What is Off-Page SEO? A Marketer’s Guide in 2026
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is a strategy that uses off-site optimizations to improve a webpage’s rankings in relevant search results.
Search engine optimization (SEO) comprises multiple strategies, one of which is off-page SEO. Essential to ranking well in searches, off-page SEO involves optimizations done outside your website, including link building and earning reviews.
Here are helpful topics you can go through if you want to use this strategy to boost your rankings and improve our online visibility:
- What is off-page SEO?
- Off-page SEO vs. on-page SEO
- Why does off-page SEO matter?
- Off-page SEO techniques
- 3 types of links for off-page SEO
- 6 factors that influence link value for off-page SEO
- FAQs for off-page SEO
And, if you’d like to speak to a specialist about off-page SEO, you can reach us at 888-601-5359.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is a set of optimization techniques that can improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) through efforts outside your website.
Also known as off-site SEO, off-page SEO involves tactics that attract links from other websites, social media shares, and mentions across various reliable sources on the web.
🎥 Watch: The different types of SEO
Off-page SEO vs. on-page SEO
Off-page SEO focuses on optimization efforts done outside your website. Meanwhile, on-page SEO focuses on optimizing elements on your website.
Search engines like Google use a page’s off-page SEO to measure its credibility. Off-page SEO tactics involve earning backlinks from authoritative websites. These links are like a vote of confidence for your content and website.
Meanwhile, search engines use on-page SEO to measure your page’s relevancy. On-page SEO efforts include optimizing your content, URL, and meta tags among other elements.
Make sure to implement both strategies, along with technical SEO, to see your pages rank in the SERPs.
Why does off-page SEO matter?
Off-page SEO tells search engines that your website is important to others on the web. It also targets Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust (E-E-A-T), which can boost trust with both users and Google.
Every link that you receive acts as an endorsement from another source that your website is quality. This lets external sources act as tie-breakers for websites that have the same quality of on-page SEO so search engines know the best way to rank websites on SERPs.
Sites with off-page SEO earn higher search engine rankings because of backlinks, mentions, and social media publicity.
For example, if we look at two wedding websites with similar content, which site would rank higher?
If the sites use similar on-page SEO strategies, off-page SEO signals can help determine which site ranks higher in search results.
Search engines like Google measure off-page SEO factors, like the number and quality of backlinks to websites.
If one of the wedding websites has more backlinks from reputable sources, while the other site has received zero online mentions, the site with more backlinks (and better online reputation) will likely rank higher.
Using numerous off-page and on-page SEO factors, search engines determine how valuable pages are to searchers’ queries and return relevant results accordingly.
Off-page SEO strategies to boost your rankings
Now that we’ve established how important off-page SEO is to a website’s success, we can delve into the specifics of how to improve off-page SEO:
Let’s dive into each one:
1. Link building
The most popular off-page SEO technique is backlinking, which aims to generate natural links to your page.
Getting reputable websites to link back to your website has two main benefits: driving traffic to your site and helping determine your rank. Links from reputable sites are hugely beneficial to your website, and they help users find more information that benefits their search.
High-quality links will tell Google that you’ve earned the recognition — that your site knows its material — and Google will rank you higher. While links are not a top-three ranking factor, they still matter to your SEO.
But how do you convince others to link to you? Here are a few backlinking strategies for your off-site SEO efforts:
- Research competitors: Identify where competitors are getting featured, such as industry blogs, directories, or podcasts. Reach out to those same outlets and find ways to place yourself in those same areas.
- Join an association: This could be an industry association or the local Chamber of Commerce. Make sure that your company gets a link on the association’s website.
- Reach out: Reaching out to journalists and bloggers as possible sources for their writing, or asking them to host something you’ve published, provides future opportunities for you to earn links to your website.
- Employ broken link building: Broken link building is a strategy of looking for dead links on other websites and asking the site linking to them to link to your page instead.
- Share on social media: Promoting your content on social media can help it gain traction. Post appropriate content, like infographics, blog posts, and more, to social media channels. Optimize your posts for discoverability, like by using hashtags on X (formerly Twitter).
To make sure that your off-page SEO strategy is performing up to par, regularly check your backlinks to see if spammy sites are linking to you, potentially harming your strategy. You can use tools to analyze your and your competitors’ backlink profiles. Some of our favorite backlink tools are:
When implementing your off-page SEO strategy, don’t just know how to build links, understand why you’re building them. You’re building them so you can have a more significant presence and reach the people that you think your services and products could help.
2. Content marketing
Making high-quality content like blog posts, infographics, videos, and white papers are all excellent ways to draw clicks and natural links to your site. If you have interesting and useful content, natural links will come.
That said, content is an essential off-page SEO element, especially when deployed through parasite SEO tactics on authoritative domains.
Publish helpful content that will engage site visitors and show search engines that your page’s content showcases EEAT.
Then, distribute your content through the following to reach more online users:
- Guest posting: Guest posting not only lets you reach new audiences, but it also boosts your authority on the topic and helps you earn backlinks from reputable sites where you’ve contributed. Commenting on blogs and forums can also help you build relationships and authrority as well.
- Social media marketing: Social media doesn’t directly influence your ranking on SERPs. However, it improves your site’s discoverability and brand’s credibility, resulting in increased chances of earning backlinks.
- Influencer marketing: 86% of U.S. marketers will partner with influencers in 2026. You can reach a wider audience when you partner with a trustworthy influencer related to your business. When an influencer mentions and promotes your brand or products, they can link to your website to encourage them to visit.
- Digital PR: Digital PR is a strategy of growing your online presence through building relationships with journalists and establishing your trustworthiness. It’s an excellent way of earning backlinks and becoming a resource person for journalists.
- Podcasts: Appearing on podcasts is a great way to target audio and visual content and find new users. These channels can be a great way to get links back to your website from YouTube descriptions or podcast show notes.
- Roundup posts: Contributing to expert roundup posts (like “Top 10 Tips from SEO Experts”) can be a great way to showcase your expertise to others in your industry.
Pro Tip
Repurpose your content to boost the reach of your messages and your chances of earning a backlink.
For example, let’s say you own a travel agency business and you published a survey about the most popular destinations and tour activities in Europe among your clients. You can create a press release about the topic and share it with digital publications, which may link back to your site.
You can also repackage your study into an infographic summarizing the results of the study. Influencers and bloggers in the travel niche can share your infographic with a link back to your site.
3. Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is the process of submitting your content to sites like Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, and others. These sites segment their content to appeal to certain niches, which you can use to appeal to customers in the specific demographics that you want to target.
Pro Tip
Before you submit any content, though, make sure to research the audiences and rules of each site. You don’t want to spam these communities. Instead, you want to offer actual value with your content.
4. Get more reviews online
Fun fact: 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Earning more reviews online can improve your business’s trustworthiness.
Now you’re probably wondering why your brand’s credibility matters to SEO. When your Google Business Profile features several positive reviews, your local SEO can get a boost and your site increases its chances to appear in relevant local search results.
In addition, online reputation, which comprises reviews, ratings, and mentions, is one of the ranking factors of most answer search engines. When you have high ratings and plenty of positive reviews, answer engines will likely mention your brand.
Learn More: Off-page SEO Checklist
3 types of links for off-page SEO
Links are a critical component of off-page SEO. Before you start building or earning backlinks, it’s essential to understand the different types of links and the factors that influence the equity of a link to your website.
The three types of links include:
Let’s discuss each type:
1. Natural links
A natural link comes to your website naturally.
Your team doesn’t take any action or conduct any outreach to earn the link. The person writing that content decided to link to your content, whether because they follow your brand or discovered your content via search.
Either way, they found your content valuable and worth highlighting.
2. Built links
A built link comes to your website from outreach.
Your team worked to earn this link, whether by reaching out to webmasters, publishers, or journalists. You may have even promoted the content with an ad campaign, providing it with the exposure that helped people uncover the content.
Even though you built this link, you still created valuable content for users.
3. Created links
A created link comes to your website from self-submissions in directories or forums.
Your team created this link intentionally and without conducting any outreach. This off-page SEO tactic for link building tends to register as a black-hat SEO practice because search engines look down on this kind of link building tactic.
When building links, focus on natural or built links.
6 factors that influence link value for off-page SEO
You also want to think about the equity or value and authority passed by a link.
While you could attract dozens of low-value links from spammy or untrustworthy websites, they won’t help your business rank well in search results. These links may even harm your overall SEO strategy.
That’s why it’s essential to focus your off-page SEO link building efforts on trusted websites with excellent link equity.
The six factors that influence the equity passed by a link include:
- The anchor text used to link to your site
- The freshness or age of the link to your site
- The number of links on the linking page
- The relation between the linking site’s subject matter and yours
- The trustworthiness of the linking site
- The authority of the linking site and the linking page
If you use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush, you can assess the potential link value of a site.
FAQs for off-page SEO
Learn more about off-page SEO with our FAQ!
How many backlinks do I need?
While there is no set number, you should aim for 40-50 quality backlinks to your homepage, and around 100 for individual pages.
What’s more important: link quality or quantity?
Link quality is always better than the quantity of links you have.
Getting signals from reputable websites demonstrates your authority and encourages positive rankings. Having a high number of spammy links, however, could lead to a flag from Google.
Can you use AI for off-page SEO?
Yes, you can use AI tools to help with your off-page SEO. You can use AI tools to help you with the following:
Link building strategy
AI answer engines can help you uncover relevant and high-quality websites that can link to your website. They can refer news outlets, local news websites, and influencers within your niche that you can reach out to for a partnership or a link.
Personalizing your outreach
Personalization is an important element in your outreach. In fact, AI-powered dynamic content personalization can drive up to 44% of conversion increase.
When reaching out to journalists and other publications, you can get the help of AI tools to personalize your messages and engage your recipients.
For example, you’re building backlinks for your cleaning services business with a blog post on pet-friendly, home-cleaning practices. Your email outreach to a pet website will be different from an email for a home improvement magazine.
Reputation management
AI-powered reputation management tools like Yext enable you to centralize all your customer reviews in one platform. These tools use natural language processing (NLP) to understand your customers’ sentiments about your business and offerings.
Most reputation management tools also let you respond to reviews through one platform, making it easy to manage and improve your online reputation. These platforms can request reviews from your customers, too!
What factors hurt off-page SEO?
Some aspects of off-page SEO can hurt rankings if you aren’t actively monitoring them. Some examples and ways to handle them include:
- Toxic backlinks: Monitor your backlink profile to make sure you remove any spammy links to your site. You can use Google’s disavow tool if necessary to tell them not to consider those links in your ranking.
- Negative reviews: Negative reviews on Google, Reddit, or other sites can lead to a negative view of your brand. However, responding to those negative reviews can help you manage your reputation and off-page SEO.
- Duplicate content: You don’t want to post content repeatedly across different sites. This will confuse search engines and hurt your SEO efforts. Instead, make sure content is all unique, and if you do repurpose it, make sure it is different and intentional on each site.
How to evaluate off-page SEO?
To monitor your off-page SEO, you can:
- Outline key performance indicators (KPIs) like number of new referring domains, changes in local search rankings, or brand mention frequency
- Use tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to track backlink growth, referral traffic, and improvements in domain authority
- Record changes in your off-page SEO and respond to any updates to prevent ongoing damage to your SEO
WebFX knows off-page SEO
If you’re too busy with your business to concentrate on all the factors that go into off-page SEO and measuring your on- and off-page SEO efforts, you can team up with WebFX!
We’re a full-service Internet marketing firm with an award-winning team that strives for excellence in every project, no matter how big or small. Our team will be glad to learn about your business and goals, and drive the exceptional results you need to grow your bottom line!
Contact us today or call us at 888-601-5359 to build your business with our off-page SEO services!
