Backlink submission sites: the ones worth doing and the ones to skip

Submission sites fall into three groups. First, the listings every business should claim: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, a LinkedIn company page, Crunchbase, and the review platforms your buyers actually read, such as Trustpilot, Yelp, Justdial or IndiaMART depending on your market. Second, the directories specific to your industry or city: trade associations, chambers of commerce, supplier and partner directories, and for software, G2, Capterra and Software Advice. Third, the bulk directories that exist only to publish links, often a thousand site list sold as a package. Do the first group this week, work steadily through the second, and leave the third alone, because it is the behaviour Google's link spam policies describe. Many of the good listings carry nofollow links, and they are still worth claiming, because they produce real referrals, they are what review and map platforms read, and they are among the most frequently quoted sources when an assistant is asked to recommend a business.

What the rules actually say

Google's link spam policies describe links intended primarily to manipulate ranking as spam, and name the patterns explicitly: buying links, exchanging links at scale, and low quality directory or bookmark site links. The same documentation is clear that a legitimate directory listing is a normal part of doing business. The distinction is not the word directory, it is whether a human being would use the directory to find a supplier. A chamber of commerce member list passes that test. A page titled free high DA directory submission list does not.

The listings worth claiming, by category

Category	Examples	Why it earns its place
Maps and local	Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect	The basis of local search and spoken answers. Non negotiable for any business with a location or service area
Company and funding data	Crunchbase, LinkedIn company page, Wellfound	Widely republished, and the source many other profiles are built from
Reviews	Trustpilot, Google reviews, Yelp, and the platform your sector uses	Review text is what buyers and assistants quote when comparing suppliers
Software marketplaces	G2, Capterra, Software Advice, Product Hunt	High intent discovery for software buyers, with real referral traffic
Local and national business directories	Justdial, IndiaMART, Sulekha, Yellow Pages, Thomson Local equivalents	Still used by buyers in many categories, particularly for trades and services
Trade and professional bodies	Your industry association, licensing register, accreditation scheme	The most credible listing you can hold, and usually the hardest to obtain
Chambers and local groups	Chamber of commerce, business improvement district, local traders association	Genuine membership, genuine link, often genuine leads
Developer and creative platforms	GitHub, npm, Behance, Dribbble, Figma community	Where your work is already published. A profile with real output behind it
Employer profiles	Glassdoor, your jobs pages on hiring platforms	Read by candidates and by anybody researching the company

The sixty second test for any directory

Before you fill in a single form, check these five things. Any one of them failing is enough to walk away.

1. Would a buyer ever use it? Search the directory's own name plus a category and see whether it ranks for anything a customer would type.
2. Is there editorial control? A directory that accepts every submission within seconds has no standards, and a link from it carries the value of its standards.
3. Is it on topic or on location? A plumbing directory listing a plumber makes sense. A general directory with sections for everything does not.
4. What does it sell? A membership or listing fee for a real body is normal. A fee specifically for a dofollow link is a link purchase, whatever it is labelled.
5. Who else is listed? Open five listings. If they are casino, loan and essay writing sites in six languages, close the tab.

What to skip, and what it costs you

• Bulk directory submission packages. Hundreds of listings created overnight on sites nobody visits. These are the exact pattern the policies describe, and they also waste the budget that one good industry listing would have used.
• Social bookmarking blasts and article submission sites. A format that stopped working a long time ago and still gets sold.
• Paid guest post networks offering a dofollow link at a price per domain authority point. That is buying links, described as content.
• Automated submission software. It creates inconsistent name, address and phone data across dozens of sites, and cleaning that up later is slow, manual work.
• Directories that ask for a reciprocal link. Large scale link exchange is named in the policies.

How to submit so the listing works

• Write the data once and reuse it exactly. Legal name, trading name, address in one format, one phone number, one website URL, a short description and a long description, your categories, and your hours. Keep it in one document and copy from it every time.
• Match the name, address and phone everywhere. Inconsistency across listings is the single most common reason a business is skipped by maps and assistants.
• Use the description to answer a buyer's question, not to repeat keywords. Who you serve, what you do, where, and what makes the choice obvious.
• Add images and complete every optional field. Completeness is what most of these platforms rank their own listings by.
• Link to a relevant page, your location or service page rather than always the homepage, where the directory allows it.
• Record the login. A listing you cannot edit in two years is a liability when the phone number changes.
• Keep a tracker. One row per submission, so the work is auditable and repeatable.

site,url_of_listing,date_submitted,status,login_held,link_type,notes
Google Business Profile, 2026-01-04,live,yes,n/a,primary category set
Chamber of commerce, 2026-01-04,pending,yes,dofollow,membership renews in March
Industry association, 2026-01-06,live,yes,nofollow,accreditation number shown

What good listings actually produce

Three things, and only one of them is a link.

• Consistent facts across the web, which is what maps, review platforms and assistants rely on when they describe you.
• Referral visits from people already looking for a supplier, which is often the best converting traffic a small business gets.
• A link, where the platform gives one, from a site with its own standing. Treat this as the bonus rather than the goal and your choices improve immediately.

This page covers submission and directory listings. For the wider acquisition picture, link building and backlink strategy cover outreach, digital public relations and citable assets, and local citations deal with location data specifically.

Where people get stuck on backlink submission sites

Are directory submissions still good for SEO?

Real directories are, and they do two jobs at once: a credible citation and genuine referral traffic. Bulk submission lists are a different activity entirely and belong in the spam policies rather than in your plan.

How many directories should I submit to?

Claim the essential listings, then add the directories specific to your industry and city. For most businesses that is a few dozen done carefully, not hundreds done quickly.

Do nofollow directory links help?

Yes, for the reasons that matter beyond ranking: consistent data, visibility inside the platform, referral clicks, and being present in the sources that review sites, maps and assistants read.

Is paying for a listing allowed?

Paying a membership or listing fee to a real organisation is ordinary business. Paying specifically for a link that passes ranking signals is a link purchase. Read what the invoice is for.

How do I remove bad directory links?

Ask for removal where you can, and disavow only a clear pattern of paid or spam links you cannot get taken down. For most sites the better use of the hour is earning a good link rather than chasing a bad one.

Which single listing should I do first?

Google Business Profile if you serve customers in a place, and your main industry association if you do not. Both are read by far more systems than their own site.

Where those listings get read back to your buyer

The profiles above have a second use that did not exist a few years ago. When somebody asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude who to use in your category, or reads Google's AI Overview, the answer is assembled from directory profiles, review text and comparison pages rather than from your own website. Each assistant names a different two or three companies, because each reads different sources, and an out of date profile is often the reason a business is described wrongly.

So it is worth checking what those answers are built from. Ask the buying question a customer would ask, keep your own name out of the prompt so the answer comes back clean, and look at which pages get cited. AI Knows Us measures those answers and the sources behind them.