The Importance of Keywords in your book’s Metadata

Using Keywords to Find More Readers

#HASHTAGS.

We’ve all used them. #writing #amwriting #book #ebook

Why do we use them? To make ourselves, or our work, or our interests, discoverable.

Imagine that you have just composed the very best promotional tweet in internet history, then you simply send it out into the ether without any reference point, no #hashtag to guide like-minded people to your masterpiece. Sad to say, but it would be pointless.

Keywords are the #hashtags in your book’s metadata. For those of us who are new to publishing, metadata is all of the interesting information that you can’t see but is embedded in your digital files, your epubs and mobi files. Metadata is the information required by Amazon, and Kobo, and B&N and all of the other online retailers. It tells their systems who wrote your book, how you’d describe it, the genre, the price, and most importantly, where it should show up in customer searches.

This is where having the right keywords makes all the difference.

Let’s look at a typical scenario. You spent the last two years writing a romance novel to rival Gone with the Wind, but when you are publishing and faced with that blank space that encourages you to enter keywords, you simply add “romance.”

Granted, it’s short and sweet and to the point. It’s honest. But how many search results will be thrown up when a prospective reader types in “romance” on Amazon?

I just did that search myself and Amazon showed me a list of over 90,000 books…12 at a time. So ask yourself, is a single, general keyword going to bring many buyers to your book page?

Very doubtful.

So now I just searched for “romance in the deep south USA.”

And now I am looking at numbers 1 to 12, of 240 books! The chances of being discovered amongst 239 other books? A good deal higher than before.

So now we can all agree that good keywords are important. Our theoretical author should have stopped and thought for a moment when faced by that unimportant keywords section and typed.

“romance;deep south;usa;old south;america”

As a matter of interest, I just added “plantation” to the end of my query and reduced the search list to 1 available book. So if I were really wanting to buy a novel about romance on an American deep south plantation, one clever author who understands keywords just got lucky.

Here are a few more #book #keyword do’s and don’ts — inspired by Barnes & Noble’s guidelines.

Don’t ride someone else’s wave of success

Going back to our hypothetical scenario, let’s say you wanted to reach Gone with the Wind fans and so typed in the following…

“gone with the wind;margaret mitchell;bestseller;scarlett o’hara”

Surely these keywords speak directly to the people who will want your book?

Probably not, actually. These keywords will bring people to your book’s page who indeed want to buy Gone with the Wind, people who will feel annoyed that Amazon has taken them where they don’t want to be. Keyword selections like this, that deliberately mislead buyers, are against most stores guidelines and rules . They may even lead to your book’s listing being taken down.

So the message is, create your own wave of success. Don’t try to ride someone else’s.

Keyword formatting

Now to a few facts that authors don’t always know.

Always separate keywords with commas?

deep south, america, romance

True, this works, but most distribution software likes our keywords separated by semicolons (“;”). The software also doesn’t like spaces after punctuation, so the best way to present keywords would be…

deep south;america;romance

(Of course, as StreetLib Publish users already know our platform allows you to enter keywords individually, and the Publish software adds the semicolons automatically.)

Special characters are generally not recognised, so an “&” as in Bed & Breakfast would cause the whole keyword set to be ignored.

Many distributors / retailers have a set number of keywords that they accept, sometimes five, seven — sometimes more, sometimes less. So aim for five to seven good ones, and always use the best first.

Keywords are not always singular. For example, our theoretical author could have used:

deep south romance;usa;united states of america;cotton plantation;civil war

It is perfectly acceptable to use short phrases as keywords, especially if they get your message across clearly. Just keep in mind that it is advisable not to exceed 500 characters in total.

In summary, it would be possible to dive into the subject of keywords in such depth that only a programmer would understand, but as authors we just need to remember these few points:

• Don’t try to capitalise on the success of other writers by trying to use their names or works to stimulate interest.
• Put yourself in the mind of the buyer or reader. If you wanted to buy a book just like yours, what words or phrase would you use to search for it?
• Use your best keywords first, because some distributors won’t accept a long list and will delete any that exceed their limit.
• Try a little variety, as the keywords you select when your book first goes on sale aren’t set in stone. If sales are slow, try shaking things up with a few new keywords.
• Finally, avoid using words that are in your title and subtitle. These words are already in the distributor’s internal search engine. So if your novel is entitled Love On the Plantation, the words love and plantation don’t need to show up in your keywords.

Selling books is tough, we all know that. But with a little thought and clever use of keywords and key phrases, it is possible to bring more readers to your books.

So until next time… Happy Writing!

Note: Keyword facts are in-line with “Best Practices for Keywords in Metadata,” by the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. 2018