SEO PlaysHow to get listed in startup directories without a startup
You have a site with no links, and the standard advice is to submit it to the startup directories, because a directory links to you without anyone having to be talked into it. The public lists name 2,821 of them once you merge every list into one table, and 213 of those are free and marked dofollow by the lists at DR 50 or more. Then you open the form at BetaList and it asks for a product. But a blog isn't a product, and neither is a newsletter or a portfolio, because a directory lists tools and a blog is something you read. The form rejects a blog, or you submit and never hear back. The general business directories are no help either, because they list a company with an address.
To a directory, a product is anything with a store page. A Chrome extension is the smallest thing with one, and you can write it in an afternoon and publish it for a one-time fee of five dollars. Its store page then sits on chromewebstore.google.com, a Google domain at DR 99, which is the highest DR in the whole table. But Google reviews every extension before it lists it and turns filler away, so the extension has to do one real job. I'd make it one that colours every nofollow link on the page you're on, because you'll use that on your own listings later.
From then on your site is a product site. The URL you give every form is the extension's page on your domain, and where a form asks for a download or store link, you give the store page. The free dofollow directories accept the listing, and some of them are quick about it. SaaSHub at DR 80 approves within the hour, Promote Project at 49 puts the listing live the moment you submit, and Launched at 32 takes about a day. One founder logged every form and took a new domain from zero to double digits in a month.
What to do
- Write the extension, which is a manifest.json and one content script, and run it on a page that you know carries a nofollow link, because you want to see it work before Google does.
- Open the developer console at chromewebstore.google.com/devconsole (opens in a new tab), pay the one-time developer fee and upload the zip. Fill in the store listing with the extension's name, the one job it does in a sentence and a link to your domain.
- Make a page for the extension on your domain with the same sentence, one screenshot and the store link.
- Before the first form, put a logo at 1024 pixels square, up to seven screenshots and a description in three lengths into one folder. Set up an email address at your domain as well, because many forms only take a submission from the product's domain.
- Start at the top of the table 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 every one of them takes a free listing.
- Submit about ten a day and log each one in a sheet with the date, the login you made and the URL you gave, because the approvals arrive over weeks and by then you'll have forgotten which ones you sent.
- Nearly half of the directories on one public list want a badge on your site before they list you. Put a nofollow on that badge, because Google counts a link you must add to get listed as link spam.
- Ignore every skip-the-line offer and wait in the free queue instead, because it gives you the same listing later, and BetaList at 76 lists you in about a month that way.
You'll top out around DR 15 to 20. People who post their numbers got to DR 5 to 10, one of them to 17, and I'd plan on that, not on the top of the range. Google counts these links at a low weight, because anyone with an account can get one, and a listing on a page that nobody visits does next to nothing for you. Some queues take six months or more, and nothing on a form tells you which one you're in. Once it stalls, I'd stop, because the same hours go further on a tool page or a data page that earns links without a form.
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. Two to four weeks after the first approvals, put your domain into the free Ahrefs backlink checker at ahrefs.com/backlink-checker (opens in a new tab) and match its referring domains against the live listings in your sheet. Give the rankings another 4 to 8 weeks after that before you judge anything.
Evidence
The pool count and every directory's DR come from fifty public directory lists merged into one table by domain and rated with Ahrefs at the end of August.
A founder's log on r/EntrepreneurRideAlong from April 2026 covers 60 directories in two weeks, one line each with the DR, the follow type, the price and the approval time. After 30 days it showed 43 live listings, 31 of them dofollow, about fifteen hours at the forms and the domain gone from DR 0 to 12.
An Indie Hackers post on launching to 100 directories and threads on r/SaaS supplied the approval times and the badge demands.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-05. A play whose evidence stops holding up is rewritten or retired.