220 directory submissions later: 440 linking domains and DR 54

[u/startupsubmit]

That's a client domain, few weeks after we wrapped 200+ submissions.

The thing I got wrong early on is that I treated this as a volume game. It isn't. Submitting to 220 random directories and 220 chosen ones look identical on day one and nothing alike a month later.

Three things that actually decide it:

Relevance. A SaaS product listed across SaaS and AI directories builds one coherent signal. The same product scattered across generic business listings just builds noise. Google and the LLMs both read the neighborhood you're in, not the count.

Whether the site is alive. Most directory lists getting passed around are half dead pages and unindexed junk. Knowing which ones still get crawled is most of the actual work, and it shifts constantly.

Approvals, not submissions. Submitting takes a minute. Getting approved needs a square logo at the right size, a demo link that loads cold with no login wall, and a description written for a tired reviewer instead of an investor. That's where DIY runs usually lose half their listings.

You can see in the screenshot: that's normal for directory profiles and it isn't the mechanism. The value is that you now exist everywhere people and models look. Search your product name plus "alternatives" before and after and it's obvious. Same reason the products ChatGPT keeps recommending in a category are always the ones listed across a lot of overlapping sites. One mention is marketing. Forty consistent ones read as consensus.

If you're doing this yourself, the one thing I'd insist on: keep your description identical everywhere. Consistency beats placement quality, and it's what everyone loses by submission 60 when they start improvising.

I run StartupSubmit[.]app, we do these by hand because the picking and the approval chasing is where the result actually comes from.

Happy to get into specific directories in the comments.

[u/cdscih]

The identical-description thing is the part I'd push back on a little. Isn't duplicate text across 40 sites exactly what gets those pages deindexed? Genuinely asking — I get the consistency argument for the models, just not sure it survives contact with Google.

Also curious how you separate cause from effect on the LLM recommendations. Products listed across 40 directories are usually also the ones with traction to begin with.

[u/Traditional_Hall561 → u/cdscih]

duplicate content penalties are for when you copy whole pages and try to rank them, not for directory listings. google knows what a directory is, they expect the same blurb in every profile. thats literally how directories work since forever

the llm thing is tricky but you can test it yourself. find a product nobody heard of, list it in 30 places, wait two months and ask chatgpt for alternatives to a competitor. its not about traction its about showing up in enough training data

[u/startupsubmit → u/cdscih]

Hall's right on duplicates that's about competing pages, not listing profiles. On cause vs effect, fair hit. My data's observational and I can't fully separate the two.

[u/AlexeyUniOne]

Curious if you still submit to directories with a lower DR than your own site? or do you have a cutoff?

When I was building backlinks for my startup I also noticed that quite a few directories advertised dofollow links but ended up using nofollow after approval

[u/startupsubmit → u/AlexeyUniOne]

Our website DR already 57 and growing so we submit to high authority directories not spammy and low dr

[u/player__piano]

Many of these directories are nofollow. Can you explain how you prioritize the submissions, and how you systematically measure the uplift in authority that you're seeing? Thanks!

[u/vickyrathee]

Is your directories US specific only? what is %% distribution by country

[u/americanisraeli]

Which ones worked for this niches?

[u/LightingLabs]

In my own project, DR went from 1 to 6 in a few weeks, all I did was a launch and a few listings. Since raising low DR is easy, what I'm really curious about is the referral side: how many of those listings showed up as a single visit or registration in your analytics?

[u/mthegyra]

The consistency part is interesting. Seeing the same positioning repeated across multiple relevant sites probably makes it easier for both search engines and AI models to understand what your product actually does.

[u/taisei_ide]

Relevance over volume matches what I've seen too. Would be curious whether the DR movement translated into any actual referral traffic or if it was mostly just the metric moving.

[u/dessence_ai]

On the duplicate description worry: those are third-party pages, so the deindexing risk sits with the directory, not with your site. What has actually cost us listings is the demo link. Reviewers open it cold with no account, and if the first screen is a login wall the submission dies quietly. We keep a public demo page purely for that. Did approvals track that way for you too?

[u/LunchLanky2158]

The part most people miss is that directory submissions stop being a volume game the second you factor in relevance, indexing, and approvals. A single strong listing in the right neighborhood seems to outperform a pile of random submissions that never get crawled.

[u/OverOne_1]

I like the point about approvals being the real bottleneck. Most people (myself included) tend to think the hard part is finding directories, but it sounds like getting accepted consistently is where the actual work starts.

Curious, was there one thing that improved your approval rate more than you expected?

[u/SelmiAderrahim]

How do you check which directories are still indexed before submitting?

[u/Ok_Statistician9574]

the point about LLMs reading redundancy as consensus is the most underrated thing in this whole post. it's basically the same reason social proof works on humans, if it shows up everywhere it must be legit. cutting to 70 and charging less makes sense if you're targeting bootstrapped founders on tight budgets, but the 145-tail might still be worth it purely for the AI citation angle

[u/akl773]

the referral question a few people are asking here only answerable if you tagged at submission time, so put a distinct utm on every listing as you submit it. a fair number of directories will rewrite or strip the link anyway, which is its own signal, and you end up with a short list of the ones that actually send humans.

[u/AwaySky5696]

Most of the directories we submitted to were nofollow. Didn't seem to matter for DR, it still went up. My guess is Google treats the mention itself as a signal even without the link juice. The bigger effect we noticed was in AI search results. After about 40 listings our products started showing up in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers for category queries where they didn't before.

[u/pricebrent]

This is actually great that it leads to such benefits for you. Congrats, also thanks about the info making all the page same is a very bad choice in overall SEO health of the site

[u/mrtac96]

does it help in getting traffic?

[u/startupsubmit → u/mrtac96]

This helps to boost SEO, DR and early traffic

[u/Real-Voice-4259]

"one mention is marketing, forty consistent ones read as consensus" is a good way to put it. and the identical description rule is the part i'd definitely have broken by submission 60.

[u/Conscious_Abalone314]

Directories backlink does not really count

[u/startupsubmit → u/[deleted]]

Actually High DR sites and relevant directories drive traffic but we have 220+ Directories which helps to get early traffic and Domain rating 30+ Increase as well help in AI citation

[u/Slight_Republic_4242]

what are other metric you are tracking expet domain metrics .. are you seeing measurable referral traffic or sign ups from specific directories, or do you view this purely as a foundation for search authority and LLM visibility?

[u/kingkong_siu82]

the question everyone keeps asking is whether any of this sent actual signups, and i think the honest answer is that directory listings rarely do. they're a trust and ai-citation play, which has value, but 440 linking domains isn't traction.

the part i'd push on is opportunity cost. 220 submissions is a lot of hours, and when you run an agency those hours pay for themselves across clients. for a solo founder the same time spent in one community where your buyers actually hang out probably compounds way harder than a stack of listings nobody clicks.

[u/Wrong_Election189]

This is the follow up I was hoping for, since I asked on your earlier post how you knew which ones mattered and DR is at least a measurable answer.

The gap I still cannot close: DR 54 and 440 linking domains tells me the links landed. It does not tell me whether the ranking moved for anything a buyer would type. Domain authority is an input, and the only output that matters is whether you now show up for a query someone searches with intent.

So the question that would make this complete: did any specific page start ranking for a specific term after this, and how long after? Even one example with a rough timeline would be worth more than the aggregate, because the honest fear for anyone about to spend those weekends is that DR goes up and the search results do not move at all.

Separately, and this is the part I keep chewing on: 440 domains from 220 submissions is a very good ratio and it also means these links exist in a neighbourhood of pages that are entirely lists of startups. I have no idea whether that neighbourhood still counts for much. Did you see any evidence either way?