Off-Page GEO Checklist

#01Why use a checklist?

Off-page work spans PR, community, partnerships, support and marketing. Our view: without a shared list, teams duplicate outreach, miss easy fixes and lose track of what was changed and when. Google's rater guidelines tell raters to trust independent sources over what a site says about itself (Google QRG), so these outside sources deserve the same care as your own pages.

#021. Have you mapped your sources?

• 30–50 buyer prompts written in buyers' words
• Each prompt run three or more times in each engine you track
• Every cited URL logged with engine, run and date
• Domains grouped by type (reviews, editorial, forums, news, docs, directories)
• Top 20 domains classified: accurate, inaccurate, absent or out of reach

Method: building a source map and citation gap analysis.

#032. Are your listings accurate?

• Google Business Profile complete, if you serve local customers; Google's AI features guidance says to keep it current (Google)
• Merchant Center data current, if you sell products (Google)
• Business name matches your real-world name (Google)
• Cited directories and marketplaces claimed and updated
• Master sheet with owner and last-updated date for each listing

Guide: directory listings that matter.

#043. Is your review programme healthy?

• Two or three focus review sites chosen from cited sources
• Every customer asked at a success moment
• No fake reviews (eCFR) or sentiment-conditioned incentives (eCFR)
• Every review answered within a few days
• Recurring review themes logged

Guide: reviews strategy.

#054. Are you active in the right communities?

• Public communities where buyers talk identified
• Staff disclose affiliation when they mention your product
• Community rules read and followed, including Reddit's rules against content manipulation (Reddit)
• Best private-channel answers republished publicly each week
• Negative threads assessed and answered honestly

Guides: community strategy and negative Reddit threads.

#065. Are you earning coverage?

• News and trade domains cited in your category identified
• Reporters matched to beats
• At least one original, citable asset (data, research, tool) per quarter
• Newsroom page with current facts and contacts
• Analysts briefed with accurate facts

Guides: news sites, analysts and press releases.

#076. Are partner and creator relationships clean?

• Integration pages current on your site and partners' sites
• No link-only partner pages or link swaps; Google lists these as link spam (Google)
• Creator and affiliate relationships disclosed
• Paid links marked rel="sponsored"
• Creator fact sheet up to date

Guides: partnerships, creators and affiliate sites.

#087. Are you tracking results?

• Fixed prompt set, unchanged between runs
• Monthly: share of answers naming you, citing a page that mentions you, and describing you accurately
• Quarterly: source map rebuilt and top 20 reclassified
• Every change logged with a date
• Self-reported attribution ("How did you hear about us?") collected

#09Which items give the fastest wins?

Our view: fixing inaccurate listings and outdated facts on the sources engines already cite. These are often quick and can change what answers say once pages are recrawled. Reviews, community reputation and coverage take longer but compound.

#10How do you assign ownership?

Our view: give each of the seven sections a named owner, and one person overall who runs the quarterly review. PR usually owns coverage and analysts; support or community owns forums and reviews; marketing owns listings, partners and creators; SEO or analytics owns source mapping and tracking. Agree one brand facts document that every owner uses, so the facts you give out match everywhere.

#11What should you never do?

• Confirmed: no paid reviews, fake accounts or vote manipulation
• Confirmed: no undisclosed paid placements
• Confirmed: no links required as a condition of a quote, partnership or contract

#12How do you review the checklist each quarter?

Our view: hold a one-hour session. Go through each section, mark items done, overdue or not relevant, and note what changed in your source map since last time. Pick the three highest-impact open items for the next quarter and assign them. Keep the completed checklists; over a year they show what was tried and which changes coincided with better answers.

#13Exercise

#14From MentionX data: where citations come fromOriginal data

Method. Read-only aggregate queries over MentionX scans from 22 August to 29 October 2026 (UTC): 2,217 engine runs (2,154 completed) across 18 anonymised projects and six engines.

Off-page sources make up much of what engines cite. In the MentionX sample:

Our view: review pages and Wikipedia are small shares here, but most citations aren't homepage or docs pages either. Much of the remainder is third-party content, which is what off-page work aims to influence.

Limits. A convenience sample of mostly B2B software projects, run through engine APIs, which can behave differently from the consumer apps. Perplexity, Copilot and DeepSeek figures come from a single day (26 October 2026), so treat them as a snapshot, not a trend.

#15Worked example: Ledgerline runs the checklist

Ledgerline is a fictional accounts-payable tool. Figures are illustrative.

Ledgerline's marketing lead works through the checklist in one quarter. She fixes outdated descriptions on three software directories, starts a post-onboarding review request, assigns a product specialist to two finance communities and pitches one data story to trade press.

Each item has an owner and a due date in a shared sheet. At the quarter's review, two directory listings now appear among cited sources in the team's prompt set. All details are illustrative.

#16How do you find which sources matter?

Run your prompt set and list the cited domains. Those are the sources engines already use for your topic. Prioritise the ones that cite competitors but not you.

#17How do you track progress?

Keep one row per checklist item with owner, status, date and result. Review monthly, report quarterly.

#18What does "accurate listings" involve?

Check every directory, marketplace and profile that describes your company: name, description, category, pricing, features, integrations, logo and links. Correct anything outdated and note the date you checked. Prioritise the listings that appear as citations in your prompt set. Our view: outdated listings are one of the most common sources of wrong AI answers, and one of the easiest to fix.

#19What makes a healthy review programme?

Ask every customer for an honest review at a natural moment, such as after onboarding or a successful renewal. Don't offer incentives tied to positive ratings, and don't filter who gets asked based on how happy they seem. Reply to reviews, including critical ones, politely and helpfully. Follow each platform's rules on solicitation and incentives.

#20How do you participate in communities?

Choose a few communities where your buyers ask questions. Have named experts answer helpfully, disclose their affiliation and mention your product only where it's genuinely relevant. Respect each community's rules on self-promotion. Consistent, useful participation builds trust over time.

#21How do you earn coverage?

Offer journalists and writers something new: original data, an expert view on a timely topic or a useful resource. Pitch specific stories to writers who cover your area. Make it easy for them with clear facts, quotes and visuals.

#22How do partners help?

Partners such as integration providers or resellers often have pages describing your product. Make sure those pages are accurate and current. Co-written guides or case studies can be valuable sources too, as long as relationships are disclosed.

#23How do you handle negative or wrong information?

If a third-party page states something wrong about your product, contact the publisher politely with the correct facts and a source. For reviews, reply calmly and explain what you've changed, without arguing. Don't try to remove fair criticism. Our view: a thoughtful reply to a negative review often reads better than a page of perfect scores.

#24How do you prioritise with a small team?

Do listings first, because they're quick and often cited. Then start a steady review request process. Add one community and one coverage goal per quarter. Expand only when each item runs smoothly.

#25What should you report each quarter?

Report which checklist items were completed, which cited sources changed in your prompt set and what you plan next. Include one example answer that improved, and one that didn't, with your view of why.

#26What should you do this week?

Run five category prompts, list every cited third-party domain and check your profile on each. Fix anything wrong, note the date and assign an owner for next quarter's check. That alone covers the first item on the checklist and often reveals the second. Next week, add the review request to your onboarding emails and pick the one community where your buyers ask the most questions. Small, regular steps like these add up to a strong off-page presence over a few quarters, and each one is easy to check. Keep a simple log of each fix so you can show progress at the quarterly review.

#27Common questions

Where should we start? With accurate listings on the directories engines cite for your category.

How long does off-page work take? It's ongoing. Expect months before changes show in answers.

Can we buy reviews? No. It breaks platform rules and consumer law in many places.

Who should own it? Usually marketing, with help from product, support and PR.

#28Related

• Earned media vs owned content
• Unlinked brand mentions