Ryan Dohrn warns that 80-85% of SEO assumptions are wrong, especially thinking your publication's name is the top search term. He recommends targeting 22,000-25,000 monthly searches with a 1.5% conversion rate, and stresses that keyword research must happen regularly, not once.
My gut is right a lot. That's why I drove here. Because they said, oh, we're going to fix this plane. Just get off for a few minutes. We'll give you a voucher and we're going to put you back on the plane. Guess where they're still at? In LAX. That's right. In LAX. And we're here. So I'm not saying you shouldn't follow your gut, but now we have technology and research tools that allow you to understand if your assumptions are right and if you're going to be able to generate some revenue from it. Now, because your magazine is going to end up online in some capacity, portions of it, a few articles here and there, it's really important for you to understand that search on the web is so important and so key. When I start working with a publisher through an SEO perspective, I first say, give me 10 things that you feel people are going to search for when coming to your website. Here's the most common thing that I get. They give me back via email the name of their magazine. Then when they type in the name of their magazine, guess where they appear on Google? In the first spot. So then guess what they think? I'm rocking. I'm doing really, really good. Now, not all of you are fortunate enough to have the title of your magazine match exactly what you do, like Quarter Horse News. That works out very, very well for that group. So what you have to do is I get these assumptions, and I would say that 80% of the time, maybe 85% of the time, the assumptions are completely wrong in almost all cases. Now, by a showing of hands, how many people in the last 30 days have rerun your SEO keyword research to make sure your site content matches up with what people are searching for? Okay. Alright, so maybe like 3 of you. Okay, 4 or 5. Good. I did. I want to come up with a body of terms that are going to bring me in, say, 22,000 to 25,000 searches a month, okay? Because I'm going to try to convert about 1.5% of that. I saw no pencils moving. Honestly, this is your future. If you're not making note of this, I'm scolding you now because I want you to succeed.
