Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)
Listen on your favourite platform
| Platform | Link |
|---|---|
| YouTube | Listen on YouTube → |
What Does “Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)” Talk About?
This episode of the James Dooley Podcast features a focused conversation between James Dooley and Charles Floate on the often-overlooked practice of powering up backlinks after they have been built. Charles explains how link building agencies and their clients routinely leave significant value on the table by acquiring expensive links on high-authority sites like Forbes or The New York Times and then doing nothing to strengthen those links over time. The discussion covers how combining multiple signals, including traffic, social signals, internal links, and additional backlinks, over a period of 12 to 18 months can dramatically increase the effectiveness of any backlink.
The episode also digs into the topic of nofollow links and whether they can still pass value. Charles explains that Google changed its treatment of nofollow links in 2018, moving from a strict directive to a hint directive, meaning value can now flow through nofollow links if surrounding trust signals are present. The conversation then shifts to tier two link building strategy, with Charles emphasizing that contextual relevance is the primary concern at tier two. He references Google patents that suggest around 25 words on either side of an anchor text need to be contextually relevant for a link to properly pass relevance and value. Traditional web 2.0 spam tactics at tier two are largely neutralized by Google today, making a coordinated, multi-signal approach the more effective path forward.
“There is a massive amount of money being left on the table by link building agencies and clients that build links and then do absolutely nothing after the fact.”
— Charles Floate
Who Are the Guests on “Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
James Dooley is an experienced SEO professional and agency owner known for his work in link building, entity SEO, and digital marketing strategy. He runs PressWhizz and has built a reputation for sharing practical, advanced SEO knowledge through his podcast series, which covers topics ranging from traditional link building to ranking in large language models and AI visibility.
Charles Floate is a well-known figure in the SEO industry with deep expertise in link building, tiered link structures, and backlink activation strategies. He brings a technical and data-informed perspective to SEO, drawing on experience working with clients who invest heavily in link acquisition and discussing how to maximize the return on that investment through coordinated signal building over time.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Building a high-authority backlink and leaving it without additional signals is a missed opportunity, as ongoing traffic, social signals, and supporting links can significantly increase a link's effectiveness over 12 to 18 months.
- Google changed its treatment of nofollow links in 2018 from a strict directive to a hint directive, meaning nofollow links can now pass value if the page has sufficient trust signals such as traffic, backlinks, and social signals.
- Traditional tier two link building using bulk web 2.0 spam is largely neutralized by Google today, making a coordinated multi-signal approach far more effective than simply blasting low-quality links at tier one backlinks.
- Contextual relevance is the primary concern at tier two, with Google patents suggesting that approximately 25 words on either side of an anchor text need to make contextual sense for a link to properly pass relevance and value.
- Overlapping multiple signals simultaneously, including traffic, social signals, contextual links, and internal links, creates a combined impact that is far greater than any single signal applied in isolation.
“If you are coordinated and you overlap different signals such as traffic, social signals, links and internal links pointing towards that backlink, then all of those combined can have a much larger impact.”
— Charles Floate
Is “Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to for anyone who invests money in link building and wants to understand how to get more from existing backlinks rather than simply acquiring new ones. Charles Floate gives a clear, practical breakdown of why most agencies stop at link acquisition and how that leaves enormous value untouched. The discussion of nofollow link activation alone is useful, as many SEOs still operate under the pre-2018 assumption that nofollow links contribute nothing, which Charles directly challenges with specific reference to Google's change in policy.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is its specificity. Charles does not speak in vague generalities but references Google patents, timelines, and concrete signal types that can be actioned immediately. The distinction between spammy tier two tactics that no longer work and a coordinated multi-signal strategy that does is clearly explained, making this a practical guide rather than a theoretical overview. For agencies managing link building campaigns or clients spending significant budgets on link acquisition, the insights here could meaningfully change how they approach post-build strategy.
Who Should Listen to “Powering Up Your Backlinks | Tier 2s or Virality Traffic (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
This episode is ideal for:
- SEO professionals and link builders who want to extract more value from existing backlink profiles
- Digital marketing agency owners looking to improve the ROI of client link building campaigns
- Content marketers and website owners who have invested in guest posts or editorial placements and want to maximize their impact
- Advanced SEO practitioners interested in the technical details of nofollow link activation, Google hint directives, and tiered link building strategies
Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?
You can listen to James Dooley Podcast on all major podcast platforms:
- Apple Podcasts – Search for “James Dooley Podcast” in the Podcasts app
- Spotify – Available on Spotify for free
- Amazon Music / Audible – Listen through your Amazon account
- Overcast – For iOS users who prefer a dedicated podcast app
- Pocket Casts – Cross-platform podcast player
You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/james-dooley-podcast
What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The breakdown of nofollow links as hint directives rather than strict directives was genuinely eye-opening. I had no idea Google made that change back in 2018 and Charles explained exactly what conditions need to be met for value to flow through. Immediately useful.”
“I appreciated how specific Charles was about tier two relevance, especially referencing the 25 words either side of an anchor text from Google patents. This is the kind of granular detail you rarely get from SEO content online. Short episode but packed with actionable insight.”
“The point about expensive links on sites like Forbes just being left to rot really hit home. We have been doing exactly that with client campaigns. Charles and James made a compelling case for treating backlink activation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time task.”
James Dooley is joined by Charles Floate to discuss powering up backlinks, tier two link building and activating the full value of backlink profiles. The discussion covers guest posting, entity stacking, backlink activation, social signals, viral traffic, contextual relevance and the future of tier two SEO strategies.
Charles Floate explains why many SEO agencies waste money by building backlinks and failing to strengthen them afterwards. The episode explores how traffic, internal links, social signals and contextual relevance can amplify backlink effectiveness over time. Topics include nofollow link activation, Google hint directives, backlink relevancy, tiered link building and why low-quality web 2.0 spam no longer works in modern SEO.
James Dooley: Powering up your backlinks.
Today I'm joined with Charles Floate and we're going to be talking about tier two backlinks or sending viral traffic through to your backlinks. Obviously you've grown a huge agency with PressWhizz doing a lot of different guest posting, different types of links, entity stacking and stuff like that. Charles Floate, how important is powering up backlinks?
Charles Floate: Number one, I think there is a massive amount of money being left on the table by link building agencies and clients that build links and then do absolutely nothing after the fact.
You might go and build a guest post on Forbes or even get featured in The New York Times. It costs a lot of money to acquire that link initially and then afterwards it is just left to rot. There is a massive opportunity if you can continually improve the power, relevance and supporting signals around those backlinks. Over 12 or 18 months, if you can build additional links, send social signals and send traffic through to that backlink, it should become far more effective than just leaving it alone. There are two sides to this though. Traditional tier two link building where people spam web 2.0 links at a backlink is mostly going to get neutralised now. If Google suddenly sees a thousand web 2.0 links appearing in a week, it is just going to neutralise them. However, if you are coordinated and you overlap different signals such as traffic, social signals, links and internal links pointing towards that backlink, then all of those combined can have a much larger impact.
James Dooley: So if you're looking to power up your backlinks, would you only focus on dofollow backlinks or would you also activate nofollow links as well?
Charles Floate: One hundred percent you can activate nofollow links and they can still pass value.
Back in 2018, Google changed nofollow from being a strict directive to becoming a hint directive. Before that, nofollow meant absolutely no link equity could pass through. Now it can pass value, but there needs to be a reason for Google to trust that link. Does the page itself have backlinks? Does it have traffic? Does it have social signals? Does it have internal links? All of those things can help activate the nofollow link and allow value to flow through it.
James Dooley: With regards to powering up links, if you've got tier one backlinks pointing at your money site and then tier two links pointing at those tier one links, are you focused more on relevance or raw power at tier two?
Charles Floate: We are mostly concerned with contextual relevance.
That means the surrounding text around the anchor text linking to the tier one backlink needs to make sense. You cannot have a blog post about car washes linking to a pet guide. At minimum, the surrounding context needs to be relevant. Google patents mention around 25 words either side of the anchor text needing to make contextual sense for the link to properly pass relevance and value onwards.
James Dooley: Charles Floate, it has been an absolute pleasure.
We hope everyone enjoys the podcast series because we are covering a lot of different SEO topics including ranking in LLMs, AI visibility and the best SEO strategies working today. This episode was all about powering up your backlinks and activating the real power of your backlink profile.
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.