Backend keywords

What the keyword boxes are for

KDP gives you 7 keyword boxes of up to 50 characters each. They are not shown to shoppers; they tell Amazon's search what your book is about beyond what the title, subtitle and categories already say.

Spend every character on something new

Words already in your title, subtitle and categories are indexed anyway, so repeating them in a keyword box spends space on nothing. Use the boxes for the other ways a shopper might describe the book: the setting, the trope, the reader it is for, the problem it solves.

Phrases tend to work better than single words. Shoppers type “gratitude journal for teens” more than “journal”, and a broad single word puts you against every book on the site.

What not to put in

Amazon's metadata guidelines prohibit several kinds of keyword, and they can lead to a listing being suppressed:

• Other authors' names and other books' titles.
• Trademarked terms you are not entitled to use.
• Claims about the listing such as “bestseller” or “free”.
• Terms that are misleading or unrelated to the book's content.

Finding good keywords

Start typing a phrase into Amazon's search box and read the suggestions; they reflect what shoppers actually search. Look at how comparable books describe themselves. Then revisit after launch — keywords can be edited at any time, and this is guidance you can test rather than a rule you must get right first time.

The keyword planner in the workspace gives you the seven boxes with a live character count and flags duplicates across boxes, so no slot is wasted.

Changing keywords later

Keywords are not fixed at publication. If a book is not being found for the searches you expected, adjust a box or two and give it a few weeks before judging the result. Change a few at a time, so you can tell which change made a difference.