How to Pick Keywords That Help Readers Find a Western Comic

This article first appeared on annaelizabethjudd.com.

By Anna Elizabeth Judd

Nobody has ever typed “book” into a search bar and found my
marshal.

A reader who finds The Stage Robbery: Marshal Spur and the
Outlaw got there by typing something specific: a stagecoach holdup,
a horse that saves the day, a cliffhanger like the old radio westerns.
Those words are the door. If they’re missing from my book’s metadata,
the door stays shut, no matter how good the pages behind it are.

Here is how I go about picking them now, and what I’d tell any author
with a western, an illustrated story, or a comic on the shelf.

Broad words lose.
Specific phrases win.

“Western” is a genre. “Old West stagecoach robbery adventure” is a
reader who already knows what she wants.

IngramSpark makes the same point in How
Readers Actually Search for Books: someone searching a single genre
word is still browsing, and longer, more specific phrases face less
competition. Their Title
Metadata Best Practices guide asks for at least seven keywords or
phrases, separated by semicolons, with no quotation marks.

I sort my phrases into four piles:

• Setting and era. Old West, frontier towns, desert
  country.
• Character types. A U.S. marshal, his deputies, an
  outlaw gang, a brave horse.
• Plot and theme. A stage robbery, a kidnapped
  lawman, a family secret.
• Style and tone. Illustrated, comic panels,
  cliffhanger endings, wholesome.

If a phrase doesn’t fit one of those piles, it probably doesn’t
belong.

Start with the title you
already have

Your title and subtitle get read by every search system out there, so
they do a lot of the heavy lifting. IngramSpark suggests working two or
three of your main phrases into the subtitle. Mine already carries three
of my best words: stage robbery, marshal and
outlaw.

That means my keyword field shouldn’t repeat them. IngramSpark’s
guide also says keywords should add to your subject codes, not copy
them. Repeating yourself wastes space.

My keyword set for Marshal
Spur

Marshal Buck Spur keeps the peace with help from his deputy, Bad Bull
Dooley, and his older brother, Sam. The Outrider gang keeps leaving
notes and making trouble. And then there’s Haystack, a black horse with
white spots who has pulled the Marshal out of more than one tight spot.
Every chapter ends the way the old serials did: Wait till the next
exciting episode.

So these are the seven phrases I’d use, each one true to the
story:

1. old west stagecoach robbery adventure
2. illustrated western comic book series
3. frontier marshal and his deputies
4. brave horse hero western story
5. old west outlaw gang adventure
6. cliffhanger western serial adventure
7. kidnapped marshal rescue western

Not one of them promises a train heist or a saloon shootout, because
my books don’t have those. A keyword that brings in the wrong reader can
cost you a review.

Where the keywords actually
go

IngramSpark. Your keyword field and your BISAC
subjects live on the title’s metadata page. The 7
facts about book metadata post walks through both, and it also
suggests updating keywords now and then, not leaving them forever.

BISAC subjects. These are the shelving codes
bookstores and libraries use, kept by the Book Industry Study Group. The
complete
BISAC list includes the adult Comics & Graphic Novels and
Fiction / Westerns headings, which is where a trade comic like mine
belongs. Pick the code a bookseller
would actually shelve your book under, not the one with the fewest
titles.

Bowker. When you register an ISBN at MyIdentifiers,
Bowker asks for a primary subject and
notes that its classifiers may later refine it with more specific
subjects. That record feeds Books In Print, which bookstores
and libraries check when they order. Fill it out completely and match
your IngramSpark description.

Your own website. Use the same phrases in your book
page’s headline, description and image alt text. My books live at annaelizabethjudd.com, and
Google reads that page the same way a reader does.

How I research a phrase

1. Type slowly. In Google, start typing “western comic
   for” and watch what fills in. IngramSpark’s guide recommends this exact
   trick, since those suggestions come from real searches.
2. Check the trend. Google Trends shows whether
   “cowboy books” or “western books” gets more interest, and in which
   months. IngramSpark’s metadata
   basics post also points to Google Keyword
   Planner, which is free with a Google account.
3. Read how readers talk. Browse the Westerns genre on
   Goodreads and look at the shelf names readers make up. Reader-made
   shelf names often sound more like a search than any genre label
   does.
4. Look at library catalogs. Search WorldCat for books like yours
   and note the subject headings librarians gave them. Those are the words
   a librarian will search.

Test, then adjust

Change one or two phrases at a time, give them a few weeks, and watch
what moves: site visits, library orders, a bump on your distributor
reports. If nothing changes, swap them out. Keep a short log so you
remember what you tried.

The cover still has to do its
job

Keywords get a reader to the page. The cover and the first lines of
the description decide whether she stays. Use the same words in all
three, so the promise in the search matches the picture and the
pitch.

Haystack would tell you the same thing, if he talked. He’d just nod
his head.

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Resources

• How
  Readers Actually Search for Books (IngramSpark)
• Title
  Metadata Best Practices, PDF guide (IngramSpark)
• The
  Basics of Book Metadata and Keywords (IngramSpark)
• 7
  Facts About Book Metadata (IngramSpark)
• Complete
  BISAC Subject Headings List (BISG)
• Primary Subject
  help, MyIdentifiers (Bowker)
• Books In Print
  (Bowker)
• Google Trends
• Google
  Keyword Planner
• Westerns on
  Goodreads and the Goodreads Author
  Program
• WorldCat library
  catalog
• Western Writers of
  America
• The
  Stage Robbery: Marshal Spur and the Outlaw, paperback (IngramSpark
  shop)
• Anna Elizabeth Judd’s
  books