Build authority through useful assets, editorial coverage, legitimate mentions, and reputation rather than manipulation. Work through the four lessons, apply each exercise to a real, approved, personal, or sandbox site, and retain the result in your continuing portfolio.
Recommended prerequisite: access to a real, client-approved, personal, or sandbox website. Units 1–3 require no prior SEO experience.
Progress is self-reported. Mark a lesson complete only when you are satisfied with the applied work—not because you reached the bottom of the page.
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Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Classify 20 opportunities as pursue, investigate, ignore, or avoid, with reasons.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Which is generally stronger: relevant editorial citation or paid sitewide footer link?
Compare with guidance
Relevant editorial citation.
2. Name two link-scheme warning signs.
Compare with guidance
Guaranteed rankings, bulk paid placements, irrelevant networks, hidden links, forced anchors, or no editorial review.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Lesson 8.2Not started
Digital PR with Data and Stories
Public data, newsworthiness, methodology, visual assets, press packaging, and outcome variability.
Open on YouTube. Interfaces, platform policies, and product details may have changed; learn the durable principle rather than memorizing buttons.
Learn
The working idea
Public data, newsworthiness, methodology, visual assets, press packaging, and outcome variability.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Design one campaign: audience, question, data source, methodology, three story angles, target publications, asset, and disclosure limitations.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Is a case study’s link total a guaranteed benchmark?
Compare with guidance
No.
2. What makes data PR credible?
Compare with guidance
Transparent methodology, accurate interpretation, reproducibility where possible, and a genuinely newsworthy insight.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Specify one useful asset and audit 15 mentions. Contact is simulated; learners must explain why a link would improve the source for its readers.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Why is an unlinked mention not an entitlement to a link?
Compare with guidance
The publisher controls its editorial choices and may have valid reasons not to link.
2. What is a stronger asset: a generic infographic or a useful calculator with transparent assumptions?
Compare with guidance
Usually the useful calculator.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Lesson 8.4Not started
Reputation and Off-Page Corroboration
Reviews, independent references, expert recognition, consistency, and ethical response.
Assignment note: 3 ways to improve your content and revisit the E-E-A-T/reputation discussion.
Open on YouTube. Interfaces, platform policies, and product details may have changed; learn the durable principle rather than memorizing buttons.
Learn
The working idea
Reviews, independent references, expert recognition, consistency, and ethical response.
Translate this principle into an observable decision: identify the audience task, the evidence available, the business consequence, and the verification method. Keep facts, assumptions, and recommendations separate.
Do the work
Exercise
Map claims made on the site to independent evidence that could legitimately corroborate them. Flag unsupported superlatives.
Acceptance check: your output should name its source evidence, assumptions, intended user or business outcome, and how the conclusion could be verified.
Quick check
Compare your reasoning
1. Can a company manufacture trustworthy third-party corroboration by publishing on its own domains?
Compare with guidance
No; controlled properties are not independent confirmation.
2. Why should unsupported “best” claims be removed or qualified?
Compare with guidance
They may mislead users and weaken trust without transparent evidence.
Portfolio handoff
File the evidence
Save the exercise output in your own course workbook or project folder. This site does not upload or retain your work.
Unit 8 exam
Apply it without pretending the browser is your professor.
Status: Not attempted
Knowledge prompts
List four link-quality dimensions; identify two manipulative tactics; distinguish owned claims from independent corroboration; explain what makes a PR methodology trustworthy.
Practical assignment
Produce a 90-day authority plan with one asset, one PR campaign, mention qualification, outreach criteria, risk rules, and success measures beyond raw link count.