What are keywords and how can they help you sell your book?

Do you know what keywords and SEO are?

Whether your answer is Yes or No you’ll want to read this article to understand how you can leverage them to increase your book sales.

Many of the book authors I work with are smart business owners, consultants, executives and board directors. Some have their own websites, others not . . . well that’s until they’ve started their self publishing book project.

Without going too far into the details, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. It’s how your website content, articles, posts, Blogs etc are written and uploaded to maximise their ‘searchability’ by Google. The easier it is for Google to search your content the more you/your book will be ‘found’.

Keywords aren’t just words, they are words and phrases.

They are ‘key’ because they are the common words and phrases that people use when they type their query into Google. The clearer, more commonly used the word/phrase the more chance you have of people ending up on your website/article.

AND, given that Google searches have 90% of the search market understanding how it works is vital for your/your book to be ‘found’.

This said, In May 2024 at its annual IO conference Google announced that it is overhauling its core search engine to feature Generative AI and would start showing AI-generated answers (AI overviews). The answers, powered by its Gemini technology, will appear at the top of Google search result pages and will give users concise summaries along with suggested follow up questions and a list of links they can click on to learn more.? Traditional search results will be further down the screen.

If AI overviews do their job well enough users won’t need to click through as many links, if at all. I’ll cover this in another article as I am still getting my head around it and what it means for self published book authors.

Semrush has a good overview of this .

There's also negative keywords...words that you don't want linked to your search. Fujisan Marketing has a good summary of this.

Keywords for books

If you are publishing your book online with online retailers (like Amazon) you’ll be asked to type in keywords (not phrases) that describe your book. There’s a bit of science and smart thinking around what keywords you should use and the team at Reedsy have numerous free articles about this.

In short though, Reedsy notes that you should pick keyword phrases that are relatively popular (otherwise no-one will search for them), but not necessarily too popular (as they’ll be too competitive).

Keywords and book titles

Interestingly though, the Reedsy team shares another really interesting point, that the title of your book is also super important from a search perspective.

I know you might be in love with your beautifully crafted book title, BUT, if you want your book to perform better in searches think about making sure that your title, subtitle, or series title, include the words of your search.

Of course, the title and subtitle has to reflect what’s in your book and have some creative flair rather than simply be a keyword phrase.

One option is to have a creative title and more keyword orientated subtitle OR the other way around.

Keywords and book blurbs

?Another area you can apply this approach to is the blurb on the back of your book (and versions of this that will appear in your book descriptions on media releases, summaries for Podcasts, events etc.

Keywords and your author bio

Your author bio is yet another piece of search real estate that you should review with your ‘keyword hat’ on. Like the book blurb your author bio can include more than just words…you can include highly searchable phrases as well. As with the content on your website, you don’t want to stuff your bio with so many keywords/phrases that it’s unreadable or simply not interesting.

Like all elements of content marketing, SEO and keywords, it’s a matter of balance, and I’d also suggest preference.

Personally, I prefer to write what I want to write and then scan it to see if there’s anything I can change to make it more searchable, but I don’t rewrite my content to maximise it’s search factor. Why? Because I am more focused on sharing insights and knowledge that helps people write and self publish their book more effectively.

In summary, be aware of what keywords and phrases your target audience might use to find your book topic, do some research on this or pay an expert to, and integrate these words and phrases into everything you write, but don’t overdo it.