Free Backlinks: Legitimate Sources for a New Website

What free backlinks are worth

The best free backlinks for a new website come from places that list or mention real products: launch and product directories, integration and partner pages, journalist requests, podcasts, GitHub and free tools people want to share. Profiles and community answers are free too, but their links are often nofollow, so count them for discovery and visitors rather than rankings. Anything that promises hundreds of free backlinks overnight is the kind of link scheme Google's spam policies describe.

A free link can do four different jobs, and it helps to know which one you are getting:

• Discovery: search engines find new pages by following links. Any crawlable link helps a new site get found.
• Visitors: a link on a page people read sends clicks, whatever its rel value.
• Rankings: followed, editorial links from relevant sites are the ones that can pass ranking signals. Google treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints and says it generally does not use those links for ranking.
• Reputation: mentions on trusted pages shape how people, search engines and AI assistants describe you.

The sections below run from quick listings to links you have to earn. Once a link goes live, paste the page into our free nofollow link checker to see what it actually is.

Profiles and business listings (day 1)

Start with the profiles a real company has: a LinkedIn company page, X, a GitHub organization, YouTube, Crunchbase and a Product Hunt maker profile. Each has a place for your website, and listed in your site's Organization schema they give Google more pages that describe your company.

Be realistic about the links. In our checks in October 2026, GitHub marked profile website links nofollow, and LinkedIn and YouTube sent theirs through their own redirect URLs. These links are for identity and discovery, not rankings. Our guide to social profile backlinks lists which platforms allow a link and how to set each one up.

Add relevant business listings while you are at it: an industry association, your accelerator's or university's startup list, and a local business directory if you serve a city. Use the same name, one-line description and URL on every one.

Launch and product directories (weeks 1 to 4)

Launch platforms and curated directories give you a listing, a link and, on launch day, real visitors:

• Launch platforms: Product Hunt, Hacker News (Show HN), BetaList, Uneed, DevHunt, Peerlist, Microlaunch and Fazier.
• Software directories and alternatives sites: AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, G2 and Capterra.
• Category directories: AI tool directories for AI products, extension galleries for browser extensions, template galleries for templates and app marketplaces for integrations.

Pick the ones your buyers browse. Several launch sites offer a free queue alongside a paid option to skip it, so the free route works if you plan a few weeks ahead. Some of the biggest, including Product Hunt and Show HN, are for products people can try, not for services.

Avoid mass submission. Google's link spam policy names low-quality directory and bookmark site links, and automated submission to hundreds of directories nobody visits fits that description. Ten relevant listings beat two hundred random ones. Our list of startup launch directories is grouped by product type, and the Product Hunt launch checklist covers the biggest one.

Integration, partner and customer pages

If your product works with another product, there is usually a page that could list you:

• App marketplaces and integration directories of the platforms you connect to. A listing often links to your site and puts you in front of that platform's users at the moment they look for an add-on.
• Partner pages of agencies, consultants and complementary tools you genuinely work with.
• Customer pages: some customers publish a "tools we use" or tech stack page, or agree to a case study. Ask your happiest customers whether they would mention you.
• Your own network: accelerators, investors, universities and former employers often have portfolio or alumni pages.

Keep it real. Google's link spam policy lists excessive link exchanges and partner pages made only for cross-linking. A partner page that lists the five tools you actually integrate with is normal. A page of fifty reciprocal links is not.

Free tools and original data: links you earn

The links worth the most are the ones other people choose to give you. They come from making something worth citing:

• A free tool: a calculator, checker, generator or template related to your product. Free tools also get listed in places that do not list services, such as tool directories and GitHub "awesome" lists. That is one reason we built our own set of free SEO and AI search tools.
• Original data: a survey, an analysis of public data, or anonymised totals from your product. Writers link to the source of a number.
• The definitive reference: a checklist, glossary or guide that is more complete and more current than what ranks today.

A good test: would a writer in your niche link to it even if they never used your product? If not, keep improving it before you promote it.

A related, product-led source: if your product creates something public for customers, such as articles, forms, reports or widgets, an optional "made with" credit line can earn links at scale. Keep it optional, visible and in your brand name, and let customers remove it. Google's link spam policy names keyword-rich or hidden links in widgets spread across many sites, and links required by terms of service without letting the site owner qualify them.

Journalist requests and podcasts

Journalists and writers post requests for expert sources every day. A fast, specific answer can earn a quote and a link from a publication you could never pitch cold. The landscape changed recently, so here is where things stood in October 2026:

• HARO (Help a Reporter Out): Cision ran it under the Connectively name and shut that platform down on 9 December 2024. Cision then sold HARO to Featured.com, which relaunched it in April 2025.
• Featured: lists journalist requests (including HARO's), podcast guest opportunities and bylined article placements, and has a free plan.
• Qwoted: connects reporters with expert sources. Its free Basic plan allows 2 pitches a month, with a 2-hour response delay.
• Help a B2B Writer: now redirects to MentionMatch, which matches B2B writers with expert sources.

How to win requests: answer within hours, lead with the direct answer, add one specific example or number you can stand behind, and include a one-line bio with your title and site. Only answer where you have real expertise; writers remember sources who wasted their time.

Podcasts are the slower, warmer version. Niche shows need guests, and many link to them in the show notes. Pitch shows your customers listen to, with two or three specific topics you can cover. Expect a mix of followed and nofollow links from publications and podcasts; the audience is the main prize.

GitHub, open source and communities

For developer products, GitHub is a link source and a discovery channel in one:

• Your repository README can link to your site and docs, and an open-source helper, SDK or example project gives developers a reason to visit.
• Awesome lists are curated GitHub lists that accept pull requests. Getting into a relevant one puts you in front of people browsing that topic. Our guide to GitHub SEO and awesome lists covers how to get accepted, and our GitHub SEO repo service builds one for you.
• Package registries such as npm and PyPI show a homepage link on your package page when you set one.

As with profiles, check the rel value before counting a link: in October 2026, GitHub marked profile website links nofollow.

Communities like Reddit, Indie Hackers, Quora and Stack Overflow are where your buyers ask questions. Google asks sites to mark user-generated links with ugc or nofollow, so expect links in answers and comments to carry one of them. Their value is the readers who click, and threads can keep ranking on Google long after they are posted. Answer fully in the post, link only when your page is the best next step, and follow each community's self-promotion rules. Our guide to Reddit marketing for SaaS explains how to do it without getting banned.

Unlinked mentions and seasonal lists

Two quieter sources are easy to miss:

• Unlinked brand mentions. Set up a free Google Alert for your brand and product names, and search for them once a month. When someone mentions you without a link, a short, friendly note asking them to link the name to your site is worth sending. Offer something useful in return, such as a corrected detail or a better screenshot.
• Deal roundups and seasonal lists. Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal pages for software, and GitHub lists of SaaS deals, take submissions every year. Black Friday 2026 is on 27 November, so submit in early November.

Many "best tools for X" articles are updated once a year as well. When you are a genuine fit, a polite note to the author with the facts they need (what you do, who it is for, price) can get you into the next edition. Do not offer payment for the link; that turns an editorial mention into a paid link that Google expects to be marked sponsored.

What to avoid: free links that cost you

Some free links do more harm than good. Google's spam policies define link spam as links made mainly to manipulate rankings, and several of its examples are sold as free backlinks:

• Automated link building: free backlink generator sites and software that create links for you. Google's policy names using automated programs or services to create links.
• Mass directory and bookmark blasts: low-quality directory and bookmark site links are named directly.
• Comment and forum spam: forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature are named directly.
• Link exchanges at scale: "link to me and I'll link to you" deals in bulk, and partner pages that exist only to cross-link.
• Private blog networks: sites built mainly to hold links, often on expired domains. Google's policies cover low-value content created to manipulate linking signals and expired domains bought mainly to manipulate rankings.
• Widget and footer links spread across many sites.

The cost is not only wasted time. Google says sites that violate its policies may rank lower or not appear at all, and that it finds violations through automated systems and, when needed, human review that can lead to a manual action. If you run several sites yourself, read how to link your own websites safely, and before paying anyone for links, read buying backlinks: risks and safe alternatives.

A free link plan for your first 60 days

A steady pace looks natural and is easier to keep up. Here is a plan a founder can run alone in a few hours a week:

• Week 1: create the company profiles, add relevant business listings, and verify the site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Weeks 2 to 3: submit to 5 to 8 directories your buyers browse. Tag each listing link with UTM parameters using our UTM builder so you can see which ones send visitors in Google Analytics.
• Weeks 3 to 4: sign up for two journalist request services and answer two or three relevant requests a week.
• Weeks 4 to 6: ship one linkable asset (a free tool, a dataset or a definitive checklist) and launch it on Product Hunt or Show HN.
• Weeks 6 to 8: pitch three podcasts, ask partners and happy customers for a mention, and submit to one or two relevant awesome lists or seasonal deal lists.
• Every week: answer one or two community questions properly.

At the end of the two months, count your new referring domains with the method in how to check backlinks, and compare against the pages that outrank you with the backlink gap calculator. For more channels in the same spirit, see how to get backlinks for a new website. If the gap is bigger than free links can close in a reasonable time, our backlinks service places relevant links and lists every live URL in your dashboard.