First Sunday Q&A: Working with Keywords to Attract Your Ideal Readers
What I learned about finding and inserting keywords in the descriptions of my book for the best outreach
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Welcome to “First Sunday” Q&A, where we dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. I have a great selection from attendees at my virtual launch on November 10 and I’ll lean on these as we get going, but please feel free to post questions in the comments or email them to me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com, and I’ll spend time on them, sharing ideas, tips, and resources from my own experience. I’m happy to keep you anonymous.
My intention is to make this a safe, generous place to exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on your mind.
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Q: In one of your past newsletters, you talked about the importance of keywords for reaching your readers on bookseller sites and via other outreach. I know very little about keywords, and I’d love to learn more.
A: My sense is that few writers know about this vital aspect of reaching readers. I knew so little about keywords when I began marketing my last novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue. I had only peripherally heard of metadata and the use of keywords, and I figured if I wasn’t in tech fields or much savvier on the computer than I was, I never really needed to know.
Metadata can be simply explained as the information behind the information, the data of the data—like the time and date stamp on a photograph. It’s not the photo image itself, it’s the information about the image. If you’re going to break down metadata into what’s most useful to authors, it would be descriptive metadata: title, genre, and other details about your book. Including keywords.
Here’s an interesting article about metadata for authors, if you want to take a deeper dive, but for my purposes, the key is those keywords and how they can be used to get readers to find your book.
Keywords are the way we create compelling descriptions of our books, or blurbs, that are used on bookseller sites to attract readers. Keywords are what should, ideally, come up in a search of books similar to yours. But most of us writers really fall flat when we are asked to write either keywords or sales descriptions (versus general descriptions) of our books. We write the story—what happens, where, to whom. We don’t necessarily write the sizzle, as one author friend said. Keywords aren’t fully used as a way to attract readers.
There are simple keywords and there are long-tail keywords, which are more refined and specific. Both are incredibly useful, when an author learns how to incorporate them into marketing a book.
But so many authors assume the back-cover or jacket copy of their book is enough to connect readers who are searching online for similar titles.
Not true. I learned this the hard way.
This week, I want to share some important tips I learned this past year, launching two books (!!), about different kinds of keywords, what to use where, and how they help readers find your book.