Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) was renamed to Advertising Console, but the heart of Amazon’s advertising feature remains the same—relevant keywords.

You may have written an amazing book, but if readers don’t know it exists, it could wallow on the virtual shelf attracting virtual dust, and we don’t want that for your book. So today we’re going to focus on how to create a list of keywords for an AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) sponsored ad.

Amazon Sponsored Ads are straight-forward enough to use and budget friendly, making them a popular every-level opportunity for beginning authors.

You can spend just a few dollars a day to test out your advertising campaigns, and see if the words you’re using are attracting readers; encouraging them to click on your book; and better yet, hitting the buy button.

Manual or Automated Keyword Lists

The placement of your Amazon Ad and whether it shows up as a sponsored product in search results or on product pages, depends on the audience targeting. You need to make sure you’re reaching the right readers, and targeting them is achieved by selecting a group of keywords.

Amazon provides you with the flexibility of using an automatic keyword list (generated by Amazon), or creating your own custom list.

Amazon are kings of the algorithm, so if you don’t have the expertise or time to create your own list you can just go with the predefined list from Amazon. But if you have the time and patience to take ownership and accountability for your advertising campaigns, create your own custom list.

Parallel Keyword Ads

If you’re not sure which path you want to take, then why not run two ads. One using an automated list, and one with a list you compiled yourself.

Run them with the same settings, and for the same period of time and see which one is the most lucrative.

If the automated keyword ad is the most lucrative, that’ll give you the confidence to set up more ads, or ads for your other books, using the automated approach.

Manual Keyword Lists

When you’re creating your keyword lists, you need to put yourself into your reader’s shoes. If they’re looking for a book like yours, what search terms are they typing into Amazon to find relevant book?

There’s actually two primary ways readers search for books, and it depends on whether they know what they’re looking for, or whether they’re just browsing for inspiration.

Even though there’s a Kindle Category hierarchy, even authors struggle to navigate that, so readers are more likely to type their search term in the Amazon search field.

For example, readers looking for a travel guide may know the publishers and destination they are searching for, or they may just have a vague idea of a destination or the type of trip they want to take, and will use the search results as inspiration.

Here’s some examples of specific and generic search terms travel guide readers might use:

• Lonely Planet Bodrum Turkey
• Rick Steves Europe
• Backpacking France
• Travel Europe
• Solo Travel
• Budget Travel America
• Driving the California Coast Highway

These descriptive phrases will bring up multiple results. Not just books that match the exact phrase, but also related books.

For example when I typed in Lonely Planet Bodrum Turkey, three books showed up, and one sponsored ad.

Amazon uses the key information publishers and authors provide when they set their titles up to deliver relevant results, which is why it’s so important to take the time to assign relevant keywords and categories, and use optimized book descriptions, titles, and subtitles.

When I typed in Solo Travel, I didn’t just get results generated by Amazon, I also saw Sponsored titles at the top of the results. One on them had Solo in the title, but the Fodor’s guide didn’t. So the way these books showed up in this search result was by running a sponsored ad and having solo travel as on of their descriptive phrases.

You could create a list of keywords and phrases using any search term you want. So even if your book is about family travel, you could use solo travel as one of the terms you want to be found for, and when readers type in solo travel your family travel book will show up as a sponsored book listing.

Relevant Keywords

But if the topic of the book isn’t relevant, then what’s the chances of your ad getting clicked? It may get clicked by an inquisitive traveller, but as soon as they read your  book description, it will be evident that your book isn’t anything to do with solo travel and they’ll click back to the search results.

Amazon Ads are Pay Per Click, you’ve just been charged for that ad click, and it hasn’t resulted in a sale because the search term you used isn’t relevant to your book’s content.

Your goal as an author is to entice readers to click on your book because it appears in relevant search results. Getting your book to appear on relevant pages is the first step on the path to purchase.

When they click on your book cover to visit your book page, your book description should entice them to use the Look Inside feature to read a sample of your content. These three elements—all need to work to entice Amazon customers who see your book on a relevant page or in relevant search terms, to purchase your book.

The key here is relevancy. In order to get discovered by potential readers, you need to come up with a list of terms that are applicable to your book. It’s needs to contain specific terms, but also generic terms so that you have more opportunity of having your book displayed in the broadest range of search results.

Bear in mind that some Amazon shoppers are looking for book inspiration in the search results, and may type in generic or broad search terms to see what shows up.

Manually choosing effective keywords is a trial and error process. It’s not a complete shot in the dark, but you need to test your campaigns to see how effective your keywords are.

That’s why it’s good to start with a manual and automated keyword list, so you monitor and assess how effective each ad has been for you.

Amazon Ads are a hefty topic, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. We’ll continue covering this topic so that we can help you dip your toe into Amazon Ads, optimize your budget, and sell more books.