Trust Instinct Over Data Every Time

The brands that truly break out will be those led by people with strong instincts; grounded in real experience and industry knowledge

The SEO tools all said the keyword had ZERO search volume.
But my gut said it was gold.
So I wrote about it anyway.
What happened next surprised me 👇

I was doing keyword research years ago.
I found a sub-topic, with a specific keyword/phrase that I knew people were searching for answers around.

But every SEO tool said:
• 0 monthly searches
• $0 CPC
• No competition
• Not worth writing

But something didn’t add up.
I had seen people mention this topic/question in social forums many times.
I felt the pain point was real.
So I trusted my instinct, not the tools.

I wrote a deep-dive article anyway.
Nothing crazy. Just a simple, straightforward, best-practice piece.
One page answering exactly what I knew people wanted to know.

I also threw in a fun analogy to make a slightly more difficult topic easy to understand — in layman's terms rather than industry jargon.

Since everyone else saw "0 volume"...
They ignored the topic.
Which also means they never wrote about it.
So I ranked FAST.

Within a few days:
🔹 Top of Google
🔹 30–40 organic visits per day
🔹 #1 spot for well over a year

Eventually, keyword tools caught up.
Bigger brands swooped in and muscled their way into outranking me.

But it taught me an important lesson:
It’s good to follow data...
But it’s essential to trust your instinct.

As AI becomes even more prevalent, and “best practices” become run-of-the-mill, standardized processes...

The brands that truly break out will be those led by people with strong instincts; grounded in real experience and industry knowledge.

That will often outperform even the best of the best data available.

If your gut says it's relevant, but the data says it isn't...

You might be early, not wrong.
Trust yourself.
And you might just find your own blue ocean.

Ever ignored the data and won?
Tell me about it! 👇