LinkDaddy - James Dooley Interviews Tony Peacock On Link Building Strategies

On this episode of the James Dooley Podcast, James Dooley sits down with link building veteran Tony Peacock (also known as “Link Daddy”) to unpack how location-independent online businesses work and how his Link Daddy service powers modern SEO. James Dooley and Tony Peacock explore building global remote teams, using virtual assistants across Russia, South Africa, the Philippines and beyond, and how to leverage tiered backlink campaigns for money sites, Google Business Profiles, images, and videos. They discuss using AI-driven, niche-relevant content, advanced indexing systems, press releases for brand authority, CTR manipulation with 4G mobile proxies, and strategic anchor text to improve local rankings and reputation management. Throughout the conversation, James Dooley draws on his own long-term collaboration with Tony Peacock and Link Daddy to show how a diversified backlink profile underpins sustainable rankings in competitive markets.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley:
Tony, also known as the Link Daddy – it’s great to catch up again. It’s been a while since we last spoke, but we’ve worked together for a long time. How are you doing?

Tony Peacock:
I’m doing well, thanks for asking.

James Dooley:
Where in the world are you based at the moment?

Tony Peacock:
I’m currently in Johannesburg. I lived in Russia for about ten years before moving here, and I really love it. My company is based in the US, so I earn in dollars, and the exchange rate here works very well. The cost of living is low – I’ve got a four-bedroom house with a pool, double garage, and plenty of space for around two thousand dollars a month, which would be far more expensive elsewhere.

James Dooley:
Nice setup. Do you have any staff based in South Africa? We use quite a few virtual assistants there and find the English level is very good.

Tony Peacock:
My partner is South African, but most of the team is international. I have one team member who’s Russian and lives in Georgia, and the rest of the staff are based in the Philippines.

James Dooley:
That makes sense. We’re similar in that respect. With an online business, you can operate from anywhere in the world as long as you’ve got a laptop and a solid internet connection. You can charge Western rates while building teams globally, as long as systems and processes are in place.

Tony Peacock:
Exactly. Before this, I was building fences and was completely tied to one location. Now I’m not location-dependent at all.

James Dooley:
Let’s get into LinkDaddy. A common question people ask is whether your backlinks can be used as tier one links or if they’re mainly for tier two.

Tony Peacock:
They can absolutely be used for tier one. In fact, most customers do exactly that. We offer different types of services, but the content quality is there for direct-to-money-site linking. I’ve been doing this since 2015, and with AI and our internal systems we now produce niche-relevant, unique content at scale. We see over a 70% indexing rate on tier one links.

James Dooley:
That lines up with how we use them. We send some links directly to money sites and others to power up guest posts, images, video rankings, Google Business Profiles, and even parasite SEO assets.

James Dooley:
On image rankings specifically, do you have a service designed just for that, or does image visibility mainly come as a side effect of press releases and authority links?

Tony Peacock:
I don’t have a service purely branded as image ranking, but images do benefit indirectly, especially through press releases. When your content and images land on sites like Yahoo or Business Insider, those domains are powerful and images can rank well in Google Image Search. We can link to any URL that can be linked to, including image URLs, but how many campaigns it takes depends entirely on the niche and competition.

James Dooley:
When you run press releases, do the images usually link back to the site, or are they mainly there for branding and authority flow?

Tony Peacock:
They’re mainly for branding. Most press release platforms don’t link directly from the image to your website. Clicking the image usually keeps the user on the publisher’s site, but the article itself contains links back to your website.

James Dooley:
That ties into conversion trade-offs, because those publisher pages aren’t built to convert traffic the way a business website is. In some cases, embedding or framing images hosted on your own site gives better control.

James Dooley:
What about video rankings? Are many people using your services to rank YouTube videos or appear in Google’s video results?

Tony Peacock:
Not a huge volume specifically for video rankings. I used to run a dedicated YouTube ranking system using logged-in YouTube accounts and 4G mobile proxies, and it worked extremely well, but it became too expensive to maintain. For YouTube, watch time from real logged-in accounts is the key factor. For Google search results, whether a video shows at all depends on whether Google views the keyword as video-relevant.

James Dooley:
So for something like “dentist Miami” or “roofing company Austin,” it’s almost impossible to force a video to rank.

Tony Peacock:
Exactly. But for more niche or technical queries, backlinks and embeds can help videos rank well.

James Dooley:
You previously mentioned using logged-in YouTube accounts, CTR and proxies. Was that full watch time and engagement?

Tony Peacock:
Yes. We had thousands of YouTube accounts with real-looking histories. The system searched for the keyword, clicked the video, and watched roughly 90% of it each time. They were real views – I even earned ad revenue by monetising some of those videos. But as proxy costs rose and YouTube tightened security, it became unsustainable.

James Dooley:
Do you still combine backlinks, embeds and CTR when trying to rank videos in Google?

Tony Peacock:
Yes, ideally it’s a mix of all three. And if CTR comes from real YouTube accounts with history, it’s even stronger.

James Dooley:
Let’s talk Google Business Profiles. Do many clients use your services specifically for map rankings?

Tony Peacock:
Yes, that’s very common. I developed a strategy that combines press releases with CTR manipulation. Instead of doing one press release for a major city, I recommend releasing content for surrounding smaller cities every 25 days. Each release includes images, a video embed, a Google Map embed and links back to the site. Even though the content eventually gets archived, the referring root domains remain, which is the key ranking factor.

James Dooley:
And CTR is layered on top of that?

Tony Peacock:
Exactly, but with branded search. When someone searches for a business name plus a location, Google sees that as a strong brand signal. After a press release mentions a business in a specific location, it makes sense that people would search for that brand there. We simulate that behaviour using 4G proxies, clicking the map, visiting the site and engaging naturally.

James Dooley:
And the CTR tool you use is CTR Booster?

Tony Peacock:
Yes. It was originally developed by Abbas Rajji and later improved by Garrett. I run it across multiple VPS setups with mobile proxies.

James Dooley:
On indexing, do you try to force index everything?

Tony Peacock:
No. We only index tier one links using our own proprietary system and see over 70% indexing. Press release links are left to index naturally, since Google chooses which versions to keep.

James Dooley:
What about your tooling for building and managing links?

Tony Peacock:
Money Robot is still our main automation engine, but we don’t use its content. We generate our own AI-based, niche-specific content with unique titles, images, videos, map embeds and varied layout. We also keep networks tightly niched, so roofing sites link to roofing sites, dental to dental, and so on. That’s a big reason our links index well.

James Dooley:
From our side, we also use your services for E-E-A-T, awards promotion, and reputation management. By powering up positive assets, we can push negative content down the SERPs.

Tony Peacock:
That works well. Press releases, branded links and tiered backlinks are ideal for strengthening positive properties and improving brand perception. It’s all about strategy and volume over time.

James Dooley:
We also stack your backlink campaigns with Google News articles. When we push dofollow links, CTR and social signals to a news article, it often triggers Top Stories and Google Discover exposure.

Tony Peacock:
Exactly. Once people start using creativity, backlinks become much more than just links.

James Dooley:
If someone wants to get started, where should they go?

Tony Peacock:
They can visit linkdaddy.com to see all services. They can book a call with me, or email [e-mail]
for recommendations. We also offer a done-for-you service starting at $500 a month with a three-month minimum.

James Dooley:
Perfect. We’ve used your services for rank and rent, local SEO, affiliates, images, videos, GMBs, Google News and more. The diversity and flexibility are powerful. Thanks for coming on, Tony.

Tony Peacock:
Thanks, James. It’s been a pleasure.