15 Free Directory Submission Sites, All Dofollow

What directory submission is now

You fill in a form on a site that lists websites. It builds you a page. That page has a link back to you.

This has been around since 2005 and it got ruined once. Around 2015 the web was full of "we'll submit you to 500 directories" services. Google responded by giving those links almost no weight, and by treating a backlink profile stuffed with junk directories as a bad sign on its own. So now people say directory submission is dead.

That's half right. What died is bulk. Not submission.

Here's the difference. Your company's real record on a DR 90 business directory and one link on a DR 8 junk site are not the same thing to Google. The first one still counts. The second one never did.

So the move isn't 200 submissions. It's 15 to 20 real ones, filled in properly. That's what this guide is.

One expectation to set first: these sites won't send you traffic. A DR 88 directory might get a few thousand visits a month, and those people are looking for something else. You do this so Google knows you exist, and so someone searching your company name finds a few solid records. For actual traffic you want other things — we've written up which startup directories are worth your time and SaaS directory submission separately.

Does it still work

Depends where you are.

Brand new, zero backlinks: yes, and it's the best afternoon you can spend. Going from 0 to 15 links is fastest this way. No creativity needed. No waiting on replies. Just sit down and fill forms.

Already have steady traffic: pick carefully. One directory link won't move your rankings now. But do the business listings anyway, because B2B buyers google your company before a call. Finding nothing costs you.

Pure consumer app: do two or three high-DR ones and put the rest of your time into app store listings.

One case where it's clearly a bad idea: submitting to 200 directories to chase rankings. Covered above. It backfires now.

Quick word on nofollow. Some people filter to dofollow only and delete the rest. That's too blunt — some of the highest-DR sites we track are nofollow, and we ran the numbers in do nofollow backlinks help SEO. This guide is dofollow-only because that's probably what you searched for, not because nofollow is useless.

Prep once, then it's copy-paste

These forms ask for the same stuff. Prep once and each site takes five minutes. Skip the prep and you'll be hunting for a logo file on site three and quitting by site five.

Three descriptions, three lengths:

• One line, under 60 words. Who it's for and what it fixes. You'll use this most.
• One paragraph, around 150 words.
• One long version, around 300 words. Business directories ask for this.

One specific trap when writing them: don't list features. Indie Dev Tools is hand-picked, and descriptions built around what it saves an indie dev clear review far more often than feature lists. That holds on every human-reviewed site here.

Company details (required for the business tier): registered name, address, phone. Write these identically everywhere. Inc. vs LLC, a missing suite number — inconsistent details hurt local search more than the listing helps. Manta calls this out directly.

Logo: one 512x512 PNG, saved twice — transparent and white background.

Email: use an inbox you actually read. Viesearch has a harsh rule where a bounced email wipes your account and your listings.

The 15, grouped by what they ask of you

They want real company details (4)

Highest bar here, and the most valuable links. No registered entity? Skip this section. Faking it gets you rejected, or you end up with a hollow page.

Dun & Bradstreet — DR 93, the highest here. Apply for a free D-U-N-S number, set up the company profile, add your site. The D-U-N-S takes a few weeks. A personal project won't get through. Once it's done, B2B buyers checking you up find a real record.

Foursquare Listings — DR 90. Needs a real address, so a purely online product doesn't fit. Details have to match maps and your other listings or review stalls.

Chamber of Commerce — DR 80. US business listing site, free, dofollow. Name, address and phone, all three.

Manta — DR 76, same family, free basic listing. Keep those details identical across every platform after you're in.

B2B software (3)

Software Advice — DR 88. Same group as Capterra and GetApp (Gartner), and the data is shared, so doing them together saves real time. Has to be a genuine B2B product with a full profile.

GetApp — DR 87, same Gartner family. A fuller profile ranks higher.

TheSaaSDirectory — DR 88. A plain SaaS directory. Dofollow, free, simple form, fast approval. Traffic is low, but it's the easiest good link on this list. Best effort-to-payoff ratio here.

Tools and AI, submit and forget (4)

Indie Dev Tools — DR 90. A hand-curated set of tools indie devs and solo founders actually use. Submitting isn't getting listed — a person picks. Categories are broad (AI, marketing, dev, design, SEO), so pick the right one instead of guessing.

AI Tools Guide — DR 77. Smaller AI directory, free listing, dofollow link. Short form, quick approval. Put your main keyword in the first line of the description.

Good AI Tools — DR 73. You have to log in first, there's no anonymous form. The tool has to work. Placeholder pages get rejected.

AI Agents Directory — DR 71. Human-reviewed, so a complete profile (use cases, integrations, pricing) clears faster. Featured and Partner slots are paid. Don't expect those for free.

There are more sites in this lane — we collected them in AI tool directories.

Old general directories (2)

Viesearch — DR 73. A human-edited web directory that's been around forever. Free, dofollow. They now say review takes 1-2 business days, not the years-long queue old posts describe. Two traps: mostly-AI-generated sites get rejected, and a bounced email wipes your account.

Link Centre — DR 72. Online since 1996, recently moved to subscriptions. The free tier gives one listing per domain with a clean dofollow link. Ten minutes of work. Paid tiers from $39/yr sell "page one placement", but nobody browses directory pages. Take the free slot, skip the rest.

You have to warm up the account first (2)

These two are social bookmarking sites and the rules are different. A new account dumping links gets flagged fast.

Scoop.it — DR 91. Sign up, create a topic, curate real content over time, and keep your own links to a small share. Only posting your own stuff reads as spam.

Diigo — DR 85. Public bookmarks can pass dofollow. Bookmark a batch of other people's good stuff in your niche first. Then mix yours in. Add tags and a real note. Never a bare URL.

These two cost more time than everything above. If you're short on time, do them last.

The ones that look free but aren't

This is the part those "500 free directories" lists never tell you.

Betalist — free submission is gone. Their FAQ says every submission is paid, and the price only appears at the last step of the form. If you're not selected you get an automatic full refund, so trying is cheap. But it isn't free. More in the Betalist submission guide.

Twelve Tools — the free tier gives one dofollow link, but step 4 of the form asks you to put their badge on your homepage or footer. You're trading a homepage link for a directory link. Often a bad trade. The $36 one-time tier gives three permanent dofollow links, 24-hour review, and no badge.

Dofollow.Tools — same setup. Free tier wants the footer badge, $9.99 one-time removes it. Curation is loose and traffic is near zero. Treat it as a cheap link buy, not a directory.

ActiveSearchResults — DR 74, which sounds good. But it's an old search engine nobody uses. Free submission is a URL plus an email, then you sit in an indexing queue. Backlink lists hype the DR, but what you get is a search result entry, not a page you control. Two minutes to submit is harmless. Don't buy the paid upgrade.

Should you pay for a directory submission service

No.

Advertisers bid over $20 a click on that keyword. Anything funded by that money delivers one of two things. Either it submits you to 300 junk sites, which is exactly the pattern Google penalizes. Or it fills in the 15 sites above for you and charges a few hundred dollars.

With your materials ready, all of these take one afternoon. If you really want to hand it off, give a prepared brief to an assistant. Don't buy a "500 directories guaranteed" package.

One exception: the D-U-N-S application is genuinely annoying paperwork. If someone handles admin at your company, give it to them. But that isn't a submission service.

Writing a listing that clears review

Most of the 15 above are human-reviewed. Rejections almost always come down to one thing: the description says what you built, not what the reader stops having to do.

Compare:

• No: "An AI-powered all-in-one project management platform supporting task assignment, progress tracking, team collaboration and data dashboards."
• Yes: "Project tracking for teams of two or three. No setup. Create a project, assign tasks, progress calculates itself."

The second clears review more often for a plain reason. The reviewer needs to know who it's for, and the first one never tells them.

A few specifics:

• Put your main term in the first sentence. No warm-up. Sites like AI Tools Guide pull the listing title from that line.
• Pick the right category. More submissions get bounced for wrong category than for weak copy.
• No placeholder pages. Good AI Tools rejects products that don't load or aren't finished.
• Include a demo link if you have one. Human reviewers click it.

Check that the link actually landed

Submitting isn't getting the link. Most people skip this step, then think they have 15 backlinks when they have 6.

Step one, wait. A day or two for the fast ones. A week or two for human review.

Step two, find your listing page. Search site:directorydomain.com yourproductname. Nothing? It's not listed yet, or the page isn't indexed.

Step three, check that the link is really dofollow. Open your listing, view source, find your domain, and look at that <a> tag for rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc". Some sites quietly add nofollow on the free tier. You can only catch this by looking.

Step four, check Google indexed the page. A page that exists but isn't indexed doesn't count yet. Search site: plus the full URL. Deep pages on old directories fail this a lot.

All four, then it counts. That's how the link type on every site in our directory got set. We didn't copy someone's list.

Common mistakes

• Doing 100 sites in one afternoon. The expensive one. It's worse than doing nothing.
• Company details that don't match across platforms. Inc. vs LLC, a missing suite number. Costs more in local search than the link gives back.
• Dumping links from a fresh bookmarking account. Scoop.it and Diigo both flag it, and then you're rebuilding the account.
• Using a throwaway email. Viesearch wipes accounts on bounce, and there goes the whole batch.
• Submitting and never checking. Skip the four steps above and you don't know what you actually got.
• Chasing DR alone. ActiveSearchResults is DR 74 and you don't get a page out of it. DR is where you start, not the answer.
• Taking a free tier that wants your footer. Your homepage is worth more than a directory link.

Side by side

FAQ

Does directory submission still work? On the right sites, yes. In bulk, no. Fifteen real ones beat two hundred junk ones, and the second option actively hurts.

Are there still free directory submission sites? Yes, all 15 above. Just tell "free" apart from "free if you add our badge". The second one is a trade.

How long until I see something? Links go live in one to two weeks. Ranking effects take months, and one directory link is small. Don't expect this to change your business.

How much does dofollow vs nofollow matter? Dofollow passes weight, nofollow doesn't. That's by design. But not passing weight isn't the same as worthless — we did the math in this guide.

Can I finish in one afternoon? With materials ready, the first 13 yes. Scoop.it and Diigo need a warm account, so those run longer.

Why no direct submit links here? The submit URL, the exact steps, and the gotchas for each site live on that site's own page. Click the names above.

Where the rest of the list lives

The 15 above are the ones worth writing about. Our directory has 115 sites that match "directory category + dofollow + free + DR 40 and up", each with link type, pricing, and first-hand submission notes.

Here's that list, already filtered: directory · dofollow · free. Want the strongest ones first? Set the DR filter to 80+ on that page.

Or browse by category: directories, SaaS, AI tools, dev tools.