How Top Publishers Use Keywords

In 2015, Kadaxis (with some help from Bowker, Firebrand and OnixSuite) set out to investigate whether publishers were adding keywords to book metadata. The conclusion was that of the 150,000 publishers reviewed, most weren't adding keywords, and of those publishers who did, the volume and quality of keywords was low.

Anecdotally, we've seen a significant shift in the past three years in the priority publishers give to keywords. We wanted to understand this change more deeply, but instead of taking a large sample of publishers, we adopted a qualitative approach and narrowed our analysis to 846 fiction titles with significant sales. By looking at how keywords are used on a publisher's most important titles, we can infer how important keywords are to a publisher and gain some insight into different keyword methodologies.

Findings

Keywords matter to the top publishers: of the 846 books we analyzed, 69% had keywords - a significant increase to three years ago.

Most publishers still target a 500 keyword character count. Of the books with keywords, 44% had a character count between 480 and 500 characters. See our investigation into why 500 keyword characters is not optimal for selling more books on Amazon:

Optimization savvy publishers are emerging though: 6.2% of books had keyword character counts above 500, while 2% had character counts above 1000 characters (many of these are Kadaxis clients).

Keyword Content

Almost all of the top fifty most commonly used keywords across all books in our set related to category names.

The keywords "fiction" (most common) and "fiction books" (6th most common) were seen throughout the sample set. Search engines are able to derive whether a book is fiction or not by examining the book’s categories, so adding these terms as keywords is often not necessary. Likewise, BISAC and browse node (Amazon only) category names are also indexed by search engines, so if a book is assigned to a category, repeating the category name as a keyword won’t increase the book’s visibility in search. Category and genre names are relevant and appear to make sense as keywords, but understanding how search engines index metadata can often mean a more efficient use of the keyword field.

Rule Breakers

One observation we've made from working with publishers, is that Amazon applies rules discriminately. Large accounts are generally afforded more relief from the rules, and it appears many publishers may be aware of this extra freedom. (See section "Keywords to avoid" from Amazon's rules for KDP authors).

Of our sample set with keywords, 4% of books included the term "bestseller", while 15% broke the "Subjective claim about quality" rule by stating that their books were the “best”, for example: “best horror books”, “best selling fiction author”, “best american novel” and “best fantasy series”.

We also found countless examples of keywords comprised of competitive author and title names, along with the the use of Amazon program names (e.g. "kindle" as a keyword). One publisher even tried to cash in on deal days with the keywords: “cyber monday deals” and “black friday deals”.

Amazon likely filters out prohibited terms, but one exception is the use of competitive title and author names which, when indexed, do improve search visibility.

Conclusion

Publishers with high sales volumes take keywords seriously and in most cases add keywords to their book's metadata. The quality and volume of keywords has improved significantly over the past three years as we've seen publishers move from rarely adding keywords to commonly adding keywords. While keywords were generally well considered, when assessing phrasing, term redundancy, volume and other characteristics used to assess keyword efficacy on Amazon, the trend highlights coverage as a priority for most publishers, ahead of the more involved specifics of optimization. The industry is evolving though, and gaining a more sophisticated understanding of how search works. Our prediction is that in our next review we’ll see an even greater incidence of highly optimized keywords, incorporating this growing body of knowledge.

How Do Keywords Impact Sales?

The question I receive most often from publishers is: “How do keywords impact sales?” While adding keywords to book metadata is considered best-practice, publishing businesses are naturally more interested in whether the practice will increase revenue. Keywords in this context are ‘off-page’ keywords, which are sent to retailers in an ONIX feed or added to a book via KDP, Amazon’s dashboard for Kindle books. Keywords aren’t visible to customers, but are indexed directly by retailer search engines (such as on Amazon), and allow publishers and authors to influence how readers find their books online.

At Kadaxis, we’ve added keywords to thousands of books, on behalf of a wide variety of publishers, and while some titles have seen significant short-term sales improvement, in most cases, publishers observe an average overall increase across a portfolio of titles over time. In this post we’ll cover the relationship between search traffic and sales, and outline how the title selection component of a keyword strategy can have an impact.

Keywords Direct Online Shoppers To Books

When purchasing a book online, a customer, can take many paths in a session of book browsing. We’ve isolated one path for discussion. A typical path a customer might follow involves:

• Typing a search query
• Viewing a list of search results
• Clicking on a book
• Viewing the book’s product information
• Making a purchase

Keywords can assist at the start of this flow, by helping books to appear in search results more frequently. But getting customers from search result to purchase is dependent on their previous exposure to the book, product information and other factors. Readers need to discover a book three times before they’re ready to buy, says Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, and ranking in search presents them with that option.

But the final responsibility to sell the book sits with the book’s product page. The stronger this page is the higher the likelihood of converting search traffic to sales. Some factors include and appealing title and cover, well-written descriptions, and positive customer reviews. A book with a bland, wordy description and a low count of negative reviews is unlikely to yield much return from adding keywords.

Sales Leads to Discoverability Leads to Sales

From a publisher’s perspective, a keyword’s core utility is to direct search traffic to books in the hope of selling more copies. If excellent, reader-focused keywords are assigned to a book, these keywords will only serve their function if the book appears in the search results of customers searching for books by those keywords. If the book doesn’t rank for those keywords, they are of no value.

So how do you determine whether a book will rank for its assigned keywords? The best predictor is sales. We consistently see a correlation between sales and the number of keywords a book ranks for: higher selling books also rank higher in search results. Generally, the more a book sells, and the more recently those sales occurred, the more discoverable it will be.

It can be insightful to examine the intent of different search providers when understanding how search works. Ecommerce retailers, such as Amazon, use search to sell products, whereas search companies, like Google, use search to help people find content. The focus on selling in retailer search can strongly influence how discoverable books become. (See also: How do Amazon and Google use my book metadata in search?).

For many reasons, products that have sold well in the past have a high chance of selling well in the future. Amazon exploits this phenomenon in search (and across their site), by boosting the visibility of higher selling books in an attempt to maximize sales. They understand that the odds of a sale are higher if a customer is presented with a popular item, so search results are reordered based on sales data (and other signals, such as page views and conversion rate). This means even the most well reasoned keywords might not have any impact for some books, but for others, they’re afforded the opportunity to rank for disproportionately more search queries.

Maximizing Return Through Title Selection

The myriad factors influencing search visibility, conversion and buyer sentiment, make it challenging to determine which books will benefit most from keywords. But since the endeavor is relatively low cost compared to rewriting jacket copy or updating a cover, and the possible return is high, the most prudent strategy to maximize ROI is to add keywords to a number of high potential titles.

Tying the concepts above together, this means selecting titles with:

• A high chance of converting: books with good publisher-provided metadata (to assist customers in their buying decision) and customer-created reviews and ratings (social proof).
• A high chance of ranking in search: typically books with a solid sales history, ideally performing above the competition, with recent sales valued more highly (or pre-promotion).

Recurring ROI

Titles that respond positively from keywords will experience increased sales over time, while maintaining search visibility and accumulating social proof, criteria which positively reinforce each other. But this can take time to build, and the rate of improvement varies for different genres, audiences, titles, and is heavily influenced by the prevailing zeitgeist of the moment. It’s not uncommon for titles to “tip” after several months of gradual improvement, which is why it’s best to adopt a medium to long-term outlook for any keyword strategy. But once the right keywords take effect, the return can persist long after the keywords were put in place.

As with most sound marketing strategies, keywords aren’t a silver bullet to an overnight improvement in sales. But when applied strategically across a quality catalog, they can significantly impact discoverability, leading to an ongoing recurring increase in sales over time.

This article originally appeared on the DBW blog May 22, 2017

What are off-page keywords?

In the world of publishing metadata, when we talk about keywords, we’re talking about structured off-page keywords, often sent in an ONIX file, from a publisher to a retailer like Amazon. The retailer indexes the keywords and matches them against customer search queries, in order to display relevant books to them. Keywords are made up of phrases used to describe a book and their purpose is to give a search engine clues about how to show a book to consumers. We call them "off-page", because the retailer uses them directly, and doesn't show them to customers, like they do with other book metadata such as the title or description.

Web search engines, such as Google, determine what content such as a web page is about, and also how people might search for the content. Off-page keywords put this burden on publishers or authors, who have the complex task of trying to understand how readers might search, then how a search engine will use the provided keywords.

A typical book search engine, that reads ONIX, will index various metadata fields, like the title, author, categories and so forth, data who’s primary purpose is to inform consumers about the book - it’s public data. It needs to be appealing and be constructed in a way that is optimized for a search engine to work with.

Conversely, the primary purpose of off-page keywords is to directly inform a search engine how to match a book against search queries. The intended audience is a machine, and the data is hidden from consumers - it is "off" the product "page". This private nature gives publishers a lot of freedom to test and experiment.

Here's an official, dry, textbook definition of keywords in publishing:
“Keywords are words or phrases to describe the theme or content of a book. They are assigned by the metadata creator to supplement title, author, description or other consumer facing data.”

While accurate, it leaves out the motivation behind why we use keywords at all.

On the surface, keywords are just a metadata element. But used properly, they can be a powerful discovery mechanism to capture a reader’s experience with a book, in a way that facilitates sharing that experience with others.

Creating effective keywords is an exercise in studying reader psychology and linguistics, requiring empathy and insight into how people communicate about books with each other. If you’re able to think and talk like your audience, you’re more likely to reach them.

Keywords are used to sell all kinds of products online, but creating them is probably toughest for publishers, as books are far more complex and subjectively experienced than other products, like toothbrushes or hair dryers. So figuring out which elements to express can be challenging.

How do search engines use keywords?

Search engines are just computer programs written to find information for us. We type a query, and the engine thumbs through large swathes metadata to decide what books to display.  The richer the metadata, the more search queries the book might match to.

A book with only basic metadata (title and author and so forth) will show up in fewer search results than the same book with 100 or even 50 good keywords. Every keyword you add is an opportunity to widen the search funnel, letting you suggest to the search engine another way consumers can find your book.

Most books are sold online, and most people find books through search (per Amazon). If you can improve a book’s visibility in search, you improve it’s likelihood of selling more copies. A recent study by Recode, a tech news website, found that more shoppers begin their product search on Amazon (55%) than Google (28%).

9 Common Keyword Mistakes

Coming up with relevant and effective keywords is hard! Keeping them up-to-date and optimized for then number of sales your book is currently making is even harder. Here are common mistakes we see authors make when implementing their keyword strategy on Amazon:

1.  Choosing keywords that are too broad

2. Not validating that a keyword is commonly used by customers

3. Choosing keywords without much traffic

4. Not monitoring keyword progress (checking search rank for a book)

5. Leaving keywords unchanged for a month or longer

6. Choosing keywords that are too competitive for their book

7. Repeating terms across keywords

8. Not aligning keyword strategy with external marketing activities (to capitalize on sales rank increases)

9. Not having a keyword strategy!