SEO Basics for Kindle Book Promotion

SEO is ‘Search Engine Optimization’. This is the process of editing a website and building links in such a way that it will be optimized for Google. This means building links (which helps Google to find a site and is viewed as testimony) and it means ensuring the correct use of keywords on the pages. 

When done correctly, SEO can drive a lot more traffic to a website by helping more visitors find it through Google. 

But SEO isn’t just for websites and it isn’t just for Google. There are many more search engines out there and many of them we don’t necessarily think of as ‘search engines’. Of course you can probably guess where this is going: the Kindle store is also a search engine. In order to find books on Kindle, customers will need to search for the relevant topics and then sift through the top results. This means you can still perform SEO for a Kindle book, in order to increase your exposure through that search tool and thereby to help more customers find you.

And in some ways, this is just the same as SEO for a website. In other ways, it’s completely different…

Your Listing

The first way you can increase your exposure in the Kindle Store is to make sure your listing is on-point. The biggest factors here will be the title you choose for your book as this is going to directly impact on what searches bring people to your page. Of course one strategy is to make your title the same as your ‘keyword’ (the search term you want to rank for). For example, you might call it: ‘How to Lose Weight With Bodyweight Training’. 

While this might work, it can unfortunately undermine the effectiveness of your title by being too ‘obvious’. Only include keywords in your title then where it is a natural fit and where it doesn’t hurt your brand.

Where you can include a few more keywords is in the description for your book. Don’t be too obvious though – instead just write enough that relevant words will naturally be included so that Amazon knows what your book is about.

Success

On Kindle, success begets success. In other words, the more downloads you receive and the better your reviews, the higher you will rank. This of course then leads to more downloads and more reviews creating a virtuous cycle.

Your job as a marketer is to make sure that you get that ball rolling. And one way to do that is to run a promotion. If you sell your book for less, then this can drive more downloads and also encourage more positive reviews from happy customers.

An even better way to do this is through Amazon’s ‘Kindle Select’ program. While there are some downsides to being a part of this program, it does mean that you’ll be considered for special promotions which might even result in your book being on the front page. This is a great way to give yourself that boost and certainly worth considering.