A graph $G$ is weakly $γ$-closed if every induced subgraph of $G$ contains one vertex $v$ such that for each non-neighbor $u$ of $v$ it holds that $|N(u)\cap N(v)|<γ$. The weak closure $γ(G)$ of a graph, recently introduced by Fox et al. [SIAM J. Comp. 2020], is the smallest number such that $G$ is weakly $γ$-closed. This graph parameter is never larger than the degeneracy (plus one) and can be significantly smaller. Extending the work of Fox et al. [SIAM J. Comp. 2020] on clique enumeration, we show that several problems related to finding dense subgraphs, such as the enumeration of bicliques and $s$-plexes, are fixed-parameter tractable with respect to $γ(G)$. Moreover, we show that the problem of determining whether a weakly $γ$-closed graph $G$ has a subgraph on at least $k$ vertices that belongs to a graph class $\mathcal{G}$ which is closed under taking subgraphs admits a kernel with at most $γk^2$ vertices. Finally, we provide fixed-parameter algorithms for Independent Dominating Set and Dominating Clique when parameterized by $γ+k$ where $k$ is the solution size.