Tagging, Labeling and Key Words to Find Books

As I mentioned yesterday, entering the e-book world means writers need to know how to position their work so that readers can easily find it.
Writing Tip for Today: The more categories you can link your book to, the higher the likelihood that a reader will find your book. In the world of Google searches, blogs, reading sites and booksellers such as Amazon, an important strategy is getting your book tagged, labelled or keyed with as many appropriate words and phrases as possible.

  • On Blogger, these categories are called “labels.” Each of the posts on this blog are sorted so that they would pop up on a search. The search could be on Google or on the blog itself. In addition to labels, another helpful way to steer traffic to your site (and by extension, your book) is to title your posts in a way that evokes these searches.
  • On Amazon and other book sites, you’ll notice a bunch of key words or phrases connected to any book. These are usually down at the bottom of a book’s page. The more variety and depth of these tags or key words, the easier it is for someone interested in say, The Great San Francisco Fire, to find your book on the topic if you include those key words. You can add as many different tags as you think will help.
  • Other places online will use “tag clouds” to describe this idea. A tag cloud is just placing all the labels or tags in one spot. It sort of looks cloud-like. All in all, linking key words to your book is like an online card catalog, where libraries once sorted books to make them easy to locate. Take advantage of even these small promo ideas to get the full benefit from your marketing efforts.

About Linda S. Clare

I'm an author, speaker, writing coach and mentor. I teach both fiction and nonfiction writing at Lane Community College and in the doctoral program as expert writing advisor for George Fox University. I love helping writers improve their craft and I'm both an avid reader and writer of stories about those with wounded hearts.

2 comments on “Tagging, Labeling and Key Words to Find Books

  1. Linda, when posting a blog, are tags more specific terms, and categories are broader? For example, in a recent blog I posted Sweeping Leaves Against the Wind (going with the flow of where God’s going; avoiding opposing His direction). Tags I used: Christian, difficult, easy, leaves, summer, sweep, wind. Categories I used: Christian, devotional, encouragement, flow, Holy Spirit, wind. Do I have the right idea?

  2. I think you do have the right idea. Perhaps I should’ve been clearer that categories generally are more broad and inclusive, tags or labels tend to be more specific. One of the problems I see is that different platforms use different terms. But all of us can try to steer readers to us using them, no matter what they’re called. Hope this helps. ~Linda

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