Whether you are going to do your own SEO or if you are going to hire a SEO Company it is imperative that you understand the difference between long tail and short tail keyword phrases.  Each kind is used in a specific way and each one is used in a specific place with-in your website.

Short tail keywords phrases are generally the one or two keyword phrases.  Many times it is as simple as “Miami Fl” or Chicago IL”.  Some would argue that short tail phrases can be three or four word phrases if the words used can be considered to be generic or general in their description.  I tend to disagree with that.  Short tail phrases are always one or two word phrases

Long tail keyword phrases are the more specific three or four word phrases that a person would type into a search engine.  An example of this would be “Miami FL Real Estate” or “Retirement Communities Miami Florida”.  The importance of the long tail keyword is to be as specific as possible without narrowing the search down so far that there are no searches for this long tail phrase. 

The more specific long tail phrases are generally easier to rank well with than, the short tail phrases.  The reason for this is that are far fewer searches and websites that use the long tail phrases.  Many website owners work very hard to rank highly for the short tail phrases but never get past page 10 or 11 of the search engines.  Because of this they get very little traffic to their website.

Do not over think this part of the process.  If you just follow the descriptions you will be able to keep this straight in your head.   One or two word phrases are short tail phrases and three and four word phrases are long tail.  Long tail phrases are very specific words

Now that you have a better understand of the difference between long tail and short tail phrases what do you do next?  You need to understand where in your website do each kind of phrase belong?  That will be my next blog.