Free Guide: How To Find The Best Keywords For Your Amazon Ads

Keywords are an incredibly powerful and effective targeting option with Amazon Ads, but many authors use them in completely the wrong way, by:

- Targeting 100's of keywords in a single campaign

- Using keywords in all 3 Match Types (Broad, Phrase and Exact) in the same campaign

- Targeting keywords that are irrelevant or tenuously related to the advertised books (i.e the keyword "book")

The more relevant your keywords are to your advertised book, the better your Amazon Ads will perform.

I've been running Amazon Ads for several years now and I have tested a LOT of different strategies and tactics.

From all the testing I've done (and money I've spent), here's how I've boiled everything down into a winning keyword targeting strategy:

#1 Target 10-15 keywords per campaign

#2 Use ONE Match Type per campaign

#3 Test the same keywords in different Match Types (separate campaign for each Match Type)

#4 Only target highly relevant keywords

#5 Use a mixture of long-tail (4+ words) and short-tail (1-3 words) keywords

#6 Keep each type of keyword in separate campaigns (i.e. Authors, Search Terms, Book Titles)

#7 Only target keywords that have 500+ searches per month

Now, I want to let you in on a little secret...

I use a piece of software for my keyword research! It's called Publisher Rocket*.

Not only does Publisher Rocket help me find keywords for my Amazon Ads, it also tells me:

- How many searches a keyword has on a monthly basis

- How much authors are earning from certain keywords

- The amount of royalties any book on Amazon is earning their author

- Number of competitors for a specific keyword

- Categories I could list my book in based on their competitiveness

- Book Titles, Author Names and ASINs that are related to specific keywords 

Publisher Rocket* is an amazing piece of software that I use every single day! I highly recommend you invest in it because it will save you hours and hours of time doing keyword research manually. 

*Full disclosure; this is an affiliate link. I will earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through my link, at no additional cost to you.

Simply use Publisher Rocket's Keyword Search feature, enter your seed keyword (the word or words that first come to mind when describing your book) and tada... you'll be presented with a list of keywords related to your seed keyword.

Your seed keyword could be any number of words you or your readers would use to describe your book; for example:

- crime thriller

- historical fantasy

- self-help

- stock market investing

- confidence

- calisthenics

Publisher Rocket then provides me with, sometimes, hundreds of potential keywords I could use in my Amazon Ads.

By clicking the orange magnifying glass button on the right hand side, I'll be able to see all sorts of data for every single keyword. Very powerful.

Now, the last thing you should do here is dump all these keywords into your campaigns!

Instead, hand pick the absolute most relevant keywords, that have at least 500 searches per month.

That way, you know you'll be targeting keywords that receive a good amount of monthly search volume.

If investing in Publisher Rocket isn't an option for you at this stage, you can use Amazon itself for your keyword research - which won't cost you a penny!

Simply enter your seed keyword into the Amazon search bar and look at Amazon's suggestions.

All of the search terms listed here that Amazon is suggesting, are real search terms that real readers on Amazon have searched for.

Unfortunately, without using Publisher Rocket*, you won't be able to see the reams or reams of data that is possible with this piece of software, including the monthly searches, which, for me, aside from relevance, is the most important asset of a keyword with good potential.

But, if you're just stuck for keyword ideas, going the Amazon suggested route will work well for you. When you want to take things up a notch, that's when Publisher Rocket will really come into its own.

If you want to go deeper into keyword research, I cover this very topic (and much, much more) inside Amazon Ads Academy For Authors.

Keyword targeting is very powerful.

Yes, it takes time to collect the keywords you want to test, but once you've found them and you know you're only targeting keywords with a reasonable amount of monthly search volume, that's when you can feel confident in your strategy.

And when you've discovered some good performing, proven keywords after testing them for 2-4 weeks, you can then really start to scale those up to reach even more readers and sell more books.

That's all for today! You got this.