You need good keywords for books to have effective ads
Understanding keywords for books is crucial to your ad’s success.
Ultimately it’s the difference between a cost effective ad buy and a waste of money.
What are keywords for books?
They are words or phrases you bid on for Amazon, Facebook or Google ads.
The more precise your keyword, the less competition you’ll have on that word.
Your ads should have some relevance to that keyword or phrase.
If you win the keyword bid, your ad will be seen by potential customers.
If they click on the ad, you pay.
With GOOD keywords, your ad will be seen by more potential customers.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Don’t merely pick what you think are decent keywords for your book.
Build a good list.
Brainstorm your book.
What would you ask Alexa in order to find your book?
Think Jeopardy. You have the answer, you just need the question.
Then that question becomes your keyword or keywords.
Find a keyword or keyword phrase readers are already searching by putting the first word into the Google search bar.
See the list of six or even other words dropping down?
Those are additional, and usually more specific, keywords.
You can also use any of these tools to help you find good keywords:
- Amazon Advanced Search
- Answer the Public
- Google Trends
- SEOBook Keyword Tool
- Kindle Spy
- Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- Keywords Everywhere
- Wordtracker Scout
- Ubersuggest
However, before you just start browsing through the generators, planners and repositories, look at your brainstormed list.
What words do you think people will look for if they are looking for your type of book?
What’s working?
Now use that list to look through the tools above to see how well those keywords and keyword phrases are working out.
Each of these tools offers analytics on a certain word or phrase.
The simplest way of doing this is to look at the ones at the top of the list.
Don’t use them.
Same as with a Google search, use the ones further down.
But really look at the data.
What’s performing well and how much are people spending on it?
Most markets recommend targeting 2.5% of the sales cost for a long phrase keyword.
So if your book is priced at $1.99, then you’ll target five cents for the price you’ll pay per click.
The more precise the keyword phrase, the less you should have to pay for it.
The cost is higher for more popular keywords.
The average cost per click on Facebook is $1.56 and on Google it runs $1.50.
Best practices for finding good keywords for books are broken down into these steps:
- Brainstorm Your Book. We already talked about this but it gives you the starting point you need.
- Look at the top hits on Google’s search engine results page for keywords or phrases you are targeting. Use the fourth or fifth one. It has less competition.
- Enter the topic in one, two or even three of the keywords tools listed above.
- Check search volume, trends and other data available on the words you want to use
- You can also enter a URL to see what keywords others are bidding on
- Pick a keyword or phrase that convert at a high rate. You want ones where high traffic, low competition and commercial intent intersect
When you begin to build ads, no matter which platform you decide to use, keywords are the difference between a hit and a flop.
You need great keywords to make your ad work for you, because keywords is how targeted ads work.
Every single ad you buy is really you bidding on a keyword or keyword phrase.
The more precise the keyword or phrase, the more targeted it is, the more likely you’ll win the bid.
Good luck!