James Dooley Podcast

In this episode, James Dooley discusses why he strongly prefers hiring apprentices rather than experienced SEOs, explaining that many seasoned professionals bring bad habits and outdated knowledge from blogs, forums, and old YouTube videos. He shares how his company trains apprentices from scratch using proven, data-backed methods developed from daily testing across more than 15 million web pages. James explains how traditional university digital marketing courses are outdated, focusing on basic social media rather than ranking in Google. He breaks down the essential fundamentals his team teaches in-house—including keyword research, content optimisation, backlink strategies, and effective frequency across multiple traffic sources such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and search engines. James also reflects on his early journey into digital marketing, beginning with his frustration that his first business website wouldn’t rank. After discovering SEO, outsourcing mistakes, being misled by agencies, and suffering major financial losses from old algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin, he learned the importance of doing rigorous testing himself.He goes on to explain what he looks for when hiring apprentices: not just skills but passions, interests, and natural strengths. He shares examples of team members thriving when placed in roles aligned with what they enjoy—such as content writers, analysts, social media creators, and video specialists. James outlines how roles across content, social media, PR, backlinks, and video all work together in a synchronised system designed to achieve “effective frequency” and strengthen rankings across all platforms. The episode highlights how building a diverse, specialised internal team has helped his company grow into one of the most advanced testing-driven SEO operations in the industry.

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 Google’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:
I employ apprentices because past experience has shown me that hiring time-served SEOs—whether guys or girls—often comes with a lot of bad habits. They’ve read too many blogs, watched too many videos, and most of what they’ve learned is outdated or flat-out wrong.

James Dooley:
When I take on apprentices, they come in with almost zero understanding of digital marketing. That’s perfect, because we can train them from scratch using methods we know actually work. We know they work because we test every single day. We have over 15 million webpages online, so we run a huge amount of testing. I genuinely feel we’re at the forefront of online and digital marketing.

James Dooley:
University courses are outdated. You go on a free course and they teach you the basics of social media—Facebook, Instagram ads—but that’s not going to rank a website in Google. You need effective frequency. You need traffic from multiple channels. Facebook is one of them, but you should also be using Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on.

James Dooley:
To rank on Bing, Yahoo, and Google you need good content, good backlinks, and to understand what types of backlinks work right now. You need content optimised correctly, the right keyword usage, proper keyword research. We teach all of this in-house because we test continuously. We already know the right way to train our staff.

James Dooley:
In the early days, before I had this knowledge, I watched countless videos and followed blogs, but most of what they taught didn’t work. I followed their blueprints exactly, and it still didn’t work. That’s why testing is everything.

James Dooley:
I’ve been in digital marketing for around 11 years. Back when I was working at Soft Surfaces—Carriso Play, sports pitches—we had nothing proactive to bring business in. I realised we needed a website, so I got one built. But even after launch, it wasn’t getting any enquiries. The web designer said, “I’m a designer, not an SEO.”

That’s where it all started. I Googled “what is SEO,” learned it meant search engine optimisation, and began trying to figure it out myself.

James Dooley:
For the first three years, I outsourced work to agencies. Some did a decent job, got the site ranking… until I realised I was paying £2,000 a month for backlinks that were actually a $29 package. I discovered places I could buy links cheaper—Fiverr and other marketplaces. Back then it was all about quantity, not quality.

Then Panda hit. Penguin hit. I lost hundreds of thousands of pounds testing the wrong methods.

James Dooley:
When hiring apprentices, the skills needed are very different from what most people assume. At first, I looked for media studies, good GCSEs, English literature, English language. I still look for strong English skills in writers, but skills aren’t the main thing. Hobbies matter too.

James Dooley:
We work in so many niches across affiliate and lead gen. If someone loves horses, for example, we can put them on horse-related content. They enjoy it, and the output is better. It's about matching the right person to the right job.

I personally hate writing content every day—but for some people, that’s their dream job. Others prefer analytics and data. They thrive looking at backlink metrics and improving rankings.

James Dooley:
Apprentices have massively helped our company grow. We now have Becca heading content, Lucy heading social, Amelia heading video, Dan leading backlinks, and Elliott running PR.

Everyone works in sync. Video feeds into social, content supports video descriptions, articles embed videos, PR supports outreach, backlinks support ranking. Everything clusters together through effective frequency to strengthen rankings across the board.