Jonathan Goodman delivers a fast-paced, practical primer on backlinks, what they are, why they matter, and how to earn them, starting with a quick history lesson on how early search engines were easily manipulated by black-hat tactics like keyword stuffing and hidden text. He explains that Google’s breakthrough came when Sergey Brin and Larry Page shifted ranking toward link popularity (PageRank), treating backlinks as signals of authority and trust, and he uses a “web of links” visualization to show how many small sites linking to a hub can amplify that hub’s influence, which then passes authority onward through its outbound links.

From there, Jonathan focuses on legitimate, scalable ways to build backlinks. He covers tactics such as shareable assets (like infographics, with a warning that people often copy images without credit), viral content that encourages social sharing and linking, and “award” programs where winners embed a badge or widget that links back to the award source. He also recommends sponsorships and charitable donations, especially locally, where a simple ask can secure a link from the sponsor’s website, and he highlights alumni profile pages as a potentially strong source of links when hosted on .edu domains. He addresses directories with a balanced view: they can help if they’re reputable and higher-quality than your current standing, but he advises against paying for listings or exchanging links just to get included.

Jonathan then gets into more advanced execution: press releases can generate strong backlinks when they’re genuinely newsworthy and handled correctly. His process is to publish the release on your own site first, immediately prompt Google to index it using Google Webmaster Tools (“Fetch as Google” in that era), and then distribute the release so syndicated versions point back to the original source. He calls guest posting the “holy grail” of backlinks, high effort but high integrity, emphasizing that content must be original, never spun, and never placed in article farms. He outlines a repeatable model: publish a core article on your site, then create several distinct supporting articles that link back to it, gradually placing them over time to mimic natural link growth.

To make the concept tangible, Jonathan demonstrates backlink and domain authority analysis using SEO tools (notably Moz), comparing real local competitors to show how link profiles can predict who wins rankings when companies compete on the same keywords. He explains that authority gaps are hard to overcome, moving from a low score to mid-range is exponentially harder over time, so link-building should prioritize higher-authority sources rather than chasing low-value links. In Q&A, he clarifies nuances like “nofollow” links, why footer links tend to carry less weight due to historical abuse, and why backlink building is a blend of science and art—leaning slightly more toward science, because results depend on both measurable authority signals and strategic judgment about what links will matter.