How to Find Low Competition KDP Keywords With Helium 10

One of the biggest mistakes new self-published authors make is creating a book first and researching the market second. By the time they realise there is no demand for what they wrote, they have already invested hours into a project that may never sell.

The good news is that flipping that process around is not complicated, and the right tools make it genuinely straightforward.

In this guide, I am walking you through exactly how I use Helium 10 to find bestselling book niches, identify low competition keywords, and craft a title and subtitle that are built to rank on Amazon.

I am also going to show you how to think about your book in terms of multiple income streams from the very beginning, because one book can pay you in more ways than one if you set it up correctly.

Your book title and subtitle are locked in the moment your book goes live on Amazon. You cannot change them after publication.

That means if you choose the wrong keywords, or keywords with no search volume, or keywords so competitive that you have no realistic chance of ranking, you are stuck with that decision for the life of the book.

Getting the research right upfront is not optional, it is the foundation everything else is built on.

The goal is to find keywords with high search volume and low competition, which gives you the strongest possible chance of landing on the first page of Amazon search results and staying there.

Helium 10 makes this process faster and more accurate than doing it manually, and I am going to show you exactly what to look at so you are not overwhelmed by the data.

To get started, sign up for Helium 10 HERE for a significant discount. I use the Platinum plan for this level of research.

Once you are logged in, install the Helium 10 Chrome extension, then head over to Amazon and click Books in the top menu.

From there, go to Bestsellers and More and select Amazon Bestsellers. This displays all the top-selling books on Amazon, and with the Chrome extension active, Helium 10 overlays useful data for each title directly on the page.

The first thing you need to know is which of these bestsellers are independently published, because those are the ones you can realistically compete with.

So scroll back to the top and press Analyze Products (which opens Helium 10's X-Ray tool), which is the fastest way to view all the book data sorted by bestseller ranking, or BSR. A lower BSR means the book is selling more frequently, and anything under 100,000 is generally a healthy sign. It also offers other valuable data by columns, like publisher, pricing, sales, formats and more, which you can click on to sort.

As I scroll through the results, I notice that the top independently published books in the general bestseller list are mostly coloring books. Those only offer one format, which means one stream of income.

If you want more that one stream of income per book, you want to create books that can be published as a paperback, hardcover, Kindle edition, and audiobook, because that is how one book becomes four income streams.

So I keep scrolling.

In position 67 of the general book bestseller list, I find an independently published high-content book about trusts. Swiping right on the Helium 10 overlay shows it has 2,929 monthly sales and over $70,000 in monthly revenue.

The author has also made it part of a book collection on wealth strategy and published it across all four formats. That is exactly the kind of book we want to reverse engineer.

The money niche is strong because financial pain points are universal. People are always looking for help with retirement, budgeting, tax strategy, and wealth building.

But the broad category is competitive, so I start niching down through the left menu in Amazon's bestseller books section.

I move from Business and Money into Personal Finance, then into Budgeting and Money Management, and finally into Retirement Planning.

Each time, I click Analyze Products and sort by the Publisher column to surface the independently published books faster.

What I find in Retirement Planning is promising: several independently published books with solid monthly revenue, good BSR numbers, and in some cases, fewer than 100 reviews.

Low review counts with strong sales is exactly the combination that signals a real opportunity.

One title catches my attention in particular. It has a BSR of 9,483 and only 22 reviews, yet it is generating $2,923 per month. It is also only 97 pages and currently only available as a Kindle and paperback.

That means there is an immediate advantage available to anyone who creates a similar book and also offers a hardcover and audiobook version.

As I work through the categories, I use Helium 10's list feature to save the books I want to compare, by clicking on their pin on the left.

Once I have a solid selection, I press Go to My List, which opens Black Box. This is where Helium 10 lets you view, compare, and even track your saved products over time.

I sort the list by ASIN sales from high to low. Black Box shows pricing, monthly sales, revenue, BSR, review count, and more for each title side by side.

One of the most useful metrics here is the Sales to Review ratio, which tells you how many reviews a book needs in order to generate consistent sales. The lower that number, the easier it is to compete and get sales as a new author with no reviews yet.

The BSR graph icon is also worth clicking on for each book, because it shows how the ranking has changed over time. A book with a consistently strong BSR is a much safer bet than one that spiked briefly and then declined.

This comparison view gives you a clear picture of which topics are genuinely worth entering before you commit to writing a single word.

Once I have identified a winning book I can recreate and compete with, I copy its ASIN and head to the Helium 10 dashboard to use Cerebro.

Cerebro is Helium 10's reverse ASIN tool, and it is one of the most powerful features available for KDP keyword research. You can find Cerebro in the dashboard or under the Products tab in Classic View.

I paste the ASIN and press Get Keywords.

For this particular book, Cerebro returns 22 total keywords, 17 of which are ranking organically. The book is not running any ads at all, which means every sale it gets comes from organic search rankings.

That is a strong signal that the keywords it is ranking for have genuine demand.

Cerebro surfaces a lot of data, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed if you do not know what to focus on. Here is exactly what I look at and why.

Once I have reviewed all the data, I export the keyword lists sorted three ways: by Cerebro IQ Score, by Organic Rank, and by Competing Products. There is other sorting options you could use if you wish, but these are the ones I found most promising for their keyword rankings.

I save each as a separate Excel file and then open them alongside my title and subtitle creation template to begin building the best possible title.

Your title needs to contain your primary keyword.

Your subtitle needs to include supporting keywords while making a clear, bold promise that speaks directly to your reader's main problem.

Amazon allows up to 200 characters total, but I strongly recommend keeping the combined total under 80 characters so the full title is visible on mobile and in search results without being cut off.

The approach I use is what I call the keyword-driven solution plus bold promise method. The title carries the main keyword, and the subtitle delivers the outcome your reader is buying the book for.

It takes some mixing and matching to get the phrasing to sound natural, but that is worth the time because titles that read awkwardly will not get approved by Amazon, and even if they do, they will not convert (sell) because the potential buyer will not understand what your book is about nor what it offers.

For this particular book, I went through several combinations before landing on a title I was genuinely happy with. The final version was under 90 characters, contained the primary keyword, referenced the step-by-step nature of the content, and made a bold promise about being the only retirement resource the reader would need.

You can keep experimenting with combinations, but at some point you have to commit. Do not overthink it.

One important reminder: the keywords you do not use in your title and subtitle are not wasted. The remaining high-potential keywords from your Cerebro research can and should go into your seven backend keywords and your book description.

Those you can update any time. Amazon penalizes keyword stuffing in titles, and an unnatural title can get rejected or simply ignored by shoppers, so keep it clean and readable.

Every time I evaluate a book niche, I am also asking whether the book can exist in multiple formats.

A paperback alone gives you one income stream. Add a Kindle version and you have two. Add hardcover and audiobook and you have four, all from the same content, the same research, and the same marketing effort.

When I spotted that the winning Roth IRA book I found was only available as a Kindle and paperback, that registered immediately as a gap. A competing book that also offered hardcover and audiobook would have a structural advantage from day one.

That kind of thinking, looking for what the market is missing rather than just what the market wants, is what separates authors who build lasting passive income from those who publish once and move on.

Once your book is written and published, the next step is getting reviews before you run any ads.

I have two platforms I trust and use regularly for this.

Gemsy works well for all book types including low-content books, and I have been using it safely for over a year. You can try it for free using my link and you get a lifetime 30% discount with my code GABRIELLE30. I created a guide about my experience after one year using Gemsy, you can check it out here.

For high-content ebooks that have a Kindle version, I have been using BookVillage more recently. What I appreciate most about it is that it checks all the reviews you have previously submitted to make sure you never accidentally end up in a review swap situation, which is against Amazon's terms and can get your account banned.

BookVillage is the safest e-book review platform I have come across. You can try it free for 30 days and access two months at a reduced price HERE. I created a guide about how to use BookVillage to get book reviews, check it out here.

Once your reviews are in place, you are ready to run ads. I have a full guide on running KDP ads that you can view here, another guide about why you should never run ads without reviews here, and I will also be covering how to use Helium 10 specifically to find ad keywords in an upcoming guide.

Helium 10 gives you everything you need to find a profitable KDP niche and topic, identify the keywords your competitors are ranking for, and craft a title, subtitle and book descriptions that are keyword rich and built to rank and sell from day one.

If you have been putting off your keyword research because it felt complicated, Helium 10 makes the entire process visual, structured, and genuinely manageable.

The research you do before you write a single word is what determines whether your book ranks and sells or gets buried in search results.