Jaume Ros Interviews James Dooley Entrepreneur | Jaume Ros Podcast

James Dooley : There are certain industries where you can make 100% ROI—literally within 12 months you’ve got your money back, and then you’ve got a rental property for three, four, even five thousand pounds a month. Our R&D team is consistently breaking the SEO boundaries, pushing how far we can build links and how aggressively we can build links. Especially in the live casino industry—you could be earning three, four, even five hundred thousand a month on a site that doesn’t look like it’s even doing that much. Jaume Ros: What do you think everyone is doing wrong with their link building? James Dooley: People are obsessed with thinking that relevance, traffic, and DR are the holy grail of link building. Jaume Ros: If you had a brand new site, what are the three main things—the first things—you’re doing the minute you create your first article? James Dooley: As long as it’s loosely relevant to where it was, you’ll start getting traffic pretty much from day one. Jaume Ros: Alright James, thanks so much for taking the time to join me on my channel today. First of all, I have a little story. We both attended the Birmingham conference that Charles sets up, and I was doing a vlog where I tried to get as many SEO nuggets as possible from all the big guys. And absolutely everyone said I needed to speak to two people: Mads Singers And you—because everyone said you’re one of the most successful SEOs they’ve ever been around. So it’s really cool to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today, and where are you based right now? James Dooley: I’m based in Manchester. I travel quite a lot, maybe one to two weeks here and there. Just came back from Turkey with the family, and I’m heading to Chiang Mai. Are you going? Jaume Ros: Yeah, I’ll be there. Amazing! So—you’re involved in an insane number of businesses and different ventures. I found a list online, I think on FatRank, showing like 24 different things you do. We can’t talk about them all, but I want to get to the beginning: How did you get started in SEO? What was your first success, and what were you doing before? James Dooley: Before SEO I was a project manager in the construction industry. I realized quickly that we needed a consistent flow of quality inquiries, but we weren’t getting inbound leads and everything felt like pushing water uphill. We tried lead generation companies—they were terrible. We built our own site—it didn’t rank. And everyone seemed obsessed with impressions, clicks, retweets… all that vanity stuff. The only thing I cared about was ROI. How many times did the phone ring? What was the conversion rate? What did we make? Over the first 18 months, we dabbled in everything—social media, PPC, SEO. Eventually we realized SEO was the most profitable because once you rank, the costs are low. That’s when we doubled down. Networking, testing, and finally creating our R&D team were the real game changers. Once we started testing aggressively, everything accelerated. Jaume Ros: I heard your first big move was a rank-and-rent model where you blanketed the first page with your own websites. Can you talk about that? James Dooley: Actually, it started with our own sites. We wanted to grow the construction company, so we ranked multiple sites for our keywords. Then we realized we could shoulder into neighboring niches—landscaping, fencing, groundwork—and get those partners more work, which got us more work. That naturally evolved into rank and rent. Today we’re in over 800 industries, but we never planned to start that way—it just grew as ROI became obvious. Jaume Ros: So the first million the business made—that came from construction? James Dooley: Yes. The first million came from construction. But four years in, we realized we were making more money from lead generation than construction itself. So we flipped the whole model. The construction company grew from £500,000 a year to £8 million a year, and we still own it. Jaume Ros: For someone who’s a complete beginner—can you break down what rank and rent is today? James Dooley: Rank and rent is simple: You build a website → you rank it → you get inquiries → then you rent the site to a company for a fixed fee. We’ve taken it further: we build branded sites for clients that we own and give them exclusive leads. They don’t pay for content, links, videos, images—nothing. Once they’re happy, they rent it from us for a fixed monthly rate. Jaume Ros: Do you ever take equity instead of rent? James Dooley: Every niche is different. Some clients start with paying per lead. After 6–12 months, many want a fixed rate. But after years of working with a company, some get scared because their whole business relies on our leads. Many offer us 25% of their business so we never switch them off. So yes—now we own equity in many real-world businesses too. Didn’t plan that originally. Jaume Ros: When I started SEO, I ranked a fake dentist website and contacted clinics, but many didn’t believe the leads were real. One tried to sue me! How do you avoid coming across as a scam? James Dooley: Build directories instead of fake profiles. List the top providers, collect leads legitimately, distribute them, build trust, then build relationships. Don’t fake addresses, GMBs, or documents—it’s fraud and it’ll get you nailed eventually. Jaume Ros: What is your day-to-day like now? James Dooley: Wake up at 5 AM, get three hours of deep work in, then the team arrives. I don’t run day-to-day tasks—I oversee direction, ensure partners and managers are aligned, and build businesses around high-performing team members. We have 12 directors, each with up to 10 VAs. We’ve also invested in and built businesses like AutoBlogging.ai, SearchHero, EAT SEO, BacklinkDoctor, and more. Jaume Ros: Let’s talk about your testing team. How did that start, and what do they test? James Dooley: It started because I was annoyed with SEO “gurus” giving 2 minutes of value in a 1-hour sales pitch. I followed their advice and failed repeatedly. So we built a team to test everything: – How fast can you push links? – How many articles per day break a site? – Anchor text thresholds – Content velocity thresholds – Penalty recovery – Whether E-E-A-T even mattered Turns out E-E-A-T mattered massively—especially after we got manual transparency penalties. Our testing team pushes everything to the limit so we know the boundaries. Jaume Ros: What industry has the highest ROI? James Dooley: Local rank and rent caps at £3–5K a month per site. iGaming—slots, bingo, casino—can make £300K–£500K a month. Finance is huge too. Our call center in Manchester (100 staff) massively boosts hot lead value—sometimes £1K+ per hot lead. AI/SaaS businesses also have insane margins—80%+ net profit. Jaume Ros: What’s your greatest SEO win? James Dooley: We have a page earning nearly six figures a month, ranking for 1,000+ lucrative keywords. But generally, I don’t chase hero keywords—I build topical authority so everything rises. Jaume Ros: In the iGaming industry, do you run casinos or just affiliate sites? James Dooley: Affiliate sites only. My partner Kyle runs actual casinos. I send players and get £200 per player + 4% rev share on lifetime losses. Jaume Ros: Given how well you rank sites, did you ever think of building your own real-world service company? James Dooley: Originally no, but clients eventually offered equity because their entire business depended on us. Now we own partial stakes in many real-world service businesses. Jaume Ros: What is everyone doing wrong in link building? James Dooley: They worship DR, relevance, and traffic. But they ignore: – Trust – Toxicity – Link neighborhoods – Toxicity thresholds – Anchor ratios – Missing E-E-A-T mentions across the internet Backlinks should reinforce your expertise off-site, not just on your website. Jaume Ros: AI content—are you using it? James Dooley: For supporting articles, yes—500 posts/day in testing. For money pages, no—we still use human writers because conversion requires persuasion and personality. In 6 months, though, I might change my mind. Jaume Ros: Have the latest algorithm updates hit your sites? James Dooley: Two big sites got hit hard. Many others with outdated content skyrocketed. It’s the strangest update I’ve ever seen. I think Google added wildcard diversity filters to avoid SERP sameness. Some of the results make no sense. I suspect they’ll have to roll it back. Jaume Ros: For a brand new site, what are the first three things you do? James Dooley: Set up real business fundamentals—address, phone, email, socials, brand signals. Build ~50 pages targeting very low difficulty keywords (KD 1–5). Build branded/naked URL foundational links—citations, forums, social profiles. And don’t expect success in two weeks. Plan for 12 months. Jaume Ros: If you had to start over from scratch with no money, what would you do? James Dooley: Local SEO → pick a service niche, build a 50-location mini-site, find one client, charge £300–£500/month. You can get to £2–3K/month quickly. Jaume Ros: And with £20K capital? James Dooley: Buy an aged domain from Odis Global. Build an appliance repair + display ads + affiliate hybrid model. Monetize: – Affiliate – Lead gen – Display ads – Extended warranty offers You can make money from day one. Jaume Ros: Future of SEO with SGE—still bullish? James Dooley: Yes, for bottom-of-the-funnel queries. Top-of-the-funnel informational sites will be hammered. But Google must send traffic to sites—they make billions from AdSense. So they’ll guide users down the funnel until ads appear. SEO isn’t dead—it’s shifting. Jaume Ros: Before we wrap up, tell us about your horse racing business. James Dooley: Four years ago, after ensuring financial freedom for my family, I wanted something meaningful to share with my mum and brothers. We all love horse racing. Started with one horse, now we own 14. We’ve raced globally—Qatar, Dubai, Hong Kong. It’s brought incredible memories. Jaume Ros: Amazing. Where can people find you? James Dooley:

Twitter: @JamesDooley

Instagram: @JamesDooley

Website: JamesDooley.com – all socials and YouTube are linked there.