SEO PlaysHow to get the first backlinks for a brand-new domain
A brand-new domain does not have a weak link profile. It has none, which is a different problem: nothing points at it, so little crawls it, and nobody you email has any reason to believe you exist.
Directories are the one link source that requires no human to agree. You fill a form, the listing is approved, the link exists. Each one is individually weak, and Google discounts links anyone can create — but weak and present beats absent, which is the position you are actually in.
They are also unusually well documented. Public lists on GitHub carry the domain rating, the price and the follow type for each directory, which means most of this play is screening a large pile down to the entries where a link can do something, and then filling forms for two weeks.
What you get
Twenty to forty live directory listings — the one link source that needs nobody to say yes — screened so you only submit where a link helps.
Steps
- Collect the free public directory lists first. On GitHub, volodstaimi/Startup-Launch-List (580+ directories with domain rating, link type, and pricing per entry) and planting-moon/awesome-backlink-lists (423 directories with DR, free-or-paid status, and follow type, refreshed monthly) carry the screening data; imsankz/backlinkflow adds 1,123 entries with submit paths and live-or-dead flags. All three feed the merged dataset this play screens; a paid list adds nothing.
- Screen before you submit anywhere. Keep a directory only if submission is free, the directory itself ranks for at least one keyword, and it has 50 or more referring domains. In our merged dataset of 2,821 unique directory domains, 1,066 are free and 1,628 pass this screen.
- Start from the verified high end. Our own Ahrefs refresh puts SourceForge at DR 92, dev.to at 91, Capterra at 91, G2 at 91, startupfa.me at 83, dang.ai, fazier.com and twelve.tools at 82, and SaaSHub at 80 — all free per the merged lists, most marked dofollow there; step 6 is where you confirm that per listing.
- Build your submission kit once: logo files, two screenshots, and descriptions in three lengths, all in one document. Every form after that is a ten-minute paste.
- Submit to 30 or 40 of the screened directories over two weeks, and log each submission with its date and login in a sheet.
- A week later, open each approved listing and read the link in the page source (Ctrl+U, search for your domain). An approval email does not tell you whether the link went live, or whether it carries nofollow.
- Stop when your domain rating stalls; the plateau tends to arrive in the mid-teens. Past the plateau, the same hours pay better in a tool or a data page that people link to on their own.
How to verify it worked
- A free backlink checker (Ahrefs' free tool, or Bing Webmaster Tools' backlinks report) shows new referring domains within two to four weeks.
- Your sheet shows live-versus-nofollow status per listing, read from page source, not from approval emails.
Why it works
What directories buy you is a floor, not a trajectory. They put crawl paths and brand mentions where there were none, which is enough to get later outreach answered — and the plateau, when it arrives, is the signal to spend the next hours on something people link to without being asked.
Evidence
Our own dataset: merging the 50 public directory lists produced 2,821 unique directory domains; 1,066 accept free submissions, and 1,628 pass the screen in step 2. DR figures come from our own Ahrefs refresh of all 2,8xx domains.
A tracked practitioner run, 2026: 60 submissions in two weeks (~15 hours) produced 43 approvals and 31 dofollow links, moving the domain from DR 0 to 12 inside a month, with the plateau arriving around DR 15-20.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-01. A play whose evidence stops holding up is rewritten or retired.