James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Kasra Dash dive into what to check when a website has dropped drastically in Google rankings, walking through a practical checklist that covers manual actions in Google Search Console, backlink toxicity and disavow files, and the difference between partial and full penalties. They explore technical SEO issues using tools like Screaming Frog and Sitebulb, including crawl errors, orphan pages, bad internal links, and bloated images that waste crawl budget. The conversation then moves into content pruning and optimisation, explaining when to delete or 410 pages, when to rewrite them, and how to use impressions, clicks, intent, LSIs, entities, and internal links to revive underperforming URLs. James Dooley and Kasra Dash also break down link velocity, link loss, indexing existing backlinks, tiered link building to power up guest posts and digital PR links, and why links live on URLs, not domains. They emphasise traffic diversity from platforms like Reddit, Quora, YouTube, email lists, and social media, and finish by unpacking on-page and off-page E-E-A-T, brand signals, reviews, awards, author authority, and unlinked brand mentions as part of a real-world recovery framework for sites hit by recent Google updates.

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:
Today I’m joined by Kasra Dash, and we’re breaking down what to check if your website has dropped drastically in Google rankings. A lot of people ask why their site isn’t just down a few positions, but completely gone—from page one to not even appearing in the top five pages. Where would you start if you saw a drop like that?

Kasra Dash:
The very first thing I’d check is whether there’s a manual action in Google Search Console. That’s always step one. If Google has manually penalised the site, you’ll usually see a clear warning—often in a red notice—saying the issue relates to links or spam. In some cases, Google may have effectively removed the entire site from their index if they believe something seriously violates their guidelines.

James Dooley:
Yeah, and one of the most common things we see there is an unnatural inbound links penalty. Even if the site doesn’t show a clear manual action, a lot of websites are sitting in partial penalties. We’ve seen sites jump back up massively just from proactive disavows, even when they’ve only dropped to page two. Cleaning out the most toxic backlinks and bringing risk levels back in line with competitors can make a huge difference.

Kasra Dash:
Exactly. And that flows into the technical side as well. If a site used to rank but suddenly doesn’t, it’s rarely just because it’s slow. There’s usually a deeper issue. My go-to tools are Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. I’m looking for orphan pages, broken internal links, 404 errors, redirect chains, and wasteful crawl paths. Fixing those helps Google crawl the site properly again.

James Dooley:
I always say it’s like building a house—you wouldn’t build on quicksand. You don’t need to obsess over site speed, but you do need solid foundations. No 404s, clean internal links, and a sensible silo structure. For most sites, everything should be accessible within two or three clicks from the homepage, unless it’s a large ecommerce store.

Kasra Dash:
Right, and from there I’d move into content pruning. This is where people get uncomfortable because they’re obsessed with topical authority, but sometimes you actually need to delete content. If you look at the last 12 months and see pages with zero impressions and zero clicks, Google clearly didn’t like them. Those pages are either rewritten, redirected, or removed.

James Dooley:
That’s the key point: topical authority only matters if the content actually gets traffic. Pages that sit too far away from your core entity and don’t rank are just wasting crawl budget and internal link equity. But if a page is important to the business, you don’t delete it—you expand it, optimise intent, and strengthen it.

Kasra Dash:
Exactly. Content expansion can mean adding missing secondary keywords, addressing People Also Ask questions, fixing intent mismatches, or improving internal linking. Sometimes the problem is that the page is 500 words when every ranking competitor has 3,000. Other times it’s the opposite and the page is bloated when users want something shorter and clearer.

James Dooley:
Another big piece is link building. A lot of ranking drops happen because link velocity slows down or links are lost. Sites get an initial boost, then stop building links, and Google reassesses their long-term authority. One of the easiest wins is auditing backlink loss and reclaiming links that were removed or changed.

Kasra Dash:
And don’t forget indexing. You can have great backlinks that Google hasn’t even counted yet. Third-party tools might show them, but Google hasn’t crawled the page or picked up the link. Running your backlink profile through an indexing solution can bring those signals back into play quickly.

James Dooley:
Tiered link building is another thing people ignore. They’ll spend hundreds on a guest post or digital PR link, but that page itself has no internal links or backlinks. Links live on pages, not domains. Powering up strong links with tier twos can massively increase their impact.

Kasra Dash:
Then there’s traffic diversity. If all your traffic comes from Google search, you’re very exposed. Referral traffic from Reddit, Quora, YouTube, Pinterest, and email lists sends strong behavioural signals. Google watches how users interact, not just where they come from.

James Dooley:
And that leads straight into E-E-A-T. Even if people argue about whether it’s a direct ranking factor, real businesses naturally align with it. About pages, team pages, contact details, reviews, awards—these all reinforce trust. Off-page signals matter too, like unlinked brand mentions, PR, and authority references.

Kasra Dash:
E-E-A-T looks different depending on the site. A local business needs reviews and real-world trust. Ecommerce sites need platforms like Trustpilot. Affiliates need strong author credibility. It’s not one-size-fits-all.

James Dooley:
So if your site has dropped drastically in Google, it’s rarely just one thing. It’s usually a combination of links, content, technical issues, traffic signals, and trust. If anyone watching is dealing with this, leave a comment saying “SEO ranking drop” and we’ll take a look.

Kasra Dash:
That covers it from my side.

James Dooley:
Perfect.