New to backlinks? Start here.
A backlink is a link on somebody else's website that points to yours. Since the late nineties, search engines have treated backlinks as a rough sign of whether a site is worth showing, which is why people go looking for them.
This site lists directories you can submit your website to, with notes on which are worth your time. Those notes lean on a few terms that will be new if you are just starting out, so here is a short course: five pages, in order, written for someone who has never come across the word nofollow.
You do not need all five before you start. Read the first two, then go and submit somewhere. The rest will make more sense once you have filled in a form and seen what happens.
The order to read them in
Dofollow and nofollow links
Read this before you submit anywhere. It explains the difference between a link that can affect your rankings and one that cannot, and most free directory links are the second kind. Link type is also the most prominent column in every table on this site, so this page is what makes those tables useful. It finishes by showing you how to check any link yourself in about ten seconds.
What a web directory actually is
A web directory is a site whose whole purpose is listing other sites by category. Most of the ones people still recommend were built before 2012 and have been copied from list to list ever since. This page covers what the format is, what it was originally for, and whether it is still worth your time. It does not name individual directories, because the directory pages do that.
Local citations, and why the details have to match
A citation is any mention of your business name, address and phone number, whether or not it links to you. For a business with a physical location this matters more than most link building, and it usually goes wrong for a simple reason: the details do not match from one listing to the next. This page shows what consistent details look like in practice, and how a suite number in the wrong field can undo the work.
What to have ready before you submit anywhere
Every submission form asks for roughly the same things, and most rejections happen because one of them was missing or did not match, rather than because the site was judged on quality. Put it all together once in a single document and a submission takes four minutes instead of twenty. This page is that checklist, with the reason each item is on it.
Why every list of directories has the same names on it
Search for free directories and you will find the same forty names on page after page of results. There is a reason for that, and it has little to do with those forty being the best. This page explains where the lists came from, what happened to directories in the years since, and how to prove the copying yourself with a search engine in about thirty seconds.
You do not have to read them in order
The order above makes sense if you are starting from nothing. If you already know roughly what you are doing, there are two shortcuts.
If you run a business with a physical address, somewhere a customer could walk in, go straight to local citations. That page is written for you, and getting your details identical everywhere is worth more to you than every other page here combined.
If you run a website with no premises, such as a blog, a portfolio or a software product, the citations page is not for you, and roughly a third of the entries on any general directory list will reject you. Read the nofollow page and then the web directory page, and you have what you need.
What to do next
Once the terms make sense, the rest of this site works as your reference. Every directory we list has the same columns: what kind of link you get, what it costs, how long approval takes, and the date a person last checked it. When a directory is not worth your time we leave it off, and we publish what we removed and why.
Our advice before you open a single table: submit to fewer places than you planned, keep your details identical everywhere, and do not expect much from any single listing.