Short tail vs long tail keywords: What’s better for your business?

Every SEO strategy needs keywords.

But what type of keywords should you choose?

You’ve got two choices.

1 – Short-tail keywords

2 – Long tail keywords

You’ll need a combination of short and long tail keywords to be successful with SEO for business.

But, depending on your website’s authority, you may lean on one type of keyword more than the other.

At least when you start out.

But you’re not here to read a bunch of intro filler.

You want to know the difference between short tail vs long tail keywords.

What are short tail keywords?

Imagine you’ve scrimped and saved and finally have enough for your very own home.

You go online, and type homes for sale.

That’s a short tail keyword.

These are 2-3 word searches that take a broad view of a topic.

Estate agents. Letting agents. Digital marketing.

These are all examples of short tail keywords.

What are long tail keywords?

So you’re looking for a house, but searching homes for sale is a bit broad.

You live in Liverpool, so search results with homes for sale in London is going to be about as much use to you as a chocolate teapot.

We need to be a bit more focused.

So instead, you search for terraced houses for sale in Liverpool.

That’s a long tail keyword.

These are searches typically of three or more words that are more specific than short tail keywords.

As you can probably guess, there are going to be advantages and disadvantages when you’re choosing between short tail and long tail keywords.

Pros and cons of short tail keywords

The biggest advantage of short tail keywords is that they tend to have lots of search volume.

That’s because they’re broad and can include everything about a particular topic.

But. That comes with a price.

Because the keyword is so broad, it also has lots of competition.

Just look at this example of searching for SEO agency.

Sure, it has 14,800 monthly searches. But with a keyword difficulty of 65, you’ve got to have a high authority website to stand a chance of ranking for it.

It’s also quite broad. What type of SEO agency are you looking for? Are you looking for a particular service?

There’s also the chance that whoever is searching for this is in the early stage of researching. 

So may not be ready to buy. 

Generally speaking, this is a problem with short tail keywords vs long tail.

Short tail keyword searches tend to be low buyer intent.

Don’t get me wrong.

If you have a website with the authority to take this keyword on, you should (and we do). But if you’re a smaller website, you’re probably going to need a different approach, with a longer term view.

Pros and cons of long tail keywords

So, ranking high for SEO agency is a goal for later.

But we need to start ranking for something now to get traffic and generate leads.

Luckily, we’re interested in doing SEO for a particular niche.

We’re looking to do SEO for estate agents.

Now, the first thing you might notice is that “seo for estate agents” has significantly lower search volume than SEO agency.

1,600 monthly searches vs 14,800.

But.

You’ll also notice it has a keyword difficulty of 0 (which, in theory, means it should be easier to rank for, even with a website with lower authority).

This is the main benefit of long-tail keywords.

While they tend not to have the higher search volumes of short tail keywords, they often have much lower difficulty ratings. So, for new or low authority websites, they can be much easier to rank for quickly.

Another big benefit of long tail keywords is they usually attract much higher intent visitors to your website.

If someone is searching specifically for an SEO agency for estate agents, we can assume:

1 – They’re an estate agency

2 – They’re looking for a very specific service or provider

3 – They’re more likely to make an enquiry because they’re looking for something very specific

This is compared to someone shopping around for an SEO agency in general who still has a lot of narrowing down to do.

It’s the same in B2C searches.

If you’re in the early stages of buying a pair of trainers, you might search for men’s or womon’s trainers. It’s a broad search, and there’s a lot of other research you’ll have to do before you’re ready to buy.

But, if you search for best men’s running trainers for a marathon size 12, you’re looking for a very specific product and, if you find it, you’re much more likely to buy.

So, while long tail keywords might not give you the ego boost of driving lots of traffic to your website, they can help you attract more high intent searchers.

One thing to think about. Long tail keywords can be harder to identify.

You really have to understand the search intent and behaviour of your customers in order to think about what long tail searches they could make.

You can use keyword research tools to help make the process easier.

Which keyword type should you target?

Here’s the answer you don’t want. It depends.

Over time, as your website becomes more established, you’ll definitely want a mix.

With a mixture of short and long tail keywords, you get the benefits of high search traffic from broad, short tail, enquiries that can bring customers to you earlier in the buyer journey, along with the higher intent enquiries from long tail keywords.

But if you’re a newer website, or a website with low authority, you’re likely better off starting by focusing on long tail keywords first while you build authority.

At the end of the day, a lot will depend on the circumstances of your business.

Consider things like:

What’s your goal? (Do you want high traffic or more targeted visitors?)

What’s your website’s authority? (Is it realistic you can rank for keywords with high difficulty?)

What’s your budget or timeline? (Do you have the money and time to build authority? Or do you need to start seeing results quicker?)

Using the right keyword types for your keyword strategy

Hopefully, you have a better idea of the difference between short tail vs long tail keywords.

And, hopefully, you have a better idea which keyword type your website has a better chance of ranking for.

Just remember, SEO success is a long term investment. You might not be in a position to target high volume, short tail queries now.

But over time, and by building topical authority with long tail searches, your website will eventually be in a position to dominate search results for all types of keywords and customer queries.

If you want help with your keyword strategy, why not give us a call.

We’ll start out with a free SEO audit and can work with you to build out a long term keyword and content plan to get your site ranking for valuable searches.

If you’re not ready for that yet, have a look at some of our other SEO content.