How to Get the Best Kindle Publishing Keywords (Tutorial)

About this video

In this follow-up to his earlier keyword tutorial, Dale explains what to do with a long list of candidate Kindle keywords: use keyword stemming to fit many of them into the limited slots. He says publishers once stuffed keyword lists labeled as tags into book descriptions to game Amazon search, a messy practice he believes Amazon has cracked down on. Keyword stemming means taking a basic popular keyword and adding a prefix, suffix, or pluralization to make a longer version, narrowing and broadening capture at once. Using Amazon’s search suggestions for ‘workout’ as an example — suggestions like workout plans, workout motivation, workout routine book, workout books, workout cookbook, workout plans for women, workout routines, workout guide, and workout books for 50 plus women — he first removes irrelevant suggestions (motivation, cookbook, and, in his hypothetical, the 50-plus audience), then removes redundancies such as workout plans versus workout plans for women depending on the book’s actual audience, and also drops suggestions containing ‘book/books’ for this demonstration because, he notes, Amazon strongly discourages those words, though he says he has not heard of pushback for using them. He combines the remaining phrases — workout plans for women, workout routines, and workout guide — into one logical stemmed phrase, ‘Workout plans and routines guide for women,’ signaling to Amazon that searchers for any of those terms should find the book. He reminds viewers KDP allows up to seven keyword slots with a 50-character limit per slot, while CreateSpace allows only five slots with 25 characters per slot, so stemming choices must be more selective there.

Key takeaways

• Keyword stemming combines a base keyword with prefixes, suffixes, or plural forms so one slot can capture multiple related searches
• Do not stuff a raw keyword list as tags into the book description — Dale says the practice looks spammy and Amazon has cracked down on it
• Prune Amazon’s autosuggest list by removing irrelevant terms for your book and redundant near-duplicates before stemming
• Combine the surviving phrases into one natural, logical phrase, as in his example merging workout plans for women, workout routines, and workout guide
• Slot limits shape the strategy: he states KDP allows seven keyword slots at 50 characters each, versus CreateSpace’s five slots at 25 characters each

Episode details: published August 31, 2017 · 4:44 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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