James Dooley & Olesia Korobka | Lead Generation, SEO & Much More!

James Dooley and Olesia Korobka discuss the digital marketing strategies casino affiliate marketers should prioritise in 2026, covering KPI tracking, barnacle SEO, traffic tiers and diversified income streams.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies casino affiliate marketers should focus on in 2026 to improve search visibility, affiliate revenue and resilience against algorithm updates. James Dooley and Olesia Korobka start with KPI tracking because measuring clicks, FTDs, rev share and conversion speed is essential for understanding which affiliate sites and campaigns actually generate profit. 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 casino affiliate marketers.

PromoSEO lead generation for casino affiliate marketers recently received recognition as the "Best Casino Affiliate Marketers Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode

James Dooley & Olesia Korobka | Lead Generation, SEO & Much More! is available on:

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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: You also told me that I can ask you anything, anything you want. What do you think about questions which are too straightforward? Or what do you think about people who are asking too straightforward questions? Like, what, explain, give me an example, can you show me your F trip?

Guest: Yeah, I can show it, no problem.

James Dooley: Yeah, you could be based anywhere in the world right?

Guest: Yeah.

James Dooley: Why Manchester though?

Guest: Obviously my office is based there, my home and my family are all there. So I like being based in Manchester even though I don't like the weather. I think it's a great city. I think it's one of the best cities in the world if I'm being honest with you. But I do like then going on holidays to warmer places in the world. Let me share my screen.

James Dooley: You once posted, it was I think a year ago, right, "James Dooley is better than Craig Campbell" with volume almost 5,000. Yeah, how did you do that?

Guest: That was just done by using CTR tools like, um, SERPstats Empire and CTR booster and stuff like that. So, um, they, because they're using different IPs, it was able to get picked up in Google Search Console and then, ah, are, must be buying some data that is using Google Search Console or the click data, clickstream data or something like that, and then it can show the Google search volume in there.

James Dooley: Do you do that for your competitors, like for example for guiding them in their own direction?

Guest: Um, no, not normally. We do UTM complete and AI suggest for certain keywords. I always try and do it in a positive manner. So I'm always trying to like, let's say for certain brands, I'll use the brand name with awards, so that people can, they might want to click through to that to see all the awards that that brand have won. I never really do anything from in a negative, kind of negative way. I just, it's just not the way I do business.

James Dooley: I've also noticed that you do the same for YouTube and, uh, you use the same clicks tools?

Guest: Yes, yeah, yeah, we used, we used engagement and behavior signals for everything. So images, videos, web pages. Um, I feel like engagement is one of the key factors of SEO.

James Dooley: Do you mean the engagement as G factors for YouTube and local on Google only, or for global search as well?

Guest: So we're trying on global search and also for local. A lot of the searches, what we try to do is we try to get real engagement. There's nothing better than real engagement. So we've got massive email lists of people that might be interested in certain blog posts that we write about, our videos that we do. We've got certain kind of Facebook groups that we're in where we can post certain things and ask them certain questions like, what did you think about X, Y and Zed? And then what they'll do is they'll go and click through to the video, watch it, and they might give a like, or they might give feedback with regards to comments and stuff like that. Um, we're asking that information for people to try to, um, see what their thoughts are on it. And yeah, yeah, we're, I'm a massive advocate of behavioural signals and engagement for everything.

James Dooley: What tools do you recommend, or do you use anything else?

Guest: You've got different sites that you can use. So you've got Microworkers, you've got MTurk, certain CTR tools. But the best way of doing it is being active in like Reddit, in Quora, on all these different kind of social media platforms, getting like large Facebook groups and stuff like that, and then sharing in those groups and trying to get real people to click through and stuff like that.

James Dooley: Are you afraid of Google entering these Facebook groups and chasing you afterwards?

Guest: Uh, no, because I'm not doing anything in a fishy way. I'm trying to get real people to go and click through to a website to give me genuine feedback of what their thoughts are on a site. Like, I'm not asking someone in the Facebook groups to go and do something that they don't want to do. We'll share my screen once again.

James Dooley: Cor posted that he showed you how to rank a fresh domain for "best online casino" in 15 seconds. Yeah, what did he show you?

Guest: That was just, BS, it wasn't, that's not the case. That was just a joke. If you wanted to know certain ways of how you can rank certain things pretty quickly, I'd say if you wanted to go down those roads where we have like, it was tongue and cheek banter where he didn't show us there and then. But parasite SEO, if you get a well-written, semantically well-written article and put it on the right site, you can rank very very quickly, especially if it's a Google News approved site. Google normally picks it up and indexes within 15 seconds. So it was there was a little bit of truth in it, but not specifically something that he showed there and then. It was more banter and a joke.

James Dooley: And do you often use parasite SEO for your property?

Guest: Yes, we use, we use it, yeah. We use it for everything. So, um, I don't like, first and foremost, I, I hate the name parasite SEO because parasite is where you're leveraging a third party at the expense of them being harmed by you doing it. But actually, if you look at parasite SEO, which is also known as barnacle SEO or piggyback SEO, actually it's a win-win-win situation if you do it right. One, the content writer that produces the article is given a well-detailed article and they're getting the exposure on a powerful domain. To the person that owns the hosted domain that you're placing the link on, they're getting traffic and engagement from the audience for the article that you've had written, and probably written it for free. And three, the users. If you write a well-detailed article that is good for the user, the visitor, and the user gets a good user experience, the person that's actually publishing the article, who owns the website, gets a good experience, and the content writer gets exposure that probably couldn't have got on their own website. So for that reason, yes, I'm a massive advocate of barnacle SEO being a great solution for you to use. But I don't like the word parasite SEO, but that's what everyone seems to call it.

James Dooley: You have lots of, uh, lead generation websites, and you are famous for being like maybe a leader in some niches for lead generations. I've heard that you've got a huge call centre, maybe more than 100 people in that. Is it true?

Guest: Yes, so we've got a call centre in Leigh-on-Sea in Manchester. Um, so I think it's down to about 90 something staff that's in there. Um, that's mainly for financial lead generation type stuff. So mortgage brokers could be, business debt, liquidation, administration, personal debt, stuff like that. So we started to do quite a lot of lead gen in the finance sector, and we started to realise that if you didn't get hold of the people in under a minute we always tried to have KPIs for 23 seconds, but if it's not been done in under a minute, then the lead could get lost because they're going to fill it in with somebody else. So having the lead generation and changing it to a sales generation has give us massive extra profits on the way we do business. And also, um, I don't know, I can cut it off if if you don't want it to be in the video, but I've heard about your interest in model of how you do that. So you take your lead at the starting point, but then you like sell them everything else in the process. For example, if they are moving, you then can also try to sell the mortgage and everything like that. So can you explain your model a bit? If if it's not a secret?

James Dooley: Yeah, so not a problem. So like, if someone calls and fills in, let's say someone is, um, looking for a new mortgage, right? At the time of getting a new mortgage, at that time is when you're most likely to think about life insurance, because you might be moving in with your missus, um, or with your fellow, or or partner, whoever it is. And as you're moving in with your partner, at that time, people might be thinking about life insurance. So why, when you've got a mortgage inquiry, if you can mention, oh, by the way, we've got some good deals on life insurance, they've not inquired about that, but if you ask the question, if they're interested, a lot of the time they are. If someone's looking to get, let's say, um, a will that's being written, which means that they're passing like the assets down to the kids when they pass away. At that time, when they're thinking about that, they might also be looking at things like equity release or pensions, because they're generally, when you're looking to get a will written, generally speaking, the audience is an older audience. So if you could look to cross-sell certain products and services, then it makes sense, it complements. If he was doing SEO and someone was asking about content being written, then might you might also ask, are you thinking of getting any backlinks to these articles that you have been written and stuff like that? So we're we're a massive advocate of cross-sells and upsells in everything that we do.

Guest: Yeah, and how do you do that, because most people, it's very hard for them to think about that or to propose something like that? So how, how did you decide to do that and how do you, uh, help those who work with you to do that?

James Dooley: So that's a great question, because it's very difficult in trying to educate people unless you know the industry very well, what other kind of services complement what you do. And that's why you've got to try to be careful that you're getting the right people in place who know everything about the industry that the leads are coming in for. So one of the things that we'll do is we'll go and have, when we first enter a market, we'll have a big whiteboard session. So like, what else might they be interested in? So in marketing, if someone's interested in PPC, well, why are you interested in PPC? What's the reason for you wanting to run ads? And they might say, I want more enquiries, right? Okay, have you also thought about SEO? Have you also thought about content? Have you also thought about backlinks? Because your end goal is to get more enquiries. We can help you in X, Y and Zed. Could be the same with Facebook ads. You then could cross-sell PPC and cross-sell Twitter ads or other platforms like that. So it's about knowing who your customer is. And once you know who the customer is, seeing what other things you can sell. So I'm a massive advocate of your average transactional value, which is known as ATV in business. If you can drive that up, you don't need to keep looking for new business. You're just trying to get more money from existing clients. They're happy, they don't need to deal with different companies, and obviously you're happy because you're making multiple sales from that one enquiry.

Guest: You are a great proponent from what I've observed of who you know and who you connect with, and that people help each other. And you I've seen you helping people all across the Facebook in different groups and even in private messages without any particular benefit to you personally. And you answered all the questions in a straightforward manner. Why is it so important to you? So why are you so people-oriented?

James Dooley: So I, I'm a massive advocate that your network is your net worth. Every day is a school day, and what I know today might not work tomorrow. So if I can help everybody out in what I know works today, and from my own understanding of making a lot of failures, if I can stop other people from making those failures, then I feel like I've achieved some sort of accomplishment to help others and elevate others along the way. But I also do believe that in return that if you help others and you don't ask for money and you just do it for the benefit of one, trying to help them, I believe in karma. So I do believe in the what goes around comes around. So if you can help other people out, that if tomorrow I'm struggling with something and I ask someone that's an expert in server log analysis, or let's say you're an absolute unbelievable expert with regards to knowledge panels and schema, that's a massive weakness on my behalf. So I know that if you help me out in schema and knowledge panels, I know I'm going to do everything I possibly can to help you out in return whenever you're struggling with anything that you might be struggling with. So I'm a massive advocate, like you said, your network is your net worth, and you should be trying to elevate others. And not only that, it's rewarding internally for the mindset to try to help others. You feel like you're doing some good in the world.

Guest: Also, like, once again, you've mentioned your dad here, and you seem to always mention your family and, uh, it seems like it's a very important part of your life. How, how do you think, for like, it should be for a general person? How much important is the family? And, uh, what purpose it serves in your overall success?

James Dooley: So in in my own personal world, um, all of my success I bring down to my family and friends around me. So, um, my family being my wife. I couldn't do what I do today if it wasn't for my wife looking after the kids. Like, she's an amazing mom. Um, I try to be the best that I can be, but she allows me to go to work and do things. And if she didn't, then I'd be held back from business because I'd need to spend more time during the day with my kids. So behind every successful man is an even more successful woman. So she's a great wife, she's a great mother of my kids. My mom, my mom made me. So I feel like she did a great job. No, the, um, but my, I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for my mom. My mom's been there, not just obviously because she gave birth to me, but the, uh, my mom and dad are a brilliant parents. And I've got two older brothers that at a younger age used to push me in sport every single day to improve. And I feel that pushing of sport helped me to know how the drive to always want to improve in business, like I was doing at sport. But the caveat to this is I'm lucky that I've got an amazing mother, an amazing father, and two amazing brothers and a nice wife now. Some people are less fortunate that they might be orphaned. They might not have a mother, they might not have a father. They might have brothers or sisters. And in that scenario, you can't choose your family. So when I say family is important, sometimes to other people, family is not important. But your friends that you can choose, which you do have a choice with, being if you choose the right friendship and you are genuine and you are genuinely honest and you're nice genuinely, you you'll find friends that have got the same traits as you that are nice that are honest that are trustworthy that do things with integrity. And at that point your friends can become your family. And from that then yes, it's not always about family as such, because you can't choose it, but you can surround yourself with very positive people that make you a better person.

Guest: Some people now, it's like a fashion, so to say, they try to surround themselves with get into the millionaires circles, you know, all these kind of things themselves, not yet been there. So what do you think about these, uh, practice? Like, when people are trying to get into some circle where they are not belonging right now?

James Dooley: And I feel there's a, there's a saying that you're, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So whether that's true, whether that's not true, that's in history. People say you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I feel there's some sort of truth in it, because if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, right? You need to be trying to hang around with people that are smarter than you, that are probably more successful than you. But what I would say as well is that just hanging around with millionaires because you want to be a millionaire doesn't mean you're going to be happy. And I'll repeat again, success isn't what, how much money you've got in the bank. Success is happiness. And people have got different traits of what is happiness. And some people love having a big bank balance. For me, having a bank balance with nothing, I, you have everything I've got with regards to family and friends and the journey that I've been on and have no money in the bank than have some money in the bank. Like, money to me isn't the be-all and end-all. But for people who want to strive to improve in business and strive to improve in having more money, if you can hang around with people that are more successful, are better than you in business, I do feel you start getting certain traits and you learn from them and you set, they're setting good example for what you should be doing to be where you need to be at today.

Guest: You are like that type of person everyone wants to hang out with, and you are pretty busy. It's very hard to get to you even on a conference, like you're always surround by a large group of followers and people wanting to get closer to you. How can a shy person or introvert, a good nice person, to get to know you better and to hang out with you a bit, when you have time or anything else? Maybe how can they make you, your, there as coach?

James Dooley: So that's a great question. And I, um, if you come over to me in a nightclub, I will get you up on stage and get you playing the drums, like I did with you. He was very good on the drums as well, by the way. No, but if someone's an introvert and they haven't got the confidence to come over and speak to me, because in in a nightclub or in a bar, if I've got five or six people around me and then someone tries to get my attention, it might not be the best time because I might already be speaking to somebody and then it's almost someone being rude coming over trying to grab my attention, that might not be the wrong surroundings. But I've got JamesDooley.com. I'm on Twitter. On I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. Leave a comment on my YouTube. Like, just try to get to know me. Leave a tweet, give me a DM on Instagram, give me a DM on messenger. Try to do it in a nice way or try and try to find something that they feel that I'm not doing very well and say, James, I love your attitude and I love what you're doing here, but I feel you could improve in this area. And you know what, something like that, I'll be like, thank you so much for that feedback. I really appreciate that feedback. And then I'll try to help them out in return. If someone just comes along saying, hi sir, please can you teach me SEO? I'm just going to delete that message because I don't know who they are. I don't know they know anything about me. Why do they want to learn SEO in the first place? I'm not going to spend all my time in learning who they are. They need to come to me with something that I feel, and it might not even be good. It might not even for me. I might listen to it. They might try and offer me something or some value, of being I feel you need to do this better, and I might disagree with them. But at least have taken the time to go and look at who I am and what I do. And if you go and do that and yes, I mean, I try to give time to as many people as I can, like I don't try to ignore the introverts and only speak to the extroverts. Some of the introverted people are the most successful people in the room. Sometimes the extroverts are the loud ones, aren't the most successful people. And this is why I always try to like, hustle in silence and let success be the noise. It's only been in the last six, seven months I've started to do podcasts and do interviews because I was always like, do you know what? I want to build brands. I want to build businesses. And I want my business partner, who is the founder or whatever, to go and excel in that business. I ain't, I ain't bothered like I don't, I don't need the fame. I don't want the fame. Of I'm being 100% honest. It's only now where I feel that a personal brand and AI is taking over a lot more that personal brands are becoming more important. And I want to portray my own message about me before somebody else tries to portray a message about me. Of some people look at me that don't know who I am and say, I'm this loud-mouthed party animal, that that's all he is. And actually at my core, I'm quite a successful businessman. But I'm not any more successful than many others that are in the industry. And I just want to come across as being, I'm quite humble. I love my family. I love my friends. And yes, I'll speak to anybody, whether you're an introvert, an extrovert, whether you're black, you're white, you're male, you're female. I, I don't, I don't have any sort of well, I can't speak to them. I'll speak to anyone. And the doors always open if anyone wants to hit me up and speak to me.

Guest: That's how you decide how to talk to people. How do you decide where to invest in business? So you see some website or some niche, how do you evaluate? Do you want to deal with that or not?

James Dooley: So the day-to-day of going into, let's say, lead generation for a niche, I don't really get too much involved in that anymore. I've trained staff up in knowing what looks like profitable niche and the search volume and stuff like that and then enter it. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. We've got the money in the bank to basically turn around and say, let's enter this market. When we first started out entering niches, I need to be very careful and very strategic in what works. But the more successful we've become in lead generation, the more we've started to realise it's actually the obscure niches where you make the most money. So instead of it just being plumbing, like wet rooms, we've realised that, which is one part of topic and can service that a plumber does, that makes more money. Instead of roofing, heritage roofing is a lot better. Now I would never have thought heritage roofing is even good. I didn't even know what heritage roofing was until one of the members of staff entered that market. So from a lead generation, let them do their due diligence and go and and test it. And if it works, then great. From a business partner point of view, that I generally look at what I'm weak at and see where whether I can partner up with someone who's very good in that lane. And if I can help elevate them to be better at what they do and help them build their business, but I can leverage that business for my own products as well in my own services, then happy days. Is I try to create a win-win situation. Now I don't know to this day, not one business partner of mine that will ever speak badly about myself, who's a business partner. And I've got a lot of different business partners. But I try to make certain I go above and beyond to help them more than what they would help me. But actually the help that they bring to me is massive. Again, it's almost like the synergy, of synergy is like you combine forces and like one plus one equals three. So the combined forces of working together give a bigger value than you can ever think of. So I'm always trying to elevate others. I'm always trying to choose people that I think I can work with them. And when I'm looking at business partners that I think I can work with, one of the first things I ask myself is, when things go wrong, are we both going to roll our sleeves up and work through this together and help each other out, get through these bad times? Because we're going to have bad times. And am I willing to go through the trenches with this person? And is this person going to have my back? And am I going to have his back? And if the answer is to that, yes, yes, then they're a good business partner to do business with.

Guest: You seem to have lots of niches covered, not only lead generation, though. Lead generation is massive, of course. But you you seem to work with crypto projects, with the gambling projects, right?

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest: You have business in racing, if I understood it correctly, horses, which one is your favourite?

James Dooley: I've got a passion for horse racing, um, from a young age. I think it comes from my parents. They used to like horse racing. It's one sport that brings us all together. So yes, I genuinely love horse racing as a sport. I enjoy not just the actual sport of the racing, but I enjoy going visiting my horses, going seeing how well kept that they are, that they're well fed, that they're loving life out in the field. Um, some people think the horses are mistreated and stuff like that, but actually, if you came to any one of our stables, you'll see that they're better looked after than me. The, like the stables are brilliant. They're out in the field. They loving life. And and yeah, so I, I love, I love horses. I love the sport of horse racing. And I love how it brings all the family and friends together, the whole weekend of the event of going to the races, getting dressed up, going, having a nice meal and everything around it. So for that reason, I enjoy doing SEO for horse racing, because I love the sport. But then I enjoy SEO as well, if I'm being honest. I see SEO as being a game, like in the fact of trying trying to find out how to get to the next level, to find out how I can be top of the league and how can I be top of the league for the industries that I'm in? And it's almost like doing Sudoku and and certain games to go, okay, if I put that there, then what's this and what's the next step here? And I'm quite strategically driven. So I also do love SEO as an industry as well.

Guest: If I wanted to go for an online casinos, change my niche completely, go for online casinos, what would you recommend for me to do? If I'm not with someone or like I'm on by myself, is it at all possible for a person to enter online casino niche on their own and earn something there?

James Dooley: So the there's two answers to that. My first answer would be, don't be naive to think that you can enter a market as big as that and go and rank number one for "online casino" because to try to rank for "online casino" you've got no chance. You've got people that spending two, three, 400,000 a month just solely on backlinks, never mind on content and everything else around the brand, what they're trying to rank for. It's so a very, very, very tough niche. But could you make money working out of the bedroom on your own in the casino industry? Yes, you can. Is the answer. So but you've got to find long-tail keywords. You might have to find certain GEOs like it could be certain foreign markets so could be like say in Sweden, in Denmark, in in different countries that might not even be the norm. Like in Canada is quite a good paying industry in the betting industry. Uh, Brazil's quite good, or India, uh, South Africa is quite good for football betting. So you've got to try to find ways of knowing how to monetize it. And if you're saying how do you find that? Speak to your affiliate managers, ask them what they want more players on. They might say, I want more slots players specifically. And you say, okay, what's the best 10 slot games that people are playing at the moment? What's the 10 newest slot games that you can do? So then you might then go and build a site out specifically just for slot games. So you don't talk about poker, you don't talk about baccarat, you don't talk about roulette, you don't talk about alls. It's a slot game site. Or you might just do a free spin site, or you might do just a no deposit site, or you might just go after like high roller players that I just want the maximum wins and stuff like like Mega Ways Slots. So there's lots of little sub-niches within the casino market where you can make some good money. But if you're trying to go off the primary terms, you're going to struggle. If you go that way you need to think of the long tails that you can win on and understand that you need to move through your traffic tiers and understand where you are at as a company or as an individual in comparison to where other people are at.

Guest: Do you have affiliate management system as a business yourself? So do you, we've got, in...

James Dooley: In offices. We've got in sales team that deals with all the affiliate managers. So like in the casino market, I think there's something like 48 different affiliate accounts that you need. I think there something like 500 different casinos. But like some affiliate accounts might have 40 casinos underneath the one affiliate account. But that's still over 40 different affiliate accounts where you've got to fill in all your information, give all your bank details, give all your tax information, give everything through to that affiliate platform form and have a relationship with that affiliate manager. So yes, you need somebody that, unless you're going to just go after one white-label affiliate platform that can give you their sub-affiliate links, that's how you might want to start initially if you're an individual, because in time you're going to need two or three sales managers that are consistently talking to the affiliate managers to get the latest information of like, you also need to make certain your site is compliant, especially in the UK, with UKGC, um, compliance and stuff like that is key. Otherwise, you just get your account shut down. So for that reason, yeah, you need to have some sort of sales team or do sub-affiliate links from like, uh, KBM or different media buying agencies that might allow you to do sub-affiliate links.

Guest: Can you recommend some affiliate program particularly so if you f in the casino market or in general anywhere in casino market?

James Dooley: In the casino market, probably the easiest way of doing it is whatever geo you're in, is going type in best casino sites, go and click on to every single one of them casino sites, scroll down to the bottom of the page in the footer, it'll have who the, um, affiliate platform is, go and click through to that affiliate platform, sign up in an account with them and say, I'm interested in pushing all of your brands. What brands are promoting? What brands are best performing at present? And they might give you one or two casinos you've never even heard of that might have only just been released. The ones that are in the tables, for the best casino sites are or free casino sites, or no casino sites, or free spins, no deposit, or whatever terms it is that you want to go after, those generally speaking, will be the best paying casinos because the existing affiliates that are promoting him are promoting them because they're probably paying the highest CPA, the highest rev share, or a hybrid deal. So you might be getting like 200 pound for a new player and 30% rev share for each player that you sign up for this casino. But then you might find one or two of the other ones that are more well-known. They might not be worth pushing because they might already have market saturation where they've already got quite a lot of players signed up to him. And their affiliate platform might only give him 50 pound CPA and 30% web share. So you can get four times more from a new casino brand. And majority of the casino players haven't yet signed up to that account. So at times it's worth promoting those than the aged big trusted brands.

Guest: Do remember at the beginning I asked about a fin STP, all right?

James Dooley: Yes, yes, yes.

Guest: Would it be possible if you showed something for casino associated or for some casino affiliate website?

James Dooley: Yeah, that's fine, yeah. Yeah, we can we can show financials of what like what a certain site earns, with regards to what platform it is and how much you're earning, how many clicks that they're getting, what rev share deal that you're on, how many unique clicks and how many FTDs and stuff like that that you get. So yeah, I can I can send that through to you. OK, thank you so much. What do you think about affiliate in general? Because like, after especially these reviews update and core update as well, but mostly after reviews update, people have started noticing that many affiliate sites they just vanish from the top results and they get now a fraction of traffic of what they used to have before. So what do you think about this, um, affiliate in general, what's its future? Is there any future for it?

Guest: I think at the present time, it's in a very, very, very bad situation at present. Do I feel it's going to improve? Yes, I think it's going to improve. And I feel the reason why I think it's going to improve is that at present, in today's algorithm, parasite SEO or barnacle SEO, or whatever you want to call it, is probably the number one SEO strategy for return on investment that you can do. So going, getting an article on a third-party high-authority site, going, doing some tier-two backlinks and some kind of behavioural signals through to that page, and you understand a much better chance of ranking on that site than on these niche affiliate sites. And this is still to the date, and this is Google saying that they're trying to combat parasite SEO and all the rest of it. But at present, it's still working very well. I do feel that Google, at some point, is going to start punishing these sites that at present are ranking the best. The big newspaper sites that are ranking for all his terms. That I don't feel are any better than these affiliate sites. These affiliate sites, at least, have gone and done a review of every casino that there is and then they're doing a round-up of the best casino sites. These newspapers are just going, getting the affiliates to write content on their site. And Google are now showing this newspaper site because it's a highly authority site, if they are a 94 site or whatever it is, to note be ranking. But does that mean it's better? Does that mean that they've gone and gone and reviewed and done everything in a better way than this niche affiliate site? No, I don't think they have. In fact, I don't think they've actually done it as well as some of these niche affiliate sites. So I feel that they're going to have to like dial down the tone back to promoting some affiliates, because all they've done is dialled up the tone of of parasite SEO. And it feels like they've tried to combat affiliate, but then all the black hatters now of the world, all the all the people, the ROI hat of the world, have now started to leverage these high authoritative newspaper sites, and that's what's working at present. But I do feel these are going to have a resurgence next year in 2024, where they're going to roll certain things back. But uh, maybe, maybe they don't. Yeah, maybe these newspaper sites will continue ranking. Maybe they'll hire these, uh, affiliates that went bankrupt during the updates. This is all guess work like, and that that's just my one, one person's opinion. Um, a lot of people say SEO is dead, affiliate is dead, and all the rest. I don't think SEO is dead. I definitely don't think that, because obviously there's lots of industries where you can make good money in. There's also the display advertising platforms, not the affiliates, that have been hit hard. And I don't know whether there's, um, some sort of something that they've put in the algorithm that for X amount of pages that you have versus X amount of outbound clicks that you have, those are the sites that are being hit. So obviously, like newspapers have got a lot of news articles, not just the affiliate sites. Is it that there's not enough informational posts on these affiliate sites or these display ads sites that are just being built to make money off display ads, like ezoic, ad pride, media vine and stuff like that, that are linking out all over the place with these ads? Is it the the amount of affiliate links and outbound click from display ads are being penalized? I don't know. Is it that the content, the everyone scaled the content using Surfer and copycat content? Is it that that people are doing that? They're not bringing anything new to the table? There's no information gain there's been brought to their articles? And realistically also, if I look at it from Google's point of view, someone that's going doing a review, a going ranking for "top 10 lawnmowers" and it's just a small affiliate site, do you genuinely believe that they bought those 10 lawnmowers and used them all and they're comparing them? They probably haven't. So there becomes a point of, should that affiliate site be ranking for "top lawnmowers" when they've never even used the lawnmowers before? Do you know what I mean? So like, sometimes these affiliate sites, some affiliate sites deserve to be hit, because they're not an expert in gaming chairs and lawnmowers and headstreams and everything else. They try and go after so maybe some affiliates need to learn. They need to become an expert in a subject and stick to that subject and not do topic dilution across the whole site and trying to be an expert of everything when Google knows that you've not bought all them headstreams and normals and everything else. So that's where, like, the experience in EEAT or something comes along with, have they used it? Is they like, I know a lot of them now are trying to do unboxing of products to try and prove that they have used the products. Is that going to help him out recover? I I don't know. But that's we don't know what's going to happen in in tomorrow's algorithm. I can only look at what's happening in today's and try to optimize for today's and if it changes tomorrow, I'll to adapt.

Guest: You've mentioned some somewhere, I don't remember where you've got R&D department for SEO right?

James Dooley: Yeah, how many people are in that department and what are you currently working on in the R&D team?

Guest: It fluctuates from there's anything from six to 50 team members of staff in that in that industry, in that, sorry, in that kind of office. But in that in that office, the way it's set up is if we're too busy on a project that we need to get out there very quickly, I can also move them from doing R&D to, let's say, ordering backlinks or doing anchor text or doing the Silo structures and stuff like that. So I can use them for different tasks. But then what starts to happen is when anybody has a question, whether that's a customer to any of my agencies that I own or whether it's just an internal question for any member of staff, like, what works better, this or this, we put it into the R&D testing team, and they go and test it and check to see what works. The truth of the matter is that with regards to R&D, it's so difficult to test things in a live environment because there's so many moving parts. So there's never a here's one test and if this test says that X is better than Y that X is better than Y, because there could have been a backlink that's been done to that page at the same time of the testing that's had, or Google just picked up an old link and give it credit now. So there it's never it's always an evolving R&D testing team. At present, probably one of the biggest things that they're testing is because some of our affiliate sites have been hit hard as well. And I'm like, wow, we've had a massive decline. Like, I'm talking like 80% down on some of our affiliate sites to where some people go, oh, James, you're doing really well. Yes, some some websites are thriving and doing very very well. Some of our agencies are doing very well. But some of our affiliate sites have been hit just as hard as everybody else's. And I feel that these affiliate sites, the content's good, I feel it's good for the user. I think I've got a good backlink profile. I think the silo structure is good. So if at present Google doesn't like our affiliate sites and we're trying to fix, obviously the R&D team are now trying to fix it. So what they're doing is a lot of testing different types of dislows, being a lot more aggressive with the dislows and almost removing everything. They're doing content pruning, which is the opposite of what everyone talks about with regards to build out topical authority to cover the topic in its entirety. We we're actually deleting pages. We're completely rewriting pages to try and remove all the fluff. So like, we used to let's say use let's say MarketMuse or Surfer or page optimizer pro. If page optimizer pro came back saying this needs to be 4,000 words, our content writer will write the article in 4,000 words. Words realistically could have you have written that article in 3,000 words and delivered all the messaging in 3,000 words? Yes. We'll go and do that, remove all the fluff, because you're only writing it in 4,000 words because a tool is telling you to do it in that amount of words. So we're trying to see, does removing the fluff help? Does content pruning help? Does disavow help? Do we need more backlinks? Do we need more link article velocity? Is the silo structure, is the internal link over optimized with the anchor text? Which I don't think it is. But I'm we're just trying to work out everything. And the truth of the matter is at present it's inconclusive. Like, we don't fully know how to time and time and time again recover a site. I thought last month we was close to knowing what was working very well, and then we tried it on several sites and it didn't work. But then in some sites it did work. So there's so many moving parts and there's so many different nuances from niche to niche with what works and what doesn't. The biggest surprise that I learned from the testing team is what works in one niche doesn't work in another. The biggest eye-opening moment for me has been there isn't just one algorithm. There's different algorithms for why, uh, your money, all life. There's a different one for casino. There's a different one for affiliate. To local, in local, you can still get away with a lot of spam, with duplicated content, with spun content, with like, look, what I would deem as being low quality type of links that still works in local that still works in some foreign countries in the non-English-speaking countries. Sometimes spam still works as well. So these are the different things of what they're testing to see what works best. We've tested this quite a lot. So certain pages just got completely, pretty much de-indexed on our side. We was ranking position number one. In fact, one of them is the horse racing site that we have was ranking position number one for some big gambling keyword. And no, when you went and copied and pasted a full section of content and put it into Google, it wouldn't even show up as being any content on the internet. So it was like the page was still indexed, but the content on the page, none of that was index. So it went from ranking in position number one to not ranking in the top 100, completely gone, with the content. So we got that page completely rewritten. It removed the fluff. And then we jumped on to page one straight away. No, it's almost like you completely need to change the page, like you're saying, remove everything on the page and then go and try and reindex the page and then it jumps back. And I feel like people are needing to do, I don't I don't know what kind of classifier they're putting in place. But it's almost like we don't like this content. If you keep, if you carry on with this content, you ain't going to rank. If you change it, will bring you back. And yeah, it's scary times really, to try and find out what it is, because so many people say, I'll wait until the next algo update and you'll come back. Yeah, but then if you make drastic changes and then they do roll it back, and then you could have been ranking number one again, it's like, what what do you do at the moment? You're not ranking. Do you change it? But previously, years, it was working really well. I suppose you just got to try to foresee what you think is the right thing for the user and long term it might work out the best.

James Dooley: F, you said that you actually, like, I said, what do you like to do the most? Do you like to make titles or H ones?

Guest: Oh, yeah, I do like the title. I like doing title tags. There's times you can change a title tag and it can literally jump you from number three to number one, literally. The the optimisation of title tags is quite good. I love keyword research. I love trying to dig deeper in understanding the source context and the intent of each page that we write. Because previously, I used to waste a lot of money and the writers used to just write for SEO purposes and not understand who the demographic and the audience of the viewer is. And I think that that's quite important. And I quite like speaking to my content team of understanding, educating them. Okay, so how are you going to write this page? Not not just the entities you're going to get on the page, what kind of tone of voice are you going to use? And stuff like that. So I quite, I quite like all elements if I'm being honest. I quite like speaking to my link building team and seeing what the best links are working at the moment, which can vary from time to time. Or in local, like citation still work pretty well. Or even press releases still work pretty well with getting like the GMB, the NAP listed and put into the GMB, the the video, the image and stuff that I put in there that can give like a big velocity of links in a in a quick space of time, as long as they like branded anchors and naked URLs. They work pretty well still. So just I like understanding what's working in today's algorithm. But then I also love the SEO community. I think it's one of very few communities where people do genuinely try to help each other out, where if I was a plumber and they had another plumber down the road, they almost wouldn't speak because they think of has being competition. But in this industry, I think because the industry is so big and diverse and there's so many different ways how you can make money, I almost don't see any other SEO being a competitor. I I try and befriend as many of them I can, as long as they're nice. And yeah, from there then I think the community is amazing within the SEO like industry.

James Dooley: Why did you decide to make an agency? Why did you decide to take clients at all?

Guest: It's so we, I don't deal, I I do not like dealing with client. I love dealing with people, but I don't like dealing with clients. And the reason why I don't like dealing with SEO clients is because it's one of very few industries where they don't just pay you to do a service. They ask you what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it and stuff like that. They have to question everything that you do. But if you went and ordered a brick layer to build you a wall, you let him just go and build the wall and you leave him to it, because he's the expert and he's the brick layer at building walls. You don't start asking, why did you hit that brick three times? But you only hit that brick twice? This industry, clients see you as being an employee and they feel that they can ask you all these questions and not let you get on with your work. So the only reason why I've got certain agencies that does client work is because there was an existing agency that did client work and we used them and we were spending 50, 60, 70,000 a month on content and links with that agency. And I was thinking if I can buy into that agency, one it's going to bring my expense bill down because I'm going to get it at a cheaper rate. But two, I can start demanding better quality control. So if I don't like the content that they're delivering, I can explain why I don't like it and how the content writers need to improve on semantic SEO. Or if the links I don't like some of the link because they deemed to be toxic, I can start to remove them out the database or remove them out of when they're doing their using pitch box and doing outreach. They can be removing what I deem to be not a good link. And then I'm for my own projects are getting better quality control at better prices. The agency can still run itself and the founder and the like managing director of the of the agency can still deal with clients and deal with that. But I don't personally deal with clients on a day-to-day basis because I don't like the SEO industry for clients.

James Dooley: Me too.

Guest: Yeah. And, uh, what, what, uh, didn't I ask you? But you wanted to tell me? For anyone who's watching that's in the casino market, if you've got a casino following to work through your traffic tiers, if you've been hit hard at present, try to leverage barnacle SEO or parasite SEO, whichever way you want to call it, that's what's working in today's algorithm. Is it going to be working tomorrow? I don't know. Google are saying they're going to clamp down on it. Just keep trying to look to grow your network. Speak to other like-minded people. And just yeah, just keep going. Like, don't become too demotivated. It's you're in a blip if you're if you're in affiliate. But I do feel diversify your income streams. And yeah. That's I think you've asked me a lot of good questions if I'm being honest. You've asked me a lot of questions. It's very different to a lot of other podcasts. So I think as an interviewer, I think you're very good at what you've done.

James Dooley: Oh, thank you so much.

Guest: Thank you.

James Dooley: No, it was very nice to talk to you.