What are short-tail keywords.

What Are Short-Tail Keywords

Posted on By Simon Gorlak
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What are short-tail keywords, and why are they essential in your SEO strategy?

I assume that if you’re reading this post, you’re looking for an answer to this question. Perfect!

But what:

  • Are short-tail keywords?
  • Characterize them?
  • Why you must create a strategy based on both short and long-tail keywords?
  • And many others.

You’ll find these answers in this post. Don’t hesitate. Have a good read.

How To Understand the Meaning of Short-Tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are concise and brief search terms that typically consist of only one or a few (rather, 2-3) words.

These keywords are often general and broad in nature, covering a wide range of topics or concepts. They’re frequently used by users when conducting online searches.

Usually, they have plenty of queries in search results, regardless of the search engine. Therefore, positioning regularly only short-tail keywords can bring irregular and significantly delayed results. Why?

When looking for short phrases, as a user, you won’t find exactly what you’re looking for, and a website that positions itself and optimizes only for short keywords, may appear high in search results after a long time (if so).

That’s why, diversity, meaning the choice of long- and short-tail keywords, is compulsory if you want to capture your market.

Look at this example below:

Short-tail keywords examples.

The screenshot shows 5 short-tail keywords.

They’re not concrete, just showing the result of a general query. 

But what’s important:

—> 5 similar to each other words.

—> Each of them asks for some coffee.

—> Total number of a monthly search: 58,630.

This is a very big number. It means that these phrases were searched 58,630 times within one month.

Sure, you can ask: Why the keyword ‘How to make coffee’ belongs to the short ones, although seems to be ‘long’.

Yes, it seems, but in reality it’s not specified. 

There isn’t added what type of coffee, what milk, what’s the temperature, and so on. For Google, it’s still a short-tail keyword, and I assume that for you as well—as far as you didn’t find the right answer for your question.

Why They Are Important For Your Digital Strategy

  • Wider Reach. Short-tail keywords broaden visibility across diverse audiences, aiding brand exposure.
  • Initial Impact. Top-of-funnel engagement targets users in the early stages of decision-making.
  • Traffic Boost. High search volumes lead to increased website traffic potential.
  • Brand Recognition. Consistent appearance strengthens brand awareness within popular searches.
  • SEO & PPC. Enhance SEO rank and support effective PPC campaigns for maximum impact.

These are the principles why short-tail keywords are necessary in your marketing strategy. Combining short and long-tail keywords creates a balanced, effective digital strategy.

Find the Right Keywords

Create a List of Important And Profitable Topics For Your Business, Or Purchases

If you have a dog, and you’re looking for good food and a leash for it, you’ll probably use general phrases, for example:

  1. Dog food
  2. Healthy dog food (taking it a step further!)
  3. Cheap healthy dog food (ohh, that’s a long-tail keyword—now you see the difference)
  4. Dog leash
  5. Tick-repellent dog leash (that’s a specific phrase)

And then the search engine will show you X number of e-commerces that offer similar products. Price will likely be crucial.

On the other hand, if you’re an SEO agency looking for keywords for your client—a dentist—you’ll choose words like (I assume):

  1. Dentist Warsaw
  2. Cheap dentist Warsaw
  3. Wisdom tooth extraction

These are crucial and searched-for keywords, meaning they make sense for your client and for you as a buyer.

Analyze And Exchange Keywords

The above step is crucial when selecting appropriate keywords.

The selection process is always the most time-consuming, as you need to find words that are not too competitive, are searched for, and at the same time are not too expensive. However, in order for your SEO process to not last for several years, but rather a few months.

Next, once you’ve chosen relevant phrases, you need to observe their performance. In other words, whether the page starts to show promise for them, or whether you need to exchange them because they won’t yield results.

For the selection and analysis of keywords, I recommend 4 tools:

Each of these tools is highly developed, allowing you to report results, and each one offers access in English (Senuto even in Polish!).

Once you notice an increase in results for specific phrases, you can expand them with additional ones or gradually replace them.

However, don’t forget that consistently generating content—regardless of your business and keyword selection—is essential for your website to rank high.

Takeaways

  1. Choose keywords meticulously.
  2. Focus on both short and long-tail keywords.
  3. Use tools for result insights & reporting.
  4. Regularly add content to your website.
  5. Generate new and exchange current keywords during the positioning process.

If you enjoyed this post — feel free to share it, and add me to your network on LinkedIn —> Simon Gorlak.

If you feel that I forgot about something, or simply I could write something more — also reach out to me on LinkedIn or X (ex-Twitter).

Thanks for reading!

Author Profile

Simon Gorlak
Simon Gorlak is a Digital Marketing Expert with over 8 years of experience. He specializes in 3 areas: SEO, Copywriting, and Email Marketing. Simon's blog gathers knowledge that helps Marketers & C-level to increase profits from their online businesses. Also, his content helps to reach the most difficult customers, make others' content to be read & purchased. Besides digital marketing, Simon speaks 4 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish & works as a Head of Business at an Indian Start-up.
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Technical SEO, SEO