Off-page SEO: what happens outside your website.

Offpage SEO, usually written off-page SEO, is the work you do outside your own website so that search engines and people trust it more. It is broader than link building: it includes brand mentions, your Google Business Profile, reviews and listings. The work on your pages themselves is on-page SEO. This guide supports my link building service, which is the core of off-page work, and explains the other pieces around it.

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO is everything that happens outside your website and affects how search engines judge it: links from other sites, mentions of your brand, your Google Business Profile, customer reviews and listings in directories. On-page SEO is what you control on your pages. Off-page SEO is the reputation other people and sites give you.

The three depend on each other. Strong reviews will not help a page Google cannot index, and good content with no links or reputation often stays on page two.

Which off-page SEO factors matter most?

For most businesses, four: links from relevant sites, reviews from real customers, a complete and active Google Business Profile, and consistent mentions of your name, address and phone across the web. National brands lean more on links and press. Local businesses lean more on the Business Profile and reviews. Both need all four.

Is link building still the core of off-page SEO?

Yes. Link building is the largest single part of off-page SEO, because Google uses links as a signal to judge how relevant a page is and to find new pages. But off page SEO link building today means earning relevant links through relationships and useful content, not collecting as many links as possible.

Google's link best practices describe how links help it find pages and understand them. Its spam policies describe the other side: links created mainly to manipulate rankings can make a site rank lower or disappear from results. Three guides go deeper into link building off page SEO: how to check your backlinks, the backlink strategy guide and guest post outreach.

How do Google Business Profile and reviews fit in?

For local searches, they are central. Google's local ranking tips say prominence, how well known a business is, is based partly on how many websites link to it and how many reviews it has, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help. Replying to reviews also shows customers you value their feedback.

That is from Google's tips to improve your local ranking. Off-page work for a local business therefore starts with the profile: correct categories, real photos, services, hours and a steady flow of reviews from actual customers. On a fleet of 436 US car dealerships where I work on technical and local SEO, the average Business Profile grade rose from 78.8 (C) to 91.9 (A) over more than five months. For a dental clinic in Medellín, local SEO reached 56 top-3 positions on the Google Maps grid, a 115% increase in three months.

Reviews must be real. Google's Business Profile guidelines set the rules for how a business is represented, and in the US the FTC's rule against fake reviews makes buying or faking them a legal risk as well as an SEO one.

Do brand mentions without a link help?

They help your reputation even when they do not carry a link. Google has not published that unlinked mentions are a ranking factor, so do not treat them as one. Still, mentions in news, associations and forums build trust with people, and many site owners will add a link if you politely ask.

A simple routine works: set an alert for your business name, check new mentions each month and, when a friendly site mentions you without a link, send a short note asking them to link to the relevant page. Mentions also shape what people find when they research you, including in AI assistants that summarize what is published about a business.

An off-page SEO checklist for the next 30 days

• Complete every field of your Google Business Profile and add recent real photos.
• Ask your last ten happy customers for a review, and reply to every review you have.
• List your suppliers, partners and associations. Ask each one to link to you from the right page.
• Check your name, address and phone on the main directories in your industry and fix any differences.
• Export your backlinks and look for lost links. See how to check backlinks.
• Pitch one local or industry media outlet with a story, data or an expert comment.

Which off-page tactics should you skip?

Skip anything that fakes a signal: bought links that pass ranking credit, link exchanges, automated link programs, mass submissions to random directories and fake or incentivized reviews. They look cheap and fast, but Google's spam policies target them, and fake reviews also carry legal risk in the US. Real reputation takes longer and lasts.

Off-page SEO is the slowest part of SEO to build and the hardest for a competitor to copy. If you want help with it, see my link building service and local SEO service, compare plans on the pricing page or start with the free diagnosis from the home page.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Juan José Giraldo is an SEO consultant in Medellín, Colombia, with 5+ years of experience. He works on technical and local SEO for 600+ US car dealerships at Reunion Marketing, an Inc. 5000 agency, and supervises the SEO of 18 US online stores with more than 3 million products at Prontomowers. Read more · LinkedIn.

Sources

1. Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
2. Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search
3. Google Search Central, Link best practices for Google
4. Business Profile Help, Guidelines for representing your business on Google
5. Federal Trade Commission, Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (August 14, 2024)