ll see a line that reads: 1-24 of over 50,000 results for “conflict.”

That means conflict has a keyword search result of 50,000. Many people are searching for books using this term.

On the contrary, if I type in the term “friction”, which is a synonym for conflict, I’ll see a line that reads: 1-24 of 389 results for “friction”.

That means friction has a search result of 389. Far fewer book buyers are searching Amazon using this term.
Note: These values will change daily, although not dramatically.

The relative “competitiveness” of a keyword is the second consideration.

Your first impulse, and it’s a good one, would be to load your title up with the most-searched keywords that would get your book found. However, the top keywords are also the most competitive. For example, when you search for “self-help books,” Amazon generates 70,000 books in the search results.

With the competition so high, you’ll struggle to compete on this keyword. This means you must narrow down your search and find more specific keywords that are popular but also have less competition.

Empath is a good example of this. It’s a perfect complimentary keyword for any self-help book, and only 8,000 competitors show up in the search volume.

As a rule of thumb, look for keywords within a 4000-50,000 search ranking range. In this range, you can compete, and there are enough ideal readers out there using the term.

If you want some additional keyword ideas, look at the books that come up in the keyword search. Under conflict resolution, for instance, I found:

The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution: How to Thoughtfully Handle Difficult Situations, Conversations, and Personalities by Rosalie Puiman

New possible keywords include:

• Difficult situations
• Difficult conversations
• Difficult personalities
• Mindful

Once you locate appropriate keywords, consider placing some of them in the title and subtitle of your book. However, don’t feel the need to force it if it doesn’t make sense. You want to make sure your title flows nicely and sounds authentic and natural, as opposed to robotic.

A good keto diet book title, one rich with keywords, might go something like this:

Keto Diet for Beginners: A Practical Guide to Health and Weight Loss Containing Over 100 Quick, Easy, and Delicious Low-Carb Recipes

It’s a little long for my taste, but if you heard me say it out loud, you wouldn’t question the title. In fact, you’d know precisely what the book is about and who (and what) it’s for.

QUESTION: Can you list at least fifteen keywords that would make sense for your book and their search values?

Examples:

• Pain (60,000)
• Pain Relief (10,000)
• Pain Free (20,000)
• Chronic Pain (20,000)
• Chronic Pain Management (10,000)
• How to cure chronic pain and depression (36)
• Chinese medicine (30,000)
• Maladies (20,000)
• Chronic disease (20,000)
• Chronic illness (10,000)
• Health cure (60,000)
• Illness (60,000)
• Symptoms (50,000)
• side effects (9,000)
• Incurable (2000)

Then, can you list another 15 keywords from titles/subtitles that you found in your search for competitive titles?

Examples:

• Active pain management (183)
• Autoimmune pandemic (128)
• Stress & Fatigue (453)

Of course, there are other considerations when choosing your title.
A strong title also matches the category of your book.
And it speaks to an ideal reader and the problem they want solved.
And it matches the tone of your content.
And it’s memorable and packs a punch.