Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley
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What Does “Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley” Talk About?
In this episode of the James Dooley Podcast, James Dooley and Karl Hudson tackle one of the most persistent myths in the SEO industry: that producing a high volume of blog posts is the key to ranking success. They explain why the old-school agency tactic of publishing five blogs a month as a retainer justification is outdated and potentially harmful. Instead, they advocate for building a contextual topical map, identifying content gaps, and prioritising quality optimisation of existing articles over churning out new ones. A central concept they introduce is the cost of information retrieval, which describes how low-traffic, unfocused content forces Google to spend more crawl budget, indexing resources, and storage on pages that contribute nothing to a site's authority.
The conversation gets highly practical as both hosts walk through actionable techniques for improving SEO performance without adding more content. James explains how repositioning headings by relevance, adding entities, synonyms, and hyponyms, and improving semantic triples can move rankings on existing pages. Karl adds a technical dimension by discussing how server log analysis tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and JetOctopus can reveal which pages Googlebot visits most frequently, creating strategic opportunities to attach the most relevant internal links. They also address the relationship between backlinks and site health, stressing that technical SEO, topical authority, and internal linking architecture must all be sound before link building delivers its full value.
“Writing content that gets no traffic harms your site because it increases Google's cost to crawl and store it.”
— James Dooley
Who Are the Guests on “Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley”?
James Dooley is an SEO expert and entrepreneur widely recognised in the digital marketing industry for his results-driven, no-nonsense approach to search engine optimisation. He is known for focusing on topical authority, internal linking strategy, and the holistic health of a website rather than superficial vanity metrics. In this episode, James brings deep practical knowledge about crawl efficiency, content pruning, and why the fundamentals of technical SEO must be aligned before link building can deliver its full impact.
Karl Hudson is an SEO specialist who frequently collaborates with James Dooley to break down advanced SEO concepts for business owners and practitioners. Karl brings a strong technical perspective to the conversation, particularly around crawl budget analysis and how tools like JetOctopus and Sitebulb can expose critical opportunities in internal linking architecture. Together, the two hosts complement each other well, blending strategic content thinking with hands-on technical SEO execution.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Publishing high volumes of low-quality blog content can actively harm SEO by increasing Google's crawl and indexing costs without delivering meaningful topical authority.
- A contextual topical map should guide content decisions, ensuring every page reinforces the site's core niche rather than diluting it with off-topic or redundant posts.
- Optimising and improving existing articles using Search Console data, competitor analysis, and stronger semantic associations often delivers better results than writing new content.
- Server log analysis tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and JetOctopus can identify pages crawled frequently by Googlebot, which represent prime opportunities for strategic internal link placement.
- All SEO pillars — technical health, content quality, topical authority, internal linking, and backlinks — must work together, as links alone cannot compensate for underlying site issues.
“Instead of writing two new articles, go optimise two old articles with potential. Look at Search Console for missed questions. Look at what competitors include. Add entities, synonyms and hyponyms.”
— James Dooley
Is “Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to because it directly challenges one of the most commonly sold SEO services — the monthly blog retainer — and replaces it with a more strategic, evidence-based framework. James and Karl do not just criticise outdated practices; they provide specific, actionable alternatives such as building topical maps, pruning underperforming pages, restructuring headings for relevance, and leveraging crawl data to prioritise internal linking. The discussion of information retrieval cost is particularly illuminating for anyone who has wondered why a large content archive sometimes correlates with weaker rather than stronger rankings.
What makes this episode especially valuable is the way it connects content strategy with technical SEO in a way that is rarely explained so clearly. The insight that repositioning a more relevant H2 higher up in a page can move rankings, or that pages crawled once every few months could be revitalised simply by attaching strong internal links, are the kinds of practical details that practitioners can apply immediately. Whether you are managing your own website or advising clients, the frameworks discussed here offer a smarter path to sustainable SEO growth than the publish-more approach still promoted by many agencies.
Who Should Listen to “Keep Blogging or Lose SEO Rankings? | James Dooley”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Business owners who have been sold monthly blogging retainers and want to understand whether they are getting genuine value from their SEO investment.
- SEO practitioners and digital marketers looking to move beyond volume-based content strategies toward more advanced topical authority and crawl optimisation techniques.
- Content managers and website editors who want to know how to improve existing articles using semantic optimisation, heading restructuring, and Search Console insights.
- Entrepreneurs and site owners who have been hit by Google helpful content updates and need a clear framework for bringing their site back to core focus and recovering rankings.
Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?
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What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The breakdown of information retrieval cost finally made sense of why my large blog archive was dragging down my rankings instead of helping them. James and Karl gave me a completely different way to think about content strategy, and I immediately went into Search Console to find pages worth optimising rather than writing new ones.”
“I loved how practical this episode was. The tip about using Screaming Frog or JetOctopus to find pages Googlebot visits most and then attaching your strongest internal links to them is something I implemented the same day. Simple, logical, and something no agency had ever mentioned to me.”
“As someone who was paying an agency for five blogs a month, this episode was a wake-up call. James calling it an old-school tactic used to justify retainers stung a little, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. The focus on topical maps and pruning weak content has already changed how I brief my team.”
James Dooley: The question is how important blogging is for SEO. I would produce you five blogs a month. Really did I write that? Yeah sorry. That's an old school content myth. Don't just write content for the sake of writing content. People are writing too much content. You need to make sure you've got the most relevant internal links. It's a very old school SEO agency tactic just to get paid. I think Karl is going to come back and say you need more links. Karl Hudson: So here's one of the questions we've been asked and it's an important one. How important is it to keep up the blogging for SEO? This is quite an old concept. Way back in the day you would knock out blogs and SEO agencies still tell business owners they will produce five blogs a month. That's an old school concept. What we prefer to do is look at the site as a whole and the niche as a whole. We work out a contextual map and check if you are covering all the topics in that map. If you're not, you have work to do. That doesn't necessarily mean writing blogs. It could be creating power pages focused on specific niche topics. Eventually it becomes about editing, improving and progressive optimisation. James Dooley: On that point about how many blogs you need to do a day or a week. That's not how it works. It's an old SEO agency myth used to justify retainers. One blog and one backlink a week. You might already have enough links. You might already have enough blogs. It might actually be about pruning some of the blogs you have. We do that a lot. I proactively look for sites with three thousand pages where the competition has two hundred and fifty. They have been told to publish two blogs a day and hired two full time writers. That is blogging for the sake of blogging. There is a concept called the cost of information retrieval. Writing content that gets no traffic harms your site because it increases Google's cost to crawl and store it. Karl Hudson: You're essentially trying to make your website lean with the best information available. More pages means more crawl cost. More indexing cost. More storage cost for Google. You want the most valuable pages, not the most pages. James Dooley: I'm obsessed with making sure you cover the topic in full with a proper topical map. Don't write content for the sake of writing it. It has to get impressions or clicks or feed information into Google's understanding of your expertise. Not every blog needs traffic. Some pages exist for trust signals such as case studies or awards. But generally people are writing too much content. Especially now AI makes it easy. It's not quantity. It's quality. Instead of writing two new articles, go optimise two old articles with potential. Look at Search Console for missed questions. Look at what competitors include. Add entities, synonyms and hyponyms. Improve semantic triples so you can win featured snippets. Make headings clear question-and-answer structures. Order headings by relevance. Putting a more relevant H2 higher up in the macro content can move rankings. I've seen identical content improve just by repositioning headings. Karl Hudson: Something else people might not understand. If you load up Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or JetOctopus and see one page is visited far more by Googlebot, that is an important opportunity page. You should attach your most relevant internal links to it. It will get picked up faster and increase crawl rate for linked pages. Many times we find pages only crawled once every few months, while others are crawled daily but have no internal links. That's a huge opportunity. Link them properly and the whole site lifts. James Dooley: People think I'm going to say you need more links, but you need everything lined up before links give you their full value. Internal links leverage link power. It’s not just link building. Technical SEO, content quality, topical authority and internal linking all need to be right before backlinks deliver their full effect. We often check a site where someone says the links aren't working, and after twenty minutes of technical fixes the site jumps. Sometimes the SSL is broken or pages have run away. Links work. It's the site that doesn't. Karl Hudson: Technical is still fundamental. With AI content everywhere, technical SEO matters more than people want to admit. James Dooley: All pillars matter. Technical, content, topical authority, internal links, backlinks. Get them all right. Blogging just for the sake of it is outdated. Do less but higher quality. Aim for engagement, traffic diversity, a couple of links to each article and strong internal linking. Then the whole site lifts. If you were hit by helpful content updates it usually means you went too wide or too off topic. Bring the site back to its core focus. Do less content but higher quality. Don't expect instant movement. You usually need to wait for the next core update for reclassification. Karl Hudson: So yes blogging is important. Yes you need topical authority. But don't go too wide. Go quality over quantity. Leave any questions in the comments and we’ll answer anything specifically related to blogging for SEO.
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.