Long-tail vs. Short-tail Keywords: What’s the Difference?
The difference between long-tail and short-tail keywords comes down to popularity. Many people search for short-tail keywords, while few search for long-tail keywords.

Because of that, long-tail keywords are generally easier to rank for and tend to attract searchers with more specific intent. This has made targeting them a widely adopted SEO tactic.
So should you follow suit and prioritize long-tail keywords at all times?
It’s not about how many words they contain or how specific they are.
Short- and long-tail keywords got their respective names from the position on the “search demand” curve.
If we take all search queries that people have performed in Google in the course of a month and order them by their search volumes, it’ll look somewhat like this:

As you can see, long-tail keywords are literally in the “long tail” of this graph. It’s because they are