Show notes
E1131: James Dooley and David G Quaid join me for a three-hour discussion about the SEO "best practices" they ignore, the advice they think gets repeated without enough testing, and what they really look at when trying to rank websites. We start with a simple question: which accepted SEO practices do you not follow? That turns into a much broader discussion about how Google works, why SEO checklists often fail, and why tactics that work on a large authority site can be useless on a new domain. James and David agree on a core principle throughout the episode: test what works, understand why it works, and avoid treating SEO advice as universal. We get into: - Why James largely ignores standard SEO best practices and relies on in-house testing instead - Why doing "more SEO" does not necessarily produce better rankings - How adding more pages can create cannibalization instead of improving topical authority - Examples of pages ranking with almost no content - James' story of ranking #1 with a page that was accidentally published before the content was written - Why a technically poor website with an unnatural links penalty could still rank for extremely competitive terms - The relationship between authority, relevance, traffic and rankings - Whether Google actually understands content quality in the way many SEOs assume - Why "just write good content" is incomplete SEO advice - EEAT and what James and David believe it does and does not affect - Why simply adding author bios is unlikely to fix a struggling website - Google quality raters, RaterHub and manual transparency actions - When EEAT considerations may matter more for finance, gambling, medical and other high-consequence searches - Why YMYL may need to be considered at the query level rather than treating an entire industry the same way - Schema: where it is necessary and where adding more schema probably will not improve rankings - Why job, flight, hotel and similar structured search features are different from ordinary webpages - Backlinks, PageRank and why authority still matters - Why comparing backlink counts alone can give you the wrong conclusion - Branded search and whether increased branded searches can influence broader rankings - Using search behavior, autocomplete and suggested searches to strengthen associations between a brand and a topic - Click-through rate and how James approaches CTR testing - Why advice from SEOs working on huge brands may not translate to a brand-new website - Exact-match domains and partial-match domains - Why both James and David dislike having a single website as the only source of SEO traffic - Using multiple sites to reduce single points of failure - How James evaluates aged and expired domains using data from multiple SEO tools instead of relying on DR or DA alone - Why looking at trends and historical data matters more than blindly trusting a single authority metric - Contextual bridging and how to move from easier topics into increasingly competitive search terms - Why topical relevance determines which keywords a website realistically has the authority to target - How Google Search Console can reveal search demand that traditional keyword tools miss - Ranking social profiles and videos in Google - SEO in an AI and LLM-driven search environment - Why David believes SEO remains one of the best ways to reach someone at the exact moment they are looking for something A recurring theme in this conversation is that SEO is contextual. A tactic can be useful on one site and pointless on another. Schema can be required for one search feature and irrelevant to another. An author bio can matter in a transparency review without being the reason a normal commercial page ranks. A change that produces huge results across one million pages may have almost no practical value for a small local business. Instead of building SEO around a checklist, James and David argue for understanding the underlying system: relevance, authority, search behavior, internal relationships between pages, external links and real-world testing. This is the longest conversation I've recorded, and we had enough time to get past the usual surface-level SEO arguments and into the reasoning behind how both James and David actually approach ranking websites. ⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/ ⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley ⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/ ⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/ ⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/ ⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/ 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Best Practices Debate 01:44 Checklist SEO Myths 04:15 Authority Over Quality 06:20 SEO Case Studies 12:02 Content Quality Reality 21:21 EEAT Framework Clash 24:23 Why EEAT Falls Apart 32:25 Branded Search Signals 35:58 Brands Win on CTR 36:53 Autosuggest Brand Seeding 38:06 CTR Manipulation Done Right 39:56 Real Case Study EMD Launch 42:42 EEAT Myths vs Reality 44:02 RaterHub and Transparency Penalties 48:18 When EEAT Applies YMYL 01:01:53 Schema When It Matters 01:08:14 FAQ Schema and PAA Pages 01:12:40 Relevance Times Authority Framework 01:14:32 CTR Weakens Authority 01:15:19 Stop Anthropomorphizing Google 01:16:19 Bad Advice From Big Brands 01:20:07 Tribalism And Schema Wars 01:23:16 Debate Culture And Testing 01:26:47 CDN Fight And Ego 01:30:04 Penalties And Core Updates 01:31:35 Google Engineering Under Hood 01:38:07 Intent Shifts And Traffic Tiers 01:39:48 Listicles And SEO Creativity 01:42:26 LLMs Feed On Lists 01:53:58 AI Mode And Ad Economics 01:56:20 Index Moat And AI Race 02:00:03 Why Google Still Wins 02:00:42 Search Is Not The Real Battle 02:01:43 LLMs Need New Vectors 02:03:28 Best Time For SEO 02:05:09 SEO Demand From CEOs 02:07:36 AI Makes Building Easy 02:10:05 SEO Interest Explodes 02:11:22 Brand Building Myth 02:13:18 Chunking For AI Overviews 02:14:31 Using Every Tool 02:17:55 No Perfect Tool Stack 02:20:35 Data Driven Domain Buying 02:24:20 LLM Citations For Outreach 02:27:58 EMDs To Reduce Risk 02:31:59 Republish And Reuse Content 02:33:18 Steal Winning Slugs 02:35:11 Cheap Keyword Modifier 02:35:46 Search Console Goldmine 02:37:05 Social Linking Risks 02:39:56 Google As Traffic Engine 02:43:34 Tools Cost And Trials 02:47:17 Starting From Zero 02:51:16 Blogspot Ranking Playbook 02:54:16 Topical Bridging Explained 03:00:17 Strategy Over Keywords 03:04:05 Thanks And Wrap The Edward Show. 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