Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast, host Jared Bauman sits down with seasoned SEO and self-described digital landlord James Dooley to unpack how he turned a struggling UK construction business into a vast portfolio of rank-and-rent assets. James shares how learning SEO to drive enquiries for his playground and sports pitch company became the foundation for building hundreds of lead-generating websites across dozens of industries. He walks through what rank and rent really looks like in practice, why local businesses love paying monthly for proven sites that already generate calls and enquiries, and why this model isn’t something beginners should jump into until they truly understand how to rank consistently. Along the way, James dives into topical authority, backlinks, local SEO, and monetisation strategies ranging from lead generation and affiliates to display advertising. The conversation ultimately comes back to one core theme: real success in digital real estate comes from understanding where clients actually make their profit, and then building websites that directly support those revenue-driving services.
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.
Jared Bauman:
All right, welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today we're joined by James Dooley. James, welcome on board.
James Dooley:
Hi, how you doing, you okay?
Jared Bauman:
Doing great. I'm very excited to have you. The topic we’re talking about today is so exciting to me, and I think it's going to get a lot of people's brains absolutely fired up.
Before we dive into the rank and rent model and everything that you're doing with that, can you give us a little background on yourself? Maybe catch us up to when you started doing this?
James Dooley:
Yeah, so we started about 13–14 years ago. We had a construction company in the UK that built playgrounds, tennis courts, football pitches—stuff like that.
The phone wasn’t ringing, and we needed more inquiries. We knew we needed a website, so we got the website built and then realized we needed an engine behind the website, which is SEO.
I didn’t really know anything about SEO at the time. I didn’t understand how the algorithms worked. But really, it’s a formula and, in a way, basic math—changing words into numbers and making sure you’ve got the right quality links.
Things just progressed from there. We did it for our own website, then started to realize that we needed to get our clients busier for us to be busier.
So, for example, with architects: if we could get architects more work designing playgrounds or sports pitches in schools or universities, indirectly that would get us more work.
That’s how the whole business model grew. It was never set out to be a rank and rent business; it just evolved. One domino fell onto the next, onto the next, and then onto the next.
Fast forward 14 years and now we’ve got a successful digital real estate portfolio online.
Jared Bauman:
Tell me a bit more about where you're at right now with this, and then maybe we'll dive into what rank and rent is and unravel it from there.
When you say “a portfolio,” set the stage for us.
James Dooley:
In total, online, ranking on page one, I think there’s over 56 million web pages ranking on page one in the UK that we have.
We’ve got around 850 different paying sites, about 650 different niches, and around 850 paying clients.
There’s been a lot of failures along the way. We haven’t built 850 sites and monetized all 850. Some of them didn’t work with the way we set them up. But I think every single site we’ve built that didn’t work, we’ve repurposed—into display ad sites, PBNs, or just test beds.
Our biggest growth came from having our own in-house testing team. That’s massive, because when core algorithm updates like Penguin and Panda came along, we needed to understand and unravel exactly what was going on.
There were too many people online sharing myths and information for personal benefit. Once we had our own in-house testing team, that helped us a lot.
Then we brought in good people for management and systems. For example, Mad Singers came in and helped us build a team with the right systems and processes to basically rinse and repeat.
We’ve got a strategy that works. And it’s like Henry Ford building cars: once you’ve got the “factory” and know how to build a car, it’s about having the right staff, systems, and processes to rinse and repeat that process.
Jared Bauman:
It’s still phenomenal. I mean, 850 is a staggering number of sites to grow and build. But it also makes you a pretty good resource when it comes to this model or this approach to building websites.
Like you said, at 850, you’ve probably seen almost everything—maybe not everything—but almost everything.
James Dooley:
Yeah, we’re in 650 different industries. And what’s crazy, Jared, is that people think there’s one algorithm out there. Trust me, there’s not.
There are so many different nuances from one niche to the next. Some people think, “Oh, it just needs topical authority, good quality content, and backlinks.” That’s almost always the case, but the dials are different.
At what level do you need topical authority? At what level do you need powerful links versus relevant links? Do you just need local links like citations and forum links, or do you need to go hard with guest posts and niche edits?
It varies significantly from one market to the next.
Jared Bauman:
We could do a whole podcast on that one topic right there. I may come back to it later to get as much out of you as possible.
We’ve talked about rank and rent, and a lot of people listening will be familiar with it. It’s not an ancient strategy, but it’s been around awhile.
For people who are new and it’s a foreign concept, can you give a one- to two-minute overview of what the rank and rent model is?
James Dooley:
The rank and rent model is where you get a website, rank that website, and then rent that website out to a customer who’s willing to pay for it.
In the real estate world, you buy a house and rent it out. It’s the same thing, but done digitally with websites.
So some people would say I’m a digital landlord. I own digital assets—I own digital real estate—and I rent those websites out.
Jared Bauman:
Why would people want to rent those sites out?
James Dooley:
Well, if you’re a plumber, you’re brilliant at fixing taps and installing shower rooms, but you don’t understand how algorithms work, how content works, how backlinks work.
We just need to understand what they’re good at and then present what they’re good at online. That generates the right traffic, the right inquiries that they want to receive.
From there, they get a return on investment, and they only pay us a percentage, which is our “rental” fee.
So it’s an amazing deal for each client. The good thing is we don’t really have clients leave us, because they’re paying us out of their winnings.
If they come to us saying £5,000 a month is too much, we can renegotiate down to £1,000–£2,000 if that’s what it needs to be. But the truth is, the more they pay us, the more websites we’ll build for them, the more backlinks we’ll point to the site.
That leads to better rankings, more traffic, more inquiries. We work with the customer on the bits that make them money.
That’s the most important part.
Jared Bauman:
I think the dichotomy that a lot of people listening might be thinking about is the difference between working for—using that plumber as the example—and just doing SEO services for that plumber.
Why not just build them a website and do client SEO? Why choose rank and rent instead?
James Dooley:
I absolutely despise client SEO, for a few reasons.
There are so many cowboys out there. So many people are taught to “fake it till you make it.” There’s no legislation or regulation around who is a good SEO and who’s not.
Someone can start tomorrow on a laptop, call themselves the best SEO agency in their local area, and go take three or four thousand pounds a month from a plumbing company.
They don’t rank their website, the client doesn’t see ROI, and can end up worse off than where they started.
What we’ve found, especially in the UK and US, is that many business owners have already been burned by SEOs. So you’re coming into a relationship where they don’t trust SEO as a whole.
If I start doing SEO on their website and there’s already a lack of trust, they start asking what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, how I’m doing it.
If I hire a bricklayer to build an extension on my house, I’m not going to stand over them saying: “Excuse me, what are you doing? Why did you tap that brick three times? What cement are you using?”
You let the professional get on with it. In SEO, that’s often not the case.
We found that in client SEO, 50% of the budget is spent managing expectations and building glossy reports, instead of actually doing the work.
Rank and rent is risky for us, but we’re very good at what we do. We know how to rank websites. SEO is predictable if you do the right quality content, get the right entities on the page, build the right silo structure, topical authority, and links—and keep going until you get to number one.
If you genuinely are as good at ranking websites as you say you are, you can rank a website that might cost you, say, £50,000 (just a hypothetical).
If you can rent that site out for £5,000 a month, and the plumber is happy to pay that because it’s already ranking and generating the right enquiries, then within 12 months you’ve got 100% of your investment back.
What better investment is there where you put in £50,000 and get all of it back in year one or two—and still own the asset?
The model is brilliant if you’re good at SEO. If you’re not good at SEO, maybe sell services, or go learn, or do what others say and fake it till you make it. But that’s not us.
I want to make sure all our customers get a return on investment. If you’re good at SEO, rank and rent is a great model to get into.
Jared Bauman:
It’s certainly a simpler sell for a lot of clients. Instead of saying, “Trust us, we’ll get you rankings,” you skip all that and say, “Just buy the leads from a site that’s already ranking.”
Let’s talk about the how. For people who feel they’re good enough at SEO and want to dip their toe into a rank and rent model, where do you start?
Do you start with a brand new domain? How do you pick that domain? How do you pick the industry? Is it important to do keyword research and industry research ahead of time?
James Dooley:
They’re all great questions.
Let’s stick with plumbing for the example. I’d start off by getting a domain like plumbing.com or something close—plumbing.co.uk, or if that’s gone, something like JaredsPlumbing.com.
For the first site, I’m going very broad. I’ll cover everything related to plumbing.
Even if current clients don’t do all those services, I want the search volume and the real Google Search Console data—not just Ahrefs or Semrush data.
I want to know what keywords actually get traffic. There are so many “zero search volume” keywords in Ahrefs that actually get 2–3,000 searches a month. They’re missing those.
So I go big. Then I might add 30 different plumbing companies into that ecosystem. These are 30 plumbers who are not paying a single penny for SEO or the leads.
What I say to them is:
“I’m going to give you these leads for free. All I ask is that if you secure a job from a lead, you try to add in a finder’s fee. And you decide what you think is fair.”
So if they fix a tap for £100, they might send me £10. That’s fine.
What happens is, you get 30 plumbing companies competing for those jobs. The cream rises to the top.
Whoever pays you the most over 12 months—and, importantly, can actually handle the work—becomes the one you talk to about a dedicated website.
In plumbing, fixing a tap is a £50–£100 job—very low profit. But some of them build full bathrooms or shower rooms.
So you start building them a site around shower rooms. A shower room might be a £4,000 job, they might make £1,500 profit, and pay you £500 as a kickback. Much better.
Then you notice a few of them paying you even more and you ask, “What’s that for?” — and they say, “Oh, that’s for a wet room.”
You go, “What’s a wet room?”
They explain it’s like a shower room, but commercial—for gyms, offices, etc. It’s fully tiled, floor and walls, and needs to be DDA compliant, with a wider door, bigger room, and a pull cord alarm.
That might be a £45,000 job and they’ll pay you £2,000 as a kickback.
So forget conventional keyword research alone; you’ve got to listen to your customers to find where they make the real money, and go down that rabbit hole.
You start at plumbing, move to shower rooms, and end up at disabled wet rooms.
That’s just one niche. You could do the same with roofing: start at roofing, go into flat roofing, biodiverse roofing, heritage roofing, and so on. There are so many sub-services in every niche.
That’s how we’ve managed to get into so many industries, understand what clients actually want, and make good money.
Jared Bauman:
Let’s focus on the rank part, because I have a lot of questions there.
I run an agency myself, and a lot of plumbers fall under “local SEO”: Plumbing in a certain metro or local area.
Many listeners are very experienced with building what we’d call content sites—covering all the questions, information, reviews, etc.
When we’re trying to rank a site that will end up being rented, what kind of model are we following? And can you get into specifics of what you pay attention to when building a rankable rent site?
James Dooley:
First, you can absolutely still go down the informational-content route.
I’m a big believer in approaches like the “avalanche” method or traffic tiers—start with easier-to-rank keywords and build up. Those might be “how-to” guides or similar.
If they can get traffic, that’s great. I’m a massive advocate that traffic and behavioural signals are probably the biggest ranking factors.
Yes, you need content and backlinks to get traffic, but the engagement and behaviour on your pages are key.
So I’m asking: how many pages can I create that will start driving traffic?
Sometimes we start with informational keywords and monetize those with display ads at first. If later the site is ranking strongly and the client doesn’t want display ads anymore, we can remove them and let the client put their own banners and CTAs on those pages.
We’ll also try to get the client’s address onto the site.
When I’m first building the big, broad plumbing site and sending leads to 30 companies, I usually don’t put a specific address—I’m just using it to find those smaller, more profitable niches.
Once I’ve drilled down to something like disabled wet rooms and found a client who really wants those leads and is happy to pay, that’s when we build a more focused site.
At that point, I say to them:
“I want to build this site out. I’ll pay for everything. But I want your staff on my site—I want to build this as if it’s your site. You’re going to rent it, so I want it to look and feel like your site.”
I’ll do what they should be doing on their own site, but aren’t—because they don’t have the budget, or the photographers, videographers, content writers, link builders, etc.
If they want to copy my site later and do it themselves, they can. But while I’m ranking it and they’re earning money from it, they’ll keep renting.
So we start with informational terms, then we get their address on there, then:
We target “[service] in [city]” — e.g. disabled wet rooms in Sarasota.
We ask, “How far do you travel?” They might say 90 minutes.
We then get all the suburbs and surrounding locations—maybe 150 locations—and we want to rank for disabled wet room installer in every one of them.
If we can, we’ll get images and videos for those pages. If a location gets enough search volume, we may even do a dedicated video.
Then we build directory citations with full NAP, typically with a Twilio number forwarding to their phone or office.
We build a Meet the Team page, About page, etc. They’re usually more than happy to help, because they’re only paying us a percentage of profits and we’re bringing them high-value work.
They love us for it.
Jared Bauman:
I want to focus on the ranking part because I think there are some gaps in understanding there.
Can you outline the process before you ever talk to a client—what it looks like to get these sites to rank, and what framework you use to build them?
James Dooley:
Originally the framework was raw HTML. Then we moved to PHP websites. Now we use WordPress.
We used to use plugins like SERP Shaker; now there are tools like Mike Martin’s Magic Page Plugin.
Those can help create the 150 different location pages. Or you can simply duplicate a base page and swap out the location, changing enough content to keep it unique.
From there, we build links.
We get the address, do citations, etc. On the content side, I’ve got different businesses and teams, so different writers prefer different on-page tools:
Some use PageOptimizer Pro (Kyle Roof’s tool).
Some use Surfer’s dashboard.
Some use Eric Lancheres’ on-page tool, onpage.ai.
Some use MarketMuse.
Personally, I think MarketMuse is the best, but it’s also the most expensive. For local, you probably don’t need it, but for big affiliate and casino sites, we use it a lot.
Tools like Frase, Surfer, PageOptimizer Pro, Onpage.ai, MarketMuse—they’re all good enough to help you get the right entities on the page and structure your headings properly.
Then we do:
Foundational links (citations, directories with NAP).
Forum links.
A “social fortress”: If I’ve got disabledwetrooms.com, I’ll create:
Disabled Wet Rooms Twitter
Tumblr
Weebly
RebelMouse
Blogspot
…all around that brand.
Each gets a unique article linking back to the site. They’re only web 2.0 links, but they:
Give branded anchors.
Help diversify the link profile.
At that point we’ve got:
Naked URL links from citations.
Branded anchors from the social fortress.
Then we focus on power.
Where does the power come from?
PBNs give you the most power (homepage links).
Guest posts give you relevance.
You can power up guest posts with tier-2 links, because even on a high-DR site the page might be weak at first.
Niche edits (link insertions) on existing pages already have some power, even if they’re not super relevant.
So we aim for a blended profile:
Some homepage PBN power.
Some highly relevant guest posts.
Some niche edits with existing power.
Citations and forums providing diversity and nofollow naked URLs.
Social fortress/web 2.0 branded links.
Diversity in follow/nofollow, and in link types, plus a site that covers the topic well using on-page tools to get the entities and topical coverage right—that’s the framework.
Jared Bauman:
I heard you talk a lot about the social fortress, citations, that kind of thing. How important do you think that is?
If someone missed that step, should they go back and do it?
James Dooley:
I’d say yes—definitely do it. Why skip it when 500 citations might cost you £100–£150—about the same as one decent guest post?
Go get 300–500 citations. Don’t get hung up on 50 vs. 100 vs. 200. Just get as many good citations as you reasonably can.
Are citations going to rank your site by themselves? No. They don’t really pass power; they’re mostly nofollow.
But they do help with:
Trust signals.
Local relevance for your GMB/GBP.
NAP consistency.
Diversifying your backlink profile.
The social fortress is for the brand element, and if you send a bit of tier-2 power to those branded properties, you can rank and control your own branded SERP.
Search “James Dooley” or “Dooley disabled wet rooms” and you want your own controlled properties—YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.—filling the results. That’s good for reputation management and still sends traffic back to your main site.
It all costs less than a few hundred dollars typically. To me, it’s just the right thing to do.
Jared Bauman:
Perfect segue: content.
You talked about different on-page optimization tools. Sticking with the plumbing analogy in Sarasota, Florida:
How many pages are we building here? How many location pages? How much informational content? Just to give people an idea of the volume involved.
James Dooley:
I’d start by looking at keyword research for informational pages. If I can do 30, 40, 50—however many make sense—that’s great.
In the wet rooms example, some good content pieces would be:
Wet room designs
Wet room ideas
Cost of a disabled wet room
Pros and cons of different tile types
Different shower units, accessibility features, etc.
For “wet room designs,” you’ll want as many real images from the client as possible—upload them, try to rank for “wet room ideas,” “wet room designs,” etc. You can also pin them on Pinterest, share on Twitter, maybe run cheap Pinterest or Twitter ads.
You’re talking $3–$4 a day in traffic, but that traffic helps with indexation and behavioural signals.
Then you build the core service pages and the location pages:
“Disabled wet room installer in Sarasota”
Then all the nearby cities: Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, plus all the suburbs.
Those location pages are what pull in the leads, because people search for “disabled wet room installer in [city]” or just “disabled wet room installer” on their phone—Google will localize the results.
How many pages? It’s a hard question to answer precisely. I’d say: do enough to win.
If that means 30 informational articles and 50 location pages, and that’s enough to rank and generate enquiries at a level where the client is happy to pay you £500, £1,000, £2,000 a month—great.
If the client says, “I want to go wider, I can travel four hours,” then, yes, you’ll need more location pages, more content, and more backlinks.
There’s a saying: you don’t need to be faster than the bear, you just need to be faster than the other people running from the bear.
You don’t need perfect SEO; you just need to do more than your competitors.
Too many people are perfectionists and get stuck in analysis paralysis.
If you do SEO properly to 55–60% of what’s theoretically “perfect,” you’ll probably win in a lot of easier niches.
You can always add more later if and when you need it.
Jared Bauman:
How important is site structure—navigation, internal linking, all that—in this strategy?
James Dooley:
I’ll probably get crucified for this, but on a single-topic niche site, I’d say: internally link as much as you reasonably can where it’s relevant.
Make sure:
The navigation, footer, or sidebar links to your main category pages.
Those categories link to all related posts.
I don’t really think you can over-optimize internal anchor text on a pure single-topic local site. I still vary anchors where I can, but I’ve rarely seen sites hit for internal anchor over-optimization.
Where it becomes critical is multi-topic or large affiliate sites—for example, in casino:
Live casino
Bingo
Slots
Poker
Blackjack
There, silo structure is crucial. All poker pages should interlink with poker pages, and they might roll up under “card games.” You don’t want to side-link too much between poker and, say, bingo or slots.
In local, single-topic lead gen sites, just internally link more.
Most people don’t internal link enough.
Make sure the homepage links out to your main money pages and locations, because the homepage is usually the strongest page on the site.
Jared Bauman:
A lot of people listening may think this sounds very similar to building a classic affiliate site—money pages, best X for Y, informational content, topical authority, internal linking, ads, backlinks, social profiles, etc.
What, if anything, is actually different about the rank and rent approach?
James Dooley:
It is all SEO. There’s not a huge difference in the fundamentals:
You still need good content.
You still need on-page optimization.
You still need internal linking.
You still need backlinks.
The differences are mainly:
In local rank and rent, citations, NAP, and forums matter more than on a typical affiliate site.
Affiliate is generally tougher—more competition, more sophisticated competitors.
But the big difference is the business model and the sales aspect.
A lot of SEOs get into affiliate because they don’t have to speak to anyone: no clients, no calls, no reports. Money can come in while they sleep.
Rank and rent isn’t completely hands-off. You still need a sales team. Even though technically you’re “renting a site,” clients still want conversations:
“How can I get more leads of this type?”
“Can we change this image?”
“Can we add this service?”
So you’re still doing some client service, but the relationship is very different. They’re paying you out of their winnings.
They’re usually not demanding; they’re asking you for more ways to grow.
When it’s on their site, with client SEO, they often treat you like an employee and want to control colours, wording, and design—even if your testing shows it converts worse.
On a rank and rent site you own, you can say, “We’ve split-tested this; green converts better than blue. We’re keeping it green.”
From an operations standpoint, if you know how to rank, you can make money via:
Display ads
Affiliate
Rank and rent
Lead gen
Or combinations of those
For example, appliance repair is a great hybrid niche:
Rank for “appliance repair in [city]” — sell the leads (rank and rent / lead gen).
Have “best dishwasher” pages — affiliate.
Have “how to fix your dishwasher” — display ads.
When you’re big enough, maybe rent out your Facebook pixel to appliance brands.
I don’t just do rank and rent. I’m known for my rank and rent portfolio, but I also make a lot of money from display ads, affiliate, and other monetization channels.
It’s the same core machine—content, technical SEO, internal linking, backlinks—and different ways to monetize the traffic.
Jared Bauman:
I love that.
So let’s talk a bit more, as we come toward the end, about the rent side.
There’s an elephant in the room: a lot of people are in SEO because they don’t like interacting with people—clients, plumbers, etc.
What do people realistically need to get over mentally when it comes to this? And can they outsource that piece if they just want to stay “the SEO in the background”?
James Dooley:
That’s a difficult question—and honestly the first time I’ve been asked it.
You do need some kind of sales function. Someone has to talk to clients—on the phone or at least via email—to:
Understand where they make their money.
Have uncomfortable conversations like, “We want to charge you more—how can we help you make more so it’s win-win?”
You can’t really avoid that entirely.
If you’re an introverted SEO and don’t like client interaction, you probably need a business partner who enjoys that: someone who can go out, talk to plumbers or roofers, and handle the commercial side.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Lots of people love sales and business, but couldn’t rank a website if their life depended on it. You pair that person with you—who can rank—and it’s a powerful combo.
So yes, you can outsource or partner up for the sales and client-facing part. But it does need to exist.
Jared Bauman:
Bringing it back to where we started, what are the biggest mistakes you see people making with this model?
You’ve made it sound not “easy,” but very doable if you know SEO and follow a process.
What are the big errors that commonly trip people up?
James Dooley:
There are lots of small mistakes that compound. A few big ones:
Not doing enough internal linking.
They don’t pass page rank throughout the site properly. Internal link more.
Not using any on-page tools.
If you’re not using something like Frase, Surfer, PageOptimizer Pro, Onpage.ai, or MarketMuse, how do you know which entities and terms should be on a page?
Google turns words into vectors. It’s about semantics now. It’s almost like “entity stacking” instead of keyword stuffing.
Poor content quality.
Too much fluff. A page that needs 800 words gets 3,000 words of repeated nonsense. They’re not concise enough, or they don’t cover the true intent of the query.
Buying the wrong links.
They buy guest posts that are actually PBNs in disguise, or part of bad link neighborhoods. They never look at trust or toxicity—only DR and traffic.
I wasted millions doing that in my early days—buying toxic links and cheap content.
Over-reliance on DR.
People think a high DR in Ahrefs is the be-all and end-all. It isn’t.
I can buy a domain today, manipulate links, and get it to DR 70 in 28 days—with no real content or traffic. That doesn’t make it a good link source.
What we do now is use tools and processes that factor in:
Trust
Power
Toxicity
We look at whether the link is from a real site with real traffic, good neighbourhoods, etc.
Our testing team runs experiments weekly. We’ve had sites penalized on purpose to learn how recoveries work, what disavows do, what content pruning does, etc.
Too many people:
Don’t prune low-performing content.
Don’t fix their link profile.
Don’t build diversified link types.
Don’t invest in decent tools.
And then when they get hit by an update, they say “SEO is dead.”
If you innovate, test, and learn, you stay ahead. If you don’t innovate, you evaporate.
Jared Bauman:
Well, James, this has been absolutely fascinating and a really good deep dive.
We’ve been talking about rank and rent, but throughout this conversation you’ve basically given:
A mini masterclass on starting a site.
Another one on evaluating links.
Another on local SEO structure and monetization.
There’s a lot here people can go back and listen to a second or third time.
Where can people follow along with what you’re doing if they want to reach out?
James Dooley:
I’ve got the site JamesDooley.com.
There’s not much content on there; it’s more about who I am. But from there, you’ll find links out to:
Twitter
YouTube
I’m being a lot more active on YouTube at the moment.
I’ve always kept myself under the radar—hustle in silence, let success be the noise—but more and more people want me on podcasts and to share what we do, so I’m happy to do that.
I’m not introverted; I’m quite extroverted. I’m happy to talk—as I’m sure you’ve realized.
I’ll never retire. I love what I do. I’m constantly learning. I still feel like I’m at the infancy of understanding how AI and current algorithms work, so it feels like being back at school again.
So yeah, JamesDooley.com has links to all my socials. Hit me up on:
Twitter
YouTube
I’m most active there.
LinkedIn—I get thousands of messages and fall behind, so that’s the worst place to message me.
Jared Bauman:
You sound just like me; I haven’t figured LinkedIn out either.
James, thanks so much for coming on the Niche Pursuits podcast. I really appreciate you being here.
James Dooley:
It’s been an absolute pleasure.