Charles Floate Interviews SEO Entrepreneur James Dooley | Charles Floate Podcast

In this episode of the James Dooley Podcast, veteran SEO entrepreneur James Dooley is joined by longtime digital marketing peer Charles Floate for a wide-ranging, no-fluff conversation about building sustainable SEO businesses. They dig into what really works (and what doesn’t) — from site architecture and link strategies, to client acquisition, niche selection and scaling systems. Together, they reveal how to treat websites like full businesses — not just marketing experiments — and how to build a diversified portfolio of lead-gen, affiliate, and rank-and-rent assets that generate income long term.

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.

Charles Floate:
I’ve actually known you for coming up to 12 years now, and your business has grown by an unbelievable degree. It’s almost all powered by SEO or search-based lead generation, which has allowed the profitability and scalability of your operations to exceed almost everyone’s expectations.
When we first spoke, you were one of the least technical guys I knew — and now you’re developing your own Python scripts and doing all sorts of mental stuff with your own team.
You were also one of the first people to hire me for SEO consultancy when I was 16, and you’re probably the most successful client I’ve ever worked with. I put that down to you listening, testing and implementing pretty much everything people have ever told you.
These days you’re the owner of multiple SEO businesses, you oversee campaigns across the search industry in both PPC and SEO, you do large acquisitions and partnerships with sites and companies, you own a thoroughbred horse-racing company, you’ve built an office in the UK with some of the smartest people in the industry — and you’re now finally doing interviews.
So, with that introduction: Mr. James Dooley, everybody. How you doing, you alright?

James Dooley:
Yeah, all good mate, you?
I’d actually like to start by saying this: I wanted to make sure you were one of the first to interview me, because when you were 16 and I hired you as a consultant, we were complete and utter novices. The only thing we really knew was keyword density and “stick your keyword in the title.” That was about it — I didn’t even know what a backlink was.
When you came in to train the team, it was eye-opening. You fast-tracked us by at least five or six years, which meant we could start making money very quickly and then snowball from there.
From that, we were able to invest into products and into a proper testing team. That’s been the biggest driver of our growth: a large R&D team that’s constantly breaking the SERPs, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and doing a lot of myth-busting.
There’s so many things people say work that, when we test them, just don’t. And then Google will say things like “links don’t work,” we test it, and we’re like… yeah they do.
So a massive hats off to you. At 16 you came in, and you’ve always been two or three steps ahead of everyone. I always say that about you. The photographic memory you’ve got for what you read is phenomenal.
So before we get into my journey, I genuinely want to say thank you, because you definitely helped us fast-track to where we are today.
Charles Floate:
I really appreciate that, mate.
And that’s exactly one of the reasons I wanted you on here — because as much as you’re giving me credit, I think a huge part of your success is that you actually use the information you get.
There are so many people in the industry who absorb information and then do nothing with it. You’re one of the few who take everything in and then turn it into ideas, tests and implementations that let you break the SERPs and know what’s working at any given time.
So, before we dive into deep SEO stuff, I want to ask something most people probably don’t know:
What’s your background before you got into SEO and the whole digital world?
James Dooley:
Before SEO, I was on track to become a project manager / quantity surveyor type.
Then I met a very good friend and business partner of mine — you know him well — Dave Snell. I joined him at a company called Soft Surfaces. We were building sports pitches, football pitches, tennis courts, playgrounds — anything fitness, sport and activity related — all over the UK.
We’ve grown that business from about £500k to around £8 million a year now, and that’s been massively driven by SEO and organic reach.
That’s where it all started. When I first joined Soft Surfaces, my big question was: How do we generate more enquiries? I wasn’t going to sit there cold-calling people; I wanted inbound enquiries.
I quickly realised the lifeblood of any successful business is a consistent flow of quality inbound enquiries. Once I understood that, I realised it’s what every service-based business needs — whether they’re doing roofing, cladding, windows, carpet cleaning, whatever.
So we started building it out for our own business, then moved into “shoulder” or neighbouring niches: fencing, floodlighting, groundworks, landscaping, roadways, etc. Anything where, if we got them more enquiries, they’d win more work. It snowballed from there.
My background is basically project management, and I still use a lot of those traits today. I’ve said this a few times at masterminds:
If you’re building an extension on your house, you don’t build it yourself. You get a bricklayer for the wall, a groundworker for the foundations, a joiner for the doors, a plumber for the bathroom. You hire the right people for each job.
SEO is the same. You don’t need to be a jack of all trades. You just need to know who’s the best in each field, then let them handle that part of your “extension” on the website.
That’s the approach we’ve always taken: hire the best in the world in their lane. I don’t want to talk to a content specialist about backlinks, or a link specialist about content.
That’s how we’ve managed to grow quickly and successfully over the years.
Charles Floate:
So coming from that construction-oriented world, when you were first introduced to SEO, what did you see in the SEO industry that made you go all in, when so many others didn’t?
James Dooley:
The first thing I noticed was how many technical people there were — and how many of them were introverts.
There were loads of super-smart people, geeking out in the corner, but they couldn’t really talk. They didn’t want to talk to clients or be on calls.
So I realised: if I could employ them and let them do the hard technical work, and I handle the communication and business side, we’d have a big advantage.
There’s that saying: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” In SEO, it’s often more like: talent works, but doesn’t want to put themselves out there.
We just needed the best “bricklayer,” the best “plumber,” the best “joiner” — people who were world-class at their specific SEO skill. The introverts tended to hide in affiliate SEO because they didn’t want to deal with clients.
I love speaking to customers and clients. So for me, it was obvious: not many people were doing lead gen properly, because they hated client work. They’d say “clients are a nightmare.”
Clients are a nightmare when they don’t understand what you’re doing and you’re not giving them a return. But if you’re giving them good ROI, they really like you. Those are nice conversations to have.
We stayed away from classic “client SEO” and went into owning the assets. We build the site, we own it. I decide if the call-to-action button is green or orange, because I’ve seen the Hotjar and CRO data and I know what converts.
If a client says “I want a red button,” I can say: “Doesn’t matter — it’s my site. I know this works better.” Same with the wording: maybe they don’t like certain phrases, but those phrases are what rank.
So with rank & rent/lead gen, we’re in full control of what we know works. We generate leads; they’re good at doing the actual job (roofing, whatever). They make money, we take a cut, everyone’s happy.
The other thing I saw was that people were too stuck in their lane. If someone was good at links, they did loads of links and terrible content. If someone was good at content, they’d say “links don’t work.”
It was weird — content or links, instead of content and links. We were like: do everything. Rank your images, rank your videos, grow social, act like a real business.
Everyone else seemed to be looking for hacks and shortcuts. We said: treat this like a real business. Do it properly, for the long term, not for a quick win. That’s what’s put us in such a strong position now.

Charles Floate:
You touched on some ranking factors there. From all your testing, what do you think are the top ranking signals right now, and what are some the majority of people overlook?

James Dooley:
There are loads of nuances from niche to niche and industry to industry — you say this a lot as well.
Some people don’t believe in E-E-A-T, but in finance, for example, it’s huge. If you don’t have author transparency — who’s writing, who’s behind the site — you can get a manual action.
So in finance, you need a real author, a real business behind the site, a phone number, an email address, proper contact details. That’s the foundation level.
For me, it breaks down like this:
Technical & trust / E-E-A-T:
Fast load times, good site structure, solid internal linking, real business signals, proper author pages, clear ownership, contact details.

Content:
Use whatever you like — Surfer, MarketMuse, POP, Frase etc. Write good quality content without obsessing over word count. It should be as short as possible, but as long as necessary.
Cover the topic in full. Answer the main question and all the supporting questions. Build topical authority: multiple pages around the same topic, not just one page.

Links:
Relevant, trusted, powerful links. Not just DR-chasing, but actual trust and relevance.

Most people who keep getting hit are the ones who cheap out on content, cheap out on links, don’t cover the topic in full, and ignore trust/E-E-A-T signals in industries where it matters.
There’s no magic “knowledge bomb.” Just do the basics extremely well and consistently — and you win long term.
Charles Floate:
Using that approach, what have been some of your most successful ventures as a result of SEO?

James Dooley:
We do very well in the iGaming space — casino, slots, bingo, betting, all that.
We also do very well in finance. In fact, that’s probably where we’ve made the most money overall.
At one point, we were generating around 650 leads a day in just one or two finance verticals. Our clients couldn’t handle the volume. So we took it in-house:
We set up our own call centre in Manchester. We’d take the raw web leads and turn them into hot leads — we’d get bank statements, all the info about pensions, mortgages, etc.
We’d then sell those hot leads at 6–7x the price of a cold web lead. It was very easy to do once the systems were in place.
So yeah, finance has been huge. iGaming affiliate has been great. And then we’ve got tons of local lead gen sites in loads of niches.
People often ask on podcasts: “How many sites do you have?” Honestly, I don’t know. There are well over 1,000 websites, but maybe 650–700 are making regular money — it fluctuates.
Being in that many niches helps because we see all the different nuances between industries: what works where, and what doesn’t.
Charles Floate:
You’re really diversified — but most people would ask: how do you have such a high success rate while being in so many niches?
You’ve already said there’s no one-size-fits-all, and each niche is different, so how are you winning across so many?

James Dooley:
Good question.
First thing: people only ever want to hear about your successes. They don’t want to hear about the failures. For every one successful site, we might have two or three “failures.”
And by “failure,” I don’t mean it doesn’t rank. We can usually rank them. It’s the monetisation that fails.
Example: for about four years, we ranked number one all over the UK for teeth implants in loads of areas. Could we monetise it properly? No.
We couldn’t find enough dental practices to work with on good terms. Leads were coming from all over the country; some dentists only wanted hyper-local. We’d say: “People fly to Turkey for implants — they’ll travel to Manchester.” But they didn’t really get it.
So we switched those sites to display ads — Mediavine, Ezoic, AdThrive, AdSense etc. They still make something, but nowhere near what we could’ve made if we’d nailed the model.
We might spend £40k on building and ranking a site and end up making £200–300 a month from it. Not great.
Then there are niches where we spend £10k and it makes £5–10k a month.
Out of the 600+ niches we’re in, if you’d asked me at the beginning to list the top 50 that would make us the most money, I don’t think I’d have named a single one that actually ended up in that top 50. They’re so random.
You start in the obvious ones — plumbers, electricians — and then you follow the rabbit holes.
For example: we had a joiner doing general joinery work. Then “garden rooms / outbuildings” blew up after COVID — home offices and home gyms in the garden.
Now we generate 60–70 leads a day for those timber outbuildings. They sell for around £15k, cost about £5k to build, so the margins are great.
I’d never have predicted “timber outbuildings” as a top niche. It came from listening to clients and seeing where the money is.
So the success is a result of:
A lot of testing

Going broad, then niching down where the profit is

Accepting that not everything will be a hit

Constantly learning — every day is a school day

I still call you once a month like, “Charles, what’s going on here?” You give me ideas, I go test them. I feed you back big-sample data from loads of industries. It keeps you ahead of the curve, and it keeps us sharp too.
And we could only do that because we had the budget to build a proper R&D team once the money started coming in.
Charles Floate:
That leads nicely into my next one: How do you scout out opportunities?
It almost sounds like you enter a niche thinking “this might be profitable” and then figure out what actually works inside it?

James Dooley:
Exactly.
The easiest way to explain it: if you go fishing with one rod, you can only catch one fish at a time.
We turn up with the biggest net we can build on the back of the boat and catch everything.
Once all the “fish” (leads) are in the net, we sort them:
Little fish we don’t want? Throw them back.

Big, profitable fish? Keep them.

That’s how we approach niches. We go broad at first to see what works, then we narrow down into where the profit is.
Once we know where the real money is, we can start doing exact-match or partial-match domains around that one profitable product or service.
If you’re a joiner who makes little money hanging doors but great money on garden gyms/outbuildings, I’m not interested in getting you more “door” jobs. I want more of the high-ticket stuff.
Then we might build 3–4 different websites just around that one product. They’re easier to rank and much more lucrative.
But you only discover those once you’ve actually worked with the client and seen the numbers.

Charles Floate:
You’ve mentioned “bricklayers and plumbers” a lot in the metaphorical sense. Obviously, to do everything at this scale, you need a team.
How did you, and how do you, build such a strong team to handle all of this across different niches and verticals?

James Dooley:
You actually know a lot of them because you trained most of them.
The core team have been with me close to 10 years now. They all started as apprentices.
They’re rewarded well — good salaries, but also equity in ideas. If someone on the team comes up with a new site idea, they get 25% of that website’s profit.
Even though the whole team helps build the site, it’s their idea, so it’s their asset. Some of them now earn more from their asset portfolio than they do from their salary.
Most of those original apprentices are now directors of the company. They’re well looked after.
I think a big factor is that they see me every day still working hard, even though technically I don’t have to. I’m still rolling up my sleeves, talking to everyone, pushing the culture of “every day is a school day.”
They’ve adopted that mentality: work hard, improve, get rewarded.
Also, SEO feels like a game to a lot of them. Some are gamers; they view getting to the top of Google as “levelling up.” If they keep finding ways to win, it’s fun and rewarding.
My role now is more of a cultural architect — making sure the environment, incentives and mindset are all right.
I think we’ve built a very happy, successful team where everyone wins: they enjoy what they do, and they’re compensated properly for it.

Charles Floate:
Final topic I want to touch on: the future of the industry — AI.
This is kind of a two-in-one question:
What are your thoughts on the current state of AI in SEO and its effect so far?

What do you think its impact will be in the future — especially with things like Google SGE?

James Dooley:
First thought: you have to embrace it. It’s here now.
Even though I do think it’s going to replace a lot of jobs in the long run — which is sad — if you don’t embrace it, you’ll fall behind.
There’s that line: “If you don’t innovate, you evaporate.” That’s how I see AI.
It’s a huge discussion point in our R&D and testing teams — “What can we do with this?”
We’ve invested in AutoBlogging tools that mass-create content. Some people are seeing amazing results. Click a button, get 500 articles auto-uploaded to WordPress, build out topical authority at insane scale.
Google has a big problem there: people can now scale content to another level very fast, which ramps up Google’s own cost of retrieval and scoring.
Right now, loads of people are crushing it with AI.
Long term, we’re already seeing AI teams emerging across:
Graphic design

Video editing

Content production

Data analysis

You showed me some of that stuff just yesterday in the private masterminds.
Honestly, I feel a bit like I’m back to square one — learning again. So I probably wouldn’t position myself as “the AI expert.” If someone asks, I’d still say, “Go talk to Charles about the cutting-edge side of it.”
But I know this:
We must embrace it.

I don’t want AI to replace my people — I want it to augment them.

If a graphic designer can create 40 images a day now, maybe with AI they can do 80, without losing quality.

Whether they use Midjourney, some video AI tools or something else — I don’t know exactly where it all lands.
I’m a bit worried about how fast people can now build at scale. People say “pre-Panda, pre-Penguin was the golden era,” but I honestly think now could be the real golden era, if you adapt.
What took me 10–11 years to build could be replicated in months if someone uses AI well.
So yeah, I’m partly worried, but I know I need to embrace it and figure out how to use it to my advantage.

Charles Floate:
I completely agree. It’s a massive opportunity, but it needs to be used with caution — you don’t want to accelerate your own downfall.
I really appreciate you coming on, mate. This has been one of the most interesting interviews I’ve done. I think a lot of people are going to want to hear more from you.
Where can people find you online if they want to follow or connect?

James Dooley:
I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — just search for “James Dooley” or “James Dooley SEO” and you’ll find me.
On Twitter it’s @JamesDooley / @JamesDooleySEO (depending on the handle at the time).
I’m going to start being more active now. With AI and E-E-A-T getting stronger, I’ve realised I need more of a personal brand so people know who’s behind certain sites.
So you’ll see more of me on podcasts and social media.
And I really appreciate you having me on, Charles.

Charles Floate:
Thanks for coming on, mate.
James Dooley, everyone.