Off-Page SEO: Techniques, a Checklist and What Each Costs

What is off-page SEO? The signals other sites hold

Off-page SEO covers what is said about a site on pages the site does not publish. Some of it is links: a page elsewhere points at yours, and Google follows it. Its starter guide puts discovery that way round: “Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled.” Some of it is mentions of your name with no link at all. Reviews and ratings are a third kind, listings in directories, on launch platforms and on maps a fourth and profiles on networks and communities a fifth.

What the five share is that someone else holds the page. You can supply the facts, pitch, submit or ask; the publisher decides what goes up and whether a link comes with it. That is the whole difference from the work on your own site, and it is why the costs below are mostly time: the work is persuading or filling in, page by page.

On-page vs off-page SEO (and technical SEO)

SEO splits three ways by where the work happens. On-page SEO is the pages themselves, technical SEO is how the site is served to a crawler and off-page SEO is everything other sites say about it. The first two are yours to change; the third is a request to someone else, which is why it takes longer and why it is the part people pay someone to do.

Order matters more than balance. Links point at pages, so the pages that sell come first: our plan for a new domain covers them, and the off-page work below then has somewhere to send people.

Off-page SEO techniques and methods, priced

The types of off-page SEO below are the ones that recur in the guides ranking for the topic, from link building to podcasts. Each row carries what the technique asks of you, what it costs where the provider publishes a price, what is left on the web once you stop and where to read more.

Where a paid tier sits next to the free route, it sells speed, volume or reach: Best-AI.org's 48-hour review against a free one of “many weeks or months, no fixed time”, Qwoted's 35 pitches a month against 2, PodcastGuests.com's paid directory beside its free newsletter. The column of what is left splits the techniques in two. Listings, profiles and reviews stay up for as long as the site that holds them does. Outreach, pitches and community posts bring something new while somebody keeps at them and stop when the work stops.

Older lists add social bookmarking, web 2.0, forum, blog commenting and document sharing sites to the table; how the bookmarking and web 2.0 lists hold up has been checked site by site. Profile links that cost nothing are covered in our free backlink sources.

Off-page SEO examples: what each technique leaves on the web

• A directory listing. A page on Best-AI.org with your product's description, categories and a link to your site, which our guide to it found followed.
• A launch page. A Product Hunt page with the launch day's comments and a link to you tagged ugc.
• A review profile. A G2 profile carrying your first customers' reviews.
• A mention. A newsletter or a Reddit thread that names the product, with or without a link, which you can ask the writer to add.
• An interview. A podcast episode page whose show notes name you and your site.

Off-page SEO factors: what Google's own pages say

Google publishes no weights for the signals that live off your site, and its help page on local ranking gives the reason in a line: “We do our best to keep the search algorithm details confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.” What its pages do say, read on 12 November 2026:

• Links lead Google to pages. “Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl.” (Link best practices)
• Links and mentions from prominent sites count toward quality. Google's page on ranking says that one of the factors it uses is understanding “if other prominent websites link or refer to the content”, and calls that “generally a good sign that the information is trustworthy” (How Search works: ranking results).
• Links are one signal among many. “We have many ranking signals, and PageRank is just one of those.” (SEO Starter Guide)
• Reviews and links feed local prominence. “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” Of prominence: “This factor’s also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.” (Tips to improve your local ranking on Google)
• Promotion is how links start. “Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site.” The same guide names social media, community engagement, advertising and word of mouth among the ways to promote a site, and singles one out: “One of the most effective and lasting ways is word of mouth” (SEO Starter Guide).

Three details sit under those lines. Not every link is followed: a link can carry nofollow, ugc or sponsored, and the HTML of each sits in our post on followed and nofollowed links. The words a link is written in are its anchor text, set by whoever publishes it. And Google's spam policies have a section on links; the two lines a reader of a directory service asks about are answered in our posts on web directories and automated link building. If an SEO tool flags links you never asked for, read our post on Google's disavow tool before you touch it.

Off-page SEO checklist: a strategy for the first months

An off-page SEO strategy for a new product is mostly a matter of order: the off-page SEO activities a product can use at each stage, the free route first and each one leaving something the next can point at. Eight steps, from before launch to the third month.

1. Before launch: one set of facts. Write the product name, a one-line description, a longer one, the URL, a logo and two or three screenshots once, and use them on every profile and form that follows, so every listing says the same thing.
2. Before launch: the profiles you control. A LinkedIn Page (LinkedIn's own page: “You can create a Page for free, and there are different types of pages depending on your business’ goals.”), the networks your buyers use and, if you serve customers at an address or in an area, a Google Business Profile, which Google describes in its FAQ: “Create your profile at no cost, and you can manage your business from Google Search and Maps to start reaching more customers.”
3. Launch week: directories and launch platforms. Submit to the directories that fit your category, and pick one launch platform with launch day kept clear for its comments. The directory part, field by field, is in our directory submission checklist; the launch itself in a week-by-week launch plan.
4. First month: reviews. Claim the review profile your buyers read and ask the customers who are happy. G2 prints this on its free card: “Claim your profile, collect reviews, and share customer love.” For a business on Maps, reviews feed the prominence line quoted above.
5. First month on: communities. Join the subreddits where your first users gather and read each one's rules before posting. Reddit's own rules page says a community's culture is shaped by “the community rules enforced by moderators”, and its Rule 2 opens “Abide by community rules.”
6. Month two: something worth citing. A free tool, a count from your own product or an honest comparison page gives other sites a reason to link without being asked; the ways to turn one into links are in our post on getting backlinks.
7. Months two and three: podcasts and journalists' requests. PodcastGuests.com's home page offers this: “Join the free newsletter featuring 20 podcasts looking for guests each week.” Qwoted's free plan allows 2 pitches a month to the reporters posting them.
8. Every month: mentions and what Google sees. Watch where your name appears (Reddit Pro's page: “Discover what your customers are saying about you on Reddit”) and ask for a link where a mention has none. Then open Search Console's Links report, which Google describes as a sample: “It shows a sample of internal and external links to help you understand your site’s overall link profile.” Our Domain Rating checker reads any domain's Ahrefs DR, yours or a linking site's.

Off-page SEO services: what paying someone buys

Off-page SEO services sell three things, alone or in a monthly bundle: links, mentions (PR and podcast booking) and listings (directories, local citations and review profiles). Before paying, get two answers in writing. What will exist on other sites when the work is done, counted and named? And is it a retainer that runs every month or one payment for a set amount of work? Link sellers' prices, per link and per month, sit side by side in our survey of link building services; the tools that file directories for you are compared on a page of their own.

Where Submitator fits: the submission row, done for you

Submitator takes the highlighted row of the technique table (directory submission) and the launch platforms on our list with it. You pick yours in the dashboard, where every one shows its Domain Rating, from the 189 we submit to (SaaS and software: 59; launch platforms and startup directories: 76; AI tools: 54). No site is on that list until one of our submissions has made it through the whole flow. We write a fresh description per directory, to the length its form allows, and fill in each form ourselves, CAPTCHAs included: those are handled on our side.

For the directories that want a badge on your site, one component, installed on your site once, carries every badge they ask for. We keep each badge live after that, and not one of them means a commit to your code. Each listing we file is also pushed through IndexMachine, the free indexing ($25 value) in Starter, Growth and Scale: you connect nothing, and Google decides what it indexes.

One payment, no subscription: 30 directories for $29 (Starter), 60 for $49 (Growth) or 100 for $79 (Scale). All Directories is $149 for the full catalog, directories that join it after your order included. Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, and every directory within 21 days at most. If a directory declines your product, your list gains one more directory to choose by default (All Directories aside, since it already holds them all). You can request a refund within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions in our terms. 580+ startups have been submitted through us, and the outcomes of the submissions we have filed are tallied separately.

Submitator places no ads and does no outreach; what it sells is the filing, paid once. Best-AI.org, one of the AI tool directories on our list, sold its 48-hour review for $39 on 12 November 2026; on a Starter order it is one of the 30 you can pick for $29.