Free Backlink Sites: 20 Dofollow Ones We Checked

What free backlink sites are now

Sites that let you place a link to your own website yourself, and that don't put nofollow on it.

Ten years ago there were more of these than anyone could count. Forum signatures, blog comments, bookmarking sites, directories. Anywhere took a link. Then Google tightened up, round after round, and most platforms slapped nofollow on every user-placed link, or later ugc. The ones that still pass dofollow are the minority.

So the phrase "free backlink sites" now needs a qualifier: actually dofollow. Otherwise you spend an afternoon posting 50 links, open the source, and every one says rel="nofollow ugc". Wasted afternoon.

The 20 sites here passed one test. We opened a real page on each and read the rel attribute on the outbound links. Not copied from another list.

Is it still worth doing

First, what it does and doesn't do.

What it does. A new domain with zero backlinks gets its homepage indexed and then Google mostly stops coming. With these 20 links in place, the crawler drops by every few days and new pages get indexed within days. That's the direct effect. Also, a new site whose links come from one or two sources looks odd. Twenty different sources spread the profile out and it looks normal.

What it doesn't do. Push a competitive keyword to page one. All these links are user-placed, Google weights them low, and no amount of them stacks up to a ranking. Rankings come from people citing your content on their own.

So think of this as a new site's starter kit. Do it once and you're done. An older site with a few dozen natural backlinks can mostly skip it.

One note. If Baidu is your target, most of these won't help. Baidu barely counts links from these overseas platforms.

What to prepare

The three groups want different things.

Content sites want something to post. Doesn't need to be long. A 300-word intro, or a short piece on what problem your product solves. One piece, lightly edited, covers five sites.

Company profile sites want real company details. Name, address, phone, email, founding date. Dun & Bradstreet verifies, and fake details don't pass.

Software listing sites want product materials. Name, one-liner, long description, category, screenshots, logo. Same kit you'd use for any directory. Make it once, reuse it.

One thing for all of them. Check yourdomain.com/robots.txt and your homepage for noindex first. If your own site is blocking crawlers, the links arrive and nothing comes through.

The 20, grouped by what they ask of you

Post content, get a link (6)

• Tumblr, DR 99. Start a blog, post an article, put the link in the body. We checked today: dofollow. Highest DR on the list, and no review at all.
• Hacker News, DR 91. Post a Show HN. Only posts that reach the front page get a dofollow link. Posts stuck in /newest carry nofollow. So whether this counts depends on whether your post gets upvoted.
• PRLog, DR 80. Free press release distribution, and the release body can carry dofollow links. Write an "X launches" release. There doesn't need to be real news.
• Alltop, DR 73. Submit your RSS feed and it lists your posts on the matching topic page. Checked today: dofollow. Good if you have a blog.
• Scoop.it, DR 91. Make a topic page and curate your own pages into it. Links on the curation page are dofollow.
• Diigo, DR 85. Social bookmarking. Post the link with tags and set it public. The page we checked was half dofollow, half nofollow. The public bookmarks are the dofollow half.

Build a company profile, get a link (5)

• Dun & Bradstreet, DR 93. Business database. Getting a D-U-N-S number is free, and the profile page carries your website link. They verify company details, which takes days to weeks.
• Foursquare, DR 90. Business listing for companies with a physical address. Profile link is dofollow.
• F6S, DR 86. Platform for startups and founders. Company page is free, link is dofollow. You'll also see accelerator and event applications there.
• Chamber of Commerce, DR 80. Business directory, free, dofollow, wants a real company name, address and phone.
• Webwiki, DR 77. Website review directory. Claim your domain's page and add a description. Dofollow. Has its own guide.

List your software, get a link (9)

• SourceForge, DR 93. Free hosting for open-source projects, and commercial software can claim a product page. Dofollow, and Google trusts this site a lot.
• Software Advice, DR 87. Owned by Gartner, shares a vendor portal with GetApp and Capterra. Free tier gets a basic page.
• GetApp, DR 85. Same portal as above. Fill in once, show up on all three.
• Twelve Tools, DR 83. The free tier gives one dofollow link, but wants its badge on your homepage or footer. That's trading a homepage link for a directory link. Do the math first.
• AlternativeTo, DR 81. Software alternatives directory. Anyone can submit, with moderation. Dofollow.
• TheSaaSDirectory, DR 88. SaaS directory, free, dofollow, live a day or two after submitting.
• Tool Pilot, DR 79. AI tools directory, free tier is dofollow. Non-AI products get in too. Review is loose.
• Indie Dev Tools, DR 90. Directory of tools for indie developers. Checked today: dofollow. Developer-facing products first.
• Viesearch, DR 72. A small search engine that still takes URL submissions. Free, dofollow, a few days of review.

Each site's submit page and the things to watch for are on its detail page. Click through.

How to confirm a link is really dofollow

This is the most important section, because lists go stale. A site that's dofollow today can change next year.

There's one method. After your link is live, open that page, view the source, search for your domain, and read the rel attribute on that <a> tag.

• No rel, or rel with only noopener or noreferrer: dofollow.
• rel with nofollow, ugc or sponsored anywhere in it: not dofollow.

Ten seconds. Don't trust any list, this one included. Look yourself.

One catch. Some sites render with JavaScript, and the link won't show in view-source. Use the browser's "Inspect element" to see the rendered DOM, or use Google's URL Inspection tool to see the HTML it fetched.

After you're done

Once the links are posted, watch two places in Search Console.

The "Links" report. New referring domains usually start showing up here after two to four weeks. If one doesn't appear, that doesn't mean it didn't count. Google only shows the subset it thinks is worth showing.

"Crawl stats." This is more direct. About a week after posting, the daily crawl request count should move. If it moves, the links are working.

Then stop. With these 20 done, a new site's starter kit is complete. The time from here goes into content, not into finding more backlink sites.

Common mistakes

• Assuming dofollow without reading the rel. What a list says and what the page does often differ. Check after posting.
• Counting a Hacker News post that stayed in /newest. Those are nofollow. Only front-page posts count.
• Skipping the Twelve Tools badge. On the free tier, no badge means the link doesn't go live.
• Fake company details. Dun & Bradstreet and Chamber of Commerce verify. Fakes don't pass, and the domain may get flagged.
• Posting all 20 in one day. No evidence this gets penalized, but spreading it over three or four days looks more natural and is less tiring.
• Pointing every link at the homepage. If you have inner pages, send a few links there. The profile looks healthier and the inner pages get indexed.
• Hunting for more after 20. Past this point the sites are low DR and low quality. Write content instead.

Side by side

FAQ

How much do free backlink sites actually help? They get Google crawling you often and spread a new site's link sources out. Direct ranking effect is small.

How long does it take to do all 20? The six content sites, an hour. The five company profiles, an hour plus waiting on review. The nine software listings, two hours. One day to post, a week for reviews.

Why aren't Medium, Reddit and Quora on here? Their user links are nofollow or ugc, so they're outside this guide's scope. Use them if you like, but don't count them as backlinks.

Which one should I do first? Tumblr and SourceForge. Highest DR, and no review or a loose one.

Should I buy paid backlinks? Not this guide's topic. Do the free 20, then see whether your content earns links on its own before deciding.

It's been a month and the Search Console "Links" report doesn't show them. Did they fail? Not necessarily. Google only shows a subset. "Crawl stats" moving is the better signal.

Where the rest of the list lives

These 20 are the ones we checked and thought worth writing up. Our directory has over a hundred sites tagged dofollow and free, each with link type, pricing, and submission notes.

Browse by category: content sites, directories, SaaS directories. On the homepage, set link type to dofollow and pricing to free, and that's the full set.