How to rank short tail keywords?

tazarbm said:

short tail keywords are harder to rank, and oftentimes not the most profitable ones. For example, which one of these 2 keywords do you think will convert into more sales?

1) how to stop my dog from barking guide
2) dog barking

Of course, keyword 2 will usually have more search volume, so you might be tempted to think that it makes you more money overall, but most of the time that's not the case because when people type "dog barking" into google and land on your site they might not be interested in any guides on how to stop their dog from barking, but they could instead be interested in any of these things:

- watching dogs barking
- wanting to know why dogs bark
- some movie / cartoon episode that contains the words "dog barking" in the title and they're trying to remember the full title or the main star / character of that movie / cartoon
- dog barking frequency
- comparison between different types of dog barkings
- etc...

So, in theory you could get 10,000 visitors a month if you targeted the words "dog barking" but that doesn't mean you'd make a single sale if you were selling a course on how to stop dogs from barking. On the other hand, if you did sell a course on this topic and the keyword "how to stop my dog from barking guide" only got 50 monthly visitors I can guarantee you that at least half of those 50 visitors would be interested in your guide, and at least 5-10% of them would buy it from the first visit.

This is why it's not important to target "short tail keywords" in general (at least not when you're a newbie and / or have a low authority website).

This being said, if you do really want to target those keywords, you would need to do a combination of these things:

1) have that keyword in the title of your content (not mandatory anymore in the last years, but it might still give you the edge, all things being equal between your site and your competitors' sites)

2) have the content optimized for this keyword (that is, have the keyword appear at least 3-4% of the time throughout the content, have LSI / related keywords also appear several times throughout the content, have the keyword as ALT tag of the 1st image of your content, etc... basically optimize the content for this keyword following the standard on-page SEO guidelines)

3) cover the topic in great depth (which could prove way more difficult than it sounds because - taking the "dog barking" keyword for example - in order for google to see you as an authority on this topic and rank you on page 1 for this keyword you would have to address all of the potential sub-topics of the keyword, which would include all of the sub-topics that I mentioned above and probably many more, which you can hopefully see how difficult and resource-intensive it would become, especially for a newbie to SEO / making money online who a) has no idea how to approach competitive keywords like this, and b) usually doesn't have the motivation and / or resources to approach keywords like this which, often times, take a lot of time to rank on top of taking a lot of investment)

4) a strong domain, a topically relevant site, or (most of the time) both

Strong domain means domain with lots of quality backlinks and acquiring these in a safe manner either takes time and lots of money, or lots of money and black hat techniques that will allow you to manipulate google into keeping your site safe despite of you acquiring an insane number of backlinks fast

Topically relevant site means site that is structured around one topic (in our case that would be the topic of "dogs"), along with everything that's related to dogs. Although. "dogs" is a very broad niche and it's a bad example of a topically relevant site. A much better example would be "dog training" and this would then be able to include "dog barking" as one of the main categories / silos of your site.

In conclusion, targeting "short tail" keywords is definitely doable and a lot of people are doing it every day, but it does take know-how, resources, and a lot of patience as I've not seen any new / low authority site ranking for such keywords within 1 month without doing really black hat stuff (but which doesn't last most of the time).

Moral of the story: keep focusing on long tail keywords until your site becomes big enough to rank for short tail keywords based on its relevance and authority, and do not worry about those keywords at the moment. Or, if you really are desperate to target those keywords then simply create a piece of content and optimize it as I explained above, and then start building good backlinks to it at a safe speed for your site, but be prepared to wait for months before you rank as google usually trust the big brands in your niche more than you in the beginning, so it might take even 2-3 years and constant building up of the site's content and authority before you outrank one of your competitors.

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Johnpeterburs said:

Better explanation I've come across. Instead of a direct niche or the micro niche such as dog barking or any specific topics, what would be the preferences to consider when we have a general e-commerce store that focuses on multi-niche situations? And that too brings a good authority as well, when of course the backlinks are positioning and growing at a modular phase.

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tazarbm said:

other than backlinking and increasing your brand's awareness I don't think there's much you can do. But I never owned an ecom store, so I'm not the best person to give advice

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1. Identify your foundational short tail keywords​