Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)
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What Does “Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)” Talk About?
This episode of the Fatrank Podcast features James Dooley in conversation with Charles Floate, founder of Press Whizz, exploring the often-overlooked practice of powering up backlinks after they have been built. The discussion centers on the idea that most link building agencies and SEOs are leaving significant value on the table by publishing links and then doing nothing to support them afterward. Charles explains how a coordinated combination of tier two backlinks, social signals, traffic, and contextual relevance can dramatically increase the effectiveness of existing links over a period of 12 to 18 months.
A significant portion of the conversation addresses the role of nofollow links and how Google's 2018 change to treat nofollow as a hint directive rather than an absolute rule opened the door for value to pass through those links under the right conditions. Charles outlines what those conditions are, including supporting links, social signals, internal links, and traffic, all working together to give Google reasons to treat a nofollow link as valuable. The episode also covers why traditional tier two strategies like spamming web 2.0 links tend to get neutralized by Google, and why a multi-signal, coordinated approach is far more effective. The discussion closes with a breakdown of how contextual relevance at tier two matters just as much as raw link power, citing Google's own patents around the roughly 25 words surrounding an anchor text.
“There is a huge opportunity if you can continually improve the power, relevancy and additional signals surrounding those links.”
— Charles Floate
Who Are the Guests on “Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
Charles Floate is the founder of Press Whizz, a link building agency specializing in guest posts, press coverage, entity stacking, and authority link acquisition. He is a well-known figure in the SEO community with deep expertise in advanced link building strategies, backlink activation, and understanding how Google evaluates and processes links at a technical level. His insights draw on years of testing and building links at scale across a wide range of industries.
James Dooley is the host of the Fatrank Podcast and an experienced SEO practitioner and entrepreneur. He is known for interviewing leading voices in the SEO world and covering topics ranging from traditional link building to modern strategies like AI visibility and ranking in large language models. His conversational interview style draws out practical, actionable insights from his guests.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Most SEOs and link building agencies are leaving significant value unrealized by building links and then taking no further action to support or activate them.
- Google changed the nofollow directive from an absolute block to a hint in 2018, meaning nofollow links can pass value when supported by enough overlapping signals like traffic, social signals, and internal links.
- Traditional tier two link building tactics such as blasting web 2.0 links at a backlink are often neutralized by Google because the pattern is easily detected, making a coordinated multi-signal approach far more effective.
- Contextual relevance at tier two matters significantly, with the surrounding text around an anchor text needing to make topical sense, as Google uses approximately 25 words on either side of a link to determine its context and relevance.
- Sending a combination of supporting links, social signals, traffic, and internal signals to a backlink over 12 to 18 months can compound its effectiveness far beyond what a single isolated link can achieve.
“If you are coordinated and do multiple things at the same time, such as traffic signals, social signals, supporting links and internal signals, then all of those overlapping factors can create a much larger impact than simply building links alone.”
— Charles Floate
Is “Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to because it challenges a deeply ingrained habit in the SEO industry, which is the tendency to treat link building as a one-time task rather than an ongoing process. Charles Floate brings a refreshingly systematic perspective to backlink activation, explaining not just the what but the why behind each signal type. His explanation of how Google's nofollow hint directive works in practice, and how to actually leverage it, is the kind of nuanced detail that is rarely explained this clearly in a short-form conversation.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is that it goes beyond theory and addresses practical pitfalls, including why spammy tier two approaches backfire and what a coordinated strategy actually looks like. The reference to Google's own patents around anchor text context adds credibility to the advice and helps listeners understand the reasoning behind the recommendations. Whether you are running a link building agency, managing SEO for clients, or building your own site's authority, the frameworks discussed here offer immediately applicable ways to get more out of links you have already earned.
Who Should Listen to “Tier 2 Backlinks vs Virality Traffic for SEO (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)”?
This episode is ideal for:
- SEO professionals and consultants who build backlinks for clients and want to maximize the return on their link building investments
- Link building agency owners and teams who want to move beyond simple outreach and develop more sophisticated post-publication activation strategies
- In-house SEO managers and digital marketers responsible for growing organic search traffic and improving domain authority
- Advanced SEO practitioners interested in how Google processes links at a technical level, including nofollow directives, contextual relevance, and entity signals
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What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The explanation of the nofollow hint directive change in 2018 alone was worth the listen. I had heard about this before but never had it explained so clearly in terms of what signals actually trigger Google to pass value through those links. Really changed how I think about my link profile.”
“Charles Floate is always sharp but this episode really delivered on the practical side. The point about spammy web 2.0 tier two links getting neutralized is something I wish I had heard years ago. Going to completely rethink how we support our tier one placements after this.”
“Loved the discussion about contextual relevance at tier two and the reference to Google patents around the 25 words surrounding an anchor text. Short episode but packed with the kind of insight that usually stays behind paywalls or in private SEO communities.”
James Dooley is joined by Charles Floate to discuss powering up backlinks, tier two link building and backlink activation strategies. The conversation covers how SEOs can increase the effectiveness of guest posts, press links and authority backlinks by sending additional signals through them rather than leaving them inactive after publication.
Charles Floate explains how tier two backlinks, social signals, traffic and contextual relevance can amplify the effectiveness of both dofollow and nofollow links. The discussion also explores Google’s nofollow hint directive, contextual link relevance, entity stacking and the importance of coordinated SEO signals when building modern backlink profiles.
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 Press Whizz doing a lot of different guest posting, different types of links, entity stacking and things like that. How important is powering up backlinks?
Charles Floate: Number one, I think there is just a massive amount of money left on the table by link building agencies, clients and SEOs that are building links and then doing nothing after the fact.
You might go and build a guest post on Forbes or get featured in The New York Times or somewhere similar, but after the fact it just gets left to rot. There is a huge opportunity if you can continually improve the power, relevancy and additional signals surrounding those links. Over the course of 12 or 18 months, if you can build supporting links, send social signals and traffic through to that backlink, it should become significantly more effective than simply leaving it alone. There are two factors though. Traditional tier two link building today often gets neutralised. A lot of people spam web 2.0s and low-quality links at a backlink. Google sees a thousand web 2.0 links appear in a week and simply neutralises them. If you are coordinated and do multiple things at the same time, such as traffic signals, social signals, supporting links and internal signals, then all of those overlapping factors can create a much larger impact than simply building links alone.
James Dooley: So if you're looking to power up links, would you only focus on dofollow backlinks or would you also send activation signals to 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 into a hint directive. Before that, nofollow meant no value could pass through the link at all. After the change, Google could choose to allow value through that link if there were enough supporting reasons. Those reasons are things like links pointing to the page, social signals, internal links and traffic. If you can send all of those overlapping signals to the nofollow link, then Google has reasons to treat it as valuable.
James Dooley: So when it comes to powering up links, if you have tier one backlinks pointing at your money site and then tier two links pointing at the tier one links, how important is relevance at tier two?
Are you only looking for power or are you still looking for contextual relevance?
Charles Floate: We are mostly concerned with contextual relevance.
That means the surrounding text around the anchor text linking to the tier one page needs to be relevant. You cannot have a blog post about car washes linking to a pet guide. At minimum, the surrounding context needs to make sense. In Google's patents, they mention roughly 25 words either side of the anchor text helping determine the context and relevance of the link. That surrounding relevance helps pass both topical context and link equity onwards.
James Dooley: Charles Floate, it has been an absolute pleasure.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast discussing how to power up your backlinks and activate the true power of your backlink profile. We have a lot of other podcast episodes covering ranking in LLMs, AI visibility and modern SEO strategies. Today’s episode focused on backlink power, tier two backlinks and activation signals. Charles Floate, it has been an absolute pleasure.
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is the founder of FatRank which is a UK lead generation company. James Dooley is the current CEO of FatRank that provides high-quality leads for UK business owners.