Using Amazon SIPS for Keyword Research

Not sure how useful this would be for some people but I thought I'd write about it anyway. I was just loking for a book on Amazon - Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival - when my eye was drawn to Amazon's SIPS. For those who don't know (probably everyone!) Amazon's SIPS are:

Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.

They actually offer quite valuable information - let's call them "keywords" - from within a book. In the case of the book I mentioned above, the SIPS are:

belay seat, boot snagged, belay plate, snow stake, snow hole, cooking rock, corniced ridge, ice cliff, rock buttress, ice screws, snow cave, steep ice, ice bridge, ice wall, second lake, powder snow, dome tent

It would appear that these SIPS act as tags and, on clicking, you get taken to a list of other books where these SIPS appear:

14 references in Touching the Void: The Harrowing First Person Account Of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson
8 references in Antarctic Oasis: Under the Spell of South Georgia by Tim Carr, Pauline Carr
8 references in High Achiever: The Life and Climbs of Chris Bonington by Jim Curran
7 references in Highland Fling by Katie Fforde
5 references in Storm Mountain by Anne Fitten Glenn
5 references in Everest: The Unclimbed Ridge (Adrenaline Classics Series) by Chris Bonington, et al
5 references in One Man's Mountains: Essays and Verses by Tom Patey
4 references in The Mountain Skills Training Handbook by Pete Hill, Stuart Johnston

Click on any one of these and you get presented with a new set of SIPS. Brilliant!

By methodically going through this process, it is quite possible to build up a highly relevant, set of keywords. Quite often in search engine marketing people will develop their keyword lists from 'within', that is they will either write down the keywords that they, or their closest colleagues, use. Using something like Amazon's SIPS ensures that you are, potentially, tapping into the words that the 'community' is using in relation to your subject.

Let's say that your subject is 'mountaineering', well the people that write the books that are listed above (and other ones you will discover from further research) may well come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They may be climbers, mountain rescue people, walkers, abseilers, journalists beginnes or pros; they may come from different countries or prefer rock climbing to ice climbing. The point is that SIPS allow you to see the different perspectives of other people and help you use the language (read keywords) that they may be using.

You will also come across CAPS which are:

"Capitalized Phrases, or "CAPs", are people, places, events, or important topics mentioned frequently in a book."

They are another important source of keyword information.

Try typing in keywords relevant to your business or your clients on Amazon's site and see what SIPS are being used.

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