James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Charles Floate discuss how service-based home improvement companies can use holistic SEO, lead generation and AI to build a consistent flow of high quality inbound enquiries.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies home improvement companies should focus on in 2026 to improve a consistent flow of quality inbound enquiries, higher value leads and long term scalable growth. James Dooley and Charles Floate start with KPI tracking because measuring conversion rates, lead volume and return on investment is the only way to identify which niches and products actually generate profit. 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 home improvement companies.
PromoSEO lead generation for home improvement companies recently received recognition as the "Best Home Improvement Companies Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode
Charles Floate Interviews SEO Entrepreneur James Dooley is available across all major podcast platforms. Choose your preferred platform below.

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: I've actually known you for coming up to 12 years at this point and your business has grown by an unbelievable degree. Right. So it's all it's al also almost all powered by SEO or search engine based lead generation which has allowed the profitability and scalability of their operations to exceed almost everyone's expectations to be honest. Right. And when we first kind of spoke, you were one of the uh least technical guys I know. And now you're developing your own Python scripts and all sorts of mental stuff with your own team and things, right? Um and you're also one of the first people to hire me for SEO consultancy when I was 16. And I think you were probably the most successful client I've ever worked with in terms of consultancy. I put that down mostly to you listening, testing, and implementing everything most people have ever told you. Um, and the these days you're the owner of multiple SEO businesses. You oversee campaigns across the search industry when it comes to PPC and SEO. You do large acquisitions and partnerships with sites and companies. You own a thoroughbred horse racing company. Um, you've built an office in the UK with some of the smartest and most talented people in the industry. And you're now finally doing interviews and stuff. So, without with that kind of an introduction, Mr. James Douly, everybody, are you doing all right?

Guest: I'd like to I'd like to start off with as well, mate. And um I wanted to make certain that you was one of the first to interview me because you fasttracked when you were 16 years old and I came and hired you as a consultant. We was no you and you'd openly say we was complete and utter noviceses. The only thing we knew is was keyword density and getting your keywords in the title. That was pretty much it. I didn't even know what a backlink was. Um so when you came in to train the team up it was like eye opening um you fast scratched us at least five or six years um which then allowed us to make money very very quickly and then we obviously just snowballed from there. So we was able then to invest into products into a testing team. I think that's the biggest growth why we've had the biggest growth is that we've got a large testing team. We've got a massive R&D development team um that's just breaking the SER and seeing what works and what doesn't work. Doing a lot of myth busting um because there's so many things out there that people say work and then we'll test it and it doesn't. And then there's so many things that people say like Google might come out with something saying links don't work and then you test it you're like yeah they do. So it's um a massive hats off to you. Um like you said at 16 years old you came in and you was you've always been two three steps. Everyone I always speak to, I always say Charles is always two or three steps ahead. Um the photographic memory that you do when you're reading certain things is just phenomenal. So I'd like to say first and foremost a massive thank you to yourself before we get started of my journey and stuff like that because you certainly was one that helped us fast track to where we are today.

James Dooley: Well, I really appreciate that, mate. And I and that's exactly one of the reasons why I think I have you on here is because um and and and as much consideration and thanks I give you to uh for saying that all about me. I think that the fact that you listened to not only me, right, there's so many people in the industry that I think that have helped you as well and and I'm good friends with all of them as well. Um and I I think that there's so many people out there that just absorb information and then don't do anything with it and don't utilize it. and you're one of the people that actually you absorb all that information and it gives you all of these ideas and testing scenarios and things where where where that creates this this like you said this ability to just kind of break this up and know exactly what's working at all times and I think that's amazing. So so before we kind of get on to the actual SEO kind of side of things I want to ask you because I don't think anybody really knows what is your background before you got into SEO and and kind of got into this whole digital landscape.

Guest: So, prior to SEO, I was going to be trained up to be um like a project manager, quantity surveyor type role. Um I ended up meeting a good uh a very good business partner of mine now and a good friend of mine to this day. You know quite well, Dave Snell. Um we I joined him at Soft Services. And then it was going to be building sports pitches, football pitches, tennis courts, playgrounds, anything fitness and sport related and activity related into the UK. was going to be building those projects and we still it's still we've grown that business now from half a million to eight million a year. Um so and that's massively just been grown grown by SEO and organic kind of reach. Um so that's that's where it all started and from there then when I first started to services it was like how do we generate more inquiries? I'm not ringing cold calling people. I need inbounded inquiries. Um I quickly started to realize that the lifeblood of any successful business is um a s like a consistent flow of quality inbounded inquiries. And when I knew that, I realized what I needed. I quickly realized this is what every business needs in the service-based home improvement. Whether the roofing, cladding, windows, carpet cleaning, it doesn't matter what industry it is. Every business need a consistent floor quality inquiries and we started to build it out for our own business. And then we started to do what we call like shouldering niches or neighboring niches like fencing, flood lighting, grow landscaping, hard landscaping, roadways, it almost everything that we thought if we got them more inquiries, would we win more work? And then it just snowballed from there. So my background generally was a project manager and I still use a lot of those traits today. Like I've said this a few times in masterminds. If you're building an extension on your house, would you build that yourself? No. You'd get a brick layer to come and do the wall. You'd get um a grown to come and put the foundations in. You'd get a joiner to come and do the doors. You get a plumber to come and do your shower room or your bathroom. You employ the right people for the job. And that's the same with SEO. Like you don't need to be a jack of all trades. You just need to know who's the best in their field and then utilize them for doing your extension on your website. And and that's kind of the role that we've always taken. We've always tried to employ the best people in the world in their lane. I wouldn't then go and speak to someone who's very good at content about backlinks. someone wants to speak to someone who's good at backlinks about content like and that's kind of how we've managed to grow it and grow it very successfully over the years coming coming from the whole kind of construction oriented world and stuff.

James Dooley: Um when you were first got introduced to SEO, what did you see in the SEO industry? I know you talked a lot about the lead generation side of things as well, but what did you see in the SEO industry? because a lot of people probably were aware of SEO 10 even 15 years ago but they didn't really go and put their entire you know life uh into it right in in to the degree you did at least and what did you what do you think you saw in the industry that other people didn't see?

Guest: so there was a lot of people that was very technical and like I said I wasn't a technical kind of guy I'm still not really a technical guy I employ people that are good at Python I employ people that are good at building sites and stuff like that. But the main thing that I seen was there were so many introverts. There were so many people that would geek out in a corner on the computer that couldn't talk to physically couldn't hold a conversation like this and talk to people. So if I could employ them and get them to do the hard work, it was one of them where it was like there's a classic saying of hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And it's not sometimes that they don't work hard. It's the fact that they don't want to put themselves out there. So we just needed to try to find the best brick layer to build our wall, the best plumber to do our shower room and stuff like that. And people wasn't like it was the introverts were just trying to stay solely into affiliate because they didn't want to speak to clients where I love speaking to customers and clients. So for me it was like wait a minute not many people are doing the lead genen industry because people don't like dealing with clients because they say oh they're a nightmare. They're a nightmare when they don't know what you're doing. But if you're giving them a return on investment, they really like you. It's a nice conversation to have with your clients. And this is where we always stayed away from SEO doing SEO client work. And it was more we'll build the site. We'll own the site. I'm going to have the color to be a green button or an orange button because I know that converts the best using hot jar and conversion rate. If you want a red button, it doesn't matter. It's my site. I know this converts better. This is what's happening. Oh, I don't like these words that you've used. No, these words are specifically used on the page to rank. So, you can't you don't have the client dictating and the tail wagging the dog. We're in full control of doing what we're good at. We generate them the leads that they're good at what they're at, which is whatever it is, roofing and going installing roofs. They make the money, we get to cut the money, we're both in a happy relationship. And that's kind of um how it grew. But where you saying, what did I see? I seen that too many people stayed in the lane and didn't do diversity. So they if if someone was good at links, they just didn't the content weren't very good, but they did loads and loads and loads of links. If someone was good at content, they said links don't work. And it was like what what where's all this kind of it doesn't it don't have to be content or links. Do them both and do them both well and have that diversity and holistic SEO approach to do everything right. try and rank your images, try and rank your videos, try and grow your social med media following and just be just be like like a real business basically is where but everyone seemed to want to do a hack or a shortcut. And we was like, "Hey, we want to make certain that when we're building these sites, we're treating as a real business, do it properly, do it for long-term gains, not for short-term gains." And yeah, it's it's stamp it's put us in goodstead.

James Dooley: So you talked a little bit there about some of the ranking factors that you kind of uh that you have utilized and also been testing and stuff. Um what do you think are some of the or the top ranking signals right now in terms of Google's algorithm as well as some of the maybe signals that the majority of people overlook or don't even potentially know about.

Guest: So it there's so many different nuances. I mean you you I'm going to repeat some of the things that you say because I've obviously I've been trained up by yourself as well but there is so many different nuances from niche to niche and industry to industry. So some people um don't believe let's say in EAT right but EAT is very important in the finance sector. If you if you don't have author transparency who's behind the article you're going to get a manual action penalty. So making certain in the finance industry you've got the author that is who's written the article who's behind the website you've got a telephone number you've got an email address and setting those kind of things up there like I would say the I just pull out on the technical technically build a site that converts from a CRO perspective that your silo structure is good that it loads fast that you're ticking all the boxes getting all the foundations right then when you're writing content um some people use let's say market moves, surfer, surfer SEO or phrase or pop um whatever it is that you want to use. Write good quality content. Don't obsess over specifically over word count. It should be as short as possible, but as long as necessary. So try and get all the secondary kind of H2s and questions on the page that it needs to be. Then cover the topic in its entirety. How many different articles can you write about that topic? And then links. And then just make certain you're getting relevant, trusted, um, powerful links going through to your site. And that that you'll pe the only people really who start to start getting hit a lot is they cheap out on the content. They cheap out on the links. They don't cover the topic in its entirety. The website isn't like trusted within Google, let's say, for eat signals in certain industries. And and it's just the basics. The people know what to do. They just try and do shortcuts. That's the There's no like where's your knowledge bomb? There isn't a knowledge bomb. Just do everything right. Do everything well and you'll win long term.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, so from using all of those kind of tactics and using a quality holistic approach and what have as a result of SEO been some of your most successful ventures?

Guest: We do well in the eye gaming industry. Um, so like casino, slots, bingo, betting, stuff like that. We do well in the finance industry. Um, we own a large call. I don't know if many people know about this, but we took finance on to another level with regards to at one point we was generating 650 leads every single day um in one or two industries and our clients couldn't deal with the volume. So, we took that in-house where we we set up our own call center in Manchester where we would take all the leads. We'd get all the information and we changed it from what class as being like a cold web lead to a hot lead. We'd have the bank statements. We have everything they need to know whether it's about pensions or mortgages or whatever it is that they wanted. We'd factf find, get all the information that they want, and then sell it as a hot lead. And we got paid about six or seven times more for a hot lead than we did a cold web lead. and it was very easy to do for us. So we we transition on that. In the finance sector, we've made probably the most money if I'm being honest in the finance sector. U but I game is treated as well. And then just a lot of um local lead genen sites in a lot. I mean we it's hard because sometimes I do these podcasts and they say how many different websites do you have? And legit man I don't know like there's there's well over a thousand different websites but how many are earning maybe only 650 700 something like that. it it fluctuates slightly, but we've got a hell of a lot of different websites in a hell of a lot of different niches. Um, I kind of like that because of the diversity side of things that we then start to understand the different nuances from one industry to the next of what you need and what you don't need. Um, so yeah, I'd say local lead gen affiliate and then the finance sector has been the the main thing. Something we've never really touched on is e-commerce SEO and drop shipping and stuff like that. It's not really something that there's only so much you can do and I've already got too much on.

James Dooley: Well, yeah, as you just said, you're you're really diversified anyway. Um, most people would probably ask how are you how do you have such a high success rate with being so diversified, right? You just said there's nuances to every niche. You need to know know niches. How do you see such success across all these different niches, across all these different types of businesses?

Guest: So that that's a great question to ask Charles because people only want to know about your successes. They don't want to know about your failures. And for every one site that we build, we might have two or three failures. And when I say failures, it's not that they don't rank. We can get them ranking. We know what we need to do to get them ranking, but it's clients like we we rank we ranked for about four years number one to do with like teeth implants in the UK in so many areas. Could we monetize it? No. like we could not find a dental practice that because we it might be all over the UK where the inquiries were coming from like oh we're only based in Manchester. I'm like you have people traveling over to Turkey to have your teeth done so surely they're going to travel to Manchester but whether it's just that they was naive and they just didn't understand what we was trying to generate. So we changed those sites to like display ads media vine or isoic or thrive um AdSense and stuff like that. But along the way there's been industries where we thought this would do really well and it's just not monetized into being something and we might have spent £40,000 on ranking that website but the actual comm we might only get two300 pound a month out of it and it's not it's not really been it's not really done great and we've got other niches where we've spent£10,000 on building the site and getting it ranking for all the terms and it makes us five 10 grand a month. So you're like, "Oh my god, this is ridiculous." And and do you know what? Out of the 600 plus niches that we're in, if you ask me now, back then the top 50 niches that make us the money, I don't think I would have chose one of them. If you ask me to name 50 niches now, I don't think I would have chose one of them out the top 50 that's there that's earn money because they're so random. Some of the ones you start off as being plumbing or electricians and then you start learning more like let's say a joiner. I'll give a niche away. Like we do a lot of outbuildings in gardens like where it's like gyms in a garden, offices in the garden and they're like timber huts and we started off as being a joiner and then they started to go this has gone all the rage and and obviously with co and stuff everyone was wanting this office in the garden and gym in the garden and stuff and now we generate about 60 or 70 leads a day for these timber. They cost about we charge out about 15,000 and probably cost about five to build them. Um, but the industries you wouldn't have thought like gym out building or something like that would be such a lucrative business. I wouldn't have thought that. But you go down a rabbit hole of you're in with a client, they then start telling you what works and it just moves on from there really. So the success comes from a lot of testing. Um, and then just just every single day, every day is a school day. We still learn. I still get on the phone to you once a month. Charles, come on. What what what what's going on here and stuff like that. And then you give me different ideas and go, "Right, I'm going to go and test that." And I feed the information back to you. You like it because you get the in the kind of testing from all these different industries. So, you're ahead of the curve all the time, but you're always you're always on the prowl and the lookout for what's working now. Um, and yeah, it's just it's just good to be able to have the R&D team that you allowed us to set up because we started to make money and from there then we like you said do a lot of myth busting and see what works.

James Dooley: Well, so I was actually going to ask you how do you scout out opportunities? But it seems maybe like you just uh go into a niche thinking it's going to be profitable and then you find out what's actually profitable inside that niche.

Guest: So we we the easiest way of explaining it is if you was going fishing and you've got a fishing rod, you're only ever going to catch one fish, right? So we go and do this cheat system where we're going to have the biggest net in the world on the back of the boat and we catch every single fish, right? And we go and catch every fish in our net. And at that point, if it's a small fish that we don't want, we throw it back in the sea. And if it's a big fish that we do want, we keep hold of it. And and it's kind of cheating to a certain degree. But that's kind of how we go broad. We see what works and then we micro niche it down into being where do you make your profits? Where do you make your money? And then from there then we go right let's start doing some exact match domains or partial match domains on this specific product that makes you all the money. I'm not interested in getting you if you're a joiner and you're doing doors. You don't make much money of doing doors. You make a lot of money on doing the outbuildings and gyms. Let's just get you more of those leads. And that's kind of how we're scouted out. We go as broad as we can and then we narrow it down into where the money is. And then where the money is then obviously we double down on making certain that we might have three or four different websites for that one specific product. They're a lot easier to rank. They're a lot higher ticket value, but you don't know what they are until you started to deal with the clients. So you keep on mentioning about like having the joiner and the plumber and that kind of stuff. And you obviously need a team to be able to carry out this kind of scalable operation and all that kind of stuff. And even to the point like you said um when you first got into it, you didn't know to you didn't know how to develop, how to design, how to do all the different things that you need to kind of do as an SEO, right? So you need to get people to do it for you. How would how how did you or how do you go about building such a strong team to be able to carry out all of this work across different niches and different verticals and everything at the same time?

James Dooley: So obviously you know quite a lot of them because you've trained you've trained majority of them up. Um and you've known that they've all now been with me for for nearly 10 years. Um they all started out as being apprentices. They they're all they're all rewarded nicely. So they're all well paid. They they I allow them to have any new idea that they have. They get 25% of that website. So even though the whole the the whole team build out the site for them, they come up with an idea. It's their idea. it's their site. They get 25%. They go and build these assets up and they end up earning more money on their assets than they do actually on a wage. Um, so they're seeing the growth themselves. A lot of them now, the main six that we employed right at the very start, they're all directors of the company. So they're all well looked after. But I think I think a big thing and it sounds quite arrogant this but because they see me every day when I don't really need to but working hard, rolling up my sleeves, putting the effort in, speaking to them all and trying to say, "Come on, every day is a school day. How can we progress this? How can we progress this?" They've now got that mentality that they work hard. They understand that when they worked hard, they're rewarded. I think they love it like I love it. like it it SEO is a bit like a game as well. Like I think like some of these are gamers that think like to get to the top of Google is a game and if we can keep finding ways to get there then happy days. So I think it's as an industry it's quite rewarding when you know what you're doing and I think that they enjoy it. I think we've got a good team. I think my role model more now is being a cultural architect. So making certain that the culture and everyone's happier within the business of what they're doing and yeah I I feel like we've got a very happy and successful team around me and they're all they all seem very happy and they're all well rewarded. So I think I think it works well for everyone.

James Dooley: Okay. So the so the final kind of thing I wanted to talk to you about um which is maybe going to help that team go to even the next level of productivity and stuff is the future of the industry which is AI and the uh I want to ask you kind of it's kind of a twoin one question. So I want to ask you what are your thoughts on the current state of AI in the SEO industry and its effect or its effect so far on the SEO industry and what do you think it will be like in uh in the future in terms of its effects on the industry as well as things like Google SGE and its effects like that. So in general I kind of want to ask you what are your thoughts on AI now in SEO and in the future in SEO?

Guest: So my thoughts initially is you've got to be embracing it because now it's it's there now. So you've got to embrace it. So that's thought number one. Even though I do feel it is going to replace a lot of people's jobs in the long run. Um which is sad to see. Um the end of the day it's one of them if you don't kind of embrace it you're just going to fall behind. Um there's a there's a good saying if you don't innovate you're going to evaporate. So for that reason you need to innovate and if that means you need to adapt to using AI you need to adapt to using AI. Um it's a big subject in R&D in our R&D team and our testing team. What can we do? Um we've invested in auto blogging which is an AI tool that mass creates content. Some people have seen amazing results by it. Um it's like one click of a button can generate 500 articles uploads it to WordPress. It's scaling out topical authority. Google's got a massive problem because people now can scale content to another level very quickly and it's going to cost them a fortune for their cost of retrieval of ranking the sites. Where it is at the moment is a lot of people are crushing it using AI. Um long-term even yesterday in the private mastermind groups that you're in, you were showing me this with you guys like AI AI teams now being created whether it's graphic design, videography. I I don't know if I'm being 100% honest. I'm all ears. I'm I come I'm going to be speaking to you on a monthby- monthth basis saying like how can we be embracing and adapting to use AI more? How can my graphic designers that I love to pieces innovate to be using AI to make their job easier and be able to scale more as opposed to replacing them? How can they use it to generate instead of them generating 40 images a day, can they now generate 80 images a day? Um, and whether they use midjourney or what other AI kind of image creation tool or whatever video creation tool they're going to use, I don't know. Um, it it's I feel like I'm back to square one in learning. Um, so I'm probably not the best person to speak you. I'd probably say you need to go to somebody like yourself. If someone asks me, I'll be like, Charles, what do you think about this? Um, so I feel you need to embrace it. I think if you don't innovate, you're going to evaporate. But it's scary. It's scary times in my opinion with how quick people are going to be able to adapt and grow sites way faster. Like people talk about, oh, back in pre- pander and pre penguin was the glory times. And I'm thinking, now could be the glory times if people adapt to using AI. now could be the glory times way more than any other time. You could scale out what I've done and it's took me 10 11 years. This could be done in in months um if done correctly. So I I would I partly worry um but then I partly go I need to just embrace it and see how I can use it to my best advantage.

James Dooley: I I completely agree with you. I think it's the the opportunity needs to be taken to the maximum it can be taken to, but with an air of caution, right? Like you you want to make sure that you know that you're not going to be kind of feeding into your own doom, the end of your the end of your own self, right? So, I really appreciate you coming on, mate. It was one of the most interesting interviews I think I've ever done. And I think there's going to be a lot of people in the comments who are going to be really interested to hear more from you as well. So, is there anywhere that uh people can find you as well online?

Guest: I'm on I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. Just search James Douly or James Douly SEO. Um you'll you'll find my profiles on there. I think it's James_DY on Twitter. I'm going to start being more I' I've started to realize that now with AI coming along, I do need to start having a more of a personal brand myself. So they knowing who's behind certain websites. So yeah, I'm going to be doing a lot more podcasts, a lot more social media and stuff like that. So the um I appreciate you having me on Charles. Right. Thanks for one, mate. See you later, guys.