Indie Authors: Better Keywords Sell More Books

Please welcome my guest star Jason Matthews, the author of two novels and three how-to books. I call Jason my friendly Google guru, and he's here to tell all of us authors how to use keywords to drive traffic to our books.

Jason's nonfiction books are of particular interest to indie authors especially Get On Google Front Page: 2011 SEO Tips, which is all about using keywords.


In His Own Words: Jason Matthews

Thousands of self-published books are uploaded to online retailers every day, according to Mark Coker of Smashwords. Many of these new authors are also creating blogs for their titles. That means, to succeed, Indie authors must stand out from an ever-increasing crowd. It's no longer enough to write a great story, but you also have to assist readers in finding your book.

The Answer

The answer, which eludes many authors, is to rise in search engine results for specific terms. Then new readers will find your book just by searching with Google/Yahoo/Bing or even in the box at Amazon. (Yes, Amazon is a search engine.)

Fortunately, this can be easier than you think. In fact, it can be a simple matter of using keywords wisely as well as knowing which terms to use and where to use them.

How Readers Browse

Face it, unless you're already famous, most book buyers won't type your name and book title into a search box; instead they'll type something descriptive of what they want like "historical romance novel" or "fantasy books for young adults."

Surprisingly, many authors use terms as generic as "ebook," "fiction" and "kindle" to accompany blog posts and book tags, terms too broad and competitive for helping with search engines.

Keywords can be individual words like "action" or "adventure," a set of words like "action adventure genre," or even phrases like "action adventure books for young adults." This is the difference between short and long-tail terms, targeting broad markets with heavy competition versus niche markets with less.

Best Practice

It's best to add both short and long-tail keywords to every site, blog, URL, book title, headline and description that have boxes for them, always ensuring that the keywords are related to the content of your book.

Your best keywords are relevant and being searched by lots of people with relatively low competition.

Make A List

Start by making a list of possible terms and phrases describing your book. Let this list be extensive because a few hours of initial research helps immensely in SEO efforts over time. You can include your name for branding, but the subject matter is most important.

Check Your List

Then go to Google's Keyword Tool External. There you can freely type in words or phrases and get data on how many times per month Google actually receives that request. Notice how slight variations can dramatically affect results, e.g. "action adventure novels" is about five times more popular than "action adventure stories." You'll also see a bar graph indicating competition from others using those keywords.

Then go to Amazon and type in your favorite terms (or tags) to see which books are on the first page of results. That's where you want to be!

Take Action

Begin by employing your researched terms into everything related to your book including retailer's description, tags, labels, blog posts, articles, interviews and more.

Blog regularly on these topics with the keywords, both short and long-tail, spread out among the headline, categories and text. Use those keywords for anything related. Over time, your book will make it to the first page of search results, and you will sell more copies.

Thank You, Jason Matthews!

Jason has been standing by on the West Coast, waiting to take comments and questions. If you leave either, I'm sure he'll get back to you soon. His book is available in print and Kindle editions. I'm getting the Kindle edition, and I recommend it to anyone who needs to gain more exposure for a published book.


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Takeaway Truth
Authors need to be as well-skilled in the business of writing as they are in the craft of writing. Using keywords properly can help you greatly.

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(Note: We're off to a bumpy start this Friday since Blogger has been off-line for more than 24 hours. When it came back on, I discovered to my frustration that everything from Wednesday to this moment had been wiped out. Next time Jason appears, I hope things will go off without a hitch. Guess we can blame this on Friday the 13th even though I'm not a bit superstitious.)