Off-page SEO tools are the software that measures what happens to your name away from your site: who links to you (Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Semrush), who mentions you without a link (Google Alerts, Brand24) and how you appear in listings and reviews (Google Business Profile). None of them sees all of it: in our test on 10 October 2026, 82% of the sites that name Macropix and 94% of those that name Scovaventi don't appear among the domains linking to them.
Put simply: if you measure off-page SEO with a backlink checker alone, you only see a small part of it.
Search for "off page seo tools" on Google UK from a phone and page one gives you an AI Overview, guides to what off-page SEO is (Neil Patel, LOCALiQ, HubSpot), a checklist, two pages selling off-page services and a Pinterest pin. The only list of tools on the page, from owdt.com, is about on-page analysis (our check on 10 October 2026).
So what? Everyone knows the tools: Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic.
Fine, if the question is "who links to me?". The trouble is that off-page SEO asks other questions too, and on those the backlink tools go quiet:
- who talks about you without adding a link, and so never shows up in any backlink report;
- who to ask for that link, and at which email address;
- how Google Maps sees you, where listings and reviews count.
We see it on the projects we work on. Macropix, an Italian manufacturer of LED screens, went from position 88 to 2 on its category keyword, with a 25.55% share of voice on the Italian "ledwall" cluster, ahead of Amazon (the full story is in our guide to SEO for manufacturing).
Scovaventi, a farm in Tuscany's Maremma that sells on Shopify, closed a year with €77,000 in sales and an average order of €190.
And what does that have to do with off-page tools?
Both companies get mentioned a lot: trade fairs, olive oil guides, press releases, trade publications. We counted how many of those mentions carry a link. The answer is in the second section, and it changes the order in which it makes sense to pick your tools.
Here you'll find:
- the four jobs of off-page SEO and the right tool for each, with what each one misses;
- the test on Macropix and Scovaventi: 401 sites that name them, and how many link to them;
- how often people in the UK search for each tool, and what the kit costs in three set-ups.
Let's start.
What an off-page tool has to measure (four jobs, and no tool covers them all)
An off-page SEO tool is useful if it answers one of four questions: who links to you, who mentions you, who to ask for a link, and how third-party platforms present you. We've explained what off-page SEO is and how much each lever weighs in our guide to off-page SEO; here we deal with the tools.
| Job | The question | Free tool | Paid tool | What it misses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backlinks | Which sites link to me, and with what anchor text? | Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs Free (formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) | Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Majestic | Mentions without a link |
| Mentions | Who talks about me without linking? | Google Alerts | Brand24, Talkwalker, the monitoring modules in the suites | The link: it shows you the page, the check is up to you |
| Outreach | Who is the right contact at that publication? | Hunter's free plan | Hunter, BuzzStream, Pitchbox | Whether the request makes sense |
| Listings and reviews | How does Google Maps present me? | Google Business Profile | Listing management tools (Moz Local, Semrush) | Mentions in the press |
Some English-language lists already make this split. Collaborator separates analysis tools from tracking and link building tools; the SEO.com page includes two local listing tools among its seven off-page tools. On page one of Google UK, on 10 October 2026, there was no list of off-page tools at all.
The column that matters is the last one. Every family of tools has a blind spot, and the biggest one belongs to backlink checkers.
The test: how many sites mention you without linking (82% for Macropix, 94% for Scovaventi)
An unlinked mention is a page that names your company without linking to your site. To a backlink checker, it doesn't exist. We wanted to know how many there are for two companies we know well. Both are Italian, so the test mostly covers Italian pages.
Here's the method, so anyone can repeat it. On 10 October 2026 we queried the content index of DataForSEO (Content Analysis API) to find the domains with at least one page containing the company's name, leaving out the company's own sites. Then we downloaded from the same provider's backlink index all the referring domains of macropix.it, macropix.com and macropix.es (1,012 for the .com alone) and of scovaventi.it (72), and cross-referenced the two lists.
One detail: "Scovaventi" is also the name of a place in the Maremma and a surname. Of the 204 domains we found, we kept the 117 where the text is about the farm.
| Company | Domains that name it | Of which link to it | Without a link | Italian-language pages only | Without a link (Italian) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macropix | 284 | 51 | 82.0% | 134 | 73.9% |
| Scovaventi | 117 | 7 | 94.0% | 103 | 96.1% |
| Total | 401 | 58 | 85.5% | 237 | 83.5% |
Of 401 sites that name the two companies, 343 don't link to them.
What if it's the index that can't find the links?
That was the first thing we checked. We opened six pages by hand, straight from the server: Eataly's brand page (the name appears 35 times), an article in Vogue Italia, one in WineNews, one on intoscana.it, and two articles on Macropix by Infobuild and BusinessPost (6 and 7 mentions). None of the six links to the company's site.
The test tells us three things.
The most authoritative mentions are often the ones without a link. Scovaventi has seven linking domains, including Gambero Rosso and three Japanese sites that ran a press release from an importer of its olive oil. Eataly, Vogue, WineNews and the rankings of award-winning oils just name it.
The criterion is generous, so the figure is conservative. We counted as linking any domain with a link from any page: a newspaper that linked to you in 2019 and mentioned you without a link in 2024 still counts as "linking".
It's only two companies. The exact number changes from sector to sector and from index to index. The direction is clear, though: if you only check backlinks, you see about one mention in seven.
And are those mentions any use?
Yes, in two places. For local results, Google writes in its Business Profile help that prominence is "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have". For generated answers, the Ahrefs study of 26 May 2025 on 75,000 brands (an international sample) finds a correlation of 0.664 between web mentions and presence in AI Overviews, against 0.218 for backlinks. That's correlation, not cause, and Ahrefs is the first to say so: the details are in our guide to AI citations.
How many mentions are you missing?
For Macropix and Scovaventi, more than eight mentions in ten carry no link, and no backlink report shows them. We cross-reference your brand's mentions with your referring domains and tell you which ones are worth turning into links.
Book a strategy consultationBacklinks: Search Console, Bing and the suites (the best-covered job, in brief)
For your own site's backlinks, the place to start is Google Search Console. It's free and shows the links Google has actually found. It has three limits, set out in the Links report help page: it shows a sample, tables stop at 1,000 rows and it doesn't say which links are nofollow.
The suites do the rest: Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz and Majestic for competitors, with Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Free for your own site at no cost. We've already run a test on this across 11 sites, with the limits of each free version and the share of noise in the counts: it's in our guide to checking backlinks.
Just one addition, which comes from our test. The referring domains report is also your exclusion list: when you find a mention, the first check is whether that domain already links to you. Without a backlink checker you can't know.
To choose a suite, you'll find verified price lists in our roundup of the best SEO tools.
Mentions: Google Alerts and monitoring tools (18,100 searches a month against 880)
A mention monitoring tool tells you when a new page names your brand. In the UK the most searched-for one is also free: Google Alerts gets 18,100 searches a month, Brand24 880.
| Tool | Off-page job | Average monthly searches in the UK |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Listings and reviews | 74,000 |
| Google My Business | Listings and reviews | 49,500 |
| Semrush | Backlinks (and much more) | 27,100 |
| Google Alerts | Mentions | 18,100 |
| Ahrefs | Backlinks (and much more) | 18,100 |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Backlinks | 6,600 |
| Hunter.io | Outreach | 2,900 |
| Moz | Backlinks (and much more) | 2,900 |
| Talkwalker | Mentions | 1,300 |
| Brand24 | Mentions | 880 |
| BuzzStream | Outreach | 590 |
| Majestic SEO | Backlinks | 390 |
| Pitchbox | Outreach | 110 |
Two things stand out. Outreach tools have a real audience in the UK: BuzzStream gets more searches than Majestic, and Hunter more than Moz. And Google Business Profile, adding up its two names, gets more searches than the four suites in the table put together: 123,500 against 48,490.
According to Google's help page, Google Alerts works like this: you enter a topic and get an email when new results for it show up in Google Search. You can choose how often, which types of sites, the language and the part of the world you want results from.
So one alert on the company name is enough?
For a small business, to begin with, yes. We'd set up two: one on the company name and one on the name of your flagship product, language English, region United Kingdom. The limit is that the email gives you the page, not whether there's a link. You make that check yourself, against your referring domains.
Brand24 is for when there are too many mentions to read by hand. The Individual plan costs $199 a month billed annually ($249 billed monthly) and includes 3 keywords and 2,000 mentions a month, according to the pricing page checked on 10 October 2026. Its source list also includes social networks, which Google Alerts doesn't cover.
If you work with data, the same mentions can be pulled through an API: that's how we ran our test, on DataForSEO, paying per request.
From mention to link: the tools for asking for the link (and who not to ask)
Unlinked mention reclamation means asking someone who has already mentioned you to add a link. It starts with an advantage over any other link request, for a simple reason: the editor has already decided you're worth mentioning.
The process, in four steps:
- export the pages that name you (Google Alerts, Brand24 or an API);
- remove the domains that already link to you, using the referring domains export;
- find the contact for the editor or the author, and this is where Hunter comes in: its free plan gives you 50 credits a month, and in the UK it gets 2,900 searches a month;
- write a short request, with the exact URL of the page to link to.
And who isn't worth writing to?
The test answers that. Eataly's brand page is a retailer's page: it won't link to the producer's site, and asking makes no sense. The rankings of award-winning oils are lists of dozens of names. The requests that work are the ones aimed at articles written about you, like the two pieces on Macropix by Infobuild and BusinessPost.
One rule not to forget: you ask for the link, you don't pay for it. Google's spam policies treat links bought for ranking purposes without the sponsored or nofollow attribute as a link scheme. What paid links cost, and why we put them last, is in our guide to link building; how to earn mentions with original data is in the article on digital PR.
Listings and reviews: Google Business Profile is an off-page tool (123,500 searches a month)
Google Business Profile is the free listing that puts a business on Maps and in local results, and it's an off-page tool in every sense: it lives on a domain that isn't yours, and you manage what's on it. In the UK, "google business profile" and "google my business" together get 123,500 searches a month.
Google names three factors for local ranking: relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence is the off-page one: according to the same help page, it depends on how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has.
But what if I don't have a shop?
It still counts: it's the panel that appears when someone searches for the company's name, and that applies to businesses that sell to other businesses too, like Macropix.
For businesses with several locations, paid listing management tools (Moz Local, Semrush's module) keep addresses and opening hours consistent across platforms. For a single location, the free profile is enough. How to fill it in is in our guide to Google Business Profile, how to ask for reviews in the one on reviews, and the tools for working across several towns in the piece on local SEO tools.
What the off-page kit costs (from £0 to two subscriptions)
The cost depends on how many mentions you get and how many markets you cover, not on the size of the business.
| Situation | Tools | Approximate cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| Local business or small company starting out | Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs Free, Google Alerts, Google Business Profile, Hunter's free plan | £0 |
| Small business doing digital PR in the UK | The free kit + Ahrefs Lite, billed annually, for backlinks and competitors | $1,290 (about £975) + VAT |
| Brand with lots of mentions or several markets | The free kit + Semrush SEO + Brand24 Individual, both billed annually | about $1,408 + $2,388 (about £1,065 + £1,806) |
The first row already has everything you need for mention reclamation. The details of each plan are in our pages on Semrush pricing and Ahrefs pricing; if your budget is zero, the rest of the free kit is in our guide to free SEO tools.
Frequently asked questions
No. Search Console shows a sample of the links Google has found to your site, with tables limited to 1,000 rows, but it doesn't see unlinked mentions, reviews or competitors' sites. For those you need Google Alerts, Google Business Profile and a backlink checker.
Yes. Google Alerts sends you an email when new results appear in Google Search for the name you set, and it costs nothing. It doesn't tell you whether the page links to you: you check that by comparing the page with the list of referring domains from Search Console or a backlink checker.
It depends: if you get only a few mentions a month, Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Alerts and Google Business Profile cover the job at no cost. A subscription becomes useful when you want to analyse competitors' backlinks or when there are too many mentions to read by hand.
It depends where: for local results, Google says a business's prominence is also based on how many websites link to it. For AI answers, a 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found a higher correlation with mentions (0.664) than with backlinks (0.218), but it's a correlation on an international sample.
Yes. It's the easiest link request there is, because the editor has already chosen you. It works best on articles written about the company, with the exact URL to link to, and without offering payment: bought links without the sponsored or nofollow attribute break Google's spam policies.
Where to start (with the mentions you already have)
In short:
in our test, backlink checkers see one mention in seven;
Google Alerts is free and in the UK gets about 20 times as many searches as Brand24;
mention reclamation starts by cross-referencing two lists;
Google Business Profile is the most searched-for off-page tool in the UK, of the ones we measured.
The test left us with one idea. When people talk about off-page SEO, they almost always mean new mentions: sponsored articles, press releases, guest posts. Macropix and Scovaventi are already named without a link by 343 sites. For a company that already gets mentioned, the first off-page job isn't getting more mentions: it's reading the ones it has. Two free tools are enough for that: Google Alerts and Search Console.
If you'd like us to do that cross-check on your brand, it's part of our SEO service.
Until next time!
