James Dooley Podcast

In this episode of The James Dooley Podcast, James Dooley sits down with Karl Hudson to break down what actually drives SEO results heading into 2024. They open by arguing that smart, high-quality link building will be one of the biggest differentiators in an internet flooded with AI content, and explain why brands need a diverse, natural-looking backlink profile rather than leaning on just one link type. From there, they go deep into content and topical optimisation – talking topical maps, RDF triples, subject–predicate–object structures, and how large language models plus smart entity placement in headings can seriously impact rankings. James and Karl also dig into how paid traffic can amplify behavioural signals, what it really costs to rank affiliate and rank-and-rent sites, and why so many newcomers fail simply because they’re undercapitalised. They wrap up with a rapid-fire rundown of the most common SEO failures – toxic backlinks, weak internal linking, poor E-E-A-T, never pruning content, and broken or spammy schema – before explaining when to use disavows, how to think about toxicity thresholds, and how to scale link building safely without burning your sites.

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:
So Mr. Hudson, how you doing?

Karl Hudson:
Yeah, not bad. Nice trip down south.

James Dooley:
Alright, so let’s jump straight in. Main ranking factors for SEO in 2024—let's dive straight into it. Predictive ranking factors?

Importance of Link Building

Karl Hudson:
Well, obviously we’re quite keen on link building. I would say one of the main differentiating factors will be your links. The world is becoming AI-mod. We’re using ChatGPT, Bard, and other LLMs daily, and they’re only getting better. If you’ve seen ChatGPT evolve from 3 to 3.5 to 4, it could be at 6 by the end of next year. The knowledge they produce is fantastic. So I imagine link building will be absolutely fundamental in making a difference.

Strongest Types of Link Building

James Dooley:
When you talk about link building, what type do you think is needed? Guest posts? Niche edits? PBNs coming back?

Karl Hudson:
I’m an advocate for a blended approach. Most SEOs go wrong because they only build one type of link. A natural blend is how brands actually get links. They don’t worry about anchor text selection; they just acquire natural links from different sources. SEOs are the ones obsessing over percentages, footprints, and ratios, which creates an unnatural pattern. Big brands don’t care about that—they just want the link.

Content Optimisation

James Dooley:
So away from links—content. Where do people go wrong both on-page and with topical authority?

Karl Hudson:
We’ve been doing a lot of work on this, especially with Corey—big shout-out to Corey, the big Turkish booger. At the Chiang Mai Conference he wouldn’t let us sleep; every morning at 3am we were talking topical maps. Predicates, SPOs… concepts I never thought I’d use.

Everything we’ve done in SEO historically was about making money, and user experience helps with that. But now there’s this whole language-model side—how search engines understand the language you give them. That’s Corey’s territory.

We’ve been diving deep into RDF triples, SPOs, SVOs. Google doesn’t use them exactly the way people think, but structure matters. Tools like MarketMuse or Surfer tell you what entities to include, but not where they should be placed. Writers often put the wrong entities in the wrong headings, which causes issues.

James Dooley: Importance of SPO & Structure

James Dooley:
Exactly. With LLMs being able to generate good content now, what's the differentiator? Yes, links and behavioral signals. But structure—the RDF triples—are huge. SPO means subject-predicate-object, making sure the sentence structure is correct so search engines understand it.

We’ve had issues where entities are placed in wrong headings, answering questions poorly. Training writers on SPO and entity placement is crucial. Understanding LLMs is a whole separate layer of SEO now.

Evolution of SEO

Karl Hudson:
Yeah, and it’s interesting because we thought we were high-level SEOs, and then when diving deeper, we realize we’ve been winging it for years. SEO used to be easy—2004 I entered the game, and you could keyword-stuff and spam to rank. Now? Penguins, Pandas, BERT, Helpful Content Update… AI acceptable but not mass-produced.

Quality over quantity, though now it’s more quantity of quality. You need more content but also better content.

Paid Ads & SEO

James Dooley:
What about paid ads—do you work with them?

Karl Hudson:
More and more. I use Rick at Statula for PPC and Facebook ads—genius guy. Paid ads help massively with behavioral signals. Traffic may be the #1 ranking factor. PPC lifts rankings indirectly through behavioral signals.

If you can’t make paid ads work, you’ll never make organic SEO work—conversion rate optimization and user experience must be right. Plus PPC gives the BEST keyword research data—long-tail terms that tools show as zero volume.

Parasite SEO also becomes powerful for trends and quick wins.

Favorite PPC Platform

James Dooley:
Favorite paid platform?

Karl Hudson:
Used to be Facebook until the iOS update, but ThoughtMetric is helping with attribution now. Slowly falling back in love with Facebook. Twitter ads are growing. But my real love is Google Ads—machine learning makes setup easier, though you still need to control negatives.

Cost of SEO

James Dooley:
SEO costs—rank and rent is about £30–50k per site depending on niche. Build is cheap, but content and backlinks are where cost is. Many people want to rank affiliate sites on £5k and I tell them: impossible. You need tools, age domains, budget, topical authority, and link building.

Karl Hudson:
Yeah, the hardest part now is cost. Beginners will make expensive mistakes. My advice: start in an agency first to learn. Or set a budget and start with PPC to learn what keywords convert.

James Dooley: Hard Truth About Budget

James Dooley:
Exactly—starting with £5k is like wanting to be a plumber with no tools. SEO "tools" are expensive: LRT, Ahrefs, Surfer, etc. Age domains from Odyss give massive head starts. Realistically ranking a competitive affiliate site is £150–200k. But ROI is incredible.

Stop trying to cut corners. Cheap links and cheap content = getting hit later.

Would You Start an Agency?

Karl Hudson:
I wouldn’t. SEOs are introverts. Clients expect glossy reports that take all your time. I’d rather do affiliate or lead gen.

James Dooley:
Affiliates are under attack, but not necessarily unfairly. Many are thin content, doorway pages, stock images, fake reviews. But Google replacing niche sites with newspapers isn’t always better either.

Google vs Affiliates

Karl Hudson:
Affiliates often manipulate rankings and deserve some hits. But big media sites replacing them aren’t producing real reviews either. Topical authority seems dialed down; domain authority dialed up.

James Dooley:
Exactly. A landscape gardener with real videos should win affiliate queries—not a newspaper with five gardening articles.

Topical Authority

Karl Hudson:
We learned in Chiang Mai: topical coverage ≠ topical authority.

Topical coverage = covering the whole topic.

Topical authority = coverage plus historic engagement and ranking.

Traffic tiers, avalanche theory. Build easy-win traffic first.

What SEOs Do Wrong (Rapid Fire Round)

James Dooley & Karl Hudson go back and forth listing mistakes SEOs make:

Buying toxic links

Mass-producing AI content

Not enough entities

Weak internal linking

Not enough branded anchors

Bad mobile speed

Not enough naked URL links

Not testing niches with PPC

Not enough topical coverage

Confusing topical authority vs coverage

Bad web design

No schema

No videos

No image ranking

No press releases

Weak Google Business Profiles

Using Gmail addresses

No About page or author pages

No awards, no social proof

Weak reputation management

Not pruning content

And more.

Content Pruning

James Dooley:
I export GSC into Screaming Frog to include:

Word count

Internal links

Crawl depth

Impressions

Pages with zero impressions must justify existence or be deleted/merged. Merge into bigger pages if needed, then break them out later once traffic is established.

Correlation tools (Surfer, POP) are becoming less useful. Information gain is crucial.

Disavows

Karl Hudson:
Do disavows work? 100%. If you want to build a real brand, monitor links from day one. Many auto-generated spam links can hurt you.

James Dooley:
I don’t always do proactive disavows—but I should. Toxicity thresholds matter. Many SEOs don’t understand toxicity. SEMrush toxicity scores are useless. LRT and Majestic are the only useful tools.

Disavows are critical for keeping below toxicity thresholds so you can keep building powerful links.

BBC doesn’t need disavows because they get millions of natural links. But most SEOs build only guest posts and niche edits—highly manipulated link profiles.

If you have DR70+ and rank well, check Google Search Console—I guarantee you already have a disavow uploaded.

Final Takeaways

Karl Hudson:
2024 is all about reducing Google's cost of information retrieval:

High-quality content

Proper structure

Better internal linking

Cleaner index

Safe, trusted links

James Dooley:
Quantity of quality wins in 2024.

Karl Hudson:
Exactly.