SEO PlaysHow to get listed in startup directories without a startup
You have a site with no links, and the usual advice is to submit it to the startup directories. I merged the public lists into one table and got 2,821 domains, and the lists mark 213 of those free or freemium and dofollow at DR 50 or more. The catch is that the forms are built for a product. They ask for a tagline, a logo and screenshots, and a site with no product has none of that to give. I haven't checked what a form does with a bare site, but I'd hand it a product before I find out.
The product I'd make is a Chrome extension, because it's small, it's real, and it comes with a store page on chromewebstore.google.com, a Google domain at DR 99. A tweet with five hundred likes calls that store page a free dofollow link. I wanted that to be true. I rendered three listings this week, one of them the tweet author's own, and every link from a listing to its developer's site carries a nofollow. So the store page is your proof of a product, and the links you're after are the ones the directories give it.
You write the extension, pay Google a one-time registration fee, five dollars by one report, and Google reviews it before it goes on the store. I'd give it one real job, and mine would colour every nofollow link on the page you're on, because you'll use that on your own listings later. I haven't found a log of this exact play. But people who submitted a product have posted theirs, and one small startup logged 60 forms in two weeks. After 30 days they reported 43 live listings, 31 confirmed dofollow links and a domain up from DR 0 to 12.
What to do
- Write the extension, which is a manifest.json and one content script, and run it on a page with a nofollow link before Google sees it.
- Make a page for the extension on your domain with one sentence on what it does, one screenshot and a place for the store link.
- Register at the developer dashboard at chromewebstore.google.com/devconsole (opens in a new tab), pay the one-time fee, click Add new item and upload a zip of the extension folder.
- On the Store listing tab, write the description, pick a category and a language, and upload a 128 by 128 icon, one to five screenshots at 1280 by 800 and a 440 by 280 promo tile, which Google asks for before it takes a submission.
- Put the extension's page on your domain in the Homepage URL field, which shows under Details on the listing. The Official URL field only lists sites you've verified in Search Console, and that link is the one that shows under the title.
- On the Privacy tab state the one purpose and the data it touches, choose who sees it on the Distribution tab, press Submit for Review, and add the store link to your page the day it goes live.
- Give every directory form the extension's page on your domain, and the store page where a form asks for a download link. Keep the icon, the screenshots and the description in one folder with a square logo and a tagline, because every form wants some mix of those.
- Start with SourceForge (opens in a new tab) at DR 92, then Capterra (opens in a new tab) and G2 (opens in a new tab) at 91, GetApp (opens in a new tab) at 85 and Startup Fame (opens in a new tab) at 83. Work down through Indie Hackers (opens in a new tab) at 81 and Uneed (opens in a new tab) at 75, since the lists mark all of them free or freemium and dofollow.
- Submit about ten a day and log each submission in a sheet with the date, the login and the URL you gave, because some approvals come in hours and some take weeks.
- Some directories, LaunchPanda among them, want their badge on your site before they list you for free. Put a nofollow on that badge, because Google's spam policy lists a link you're required to add, with no choice to qualify it, as link spam.
The people who post their results on Reddit got to DR 5 to 10 from directories. The best I found were a new domain above 15 and a product site at 17, but the same threads put the ceiling near DR 20 with directories alone. I'd plan on the low end of that range. Google's spam policy lists low-quality directory links as link spam, and that's why I'd stay high in the table and stop the day it stalls.
When an approval mail comes in, open the live listing with the extension switched on and write into the sheet whether your link is coloured, because the dofollow marks come from the lists and not from the live pages. Once approvals come in, check your domain in the free Ahrefs backlink checker at ahrefs.com/backlink-checker (opens in a new tab) against your sheet.
Evidence
The domain count and every DR come from public directory lists merged into one table and rated with the Ahrefs API at the end of August. The free and dofollow marks are copied from the lists and were never checked on the live pages.
The nofollow on the store link comes from three listings rendered in a headless browser on 5 September 2026, Grammarly, Detailed SEO Extension and Open Graph Debugger, and the author of the last one wrote the tweet that calls the link a dofollow. Every link from a listing to its developer's site carried rel ugc nofollow.
Google's Chrome Web Store pages, read in September 2026, give the one-time fee without an amount, the icon, screenshot and tile sizes, the Search Console rule for the Official URL field, and the upload and review steps.
A post on r/EntrepreneurRideAlong (opens in a new tab) from April 2026 by a team that runs a small startup is the source of the sixty-form log above. The post ends in a pitch for the author's own spreadsheet, and the numbers are one unverified account.
LaunchPanda's list of free dofollow directories marks its badge requirement.
The DR results and the ceiling come from an r/Entrepreneur thread of September 2025 and an r/SEO thread of December 2025, where people posted their own numbers, and none of them is a controlled test.
Google's Search spam policies, read in September 2026, list a required link that the adding site may not qualify as link spam, and low-quality directory links as well. The same page says a nofollow or sponsored attribute qualifies a link.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-05. A play whose evidence stops holding up is rewritten or retired.