Chapter 23 — Exercises

Work these in order; they climb from recall to real judgment. You'll need a live browser and, ideally, a site you can inspect in Google Search Console (your own, your employer's, or a client's) — everything here uses free tools. Items marked with a dagger (†) have full worked solutions in Appendix — Answers to Selected Exercises; odd-numbered items are worked there too. Attempt every item before you look.

The through-line, in the spirit of the chapter: stop asking "how do I get a link?" and start asking "what have I made that deserves one, and who would need to reference it?"

A. Recall and vocabulary

Exercise 23.1 — Define link earning and link building in your own words, then finish this sentence: "Only earned links compound because ______."

Exercise 23.2 — What is a linkable asset? Give the one-question test from §23.2 that tells you whether a page is one.

Exercise 23.3 † — Distinguish digital PR from newsjacking in two sentences. What does newsjacking add that ordinary digital PR does not?

Exercise 23.4 — What was HARO, and what is true about it today that most SEO blog posts get wrong? Name two current platforms (or the social tag) that serve the same category.

Exercise 23.5 — Define outreach as the chapter uses it, and list the three qualifiers in that definition that separate it from spam.

Exercise 23.6 — In one sentence each, distinguish an editorial mention from an editorial link (Chapter 22). Why can a nofollowed editorial mention still be worth earning?

B. Applied reasoning

Exercise 23.7 † — Explain the phrase "citation obligation." Why does original data create one and a well-written how-to guide usually doesn't?

Exercise 23.8 — The chapter calls a linkable asset an "asset" and a mass-email campaign a "treadmill." Explain the difference using the idea of what happens after you stop working.

Exercise 23.9 — A developer on your team can build either (a) a blog post about "10 home-maintenance tips" or (b) a free "what-size furnace do I need?" calculator. Which is the better linkable asset, and give two reasons rooted in reuse and citation.

Exercise 23.10 † — Draw or describe the newsjacking window. Why is a rough, useful quote sent within the window worth more than a polished pitch sent two days later?

Exercise 23.11 — Why does the chapter insist that digital PR "with nothing to say is just noise"? What is the engine of almost all successful digital PR, and why must §23.2 come before §23.3?

Exercise 23.12 — Restate, in your own words, why blindly emailing 800 site owners "please add my link" fails twice (name both failure modes).

Exercise 23.13 — Explain why referring domains is a better health metric for link earning than raw backlink count. Use the "one site links you 100 times" example.

Exercise 23.14 † — Earned-link growth is described as "lumpy," not a smooth diagonal. Explain the typical shape over a year and why knowing the shape helps a strategist hold their nerve.

For each situation, name the most likely reason the effort isn't earning links, and the one change you'd make first. Some have more than one defensible answer — say why.

Exercise 23.15 † — A company published a genuinely thorough 5,000-word "definitive guide" to its topic nine months ago. It ranks decently but has earned almost no links. What's the most likely reason, and what would you check before concluding "guides don't earn links"?

Exercise 23.16 — A team ran a survey, published a "study," and pitched fifty journalists. Zero coverage. On inspection, the survey had 30 respondents and no stated methodology. Diagnose the failure and name the §23.7 risk it triggered.

Exercise 23.17 † — An outreach campaign sent 600 personalized-looking emails and got two replies, both asking for a payment to place the link. Is this campaign a success? Diagnose what went wrong at the strategy level, not the email level.

Exercise 23.18 — A business earned a link from a major news site and saw no ranking change. Give two separate, honest explanations (one about the link's attribute, one about causation/time) before assuming "links don't work."

Exercise 23.19 — A free tool earns steady traffic but almost no links. Someone proposes emailing 300 bloggers to ask for links to it. Propose a better first move that fits the "earn, don't ask" mindset.

D. On your own site (use a free tool)

Exercise 23.20 † — Open Google Search Console → Links → Top linked pages for a site you control. Record your single most-linked page and its rough link count. In one sentence, say what kind of asset it is and what that tells you to build more of. (If it's empty, that's a finding — write what it implies.)

Exercise 23.21 — In the same report, note your total linking sites (a rough referring-domain count) today, and set a 90-day reminder to check it again. Write your baseline number and the date. (This is the start of your link-earning measurement.)

Exercise 23.22 — Answer the citation-obligation question for your own business: what data, tool, or definitive resource could you publish that a writer in your field would have to reference? Write one concrete asset idea and the one proprietary vantage point that makes it yours.

Exercise 23.23 — Pick one real competitor. Using only free methods (a site: search, reading their site, a free-tier backlink lookup if you have one), find their single most-referenced page. What asset type is it, and could you make a better or more local version?

E. Read the report / rewrite the pitch

Exercise 23.24 † — Rewrite this outreach email so a busy local reporter would actually read it. State the three things you added and the one thing you removed.

"Hi Dear, I loved your article! I have a great resource that would be perfect for your readers. Would you consider adding a link to it? [homepage URL]. Thanks!"

Exercise 23.25 — Improve this answer to a journalist-request query. The request was: "Licensed HVAC pro to explain in plain English why heat pumps struggle below freezing — by 10am tomorrow, please include name, title, company."

"Our award-winning team has served the metro for decades with 5-star service. Heat pumps are a great, efficient choice for any home! Contact us today for a free quote. [homepage URL]."

Exercise 23.26 † — Interpret this report.

FIGURE E.1 — "Referring domains, 12 months"                 [constructed teaching example]
  Months 1–4: flat at ~15 referring domains.
  Month 5: jumps to ~34 (a cost-data report was published in month 5).
  Months 6–12: slow climb to ~46.
  Total backlinks reported: 5,200.

Why is the "5,200 total backlinks" number nearly meaningless next to the referring-domain trend? What does the shape of the referring-domain line tell you about what worked?

Exercise 23.27 — You're handed three linkable-asset ideas for a plumbing company: (a) "10 plumbing tips," (b) a "local water-hardness map by neighborhood, from our own service data," (c) a reprint of a manufacturer's spec sheet. Rank them by likely link-earning potential and justify the order in one sentence each.

F. Myths, ethics, and judgment

Exercise 23.28 — Spot the myth. A course promises: "Our outreach system emails 2,000 site owners a week — just send enough and the links roll in." Identify the two reasons this fails (per the chapter's mandatory myth) and state what actually earns the link.

Exercise 23.29 † — Ethics judgment. A digital-PR vendor offers to run a "study" for you: they'll write a provocative statistic, build a quick survey to seem to support it, and pitch it hard to reporters — "it always gets pickup." Give two reasons to refuse, one about durability and one about ethics, drawing on §23.7 and Chapter 13's originality guardrail.

G. The Strategy File (Rivertown Home Services)

Exercise 23.30 † — Rivertown has designed its "Metro Home-Services Cost Report" (Figure 23.7). Design a second, different linkable asset Rivertown could genuinely make from its own operations — name the asset, the proprietary vantage point that makes it Rivertown's, and the one type of writer who would have to cite it. Then state one thing this asset cannot do on its own (tie it to which later chapter handles that).

Exercise 23.31 — Do Rivertown's Chapter 23 task on your own (or a client's) site: write the single sentence naming your one best linkable-asset idea and the proprietary vantage point behind it. Don't build it. Name it. Add it to your running Strategy File (Appendix C's link tracker) — it's the seed of every link you'll earn.

Where these go next. Keep your answers to 23.20, 23.21, 23.22, 23.30, and 23.31 — they are your link-earning baseline and your first asset idea, and Chapter 24 turns them into an actual outreach and link plan. The asset you name today is the thing every tactic in the next chapter exists to promote.