James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Karl Hudson discuss the digital marketing and SEO strategies that SEO agencies should prioritise in 2024, from link building and topical authority to PPC, disavows and content pruning.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies SEO agencies should focus on in 2024 to improve search rankings, content quality and toxicity management. James Dooley and Karl Hudson start with KPI tracking because monitoring impressions, click through rates and toxicity thresholds tells agencies exactly which pages and links are helping or harming performance. 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 SEO agencies.

PromoSEO lead generation for SEO agencies recently received recognition as the "Best SEO Agencies Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode

πŸ“ˆ Exploring 2024 SEO Trends | James Dooley and Karl Hudson Unveil Key Ranking Factors πŸ“ˆ is available on:

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?

Hudson: Yeah not bad nice trip down south all right.

James Dooley: So let's jump straight in main ranking factors for SEO in 2024 let's dive straight into it like predictive ranking factors I would say them well obviously we're quite keen on link building so I would say that one of the main differentiating factor will be is your links because obviously the world is becoming AI mod um obviously we utilize chat GPT Bard other um llms throughout our sort of dayto day now and it's only be going to become better if you've already seen like chat gbt chat gpt3 3.5 four you know probably by the end of next year it could be up to six and the knowledge is producing now is fantastic so I would Envision link building is going to be absolutely fundamental in making a difference.

Hudson: So when you talk talking about link building are you what type of Link building are you thinking is needed is any specific like you think guest post going to be better than Niche edits pbns that are going to come back how so I'm I'm like quite an advocate for like a blended approach like you should when it comes to like link building a lot of people go wrong and a lot of seos go wrong because they only build one type of Link when it should be like a natural blend like Brands build a lot of links they get a lot of links naturally from various different types of site they never have wor about really anchor Tech selection because they don't worry about that it's all about the natural side whereas the seos often come in and they're the ones who are worrying about you to get this specific and this specific percentage all of these sort of areas but actually just makes a glare in footprint um whereas bigger Brands don't really worry about that you don't see brand managers sort of saying oh you know you can't build that link Forbes it needs to have this an attex they don't really care about that they just want the link.

James Dooley: Yeah yeah um they're going for that sort of natural approach so so away from links right so people are very good with regards to getting a nice Blended mix of links of guest posts Niche edits getting the citations if they're in local maybe a few pbn if needs be Forum links manions redit away from the links where do you sit with regards to content and where do you think people go wrong with regards to content that's both on page and topical offeror.

Hudson: Well we've been doing a lot on this especially with Corey um big shout out to Corey the big Turkish booger um he's uh obviously a legend and we spent a lot of time in changai the changai conference recently and we've been going back and forth on tropical map topical map sorry um basically he wouldn't let us sleep for about a week um that's just every morning about 3:00 a.m. we're talking on topical maps and going through different um subjects predicate a word that I thought i' would never be able to say or use predicate still don't fully understand it but we're getting there SPO that's so that's kind of like yeah the approach the hard part with it is everything from an SEO standpoint that we've done to date we're all about trying to make money and obviously the user experience is a good one um and a good Focus because obviously that also increases your money um if the user has a good experience nine times out of 10 they're more willing to purchase from your website um but then there's this like language model of how a search engine understands the language you're giv it um and this is kind of where Cory's approach comes in and understanding that side so we've been delving quite deeply I'd say he's a lot more obsessive than I recently found out that I've probably got a bit ADHD and then apparently sort of most entrepreneurs in sort of seos this guy is very obsess iive when it comes to it I'm sure you'll elaborate in a second um so yeah just going heavily into you know what the search engine expects from your content and looking at like rdf triples and spos and svos but obviously Google doesn't really use them as much.

James Dooley: Yeah I think it's getting more and more important for being honest with you the um the whole world now of being a to go into chat GPT and press write me an article on X Y and Z it's become so easy and to be fair with g bt4 now coming out it's writing good content it is actually writing good quality content so what's the differentiator factors um obviously you've got your links you've got your behavioral signals but then with the right prompts that are going in with regards to the signals the rdf triples are so important so um anyone who doesn't know um what an SPO is it's it's subject predicate object making certain the right sentence structures in the right manner so when we're talking about not just getting entities on a page it's in the right sentence structure um and so many times like we've been using certain tools whether it's Market moves or phrase or surfo or on page. a and they getting what entities are needed on the page but not whereabouts on the page.

Hudson: Yeah and do you know what it's so important where we're actually getting some of our writers that are putting the wrong entities in the wrong heading sections and it's causing issues because each subheading section with the questions should be answering it in the correct manner to do with the subjects predicate and the objects and I think that's the biggest thing that way trying to get the training team that like the training team to go through with content writers with the editors in making certain that our content quality is so much more better um but yeah it's I think that's that's a tough one because like I said you need to then start understanding llms a lot more and stuff like that so and it becomes a whole other L it's weird because obviously I would consider myself and probably yourself quite high level seos but actually when you started delving into this you're like you know what I've been winging it I have no I have no idea what SEO is somehow I've ranked over the years.

James Dooley: Yeah but this is like another level um obviously the with that in mind though it's the it's the Evergreen sort of development of the algorithm right so when we first got into it it was arguably a lot easier you know way back when I think 200 2004 was when our first entered the SEO game and you know back then it was just a case of really just keyword stuff and then spamming the internet and you ranked um obviously nowadays you've got a lot more detailed updated algorithms all the different penguins pandas and bears om my Etc um that you've got bir you've got the helpful content updates um all of those elements are obviously playing a huge factor and more so the fact that Google is now basically turned around and said you know it has no problem against AI content except it just doesn't want Mass generated stuff so it's basically advising people yes you can use AI content but don't um obviously just don't just ch it out how have people proof reading I think a lot of it comes back down to quality over quantity and I suppose it's the exact same like I've made short cuts on the way that I do content over the years my content's not now when I look back and it's not all guilty of that.

Hudson: Yeah like the content has not been good enough but saying that it was back then so I did enough to win like K rof kind of saying don't be faster than you don't need to be faster than the bear need to be faster than the other people running away from the bear so I've always done enough to win right but now I'm starting to look more into it I'm like actually if I can just tick all the boxes and give that extra bit of quality I'm now going to make certain that I continue to win coming into 2024 and then it kind of comes back to when you first spoke about the links and it's same with links like i' I'd even say over the years previously I kind of fudged my way through links I didn't understand understand toxicity I didn't understand trust no so there's that there's all that side to it with regards to raising the bar with regards to what you're doing with quality of links having certain parameters in place to check toxicity and Trust moving forward to make certain your content does have the right rdf Trifles and stuff so it's um yeah it's it's going to be a bit of a crazy world coming in super 24 cuz I feel like I'm a school kid again that's what I was I was kind of saying to charl at my partner it's like how excited I almost feel like I'm back at school which is quite nice to wake up in the morning rather than going no bloody hell here we go another SEO day it's actually oh school day now which is great um so what's your thoughts on you know we just hit SEO what about pay ads are you do much in the Realms of pay ads or so.

James Dooley: I think pay ads is more and more important I mean I think a lot of people who know myself with regards to paid ads I do everything through Rick at statua um he's an absolute genius with regards to people PC Facebook ads got a bit of a crap hairstyle going on he just D his a on so yeah it's a bit it's a bit dodgy like but the um but with regards to statal agency in my opinion the second turn on in the world um they can run everything from YouTube retargeting to YouTube ads Twitter ads um like I said Facebook ads Pinterest ads in order to get the cheaper type of traffic that's needed for certain brands which actually has got a massive SEO as well cuz traffic's probably debatably one of the number one probably is the number one yeah which is also when it comes to obviously you own about links earlier if you can utilize traffic to help um establish whether or not your website deserves to rank and whether or not the users actually enjoy your content it's a very good way of working that out and paid Avenue is one of the the unique ways of doing it I guess.

Hudson: Yeah even even um PPC we've seen we've seen direct lifts when we run PPC to our brand I rest your ranking go and like people go there's no chance to reward in PPC it's like it's an indirect ranking Factor because the behavioral signals that are going through to the page so yes I I've always adapted I've always used um both SEO for organic SEO kind of rankings but I've always been a massive advocate of paid ads one of the ways I used to always say with paid ads is a a brand wouldn't be a brand if it wasn't willing to spend money on paid ads uh and also if you can't get paid ads to work then there's no chance in hell you'll get organic to work.

James Dooley: Yeah like as in from a you know conversion rate optimization aspect or just a general aspect of you know website functionality if your paid ads can't drive monetization then there's no point in delving into it not only that as well when obviously if you've got a decent PBC Agency on board and they're running ads for you the amount of keyword data that you get.

Hudson: Yeah very it's unbelievable so that that then can start you start realizing how much volume is coming through for certain longtail key phrases there's no better keyword research no like people are going oh let's go to H rev or SM rush and extract the data and do um keyword grouping and stuff like that there's so many keywords still to this day in phrases that are coming through that are unique all long taale that don't show up they showing zero volume kind of keywords in these tools and then getting Fen of searches especially on certain stuff that have got trends that are related to it you can quickly then if you know it's a trend parasite SEO what better way something's coming up at Christmas and I'm not bothered about ranking this in January February March but I want quick rankings get a few parasite seos up get a little bit of um signal boy kind of signals coming through to it get a couple of taros Happy Days it's another kind of process that can be going through so what's your thoughts then on the the PID what I'd say what with regards to the paid ads what what's your favorite platforms is it just PPC or do you like the other social media platforms as well.

James Dooley: So obviously loved Facebook until iOS update recently Rick um showed us a new tool thought metric which we've been getting uh to grips with but thought metric is pretty cool for attribution so obviously when the iOS update came out it kind of ruined a lot of attribution um elements and that's kind of what messed up Facebook is you can't actually attribute Facebook it's a hungry son of a um it likes to see everything converts through it when actually you plug like thought metric in and it's actually telling you no no this is what actually converted through Facebook and this is what went through you know organic or other paid Avenues so slowly starting to fall back in love a little bit I guess with Facebook having quite positive R Ro even Ro Jordy accent there um Facebook Twitter we're starting to delve into a little bit more um obviously with Facebook you've got Instagram ads and then yeah primarily my love really is um the Google AdWords platform absolutely love Google ads and especially with like machine learner now it's very easy to set up campaigns and get them running very quickly.

Hudson: Yeah yeah yeah um obviously you sta to be pretty wary and being able to feed the machine and control the negative keyword lists a lot of the time um but yeah it's really really good when it comes to um pushing traffic and pretty cost effective as well so onto the next part with regards to the costs um of SEO so first of all I I'll start off on that with regards to the rank and rent model so Rank and rent model generally generally speaking costs about around 30 to 50,000 pound in total to rank a website depending on obviously the difficulty of the niche but building of the site might only cost you 50 pound1 pound to physically built buy the domain and get the site the technical SEO of the site built but then obviously you've got the content and then you've got the back links which is where the kind of cost comes in I probably say it's around 5 10 grand on content and maybe 20 grand on the batt links but with regards to if someone comes along and they want him to rank an affiliate site let's say an Amazon affiliate site I know it's very broad question to ask this but let's say in the gardening sector some people are coming along and they're saying how can I do it on a Sho ring budget of being like Β£5,000 what would you say to them people like they've obviously not got enough money to be able to do it are you are you sending them away to say look there's just no point in going down that road it's too difficult I know it's easy to rank for key words but now knowing how how hard it's becoming with regards to topical Authority do you think they just need to go out and tell them they need a bigger budget or do you think that you can of say you know they can do it go after e to rank our keywords and stuff like that what's your what's your thoughts on that.

James Dooley: So I would say the hardest part with SEO and I've actually got a younger brother who was wanting to get into SEO and I was very much I said to him at the start you know it's very much changed from when I got into it you could kind of knock up a website and just go and start building and you use different tools and things to build links Etc but the problem you got now is there is a big cost involved and especially if you're like completely green to it you you're going to make mistakes and then mistakes are probably going to cost you quite a bit of money.

Hudson: Yeah um so my advice to him was kind of go find an agency and learn you know learn through the agency model obvious you find a decent agency um there's a lot of agencies out there I'm sure we'll touch on later on that you know only provide ranking reports and actually do no SEO um so yeah find a decent agency and go that route or if you really if you think you've got enough knowledge to go into it I would probably say set aside some budget like we're just chatting on paid ads set aside some budget to try and Target like a lower cost per click paid uh paid ad campaign and then see what other keywords are brought into the mix there and then see if you can expand your content to cover that that topic the hard part you've got now is when we're talking about um topical coverage is you know your website might need to cover a hell of a lot of topics which means especially in the garden Niche that's a lot of content.

James Dooley: Yeah um obviously you can Niche down and that's usually the route I would go is I would say but look let's look rather than saying Garden as a whole let's look at lawnmowers or hedge trimmers and let's be the best hedge trimming site what can possibly be and then if I want to expand out I buy another domain down the line and do it that way see CU for me my advice would be you can't ENT like it's it's almost like a plumber wanting to enter in being a plumber they've just they've just been time serve but they don't have a van no and they don't have the tools you're going but wa a minute you need a tool kit and the tool kit in SEO is likes things like if you're going to go down the route of um looking at toxicity you need link research tools you need H webs you need need a Content optimization tool whether that's Surfer page optimizer pro on page. Market mov something on those lines these aren't cheap tools especially with H's credit system you almost need to remage start that need to REM morgage just for that alone but the um the costs involved in doing it you need to have the right tools to start with and then not only that is when you starting out on a site I'm a massive advocate of age demands MH like go and find a demain on oys right so it's an age and the reason why I say oyss over a lot the others is because they've got spam checks in place they've got like a team of people that are specifically checking that they've not been previously used for pbns that they've not been spammed that they're healthy they've got a good referring domain count it just gives you that head start so I'm completely opposite when people are trying to go how you start an SEO blogging under 5,000 I'd say don't no I'd say it's going to cost you 20 grand to buy the domain.

Hudson: Yeah like if you're going to go hard when I'm saying it's 30 to 50 Grand that's in like a local kind of industry realistically you're probably looking 150 200 Grand but which is fine because if it's going to be making 10 20 30 grand a month you get 100% back if you even if it's going to if it's going to get 20 grand a month and it cost you 240 Grand you've got all your money back within a year right which is bloody good investment right but people are always like how do I cut Corners yeah how do I cut no there but everyone's been hit you're being hit because you're buying cheap links and doing cheap content like exactly like we said right at the very start of the meeting like with regards to what we doing in the podcast quality beats quantity you know what I mean but but that's actually a bit of a lie because you need quantity of quality so it's it's one of them that I just think on the costs people need to have the budgets in place to make certain that the combine age domain they've got enough to build out topical Authority and they've got a link building budget and that USM with regards to PPC they've got some sort of money to be able to try to start running some sort of paid media and stuff like that but anyway let's let's move on from the cost element right what if you starting an agency where do you start would you start an agency.

James Dooley: I I would start an agency personally I wouldn't no I the problem is with seos is we're all quite um what's it called introverted so the one problem I struggle with is when I'm dealing with like AG clients I do struggle quite a bit unless I really know them quite well and they understand that I'm not really going to speak to them every day and I'm just going to get results yeah then that's absolutely fine but the point is with agencies agencies want the glossy reports they want know what you're doing how you're doing it why you're doing and then they expect that all for free because by the time you did have all them glossy reports what time's left on the project to actually do their work.

Hudson: Yeah it's C it is crazy the whole kind of so what so what would you go down would you go down affiliate but at the affiliate I mean look at what's going on with the affiliate Market there's a there people saying there's a massive big Vendetta from Google against the war on against Affiliates but but actually if you start looking at people that are doing the exact same strategy with regards to content quality content scaling content on top CL and links and they're doing almost the exact same model in eCommerce or Legion and they're not being here but anywhere where it seems to be that they've got lot of outbound links on the page I doorway Pages which going into affiliate platforms or display ads they're being decimated so like what what I mean obviously we don't I don't think you know the answer to this but what what do you think it's a war against affiliate or do you think I mean do you think they deserve it first and foremost is a trold to this.

James Dooley: I think there's a two so I would say from Google's point of view the problem you've got is a lot of Affiliates tend to want to try and make money quick and they'll find the quickest route which which is usually the haest route and then that usually involves you know manipulating the search engine you know somehow finding some type of hack yeah to make them rank yeah so would I argue that yes they deserve to be hit probably you know at the end of the day they're trying to make a quick bang for your book type type approach I'd say if I'm if I'm going to support you on this one and say all right they deserve to be it I'd say they more deserve to be it because Google's quite Savvy to know that 10 best lawnmowers and they've not got one video they've got one unique picture of the law mower they're using like a a stock image of the lawnmower and the truth of the matter is they've got to prove that you've opened these lawnmowers you've got to prove that you've used these law mowers you've got to go really technical over why you prefer this one over that one and these people are just doing top 10 law mowers they're probably sting it by whoever pays the most commission yeah and they're all just going through to affiliate platforms and it's like what gives you the right right to rank for top 10 law mowers when there's an actually very good chance probably 99.9% chance you not even bought one of them so for that reason how can you go and give advice on them top 10 lawnmowers and I think that's where the scaven attack is coming from.

Hudson: The you almost need to go down the route and the Realms of making certain that you have got experience with the law mowers so it's more the gardening blogs kind of can they prove that they've used it or is it really the high authorative SES my issue is if the people that was ranking was a a landscape Gardener right that's got loads of videos right there got loads of videos out there that's ranking number one for best lawnmowers I think that's a good result right for Google to do that the issu is at the moment they're ranking big newspaper sites for big affiliate terms so it's like they've gone you missed the niche affiliate I know you've not bought these 10 law mowers but you know what in independent I'll put you at number one or Daily Mail I'll put you at number one because you've got a dr95 sign and you're going they even got less likely that they've open up and and used the law M so I don't know it's a bit on the other side to it as much as I say sometimes these Affiliates deserve it I do also feel the people theyve replaced them without any better no so I don't think they've improved the S.

James Dooley: So I would say what what's happening is obviously from an algorithmic point of view they're trying to get better identifying which Affiliates or actual Affiliates as in or actual reviewers of these products obviously the hard part is that it's it's very hard to factor that into an algorithm so because it can be manipulated right so what you've got a YouTube channel with some videos on any man and dog can do that yeah and all you have to do is name the title tags and you know all the different tags description tags Etc to say it's about this lawnmower May there a couple of pictures sprinkled in algorithmically they can probably pick that up but obviously they can't at the moment work out whether you're still that's still a legit review right so it's like there has to be a balance from Google as to what they deem as quality now at the moment I would say they are leveraging more towards the authora liveness which is from a domain point of view so the links coming into it essentially amount of content that's got Mount of links coming in because if you look at the websites you touched on before affiliate i t to have a lot of outbound links which is like a doorway page but so of these big media sites.

Hudson: Yeah I think I think that's my issue sometimes because it it I feel like they've dialed up Authority and dialed down topical Authority so like some of these like some of these newspapers they might only have five articles about gardening now the ranking where previously it was always about the last updates was always kind of dialing down Authority and dialing up topical Authority so if you've got more articles about gardening you're going to rank better where now it seems to be the highr and or it seems to be qu already edit and you know what like they they got a lot of stick for that but I suppose if you take yourself out of doing SEO what's what's a better page like me isn't in one person giving advice of here's my 10 best law MERS that are probably not even used or Reddit which might have discussions between 20 different people arguing no this is better because of this no this is better because of that and you got debates from different people giving different angles of what that of what their opinion is.

James Dooley: Yeah sometimes I think actually if these Reddit post I don't wrong some of them are yeah but this Reddit post hasn't been updated since 2018 and if it's not I can understand well why is that ranking like realistic why is that ranking but now that it is ranking I can guarantee you that those Reddit pogs that was only updated in 2018 now's probably 20 people going in there giving their opinion it might have affiliate links in there and I'm not bothered about the affiliate Links at least it's given a varied approach or what different people are thinking than one person's 6,000 word article that might be skewed by earning commission.

Hudson: Yeah so suppose I suppose partly the Affiliates deserve it with with one breath and on the other side I feel like the niche website Builders have been harshly hit when they have been replaced with a newspaper that's got 20 affiliate links on there and they've probably not used it either so what makes them better than than what we've also been delving into when we're in changai was you know so you've built a website you're doing well you're ranking well so then what you end up starting to do is you go you know what I can expand this website more yeah so then what starts to happen is you start expanding and expand oh I'm ranking for this I'm ranking for that I'm ranking for this other thing you know all of a sudden youve got a gambling website that's talking about dog toys yeah because it can rank yeah and then because you've over leveraged your position yeah you then an update come along and slapped your back down yeah and we've been discussing this a lot when it's um coming from you know like a topical Authority so um for people who might not know topical coverage is when you're covering the enity of the topic but topical Authority is when it's topical coverage plus historic data so you could have a one ACC call his example I think he said por his talk but let's just say you could have a like a b a site which is about the Bible I know religion was 999 pages on porn on porn and one on the Bible and then it gets a million traffic to this Bible page and you can almost guarantee the site will be deemed to be about Bible and not porn yeah even though you've got 999 pages on Pawn only one on the Bible Google will see You've got more topical Authority on the Bible more topical coverage on Pawn and what you want to Chase is topical Authority so can you get supporting documents and Pages getting traffic I suppose this kind of GES comes into cor uh Kyle talks quite a lot about um the avalanch approach and traffic teers can you pick up pages that are going to try to start getting some sort of traffic easy to rank for keywords that get some sort of searches get them to get traffic and work your way through traffic um and which would lean back into you know if you were very green at the start of SEO and wanting to go down that route then yes you probably can you just have to be ready to commit the time and I think that's half the battle people get into SEO because they say you know big names on the stage and all the money that's being made and things but they don't say actually them same people are probably spending 18 hours a day on SEO living breathing it reading updating websites testing you know the amount of tests we do on a weekly daily monthly basis the testing groups where other people are doing it and sharing data and knowledge like they don't see all that they don't see the the hard labor they see the the money in the thing oh this is an easy win because these guys are out on the drink at a conference they clearly you know they must have a relaxed life they don't see the hard work in the background um so yeah I would say that's an element there that people Overlook.

James Dooley: Yeah right okay let let's go through something here let's go have a bit of a bounce off each other you say one I say one what do seos generally speaking do wrong start start just one thing what do seos do wrong um I'll start they buy toxic links go then I go yeah go use chat EBT to mass produce content they don't get enough entities on the page he's H all the ones um they don't do enough internal linkoln good one good one they don't do enough branded anex links oh you what else they don't actually look at the standard sort of mobile spe speed optimization the site cuz you can see some big improvements just on fixing LCP don't do enough naked URL links don't do enough generic links good one don't have enough branded searches don't actually test the test the niche first so they don't use paid ads to test the niche yeah good one don't properly cover the topic in its entirety they think they do by writing for five pages on a topic but really they probably need 25 pages on the topic get confused about topical Authority and topical coverage that's a great one so repeat repeat the difference what's the difference between topical Authority and topical coverage what's the difference between topical Authority and topical coverage topical coverage is when you're covering the entirety of the topic so if it's about gambling you you've made all the content about gambling but then topical Authority is when it's the topical coverage plus the historical data of the ranking so the traffic essentially yeah yeah don't use a recent enough web design company that understands and I'll repeat that understands c yeah so many sites get traffic and don't convert I would recommend statu Rick hope get that done I don't think I've got many more left in you like um what else right okay I'll I'll keep going and then you every s you can Jo don't don't make enough uh different types of links yeah that's a good one so you could have brought that down saying don't do enough guest post or don't do sorry I've went too broad um they don't add enough images on the page the very kind of text Heavy especially now ai is come involved don't add enough rich media to the page don't add enough videos which is another one yeah and better videos don't actually try to rank videos in YouTube don't actually use schema now the amount of Affiliates and affiliate sites that don't actively use schema properly is including scary to I don't I need to massively brush up on my schema massively don't try to rank the images well enough in in Google Images I'm on about also like press release one thing wen't really that they don't use press release services when most businesses and big websites use a press release service yeah well not only that is if you're using the press release you're getting what did we just talk right then so you're using naked URLs you're doing branded anchors you embedding your YouTube video You're embedding an image you probably getting your nap listing I going say proven an organization exactly yeah yeah so don't try to rank the GMB is another one like don't properly fill out the GMB especially if they're in local or G Google business profile basically um and they don't do enough photos on there they don't put enough posts on the gmbb don't get enough reviews tell you what another pet here miners as well you've just landed on a website looks like an all right website and then they've got a Gmail address why don't they use their email address with the domain like that's a pet hit M all right so let's go down that route then don't have several different emails even if they're only a small company like sales at statue. COD atuk don't have careers at careers at don't have an info at don't have a complaints at like have several different emails several different ways of been contact him don't you can just forward all these onto one G Suite with in clo you don't need the different like mail boxes being opened but it shows more don't have don't have a telephone number on the side like get a telephone number even if you just don't have forwarding on to whoever is the salesperson's mobile number and just getting a local number put on there get it's another trust signal about us Pages many lack about us Pages for actual author information like people think a a is a picture of an author in a name yeah and then that's it and meet the team page as well as an about us page about us about the company the company yeah meet the team about the people offer Pages individual offer Pages for each person that you're trying to rank for it don't set up Bing and Bing Web Master tools I I only did that this year I was amazed by the traffic I was getting from Bing yeah do you know what like I I give a tip here where you get so many more keyword suggestions from bingos or also suggest and the people also ask from inside Bing which is completely different to Google's that's another platform for keyword research that also feeds into Yahoo as well so crazy and then another thing with Bing is it's very easy to just copy like literally if you've got Google search console already connected it can connect via Google search console and P ads it it copies the campaign across yeah don't do enough Wikipedia B links yeah that is a good one it's only cuz they're really expensive to accept wiie yeah don't get enough behavioral signals so social media campaign so if you're not doing it on your own social media signal bar go go signal bar it's I think it's $29 gives you behavioral signals it actually gives you um tweets Reddit Pinterest Facebook and traffic that's the most important part because there's certain tricks the way that they're doing it with regards to the way things have being shared with certain hashtags that they use in and asking people to go and check whether a link on the page works people are clicking through to it clicking onto the page engaging with the page it's the those Behaviour signals and engagement signals which making a massive difference yeah on there must be more other ones um you can use obviously when it comes to redirect links a lot of people aren't using their own internal sort of tool to like a redirect manager to track the link so you can actually track your out bound clicks as opposed to like relying solely on the affiliate site like Amazon affiliate links and things they'll rely on that as opposed to doing their own 301 from their own site where they can actually track to see if people are clicking off before they've even landed on their affiliate yeah I'll give several don't have a privacy policy don't have a complaints policy don't have a contact page all the e signals is what needed that should be on there don't have links to the social media kind of profiles modern slavery statements yeah yeah the um don't don't do a social Fortress so getting every single one of the if let's say I've got James d.com trying to get a James dly Twitter a James Dy um Pinterest getting everything around my brand and then physically trying to rank those web 2.0's just just for your brand term that's all so you own your brand so reputation management is another big one go and get try try and win Awards in your industry go and Shout about or if you have one Awards go and Shout about it going at Guest posts showing the images the videos of of awards that you've won don't do enough content pruning that's a massive one that was going to be in the next one so content pruning so what pages and you don't just delete pages that don't get traffic but what pages are on your site that a lot of them just need to rewrite they're missing the intent like something something that I'm annoyed with myself about which i' never trained my team up I just presumed and in business number one failure of what I've started to realize is you should never presume anything in business right anything an so needs to be bulletproof of Point by Point by point and I presume My Writers would know the source context of what the my audience for my websites want and I'm like I can't believe I didn't educate him that like let's say a review Prim example go on do me a review of bet 365 never once said I want you to talk about this in a positive sentiment of how great that they are but then I might go and get them to do one for William Mill and I might say I don't I will 15 from the list so I want you say that it's not as good as bet 365 I don't give them that information they're just every single reviews oh my God these are amazing oh my God a demographic of the customer that you're aiming for so they can't tell the reviews exactly that yeah so if this you you need to know like you said you demographic is it a female old audience or is it a young male audience or is it both like and at least then if you know what your demographic of audience is the writers are going to do 10 times better with the way so on this note then let's see if there's differences here how would you yeah decide to prune a page so that's a great question so the first thing I'd do I would grab all of my Google search console data and Export it into screaming frog and I'd then go and get all the information the reason why I put in screaming frog is because screaming uh Google search console only gives you Impressions clicks average ranking position um what's the other one uh click through rate click through rate right the percentage click through rate right so I want that being on there but I also want side by side the word count which it only internal links are going through to those pages yeah um what craw depth that they're on on that page so I'm getting all this information together and then I am sorting by I am I am then by sorting by Impressions right so the ones that are getting zero Impressions so the page is getting it's probably not even indexed they just getting zero Impressions right at that point I know that this is a very weak page on my side so I need in my head the way that my team are trained up you need to give me enough reason why I need to keep this page cuz this page needs to go cuz Google don't like it right now if it's a privacy policy or a cookie policy page which needs to be in my footer or whatever it's no index it don't need to get it in the index blow I don't want index blow for my site I want like as as concise as a website as I can get in the index but I want it as big as I can with regards to topical Authority so so I'd sort my Impressions and then i' be going through why is this page important for my site and if it is important it needs a complete rewrite because there's something fundamentally wrong with that page right unless I feel that the page is really good and it might need more internal links or external links going through to it right because it might just have no internal links and be an offing page and there could be issues with that but this is why the content AIT isn't just the content audit for does it go does it not go it starts going wow wow internal linking is shocking like these Pages have got two internal links like let's go and get five or six internal links through to these pages so then would you so Playing devil's advocate here let's say it had average page rank of 60 but zero Impressions yeah would you keep it so if it's a very important entity to the topic I might still delete it even though I think it's a very important entity and I'm kind of going what page can I merge this to so can I create a bigger article and merge four or five pages together still covering that topic but it's on a bigger Page hit more historical date and more traffic is going to go through to the single page and then at a later date once you start ranking forting you seen loads of Impressions you might then decide to break it back off but in this first instance I don't want to waste index blow I don't want to in waste my internal page rank distribution so at that point I'm deleting and I'm merging it and putting as part of a bigger page it I don't think there's any right and wrong specific answer I think the issue is no one even looks at this information so so what what would you do with content pruning what would you do different to what I've said is there anything different that you'd any other parameter you put in when I used to own a heavily involved in the gambling companies obviously um dudy knows quite well what I was up to and one of the approaches we did was all were one of the first in the industry to almost do like a mass every single slot game we had a review of yeah um and we didn't really have much regard for index blot or Impressions click click through data and all that then later down the line we started looking more into this and pretty much everything that you've said I would be swaying towards doing the only thing that I would be tempted to do on things where average position is let's say 60 and it's not getting many Impressions I would looking at can I further improve that page is it just slightly away from the core Corpus of what I'm trying to rank for to the point that it might then trigger some Impressions because is it just not getting Impressions because it's average page rank solo yeah um it's the only real it's quite a mixed bag really because well here has another thing let's turn it back on you so you you mentioned um taking that page and and putting it on merging it into another page or taking that bit of information put on another page so are you saying that you'd not really an advocate for all of these tools that are giving you average page H average word counts on the page definitely not I used to be I I be honest with you I used to be but now more and more when I'm seeing things where they're saying um oh you need to go with the average word count of 3, words and I'm like well I need to merge four pages together so now you say now you're telling me that this page here for this keyword needs to be th000 words but I'm I'm probably going to do 6 7,000 words cuz I'm actually going to be changing slightly the intent where I'm merging five together it's five different slot games it might be like going after the software of the game with software games or might even be 30 40 pages that like the smaller type of games that going on there and it might be one of the H2S that I've got a dedicated page for I can of a link off then going for more information about the slot game going through to it um so yeah when in that scenario no I'm not um to be honest with you more more and more I'm moving away from the content optim the correlation tools if anything I think in a lot the correlation tools are a massive problem for Google and Google could be potentially going after these type of sites especially when you're averaging out with everyone else What Makes You Different exactly yeah the the differenti differenti key words um and Information Gain is so important so so important especially now with AI as well like everyone's if everyone's getting AI to write it what's something new that they're bringing to the table EXA have to bring something new to the table but this is where I kind of go down the road of do they have enough images do they have do they have a unique video or Unique Images that's all uniqueness to the page which adds to the multimedia but also adds to the uniqueness of that page over somebody else so anyway we've spoke about content pring being important right let's carry it on there's other stuff there's other stuff we can disos MH did disos work would you do a dis 100% so when at what point do you do dis do you do a proactive dis do you do one every every two months every 3 months every six month so I would be if you're wanting to get serious about starting a brand and building a brand you should from day one be looking at your link profile and monitoring and making sure that you're keeping on top of links that are coming in because you can get a lot of you know there was a lot of that um dot spam where it was like image aggregated links um that were going around and you know some of them were toxic well 80% of them are toxic and they could mess up um link profiles yeah to the point that you're getting a you know website penalty and things or then you've got the likes of um Forum links that like there's so many different types of links obviously it's not just one type so like there's links within so like forums a type of Link but then you've got loads of different forums some are positive some are negative um so I would definitely start by get just starting a dis out using the proper tools like LRT um if you're not trained up on it it because a lot of people get um what a toxic toxic link is wrong they use tools like Sam Rush yeah and now that's not the greatest tool for identifying what a toxic let's go into a few bits on this because like we've spoke about what good quality content is with the rdf triples the spos getting the right semantics and the right entities on the page doing topical Authority and we've spoke a little bit about links but with regards to to the toxicity part I feel like people don't talk about enough right so in my opinion with regards to toxicity and bat Lings would I do a proactive disount I don't really do proactive disos of I'm being honest right because I kind of but then I'm stupid enough to wait and wait and wait until like you end up getting a penalty and then you're in a penalty and it's too late so I should do but sometimes I don't right but what should I do I I feel like I should do a proactive dis out if I'm if there's lots of links coming into the site at that point I want to do a proactive dis the reason why I want to do a proactive dis when I keep below my topist the threshold it then gives me more room to build more links it then gives me room to do more um some press releases it syndicates exra 350 sites about 150 and 350 sites a toxic not not massively toxic but they're giving some sort of toxicity for him does that mean I can't do pressure releases anymore I don't do it pro if this pretty much it could get it could put you above the toxicity threshold so getting that toxicity threshold below it and doing a a dis if you've got a link vendor that is able to do this for you and then they can link simulate and then only give you links that they know against your backlink profile is trusted is powerful and it's not going to go above your toxicity threshold so within weeks you're getting jumps on on good quality links people going oh it takes six months no you just do in links that are high Dr that are manipulated traffic manipulated Dr and the toxic and you're going it Tak six months to rank no as a link man you're just waiting for an algum update and if it jumps up you're going yay it's CU of me and it's like in it's not and links do move the needle relatively quickly if people do it the right way and then on top of that some people then come to me a massive massive like pain point of mind that does it does made him when someone comes to me and they say I think I need a dis out and you go you have a look at it you go yeah your toxicity is shocking well I've already had one and you're like what have you done it with yeah well you can't cuz no toxicity forh and no trust in it like at least at least if they're not using link research tool at least please tell me you're using Majestic right if you're saying using semrush or HRS and you've done a dis out it's like criminal like it's like saying links don't work cuz you're just buying GSA yeah like do you know what I mean it's like it's it's actually embarrassing at times the amount of people that come to me I've already done a this I don't need to do one I'm like well that's just like like I've just got chat GPT to around me 3,000 word article it's not right not ranking where you have no information game you know images you no videos no differentiate keywords no information game you just not doing it right so what would you say the core element of what is a toxic link how does it like how do you gauge what a toxic link is so you've got a to you've got toxic score detox risk score with LRT right so that is a great way of checking to see how toxic a link is don't get me wrong I'm all for getting some toxic links and that sounds like bizarre if it's got power and if it's got trust and if it's got toxicity I'm taking it right apart from if it's very toxic and I'm I'm close to the threshold of where I need to be at at that point I'm not taking it because that could have a reverse effect so what's interesting is when I've chatted about this in the past is people in seo's responses well the sites like BBC don't do disavows they don't care and then my wait wait wait wait how do they well that's what they say right so like big size take this so I might right okay but there's a reason for that and what do you mean I'm like a site like BBC gets so many links that their link or toxicity threshold it probably be not that high they get the perent exactly whereas an SEO you're going out you build an only guest PST usually seeing Dr 30 plus or whatever Dr 60s whatever you're then going the guest port and N it's typically on WordPress sites so you get an only one type of like link that's coming through and then you're usually going well I only want an exact match anchor so then you get an exact match links all from neighborhoods where every other s's buying them and then you wonder why you get hit by a penalty I'll be surprised right so I'll throw something back here anyone's got over a dr7 s that's ranking well and on an upward TR trajectory right I'll throw this out there people people try to tag in as many seos as you can they've got above a dr70 s that's on a positive trajectory go into your Google search console and send me a screenshot to say that you've not got a dis uploaded because majority of people do majority of people that people go well they won't have a diso you just mentioned BBC I'm not saying whether we've done it or not but like we've got so much data with so many big sites that we've done diso for that are in a positive upward trajectory and you're like why do they want to diso like they're doing well and you start looking at it and they've got 16 million back links pointing through to the site and actually they just good seos and they know that they want to bring down the the image aggregator links that are toxic and bring that down the toxicity threshold but even though they have got a lot of back links it just it why why have stuff and bear in mind as well these disos that people do it when done correctly they remove all the toxic links they got no power and no trust yeah so they've actually like these are seos now like with regards to Rick laas used to be brilliant at doing disos brilliant right but I would say it was too aggressive he was diso certain links that had power and had some trust and as seos and now we've kind of learned and leveraged Rick lass's knowledge we now go whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa I want to keep that it's got a bit of power and trust and it's relevant and it's got a branded anchor and it's a it's a contextual do follow link above the fold and it's getting some traffic I want to keep that everything I can so then what you do you you try to keep as many of those as you can because they get EMP power and Trust so almost like staged below a staged disab you get below the Tes your threshold and then you go over a link Rejuvenation pack you get your link Rejuvenation pack which is basically because someone's Ram your site against a toxicity threshold you can then run go through all the guest Po and Niche Ed that you might be running against your backlink profile to say yeah this is what this is only toxicity of 100 you've got 950 as your threshhold so yeah build these all day long if anything it's going to bring you rage down so yes it's got some sort of toxicity but it brings it down it's got power it's got trust and it's bringing you fresh all down should go and get a two three 4,000 link Rejuvenation Park bam you don't then need to be removing some of the powerful links people think like all these link Rejuvenation packs why are they important I'm like well for one the're powerful the're trusted and low toxic but for another reason it allows you to keep other links that are pointing through to your site at present that you need to be REM save your money because you're in a partial penalty that manage 20% classifier across you sign so you're going oh I can't get from number five to number one for this keyword yeah you're in sitewise penalty mate like you've got you above a toxicity threshold sort that bit out first or it could be that you're in a partial Panda kind of penalty it's not Panda anymore but sitewide classifier for being in a minus 20% for rankings because you've got the cost of information retrieval is costing you too much I think that's the big I think the biggest part when we're going back and forth a lot of the things that you're looking at is the cost of information retrieval what can you do to provide good quality content for Google and it's cost the least amount for them to crawl your side um and I think that's the most important part in my opinion for 2024 quantity of quality is key instead of quality over quantity it's quantity of quality is key that's going to be winning in 2024.

Hudson: Yeah sounds good.