I thought over-the-top Amazon “keyword stuffing” for book titles (an SEO technique) was mainly the domain of self-published authors trying to rank higher in organic search, like the second example in the image above. “Psychological thriller” appears in the title, subtitle, series name and even the publisher’s name!
But check out the first example. That’s a recently released book by One More Chapter, a HarperCollins Publishers romance imprint, no less. It’s not just a matter of sticking a description in the subtitle field. Whoever set up the title, subtitle, and metadata is clearly going for the following search keywords:
- Escape
- Heartwarming
- Feel good novel
- Scottish Highlands
- New for 2022
“Scottish Highlands” is the only one that feels kind of legit, and could probably be repurposed into a “normal” subtitle. But the others are particularly blatant, irritating, and slimy, particularly “New for 2022” which probably should be against Amazon TOS, if it’s not already.
I get into the topic of keyword stuffing in my video about Amazon detail page optimization. Ironically, for the HarperCollins title, the keyword stuffing didn’t appear to help rankings that much. Even though it’s been out for two months, it’s free, and already has more than 1,000 ratings, its rank currently stands at #125,418 and is not doing particularly well in any of the categories.
That said, Romance is a different beast, which may explain the keyword stuffing as well as the competitive landscape and ratings.