The Secret Research Tool Everybody Has and Nobody Knows About

Great idea! I often use the "Excerpt" tool to look into books that I'm thinking of buying, but have never considered using it like this!

Many thanks!

-John.

Nice idea. I'll give it a try.

I'd actually forgotten how useful Amazon is to dig out niches and keywords, so thanks for the tip.

Here's another research tip to do with Amazon I'd forgotten but this prompted me to dig it out.

When searching for a book, look for ones that have the 'Look Inside' graphic which is basically what I think the OP is referring to.

Click to look at one of those links and then look at the information under the Title and Author stuff. What you're looking for is a section called 'Key Phrases'.

Not all the 'Look Inside' books have that section, but when you find one that does click on the 'more' link at the end of the phrases listed.

This will jump down to the bottom of the page where you can view 2 lots of info:

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs) and Capitalized Phrases (CAPs) - click on 'learn more' to see what they mean.

Both are excellent for finding related long tail keywords and phrases to use.

All of the phrases are also clickable so you can click on them and then another list of related books will appear. Not all of them are directly related but usually you will find some that are.

What's more you can continue drilling down into related key phrases as well. Also you can look at the actual pages with references to the key phrase on them in a particular book (if you have an active Amazon account you can also actually read the enitre page by logging in).

As tomcam says, it's also a great way to familiarize yourself with a new niche if you're only just getting into it.

Tim

Also a great way to look at related items, "keywords".

Go to Amazon now and use the search bar for "dog grooming".

Scroll down and look at Frequently Bought Together that in itself is pretty interesting, but let's go down further and look at Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Do you see the clipper set and the drill? That clipper set sells for $61 and some change.

So maybe dog grooming is too competitive but look at the other books (keywords) that brought these folks to the same clipper set.


Matt

Yeah...i sh'ld give it a go also. Thanks for the tip.

I know that Amazon is a great place to do niche research, but I overlooked the books excerpt feature. Thanks so much for the tip!

@Tim, that's some incredible stuff. Thanks for vastly improving the post!

Thanks, I also find Scribd a very valuable resource.

also if you scroll down even more you will see tags that customers used. This let's you really get into the mindset of what keywords customers use to find these products

Wow, I have not been on amazon in a long time. They even have forums on there. I'll be spending the rest of the day over there

or you could go to the bookstore and see what is on the front shelves for you niche and just look at what people are buying directly and see all the content. another good place for free information would be the library, online is convenient but there is a ton of free information just around the corner at your local library. just my 2 cents