James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Karl Hudson debate the top five SEO ranking factors for 2024, covering semantic SEO, silo structure, backlinks, traffic signals and website performance.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies SEO agencies should focus on in 2024 to improve topical authority, search rankings and qualified traffic. James Dooley and Karl Hudson start with KPI tracking because measuring search console data, branded searches and traffic signals reveals what is actually moving rankings. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.

The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for SEO agencies.

PromoSEO lead generation for SEO agencies recently received recognition as the "Best SEO Agencies Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode

๐ŸŒŸTop 5 SEO Ranking Factors for 2024 | James Dooley & Karl Hudson Discuss Ranking Factors for 2024 ๐ŸŒŸ is available on:

Creators and Guests

Host
James Dooley
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Googleโ€™s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley: Everybody 2024 is coming up and today I've got Mr Hudson here who's going to run through his top five SEO ranking factors for 2024 go go so number one semantic SEO um covering you know topical authority essentially and actually doing it properly um number two I would say silo structure make sure the website's all structured proper, internal linking properly et cetera number three I would say backlinks I would say definitely backlinks um the hard part of this is I would actually put like some on part of each other but we'll say backlinks number three um number four I would say traffic and number five website performance so you know like mobile speed tests things like this so right number five website performance under that he talking about all things related to technical, technical server, host, say technical person sets the site to no index is that not number one?

Mr Hudson: Well then it would become number one very quickly but as an SEO you shouldn't be allowing your tech to website to no index right no so when you talk about website performance you're mainly about the speed the speed index indexability stuff like that right so let's go with number one semantic SEO explain what you mean by semantic SEO because you said topical authority but you called it semantic SEO so first and foremost explain topical authority and why you put that as being number one?

James Dooley: So I would say a lot of people misunderstand what topical authority is. Obviously the, um, for people who know Cory, I've mentioned him on the last podcast, um he obviously mentions the fact that topical authority is where it's your topical coverage which is everything about whatever topic is let's say gardening, you're covering everything on gardening but then it's also that plus historical data. So is your website or web page ranking for gardening and that data in the back end, so within search console, can see that you know it ranks for gardening, that then equates to topical authority. Not what a lot of people understand as topical authority as being basically they've covered the topic so that is it, they are an authority on that topic.

Mr Hudson: So when you said semantic SEO why didn't you say topical authority?

James Dooley: Cos semantic SEO obviously it looks at the semantics, it goes a little bit deeper than just topical authority. You're then looking at the micro semantics of pages where content is placed on the pages, where the internal links are placed on the pages, it goes into a lot more depth. It's not just about you know you have a bunch of pages that are all about this topic therefore you are the topical authority.

Mr Hudson: So if I give you a statement let me see whether you agree with this right. You don't internal link in the macro content in the introduction. You're generally only linking in the micro content. You try to get as many entities on the page as you can. You try to have the lowest amount of word count you can. Yeah, as long as you're covering the topic that you need to on the page in the lowest word count. Do you agree with that?

James Dooley: Yes the maximum amount of entities for the lowest amount of words right. So if you're talking about the lowest amount of words you don't believe in certain content optimisation tools that have an average word count?

Mr Hudson: No right, interesting. I I agree with you with what you're saying on there. But so number two you've said silo structure yeah, internal linking, internal linking. Can you over optimise internal anchor text?

James Dooley: I haven't seen it myself no but I would always, because it's an internal link you can get away with it because Google expects you to internally link your pages utilising anchor text so it can understand from the crawl as well what that page is about. Do you think people don't internal linking? Off, don't do it?

Mr Hudson: They often just rely on navigational links which as we all know is often ignored by Google. Navigational links, it's not weighted the same so navigation and footer links aren't the same as inbody content links.

James Dooley: So so here's one for you. Internal anchor text, do you ever use generic or naked URLs?

Mr Hudson: I would try to avoid it. You always do keyword? The only time I would probably do, um, not generic but branded would be to the homepage, um primarily because your homepage is your brand page, it's what it's your hub. Um usually the one key thing I've seen through the years of doing SEO, the the sites that move the most in the SERP when it comes to updates or the the ranking pages that move the most are ones that are leveraging the homepages as the ranking like page?

James Dooley: Yeah so they often in an update will come, you know, Google's changed its intent and it's now focusing on an internal page intent. Well the homepage is never going to match that intent yeah, um so that tends to see where I've seen the big movement is it's maybe's dropped from first to fifth because it's now, so you've got number three backlinks right. Now that surprises me because knowing you for nearly a decade in ranking you've crushed it with topical authority and I would say the person that builds the most links and has crushed it in the biggest niches liking dating, liking casino, and I've always known who being the link man. Yet you've now going put put this now for 2024 in position number three. If I would have asked you this this year that would have been position number one. Why do you think now that potentially is position number three?

Mr Hudson: If I would have asked you this, if I would have asked you this this year that would have been position number one. Why do you think now that potentially is position number three? Because also there's there's an argument to say and I've heard you saying this a few times that links are becoming more important than ever and because they're differentiating factors because of AI that's coming along that allows you to scale content easier. So why number three?

James Dooley: The only reason why I put this number three and again it's why I said I wish there was like on part elements with this, obviously having the list top one to five, yeah, is because if you didn't have semantic SEO and you didn't have, um, content then you can't rank. Yeah no matter how many links you have you're not going to rank so it has to, you almost have to, more important. I I I think backlinks is more important than internal links. You can actually rank with external links going through to a page and actually just with navigational and footer links. Yes it's not good and yes it's not passing the right amount of, but silo structure isn't all just about internal links. A silo structure is also topical authority, uh topical coverage yeah so yes you can rank without internal links but you're going to struggle down the line.

Mr Hudson: A pointless argument because all five factors are needed for in 2024. They're all needed and there isn't really one over another. If you're building a car and you don't put wheels on or you don't put a steering wheel on you ain't got a car that can drive. That was car by the way. It sounded like car but it was definitely car. If you build a car, then so I disagree with you on that though. I think backlinks number two. I'd probably even say internal links might even be number four or number five. I'm, don't get me wrong, I'm a massive advocate that people don't do enough internal links. So what I would say on the internal links, but especially for people who want in a little bit of like better understanding of it, I have tested this quite a lot and one of my best ways of doing it is look at what's ranking in your search console for that page and then utilise those as the internal links to that page. You don't just have to go really aggressive on the exact match keyword that you want in that page to angle for, um, a lot of people just don't do that now. There's the argument that someone says well I don't rank for it right now so I've got no search console data. Well look at your competitors and use a tool like SEMrush or whatever, um, to see what they rank for and use those keywords yeah initially then you can change it down the line.

James Dooley: Backlinks obviously you're talking about guest posts, niche edits, citations, link, press releases, a nice mixed bag of backlinks. I think people understand what that means so number four you said traffic right. Explain slightly what you mean by traffic with regards to direct traffic, traffic via email, traffic via web notification, any type of traffic is in my opinion good traffic. Um unless you're obviously buying just pure bot form traffic now don't get us wrong you can tweak that, manipulate so it might be beneficial but Google's pretty quickly catching on to that yeah, um so yeah email campaigns, you know even called outreach campaigns on emails are pretty good. Um usually if you've got got a bit of like a free e-book or whatever it is in the industry that's of interest you might be able to turn in some traffic there. Obviously with that you can also capture more emails, um, in the long run. Um paid ad campaigns obviously on previous podcast we mentioned paid ads, um, you know utilising either an agency like Statue or or going down a different route and you know doing it yourself if you want, there's a lot of caveats to paid ads so if you haven't got a lot of experience with it maybe don't burn money on that. Use an agency. Um but social media ads is another good avenue. Um yeah just in general social forums.

Mr Hudson: So I do a lot, a lot with regards to traffic signals, a lot of traffic testing. So, um, you mentioned Statue, you mentioned Rick. Rick does a hell of a lot PPC and different social media ads for us. He also does some email campaigns and with regards to email campaigns I show you a few little hints with regards to certain things that has worked very well. Gmail has worked way better than any other platform. So when we manage to land in someone's Gmail and click and they're going click from there, it's been directly tracked and analytics can see that it's coming from Gmail. Works really really well. That's coming through actually big ranking jumps. Works works really well so if you can collect emails great. Twitter traffic, Pinterest traffic, Reddit traffic, everything like you said traffic from in all these different sources you've obviously you've seen the results yourself and our test data of what we have. This is why we trying to build as many kind of branded searches as we can. It's crazy because when Rick runs, um, at Statue, a Facebook ad campaign, the minute he starts running it our branded searches start going up and the minute our brand searches start going up and we get natural searches for one or two of the brands in the clicking through to the site, the whole site lifts and literally the minute we stop running certain ads, the branded searches start dropping down and it's almost like the traffic tied drop back down and it's crazy. It's crazy to see and like the volume of what we're spending with regards to the ads is like I mean you could say you could go and put traffic as number one seeing seeing the results of what it is. You can almost have a landing page with not much content on so not semantic SEO, not internal links, not backlinks but gets a lot of CTR traffic and I'm not about the bot traffic and stuff like going bad where you buy your CTR traffic from. Genuine traffic from real people from mobile phones from desktops different types of mobile users that have got historical kind of search history that are going searching your brand. Not many big brands get it with Alm updates and when you then start looking at that, the more you be like a real brand and a real business, the more kind of, the one thing we did in gambling niches went down the route of, um, we did an advert campaign, um, went out on on Sky I think it was on like Dave or something and obviously with with gambling there's certain times that you're allowed to run ads and things so I think it's like Dave at like 10 o'clock at night or something anyway. It was about 50 or 60k I believe we spent on it and you could, although it's very hard to track obviously you do put like oh go such and such casino dot com TV ad or something is the URL, not everyone does that that you just load the homepage, you could see a direct correlation like you were saying to the branded search increasing, people just typing in the brand on Google and then you could also say the increase in traffic at the time that ads was running in analytics so you were able to see although you weren't able to track it as well you were definitely able to see an increase in the traffic at the time period that the ads were running and then you could actually see like a notification effect within, um, the rankings yeah, um, of that happening. So it kind of just clarifies what you want about number five.

James Dooley: Not a very pretty kind of thing for us to talk about website performance. I think for me it's just more ticking all the boxes making certain it loads fast making certain that just everything's set up correctly from a technical standpoint but then also keeping on top of it so that a lot of the time people tick that box but they never ever revisit that box and things change in time, you know, site servers uh degrade, site performance can lower, you can add more sites under the same server which start hogging more traffic which actually makes that website load slower. Um so things like that, it's very important that you have like a tech team or you know some other type of agency who can manage that for you. Um and just make sure that the site's always performing. You know, keep a, um, is a bare minimum have an uptime robot running yeah because a lot of SEOs probably have tons and tons of websites going on or a lot of stuff going on so they're not actually tracking if their website, they might be getting dosed at 10 p.m. yeah every night and the the site clock off for an hour or two and they're not realising it and then they come back on but those negative metrics are affecting the website exactly. So if I kind of analyse it for 2024 and you can as well with regards to let's say we go through your method. So semantic SEO, so for me to improve semantic SEO some of the things that we're doing internally for 2024 is making certain that we kind of Google or load into ChatGPT every single H2 that we have, make it certain that we've got the right entities underneath that heading, trying to keep it as like entity rich as we can in each and every section for us to try to get more featured snippets. That's what we're doing internally then the next one with regards to silo structure, trying to internal link more where we can, any any possible way in the micro content that we can insert a link we're doing it. Again we're doing keyword rich. Like you've said backlinks, we're doing a lot more than ever with regards to branded naked URL to the home page. We're also doing, um, dossiers to remove any toxic links that there is, which gives us more toxicity threshold kind of space to allow us to build more links. Um then with regards to the traffic we're trying to get traffic from as many different sources as we can to try to get through to the site. Technical I ain't very technical. I just try and make certain my technical team like you said keep on top of everything. So often found in WhatsApp these technical messages. So with regards to is there anything on yours like say on the semantics or on the backlinks that you're thinking people need to do slightly different or more of that people seem to miss out for 2024?

Mr Hudson: Again it's more just don't be reliant solely on ChatGPT. Obviously we know that information's going to be key and fundamental but then the problem is you're going to fall into a sort of like a bit of a pit where everyone's information's the same yeah because it's only got the the one source of entities. So try you have to kind of think outside the box, utilise places like Reddit, Quora, and see what the actual users are mentioning about, um, the different topics because sometimes that might not be an entity at that point but it doesn't mean that it can't be an entity in the future as the SERP develops. And also you're looking at the entities within say ChatGPT, it's not necessarily the entities that are within the knowledge graph of Google yeah. So obviously trying to identify that's probably fundamental. Um yeah I think on that the information gain is is so, it's going to be yeah, it's it's so important especially because a lot of people doing correlated copycat content nowadays.

James Dooley: So where would you say out that that top five list, I know you debated where I had some of mine, where would you say what you, what, what is your top five in 2024?

Mr Hudson: My top five is semantic SEO is number one yeah, traffic is number two, backlinks is number three, website performance number four, internal links number five. I think all five are ridiculously important. I don't think the oh so you're saying need internal links like they're all needed?

James Dooley: 100% like but I think that's my order of I think I can rank without doing the internal links with regards to traffic and backlinks with good quality content. So I I'd put that a bit further down the pecking order. Um I'm only putting technical number four cause I don't know much about it and it sounds important. It's a big word so, no, hopefully that wraps it up. Um obviously if anyone else has got any kind of ideas of what they think that we're missing with regards to what might be working 2024, drop a comment below and then we'll kind of come back and we'll do a follow on to see whether we agree or disagree. We do a lot of testing so it'll be interesting to see what people do. You think someone might come up with something like no you missed out this looks really important?

Mr Hudson: Probably probably yeah but again it's like the angle of in the last podcast we mentioned you know we kind of went down the route of let's make some money out of this yeah so we did the important things yeah so we're always up for testing something new and that's the great, that's the one thing I love about SEO is there's plenty of ways to skin the cat yeah and by that I mean that there's tons of ways of doing SEO and everyone's got their own different ways and methods of doing SEO and you know whoever ranks ranks yeah period so if someone has a bit of away then by all means spout it let's yeah yeah yeah drop a drop a comment see if see if we're missing something. If we are missing something then we'll test it and then we'll do a followup Alan I peace.