James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Karl Hudson explain how link building agencies scale because paid ads and organic social content amplify visibility. James shows that targeted SEO improves valuation because ranking assets generate predictable enquiries. Karl highlights that partnerships with shoulder niches increase deal flow because shared clients create warm introductions. They both stress that networking accelerates growth because in person relationships secure high value backlink buyers.

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: how to grow a link building agency SEO is probably the best way of growing but actually a different part of growing as well instead of it being social media ads is organic social media you're competing typically against the biger boys yeah you have to spend a lot before you see any return I think with regards to PPC like AdWords in Google I think you need to know the converting keywords I think you need to make certain you've got the right sales funnels in place I think you just can't really make that assumption the issue with SEO is it's you definitely don't want to look at SEO link building agencies be teaming up with PPC companies and web design companies they also a bit of a trickier customer I think the last method for if anyone is looking to grow their link building agency is hi so today I'm joined with Karl Hudson the founder of seero and today's video is about how to grow a link building agency so we'll bounce off each other and give some ideas of what is the best way of growing a bat link agency
Karl Hudson: yeah so I guess it's quite a difficult one because some people would probably believe that SEO is probably the best way of growing but actually you know on the counter spin of that you know we speak to quite a few top top top level agencies link building agencies and you know they seem to say that it actually is a lot of paid ad advertising things that's helped them scale even more so I guess if we look at sort of social media ads let's say as a first point of view like that's probably fundamental to grow in a link building agency despite it being you know something completely different like you'd expect a link building agency should be building links to grow their grow their brand but yeah if you're looking at like Facebook Twitter I know we're doing a lot on YouTube at the moment so YouTube's probably a great Avenue especially considering if you think about the average demographic or like a marketing person or someone who's in business he's probably watching a lot of podcasts things like this and probably on YouTube a lot so that is probably in my eyes one of the better ways what do you think J have you got any other
James Dooley: yeah I mean with you guys if we expanding on social media ads for now then I think Facebook and Instagram are great platforms definitely making certain that your website setting up with the retargeting pixel because the retargeting pixel is probably the cheapest form of remarketing that there is Twitter ads can do all right YouTube ads you can go you've got places like quora and Reddit that you could be doing on question based like what type of link should I be building and stuff like that that seems to work pretty well if you've got some nice infographics you could even do places like Pinterest ads as well so basically all different ways of social media ads but then a different part of growing as well instead of it being social media ads is organic social media so posting literally every single day and providing some sort of value if people have never read the book The goger I'd recommend you reading that book and giving value out to potential customers or if you're doing link building for SEO agencies providing them with some value with how they can scale their agency out can work pretty well I'd say on that LinkedIn is probably the best place to hang go and provide good value but again you can be doing it on even TikTok for certain videos and providing value on there Instagram Facebook Twitter again I'd probably say LinkedIn for organic social media what you found that works probably the best on organic social media
Karl Hudson: I personally prefer LinkedIn just because I find there's too much noise on Facebook and you've got a lot of friends and things on there some friends just don't want to see you posting stuff about whatever you're doing so yeah I definitely think LinkedIn and obviously trying to just be consistent with it I sometimes fall short on this as well trying to do at least one post a day not always trying to pitch trying to provide value to your audience you seem to it builds up like snowballs has like a Snowball Effect pretty quickly when you're doing that um obviously there's other elements to this as well where you can start to look at paid ads obviously organic social media is great and so is paid social media but then you've also got a paid ads game with Bing or Google and that can be the problem is it can be very expensive because you're competing typically against the bigger boys who are kind of controlling the whole narrative when it comes to the spend obviously there are certain industries where that would be fantastic in but I just think link building it's one of them we've toyed with it before and played around with it and it's you have to spend a lot before you see any return I think with regards to PPC like AdWords in Google I think you need to know the converting keywords I think you need to make certain you've got the right sales funnels in place that you're knowing exactly how to increase your average transactional value and the lifetime value of your customers once you have all them ducks in a row then it might allow you to spend that little bit more on PPC leads but if you've not and you've not mastered knowing exactly what your lifetime value average customer is which could be 2,000 3,000 5,000 when you know that if you're knowing that you're acquiring a new customer let's say 500 it becomes a little bit easier for you to be able to do that but these other I mean what's your thoughts on traditional marketing so like billboard advertising TV advertising radio advertising magazines some people talk about doing that I mean for me it's a little bit old school like in the way of doing it but what's your thoughts on traditional marketing
James Dooley: I think there's a time and a place and I think the hardest part with traditional marketing is trying to gauge the ROI I know like in previous businesses when we were doing TV and radio ads it was just very very hard other than seeing spikes in traffic at the time that the advert was on it was very hard to note the trend over time and see that actual ROI that's you know that is the m I would almost say if you're doing traditional advertising you're almost just doing it for a marketing and to build up your brand sort of notor rather than the ROI is going to be X you I think you just can't really make that assumption that's my opinion anyway I think another strategy as well is with you touch upon it at the start is SEO so search engine optimization so if you're starting to know what people are asking questions on you can start building up your topical Authority by writing lots of articles answering the queries and giving again giving good value which then you can then share on social media platforms as well so it is a good strategy to do that the only issue is unlike PPC where if you start spending budget today you can generate leads today the issue with SEO is it's a long term investment but something that is very important is if someone's ever looking to sell their link building agency and they're looking to grow it to sell actually having an SEO value to your website gives you a much higher multiplayer so instead of just thinking about how much is it and how much am I getting in return and what's my return on investment you also need to understand that you might actually get an extra 12 months multiplier so if you go and spend 100 200 even 300 FR in SEO of your website and it improves the traffic and that starts generating its own leads via organic SEO the multiplier of your site could be worth that little bit more have you got anything else to add on to that Karl with regards to SEO for link building agencies
Karl Hudson: again it's just that you kind of hit the nail on the head it's just the time it takes like obviously you'll find a few little nugget keywords that you might be able to rank for quite quickly but again you'll only be able to do that if you're leveraging the authority of your site and building that Authority which again is another thing that takes time and it's I think it's like a a long term if you're getting into link to set up a link building agency and you just want it to be a quick hit you definitely don't want to look at SEO because that's like a long term strategy I think whereas if you're plan on right the next 10 years I'm going to form this link building agency and this is the strategy that we're going to run with then it probably makes sense yeah for sure I mean another strategy is lead generation companies so over at fat anank one I was founder with flat rank is that we offer a no risk supply of inquiries which guarantee any clients a return on investment if they qualify now what we could do on this for link building agencies is I'm going to be brutally honest obviously I'm an investor in search aroo so there's no chance I'm going to start generating leads for a link building agency when I can pass it into search aroo myself but people should be looking for lead generation agencies where it might be that we don't personally build let's say a certain type of bat link that we don't do that then we might then be able to cross sell into another agency so building up those relationships with customers which I always call it like shouldering niches that you might be able to do that or in certain scenarios you could start buying certain leads from places like bar and places like that the only issue with that is normally the res sell those leads to multiple companies and you're not getting exclusive leads but what's your thoughts on lead generation companies to grow the business or trying to partner up with maybe like even a web designer so a web designer might be building a website and then the client might ask for do you know anyone that can do SEO or content and B links should people like like link building agencies be teaming up with PPC companies and web design companies to say look we'll pass you anyone that asks for web design but you pass us anyone that does for link building kind of inquiries
Karl Hudson: yeah that's like yeah I would say that's like a very good strategy in the sense that obviously with us we try to target SEOs typically because you know they know what links are so it's a lot easier sell and they understand the value the caveat to that is obviously they're also a bit of a trickier customer because they understand a lot more about it and so yeah definitely you know shoulder niches is a great way for aite generation point of view just obviously make sure you pick companies that you've ever used before have prior experience with and I know yourself at fat rank you know you're testing out a lot of these companies because you don't want to deal with people that were not willing to pay and give you kick prop exactly so you're kind of wanting the creme de la creme and then that's only going to help your service hopefully get better as well yeah I think the last method for if anyone is looking to grow their link building agency is networking so getting yourself to these SEO meetups like SEO Vibes or changai SEO and if you can get yourself to those SEO meetups then you can meet the owners of SEO agencies or big affiliate marketers that might be spending 20 30 50,000 or 30 30 450,000 a month specifically just on back links cuz they might be earning half a million a month through 15 websites of what they own so getting yourself out to these networking events as well and building those relationships in person I think it's another great way of growing a link building agency what's your thoughts on that Karl
Karl Hudson: I would probably say not just the networking but obviously The Mastermind elements so getting into the route pay me's even paying a lot of them you know there are me's small amount of money to join a room but it's like a room of potentially just business owners really where you can actually chat to them and a lot of them actually they might not understand what link building is but they probably understand what the result of link building can do and obviously explain that from that Avenue could also you know you're getting straight into like different businesses sort of it could be shoulder niches could be completely separate niches could be just a business owner that knows the value of link building and want a link building agency as opposed to an SEO
James Dooley: yeah for sure yeah so anyone who's watching this are you a link building agency are you looking to grow your link building company we hope you like the tips and tricks of what we've just said there leave us a comment in the comment section let us know if there's anything that you're doing additional to what we've just mentioned if you are looking to grow out your link building company