How to get backlinks for a new website: a directory-first plan for the first 30 days

A new website has no backlinks, which means search engines have little reason to crawl it, no external evidence of what it is, and no reason to rank it for anything but its own name. The fastest honest way to change that is directories: startup directories, "alternative to" sites, launch boards and niche tool lists that will link to a new product within days of a submission. This guide is the 30-day plan we use on a fresh domain, what those links do and do not do, and which sites want something in return.

What directory backlinks do for a new site

• They get you crawled. A link from a page Google already visits is the quickest route to being indexed at all. New domains with no inbound links can sit unindexed for weeks.
• They establish what you are. Thirty listings with the same name, the same URL and the same one-line description are how search engines and AI answer engines learn that your product exists and what it does. Consistency across those listings matters more than any single link.
• A few send real visitors. AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Product Hunt and, for AI tools, There's An AI For That have their own search traffic. A complete listing there keeps sending people for years.
• They rank for the searches you cannot. Nobody types your name yet. They type "alternative to Notion". Directories rank for that phrase; your listing under it is how you get found.

What they do not do: rank you for competitive terms, replace content, or turn a domain rating of zero into thirty by volume alone. Google has treated low-quality directory link schemes as spam for over a decade. The rule is the same as always: a couple of dozen real directories, done completely, beats three hundred thin listings. The longer answer, with the five kinds of directory link and how to judge one, is in directory backlinks: do they help SEO?.

Dofollow, nofollow and badge-for-link

Most launch sites mark outbound links nofollow on free tiers. That does not make them worthless: nofollow links still get you crawled, still carry the entity signals above, and still send clicks. It does mean you should not pay for a "dofollow upgrade" on a site with no visitors.

A growing number of directories run a badge exchange instead. Twelve Tools, Turbo0 and Smol Launch list you free with a dofollow link if you embed their badge on your site. Fazier and Indie.Deals require the badge (or a payment) before they list you at all. AI directories like Dang.ai and Toolpilot do the same. Their high domain ratings come from thousands of footer badges, which is worth knowing before you treat that number as a quality signal.

Decide a policy once. A badge in the footer of a weekend project costs you nothing. On a product site you are trying to make look serious, be selective: two or three badges from sites with real traffic, not fifteen.

The 30-day plan

Week 1: foundations and the long queues

• Make the site linkable: a real title tag, a meta description, Open Graph tags and a square logo. Directories and their scrapers pull from these, and so does the package builder.
• Build the launch package: one name, one tagline, descriptions at every length, logo, screenshots, pricing, "alternative to" products. The checklist has the limits.
• Submit to the free directories with the longest queues on day one: Uneed (about three months), MicroLaunch (two to three), StartupBase and SoloPush (a couple of months). They go live while you do everything else.
• Submit to AlternativeTo and SaaSHub completely. Fill the alternatives field with care; it is where their traffic comes from.

Week 2: the fast launch boards

• Sites that approve within days: TinyLaunch (under a week), Tiny Startups (under a month), Huzzler, Startup Fame, LaunchIgniter, PeerPush and Peerlist.
• BetaList if the product is genuinely new, and an Indie Hackers product page.
• Badge sites, if your policy allows them.

Week 3: launch day and communities

• Product Hunt and, for anything technical, Show HN on Hacker News the same morning. Both produce a permanent page that links to you and a day of referral traffic. The Product Hunt checklist covers the preparation.
• The communities that allow a show-and-tell post: the relevant subreddits, dev.to, the Slack and Discord groups you already belong to. Posts, not listings; the list is in startup communities worth a launch.

Week 4: niche lists and tidy-up

• Niche directories where the audience matches: AI tool directories for AI products, Dev Hunt for developer tools, We Use Rails for Rails apps, GitHub topics and awesome-lists if you are open source.
• Go back through the log. Reply to any directory that asked a question, add the listing URLs that went live, fix the listing that published with the wrong logo.

After 30 days, the pattern is quarterly: revisit the log when a queue clears, update listings when pricing or screenshots change, and submit the next product through the same list.

Keep every listing identical

Same product name (not "Acme" on one site and "Acme App" on another), same URL (pick https and with or without www and use it everywhere), same tagline, same logo. Search engines reconcile entities across sources; inconsistent listings look like different products. This is the practical reason to submit from one package rather than from memory, and it is what the Chrome extension enforces without you thinking about it.

How to tell it worked

• Search Console. The Links report lists referring pages as Google discovers them; the Pages report shows when your site was indexed. Expect the first directory links to appear there within a week or two.
• Referral traffic. AlternativeTo, SaaSHub and Product Hunt show up as referrers within days of a listing going live. Add a UTM parameter per directory to your package URL if you want the attribution to be exact.
• Brand searches. Impressions for your product name in Search Console are the first sign the entity has registered.
• A backlink checker. Any free checker will show the referring domains as they are crawled. Do not obsess over the domain rating; watch the count of real sites.

What to skip

• "500 directory submissions for $5". Generic web directories from 2009 with no visitors and a spam profile you do not want near a new domain.
• Paying for dofollow on sites with no traffic.
• Reciprocal link pages and private blog networks.
• Submitting the same product to the same directory twice because you lost track. Keep the log.