Free backlinks for your startup: we checked 30 "dofollow" sites, and what to do instead

Every few weeks a list like this goes viral: "30 websites to get free dofollow backlinks for your startup." Thousands of people bookmark it. Very few check it.

We did. On 12 October 2026 we opened every site on one of the most shared lists and looked at the link each one gives you: whether it's free, and whether it carries the rel attribute that tells Google to ignore it.

Here's what we found:

• 2 are dead or abandoned. One now redirects to a different product; the other hasn't posted since July 2025.
• 6 give you no link Google can follow at all. They send clicks through a redirect, mark links ugc, or have no link to your site on a free profile.
• Most of the rest want something: a fee from $15 to $99, a badge on your homepage, or a number of upvotes before the link counts.
• A handful are worth a morning, if your product fits their audience.

That's not a reason to skip directories. It's a reason to do them in the right order, after your site is set up to use what they send, and to spend most of your time on the links that actually move rankings.

What a backlink is actually worth

A backlink does two jobs. It can send visitors, and it can tell Google your site is worth ranking. The viral lists sell the second job. The first is usually the one you get.

A few facts worth knowing before you spend a weekend submitting forms:

• nofollow, ugc and sponsored are hints. Google uses sponsored for paid links, ugc for user content and nofollow for everything else, and treats all three as hints, not rules. A nofollow link from a page people read can still send customers.
• Google names directories in its spam policy. Its link spam rules list "low-quality directory or bookmark site links", buying links, and excessive link exchanges. A hundred links from directories nobody visits won't help, and a pattern of them can hurt.
• Paid links should be marked. If you pay a directory for a "dofollow" link, Google's policy says that link should carry sponsored or nofollow. Paying for one to move rankings is exactly what the policy is about. Paying for a launch slot because its audience buys is fine.
• "Free if you add our badge" is a link swap. You give the site a link from your homepage in return for one from theirs. One or two won't matter. A footer full of them is the "excessive link exchanges" Google describes.
• A few good links beat many weak ones. Google's own Gary Illyes has said links matter less than people think. One link from an article your buyers read is worth more than thirty from directories only other founders browse.

So treat directories as cheap distribution with a small SEO bonus, not as an SEO strategy.

Before you build a single link: the setup

Links point at your site. If Google can't crawl it, or the page they land on doesn't match what anyone searches, the links have nothing to lift. Do this first. It takes an afternoon.

1. Verify your site in Google Search Console and submit your sitemap. List the sitemap in robots.txt too. Google retired its sitemap "ping", so submitting in Search Console and keeping lastmod dates accurate is how you tell it what changed.
2. Import the site into Bing Webmaster Tools from Search Console. It verifies itself in a minute. Bing's results also feed Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, and Microsoft's results feed AI answers in Copilot.
3. Turn on IndexNow if your host or CMS supports it. It tells Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam and Yep the moment a page changes. Google doesn't use it, so it's a bonus, not a replacement for Search Console.
4. Check the basics on every page you care about: one clear title and meta description, one H1, a canonical URL, and nothing accidentally marked noindex. Single-page apps built with React need their marketing pages rendered as HTML, not only in JavaScript.
5. Add structured data: Organization on your homepage (name, logo, social profiles), and SoftwareApplication on your product or pricing page with your price (0 if free). Skip FAQ markup for rich results: Google limited those to government and health sites in 2023 and has since stopped showing them.
6. Make it fast. Core Web Vitals are LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds (INP replaced FID in March 2024) and CLS under 0.1, measured on real visitors. Search Console's Core Web Vitals report shows which pages fail.
7. Build the pages links should point to. A homepage alone ranks for your brand name. Buyers search for problems, categories and competitors: "[category] for [who]", "[competitor] alternative", "[competitor] vs [competitor]". Make a page for each one that matters. That's where a link from a comparison article or directory does the most good.
8. Tag every link you submit with UTMs (?utm_source=uneed&utm_medium=directory) so in a month you can see which sources sent people who signed up, not just clicks. Our tracking checklist covers the rest.

A word on llms.txt: it's cheap to add, but no major search engine or chatbot has said it uses one to decide what to cite, and Google has said it doesn't. Do it if you like. Don't expect it to bring traffic.

The 30 sites, checked

We read the rel attribute on each site's link to a listed product, from the page's HTML, and took prices from each site's own pricing or submit page. Sites change their rules often, and some add nofollow to free listings after the page loads, so check your own listing once it's live (how, below). "Followed" means the listings we sampled were followed; on several sites those were paid listings.

Worth it, if your product fits

Real traffic or a real link, but you're paying for it

Skip

So out of 30, about ten are worth a morning for the right product, eight cost money or a link swap for what they give, and twelve we'd skip.

How to check a link yourself

Once your listing is live, right-click the link to your site and choose Inspect. Look at the <a> tag:

• No rel, or only noopener / noreferrer: followed.
• rel="nofollow", "ugc" or "sponsored": a hint not to follow. It can still send visitors.
• An href that points to the directory's own /out/, /go/ or /see/ address instead of your site: a redirect. Search engines may never connect it to you.

Free traffic that beats directories

Directories are the easy part. These take more effort and bring more: buyers, and the kind of links Google actually counts.

1. Launch days with real audiences

Product Hunt, Show HN, Peerlist Launchpad, BetaList and Indie Hackers send a spike of people who try new things. Product Hunt now picks which launches to feature by hand, and its links are generally nofollow, so plan it for the users, not the link. Show HN requires something people can try right away, with no sign-up wall. BetaList's free queue takes months; paying shortens it. Our first 100 users playbook has the launch-day checklist for each.

2. Get on the lists your buyers already read

Search Google for best [category] tools, [competitor] alternatives and [competitor] vs. Every article on page one gets read by people choosing a tool this week, and the ones that rank keep ranking. Email each author with one line on who your product is for and one on why it belongs on their list. Offer a free account to test. Expect a reply rate of one in ten; the one is worth it.

Then claim your listing on AlternativeTo as an alternative to every competitor. New listings there are nofollow, but the traffic is people who are actively switching.

3. Integration pages and app stores

If your product connects to something, the partner's app directory is a listing on a site with real authority and buyers already inside it: the Shopify App Store, the Chrome Web Store, the WordPress plugin directory, Zapier's app directory or a partner's integrations page. Zapier doesn't hand out links; you earn the listing by building a real integration. Same with the others. If you built one already, make sure you're listed.

4. Answer journalists

HARO, the old free service where journalists asked for expert quotes, closed in 2024 and came back as a paid product. The free alternatives today are Source of Sources and Help a B2B Writer, and Qwoted has a free tier. Pick the requests in your field, answer within a few hours with something specific and quotable, and one in ten will run. A link from a real publication is worth more than every directory above combined.

5. Make something worth linking to

People link to things they can use or cite, not to product pages. Two that work for small teams:

• A free tool. A calculator, a checker, a generator: whatever small job your buyers do before they need your product. It ranks on its own, gets shared in communities, and gets linked from "useful tools" lists.
• Your own numbers. If your product sees data across customers, publish what you learn, with the method. "We looked at 1,200 [things]; here's what the top 10% do differently." Writers need numbers to cite, and they cite whoever published them.

6. Podcasts and guest posts in your niche

Niche podcasts need guests every week and almost always link to the guest's site in the show notes. Look for shows your buyers listen to, not shows about startups. A short pitch with three topics you can talk about from real experience works better than a media kit. Guest posts work the same way, on sites your buyers actually read. Skip any site that charges for a "guest post": that's a paid link.

7. Communities, the patient way

Reddit, Indie Hackers, DEV and niche Slack and Discord groups send buyers, not links: most of their links are nofollow. Read each community's rules first. r/SideProject is the most open to sharing projects; r/startups and r/SaaS allow it only in their weekly promotion threads. Answer questions for weeks before you mention what you built.

A 30-day plan

Where MarketingBuddy fits

The SEO agent does the ongoing part of this. It reads your Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools data, finds the searches your buyers make and the pages that are close to page one, writes comparison pages and articles, and publishes them to your blog, WordPress or Webflow after you approve them, then submits them to Bing. It also finds partner and affiliate sites in your niche to reach out to. Nothing goes live until you say so. See how it works for SaaS and web apps.