Off-page SEO, links and brand mentions

Unlinked mentions, and why they started mattering

For twenty years off-page work meant links, because a link was the only machine-readable vote a site could cast for another. AI answers changed that, because they read text rather than traversing a link graph.

When an assistant is asked which companies to consider in your category, it draws on sources describing that category. A comparison article naming you, a forum thread recommending you, a review page carrying your details: each of these can inform the answer whether or not anything in them is clickable. A 2025 study found AI search systematically favours third-party authoritative sources over brand-owned content, which means the pages doing most of the work are ones you do not control.

That is uncomfortable and it is worth stating plainly rather than selling around. Your own website is necessary and it is not sufficient. The practical response is to widen off-page work from acquiring links to making sure the places that already discuss your category describe you accurately, and that there is something accurate for them to find.

• Links remain the stronger signal for classic Google ranking
• Mentions without links still inform AI answers, because they are read as text
• Third-party sources outweigh brand-owned content in AI answers
• Being described accurately matters as much as being described often

What this changes about the work, and what it does not

Most of the method is unchanged. Earning coverage from relevant, trusted sites is still the core activity, because the same outreach that earns a link usually earns the mention too. What changes is what we count as a result and where we look for gaps.

The gap analysis widens. Instead of only asking which sites link to competitors and not to you, we ask which sources an AI engine actually draws on when answering questions in your category, and whether you appear in them at all. Those two lists overlap less than you would expect, and the second one is frequently shorter and more actionable.

Correction becomes part of the job. A common finding is not absence but inaccuracy: an outdated service list, a location you left, a confusion with a similarly named company. There is no correction form for an AI answer, so the only route is to fix the sources it reads, in rough order of how likely each is to be retrieved.

What does not change is our position on manufacturing any of it. Buying mentions, seeding reviews or paying for undisclosed recommendations defeats the property that made third-party corroboration valuable, and in review contexts it is unlawful. We will not do it.

What makes one link worth more than another

Not all links count the same, and the gap between a good one and a bad one is enormous. Relevance is the first filter. A link from a site that covers your subject carries meaning, because the surrounding content tells a search engine what your page relates to. A link from an unrelated directory tells it almost nothing.

Placement is the second. A link inside the body of an article, in a sentence that makes sense, is worth far more than the same link in a sidebar, a footer or an author bio. Engines have been discounting boilerplate link positions for years, because a link that appears on every page of a site is clearly not an editorial endorsement of any single page.

The third filter is whether the linking page has any life of its own. A page that receives real visitors, ranks for something, and has links pointing at it can pass value along. A page that exists only to host outbound links cannot, no matter what domain metric a tool assigns to it.

• Topical relevance between the linking page and your page
• Editorial placement in body content, not boilerplate
• Descriptive anchor text that reads naturally in the sentence
• A linking page that has its own traffic, rankings and links
• A linking site with a genuine audience rather than a link inventory

How digital PR actually earns links

Digital PR works because journalists and editors need material, and they link to the source when they use it. The job is to produce something worth citing and then put it in front of the right people. That means original survey results, a piece of analysis nobody else has published, an expert view on a live story, or a resource in your field that is genuinely better than what exists.

The outreach half is unglamorous and matters more than most people expect. Building a short, accurate list of writers who cover your subject beats blasting a thousand contacts. A pitch that respects the writer, states the story in two sentences and includes the data they would need to check it gets a reply. One that opens with a paragraph about your company does not.

The realistic yield is low by volume and high by value. A campaign that lands eight or ten placements on genuinely relevant publications does more for rankings than a hundred low-grade links, and it does not carry the same risk.

Backlink audits, toxic links and the truth about disavow

Most sites do not need a disavow file. Google has said for years that its systems ignore the vast majority of spam links automatically, because otherwise anyone could damage a competitor by pointing rubbish at them. Agencies that sell routine monthly disavows are usually selling a report, not a fix.

There are real cases where it matters. A site with a manual action for unnatural links needs a cleanup and a disavow as part of the reconsideration process. A site that bought links in the past and has since changed hands or direction may want to cut ties with that history deliberately. Outside those cases, an aggressive disavow can do more harm than good by removing links that were passing value.

What an audit is genuinely useful for is understanding your profile. Where your links come from, how concentrated they are, whether your anchor text distribution looks natural, and which of your pages hold the authority. That picture tells you what to build next.

• Referring domain count and growth pattern over time
• Anchor text distribution: branded, generic, partial match and exact match
• Link concentration: how much of your profile sits on a few domains
• Lost links worth reclaiming, often from site migrations or redesigns
• Manual action status in Search Console, checked first

Competitor gap analysis, done properly

A link gap analysis compares who links to your competitors against who links to you. The output most tools give you is a long list of domains, and most of that list is useless. The value is in filtering it down to the sites that link to two or three competitors but not to you, because those sites clearly cover your subject and clearly link out.

From there we sort by why the link exists. Some are review or comparison pages, which you can be added to by asking. Some are industry resource lists, which take a pitch. Some are news coverage, which you cannot replicate directly but which tells you what kind of story earns coverage in your field. Each category needs a different approach, and treating them as one list is why most gap analyses go nowhere.

The tactics we will not use, and why

Private blog networks, paid link placements sold as guest posts, and automated link exchanges all work briefly and then stop. Google has spent two decades building systems specifically to find them, and the failure mode is not neutral. A site that has been recognised as buying links can lose rankings across the board, and recovery takes months of cleanup and reconsideration.

The subtler risk is dependency. Rankings built on purchased links need continued purchasing to hold. Stop paying and the links come down. Earned links stay, keep sending referral traffic, and keep counting. That difference compounds over years.

We also avoid mass guest posting on sites that publish anything. The tell is a site with hundreds of posts across unrelated subjects and no real readership. Editors there are selling placement whether or not money changes hands, and engines recognise the pattern.

Unlinked mentions and brand signals

Plenty of sites already mention your business without linking to it. Reclaiming those is the cheapest link building available, because the relationship and the coverage already exist. A short, polite note pointing out the mention and asking for a link converts at a far higher rate than cold outreach ever will.

Brand mentions matter beyond the link too. Search engines and AI systems both use mentions across trusted sources to judge whether a business is real and established. Being named in industry publications, roundups and comparison pages builds that record, and it feeds directly into whether AI assistants are willing to name you when someone asks for a recommendation.

• Alerts on your brand name, product names and founder names
• Reclaim links from mentions in press coverage and roundups
• Fix links pointing at old URLs so the value is not lost in a redirect chain
• Track referring domains gained per month, not raw link count