If you want a free backlink, you have two problems: finding a real site that will actually give you one, and knowing what you're getting (dofollow or nofollow, instant or reviewed, actually indexed or a ghost page nobody crawls). Most "free backlink sites" lists solve neither. They show you a handful of obvious entries, then lock the rest behind an email signup, and the numbers next to each site are often invented.
This list has 70 entries, organised into 12 categories, and none of it is gated. Every site below is real, was cross-checked against multiple independent sources (not copied from one competitor's page), and includes what it actually is, whether the link is typically dofollow or nofollow, how approval works, and one to two sentences on how to actually use it, not just its name in a table.
TL;DR: the highest-value free backlinks are not directories. They're profile links on platforms with real domain authority (GitHub, LinkedIn, Crunchbase), genuine guest contributions to sites that publish real editorial content, and the stock-photo attribution trick most lists skip entirely. Directories help with citation consistency, not rankings.
A note on the numbers we didn't include
Every "free backlink sites" list on the internet, including the well-known one this article was built to beat, publishes precise Domain Rating and monthly-traffic figures next to every entry. Some of those numbers are accurate. Some are not: a handful of the most-copied lists in this space show implausible traffic estimates (billions of monthly visits attributed to plain profile pages, for instance) that read like they were auto-generated rather than pulled from a real tool.
We're not going to do that. Where a platform's authority is genuinely common knowledge (Google, YouTube, LinkedIn are enormous, dominant sites, that's not a stat that needs sourcing) we say so in plain language. Where the exact Domain Rating, Domain Authority, or follow status is the kind of thing that shifts over time or varies by page type, we say "verify this yourself" rather than inventing a number. Check current DR/DA with a free Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush lookup before you rely on it in a pitch or a report.
Follow status also isn't binary across a whole platform. LinkedIn's static company profile field is nofollow; some practitioners report links inside the body of a LinkedIn article (their long-form publishing feature) behave differently, though LinkedIn's own stated policy since 2014 is nofollow platform-wide, so treat that specific claim as unverified. Medium articles are nofollow by default. Treat every follow/nofollow label below as "typical for this page type," not an absolute promise, and re-check anything load-bearing.
Business and local directories
These won't move rankings much on their own, but they build the citation consistency (same name, address, phone, and website everywhere) that local search and map-based AI answers rely on. Claim the big three first; the smaller directories matter less each year but cost nothing to fill in.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile (google.com/business) | Nofollow | Instant, verified by phone/postcard/video | Verify it, keep your name/address/phone identical to your website footer, and post updates weekly, an idle profile ranks worse than an active one. |
| Bing Places for Business (bing.com/places) | Nofollow | Instant | Import directly from an existing Google Business Profile, this cuts setup to a couple of minutes and matters for Bing/Copilot-sourced answers. |
| Apple Business Connect (businessconnect.apple.com) | Nofollow | Near-instant for verified businesses | Controls how you appear in Apple Maps and Siri results, worth claiming purely for voice/AI-assistant visibility, not link value. |
| Yelp for Business (biz.yelp.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Claim it even outside review-heavy categories; data aggregators and several AI answer engines pull from Yelp's business data. |
| Better Business Bureau (bbb.org) | Nofollow | Manual review for a basic, non-accredited profile | Accreditation costs money, but the basic profile is free and carries real trust weight with a human reader checking you out before they buy. |
| Manta (manta.com) | Nofollow (typical, verify) | Instant | Low individual value, but free and fast; treat it as a citation-consistency line item, not a link-building win. |
| Brownbook (brownbook.net) | Reported dofollow, unverified | Instant | Keep the category and description specific to your actual business, generic listings get flagged and stripped. |
| Cylex (cylex-uk.co.uk and country variants) | Nofollow | Instant | Same logic as Manta: fine for citation consistency, not worth spending real time on. |
| Foursquare (foursquare.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Location data here feeds into a surprising number of downstream map and recommendation products. |
| Your local Chamber of Commerce | Varies | Often free for members; check directly | Many .org chamber sites carry real topical and geographic authority, and free basic listings exist alongside paid membership tiers, check your specific chamber's site rather than trusting a generic "list." |
Profile links and social platforms
Almost all of these are nofollow, and the SEO value is closer to zero than most guides admit. Claim them anyway: they're free, they're brand-consistency wins, and platforms with genuinely enormous scale (Google-owned, billions of registered users) are exactly the kind of entity signal that helps AI engines and Google's Knowledge Graph confirm who you are.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube Channel (youtube.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Add your site to the channel "About" links and to every video description, not just the channel page. |
| Facebook Page (facebook.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Fill in the website field in Page settings, not just the bio text; it's the field most scrapers and aggregators read. |
| LinkedIn Company Page (linkedin.com) | Nofollow (static field); LinkedIn Articles reported dofollow by some practitioners, unverified against LinkedIn's own stated nofollow-platform-wide policy | Instant | Publish an occasional LinkedIn Article (their long-form format) with a contextual link in the body, worth doing for reach and relevance either way, just don't count on it for link equity until you've checked the current markup yourself. |
| X / Twitter Profile (x.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Low SEO value, real discovery value if you're active in your niche's conversations. |
| Instagram Business Profile (instagram.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Same logic as X: brand presence over link equity. |
| Pinterest Business Profile (pinterest.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Claim your website in settings, then pin images that link to real pages on your site (not just your homepage), Pinterest sends genuine referral traffic even though the link itself is nofollow. |
| GitHub Profile README (github.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Create a repository named exactly like your username to unlock the special profile README that displays on your GitHub profile page. |
| Gravatar (gravatar.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Ties your site to every WordPress comment or account tied to that email address across a huge number of other sites that use Gravatar. |
| About.me (about.me) | Nofollow | Instant | A simple personal landing page, useful mainly as a link-in-bio hub, not a ranking factor. |
| Quora Profile (quora.com) | Nofollow | Instant | The real value isn't the bio link, it's answering real questions in your area of expertise with a natural, non-spammy link inside a genuinely useful answer. |
Web 2.0 and free publishing platforms
"Web 2.0" is SEO jargon for free hosted publishing platforms, blogs and pages you can spin up on someone else's domain in minutes. The trap: most guides tell you to build a thin one-page stub. Don't. A Web 2.0 property only holds value if it has real, useful content, otherwise it gets ignored by readers and eventually deindexed by the platform.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium (medium.com) | Nofollow (default) | Instant to publish, manual for Editor's Picks/curated publications | Write genuinely original long-form content, don't just canonical-copy your blog, and link to specific pages, not your homepage. |
| WordPress.com | Dofollow | Instant | Build a real supporting blog with several posts, a thin one-page site here reads as a doorway page and gets treated as spam. |
| Blogger (blogger.com) | Dofollow | Instant | Google-owned, simplest setup on this list, same rule as WordPress.com: put real content on it. |
| Tumblr (tumblr.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Better for brand and content distribution than for link equity. |
| Notion (a public Notion page) | Nofollow | Instant | Publish something genuinely useful, a template, checklist, or resource hub, and link out from inside it; people actually bookmark and share good public Notion pages. |
| Substack (substack.com) | Nofollow (typical) | Instant | Best framed as an owned audience channel that happens to carry links, not a link-building tactic on its own. |
| Weebly or Wix (free tier) | Dofollow | Instant | Same warning as WordPress.com: build a real micro-resource, not a spam doorway page, free-tier throwaway sites get penalised fast. |
| GitHub Pages (pages.github.com) | Dofollow | Instant | Free static hosting on a github.io subdomain, genuinely useful for a documentation hub or resource page tied to a tool or open-source project. |
Developer and startup platforms
If you're in tech, SaaS, or dev tooling, this is where the real value concentrates, these platforms have real domain authority and real relevant traffic, not just a nofollow tag next to your name.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dev.to (dev.to) | Dofollow | Instant | Genuinely one of the better free dofollow links available if you write real technical content, not a rehashed press release. |
| Hashnode (hashnode.com) | Dofollow | Instant | Similar profile to Dev.to; developer-focused, values original technical writing. |
| Stack Overflow Profile (stackoverflow.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Entirely reputation-gated: answer real questions well and the profile (and its link) becomes worth something. |
| Product Hunt (producthunt.com) | Nofollow on the maker profile (verify per placement) | Instant to create a listing, launches are scheduled | The launch itself, and the press/blog coverage it can generate, is worth far more than the listing link alone. |
| Indie Hackers (indiehackers.com) | Nofollow | Instant | A real community of builders; useful for traffic and feedback more than link equity. |
| BetaList (betalist.com) | Reported dofollow, unverified | Manual review; a paid fast-track exists alongside the free queue | Early-stage startup exposure, submit before public launch for the best fit. |
| AlternativeTo (alternativeto.net) | Nofollow | Instant, but community-edited | Submissions can be edited or removed by other users, keep your listing accurate or it invites correction. |
| SaaSHub (saashub.com) | Reported dofollow, unverified | Instant | Smaller software directory, low effort to claim. |
| StackShare (stackshare.io) | Nofollow | Instant | List the tools in your own stack and claim your product's listing if you build developer tools. |
| Hacker News, via Show HN (news.ycombinator.com) | Nofollow | Instant to post, community-voted for visibility | Not a directory submission, a genuine post about something you built; the traffic and secondary coverage from a front-page Show HN post can outweigh the link itself many times over. |
Business and software review directories
These lean toward B2B and SaaS. Several require a review or a manual verification step before your profile link goes live, but the underlying platforms carry real authority.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crunchbase (crunchbase.com) | Nofollow | Instant for a free company profile | Treated as an authoritative company-data source that a lot of journalists, investors, and AI tools pull structured facts from, keep it accurate and current. |
| Wellfound, formerly AngelList (wellfound.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Startup and jobs directory, useful mostly if you're hiring or fundraising. |
| F6S (f6s.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Startup directory with programme and grant listings alongside company profiles. |
| G2 (g2.com) | Reported dofollow on the vendor profile, unverified | Manual verification | The base listing is free; real customer reviews are what unlock its actual value, both for buyers and for the link. |
| Capterra (capterra.com) | Nofollow | Manual review | Part of the Gartner Digital Markets network alongside GetApp and Software Advice; one submission can surface across all three. |
| GetApp (getapp.com) | Nofollow | Manual review | Same underlying data network as Capterra; check both if you're in the software category. |
Q&A, forums, and communities
Signature and profile links here are nofollow almost without exception, and most require a minimum post count before the link activates, a real anti-spam mechanism, not a technicality to route around.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit Profile (reddit.com) | Nofollow | Instant | The link only earns real traffic through genuine participation in relevant subreddits, a bio-only drop gets ignored or removed. |
| Warrior Forum (warriorforum.com) | Nofollow (signature links) | Instant, but signature links usually need a minimum post count first | A long-running marketing forum; useful if you're genuinely active in the space. |
| GrowthHackers (growthhackers.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Marketing-focused community, similar logic to Warrior Forum. |
| BlackHatWorld (blackhatworld.com) | Nofollow (signature links, post-count gated) | Instant | Despite the name, plenty of legitimate SEO and marketing discussion happens here; treat the same as any forum, participate for real. |
| Designer News (designernews.co) | Nofollow | Instant | Niche community for product and design work, worth it only if that's genuinely your field. |
Presentation and document sharing
Lower priority than most categories on this list, but free, fast, and occasionally picked up by people searching for the exact content you've repurposed.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| SlideShare (slideshare.net) | Nofollow | Instant | Turn an existing blog post or report into a slide deck, link back in the description and on the final slide. |
| Scribd (scribd.com) | Nofollow | Instant to upload, manual for wider distribution | Good for PDFs, reports, and whitepapers you already have. |
| Issuu (issuu.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Similar use case to Scribd, better suited to magazine-style or highly visual documents. |
Creative portfolio platforms
Only relevant if you actually have visual, creative, or design work worth showing, don't force a fit.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Behance (behance.net) | Reported dofollow on the profile website field, unverified | Instant | Adobe-owned portfolio platform, strong for designers and agencies with real creative work to show. |
| Dribbble (dribbble.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Similar audience to Behance, skews toward UI/UX and product design specifically. |
Journalist and expert-quote platforms
This is where a lot of genuinely good, sometimes dofollow, links come from, but every one of them requires you to actually be useful to a journalist, not just fill in a form.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Featured (featured.com, formerly Terkel) | Nofollow | Free to respond to questions; a journalist selects which quotes get used | You submit a written answer to a live journalist question; if selected, you get a bio and a link. Nofollow, but it builds topical relevance and occasional real referral traffic. |
| Qwoted (qwoted.com) | Follows whatever the publication that quotes you uses | Free tier available, manual selection by journalists | Pitch journalists directly through their request board rather than waiting to be picked. |
| SourceBottle (sourcebottle.com) | Follows the publication | Free | Australia-based media call-out service; respond to requests relevant to your expertise. |
| #JournoRequest (on X/Twitter) | Follows the publication | Free, no signup beyond an X account | Search the hashtag directly for live requests, this is a real channel journalists still use, not a dedicated site, just a search. |
Free stock image attribution: the trick most lists skip entirely
This one came out of researching real SEO video content for this article rather than any written list. Edward Sturm, an SEO practitioner, described it clearly on his podcast: take original photos on your phone, upload them to a major free stock site with a link back to your site in the credit field, and every time a blogger or journalist reuses that image with attribution, you get a free natural backlink you never had to ask for.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsplash (unsplash.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Upload genuinely original photos, credit your site in the description; reusers who keep the attribution give you a free, unsolicited link. |
| Pexels (pexels.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Same mechanism as Unsplash. |
| Pixabay (pixabay.com) | Nofollow | Instant | Same mechanism, slightly different audience and licence terms, worth uploading to both. |
| Flickr, under a Creative Commons licence (flickr.com) | Nofollow | Instant | License your photos under Creative Commons with an attribution requirement; sites that reuse them are expected to link back per the licence, not just as a courtesy. |
Two honest caveats on this one: the links you get back are nofollow (they're attribution credits, not editorial endorsements), and it works at a trickle, not a flood, most photos never get reused. It's worth doing because it's genuinely free and compounds slowly over time, not because it replaces real outreach.
EDU and GOV resources
Most "free EDU and GOV backlinks" lists circulating online point to guestbook forms and abandoned comment sections on university and government subdomains. That's not a legitimate backlink strategy, it's a spam vector, and several of those pages exist purely to sell you links or steal form submissions. We're not going to reproduce that list. What follows are the tactics with an actual track record.
| Resource | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| SBA.gov partner and resource listings | Varies | Manual, only for genuine SBA partners or programme participants, not an open submission form | If you qualify for an actual SBA programme or partnership, the listing is legitimate; treat any list promising "instant" .gov submission as a red flag. |
| Data.gov and state/city open-data portals | Dofollow if you're cited as the data source | Not a submission form, this is about being the origin of data others reference | Publish genuinely original research or a dataset; researchers and journalists using .gov and .edu platforms cite and link to real primary sources. |
| University alumni association business directories | Varies, often dofollow | Manual, alumni-only | If you graduated from a university, check whether its alumni association has a business directory, this is a legitimate, underused channel most people skip entirely. |
| Scholarship link building (a scholarship you actually create and fund) | Dofollow, when it works | Manual outreach to university financial-aid and scholarship-list pages | Create and fund a real, modest scholarship, then reach out to the university pages that list external scholarships. This is the one "EDU backlink" tactic with a genuine track record, though Google has publicly pushed back on scholarship pages that exist purely to buy links, so the scholarship needs to be real, not a pretext. |
Guest-post-friendly publications
Real, open (or semi-open) guest contribution programmes, not a "write for us" scrape. Editorial policies and link-attribution rules change, so confirm current guidelines directly on each site before pitching.
| Site | Follow | Approval | How to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Engine Journal (contributor programme) | Dofollow in the author bio (per site convention, verify current policy) | Manual, editorial | Requires genuine SEO/marketing expertise and an original angle, not a rehashed listicle. |
| Smashing Magazine (pitch a guest post) | Dofollow | Manual, editorial, high bar | Front-end, design, and UX niche specifically, pitches need to be genuinely useful, not promotional. |
| freeCodeCamp News (freecodecamp.org/news) | Dofollow | Manual, editorial, pitch-based | A very well-known publication if you're accepted; the bar is real technical or career-development value, not a thin how-to. |
| Find your own: search operators | N/A | N/A | "write for us" + your niche, inurl:guest-post + your niche, and intitle:"contribute" + your niche in Google surface far more current, relevant guest-post targets than any static list, because "write for us" pages open and close constantly. |
One emerging, unproven entry: Grokipedia
Grokipedia, xAI's AI-generated encyclopedia launched in 2025 as a challenger to Wikipedia, was flagged by SEO practitioner Edward Sturm (Compact Keywords podcast) as using dofollow links in its reference sections, unlike Wikipedia's nofollow policy. We haven't independently verified that on every page, check the actual link markup before relying on it. He also reports it's currently easier to get a page created here than on Wikipedia. We're including it with a clear caveat rather than leaving it off or overselling it: independent coverage of Grokipedia (including reporting cited on its own Wikipedia entry) has raised real reliability and accuracy concerns about its AI-generated content, and getting a page indexed in Google requires actively promoting and linking to it yourself, it won't surface on its own. Treat this as a genuinely new, unproven channel, not an established tactic, and don't build a strategy around it yet.
How to actually use this list
Don't work through all 70 in one sitting. A few principles that matter more than the list itself:
- Relevance beats volume. One link from a site your actual audience reads is worth more than fifty directory citations nobody will ever click through.
- Nofollow still has a job. A nofollow link from Reddit, Quora, or a stock-photo credit won't move your rankings much directly, but it drives referral traffic, brand mentions, and the kind of entity signals AI search engines increasingly weigh alongside classic backlinks. Don't skip a category just because the Follow column says "nofollow."
- Thin content gets deindexed. Every Web 2.0 platform above only holds value if what you publish on it is genuinely useful. A one-page stub with a link is a doorway page, and platforms actively clean those out.
- This is the floor, not the ceiling. Free, self-serve backlinks are a real foundation, but a genuine link-earning and GEO (generative engine optimisation) programme also needs original content people want to cite, digital PR, and entity work that connects your brand across the web in a way a directory listing never will. If you want a partner to run that broader strategy alongside a foundation like this list, that's what AY Rank does. Book a free AI ranking audit to see where your brand currently shows up.
FAQ
Are free backlinks actually worth building, or should I just pay for links? Free backlinks are worth building because they're genuinely free and several of the entries above (developer platforms, guest contributions, expert-quote sites) carry real domain authority and relevance. They work best as a foundation alongside real content and outreach, not as a replacement for either.
What's the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? A dofollow link passes ranking signal (link equity) to the linked page; a nofollow link tells search engines not to pass that signal, though nofollow links can still drive referral traffic and brand-mention signals. Most of the profile links on major social platforms (Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn's static field) are nofollow by default.
Is Reddit a good place to get backlinks? Reddit profile links are nofollow and rarely move rankings directly, but genuine, non-spammy participation in relevant subreddits can drive real referral traffic and, occasionally, get your content picked up and linked elsewhere. Dropping a link with no context in an unrelated subreddit gets removed and can get you banned.
Do EDU and GOV backlinks actually help SEO more than regular backlinks? Not because of the .edu or .gov extension itself, that's a common myth. They tend to help because .edu and .gov domains often have genuinely high authority and are hard to get links from through normal means, which makes a real one valuable. Most "free instant EDU/GOV backlink" lists circulating online point to spam-risk guestbook pages rather than legitimate opportunities.
How long does it take for a new backlink to affect rankings? There's no fixed timeline; it depends on how quickly the linking page gets crawled and indexed, and on the overall authority of both sites. Expect weeks, not days, before a new link shows any measurable ranking effect, and don't expect a single link, free or paid, to move a competitive keyword on its own.
Can I automate submitting to all of these directories? You can, but most directory-blasting tools produce low-quality, inconsistent listings that hurt citation consistency more than they help, and several platforms above (Product Hunt, G2, guest-post programmes) explicitly require manual, human-reviewed submissions that automation can't complete anyway. Do the top ten or so properly by hand before considering any bulk tool.
What's the single highest-value free backlink on this list? There isn't one universal answer, it depends on your industry, but the genuinely original stock-photo attribution trick and real guest contributions to publications your audience already reads tend to outperform static directory listings by a wide margin, because they combine authority with actual relevance.
Should I hire an agency instead of doing this myself? Free backlinks like the ones above are worth doing yourself first, they cost time, not money. Once you've built that foundation and want a programme that layers in original content, digital PR, and entity architecture across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, a focused GEO agency like AY Rank can take that further than a self-serve list ever will.
This post is part of our GEO Optimization guide. Related reading: GEO for B2B, Claude Now Watermarks All Output, Does Google Penalize AI Content? The 2026.
Adel tracks AI citation rates across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews. He turns raw visibility data into actionable insights that guide our optimization strategy.
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