Founders still hunt high-quality dofollow backlinks in 2026 — not from link farms, but from relevant directories people and crawlers actually use.
Launchpadly gives approved startups a permanent listing page that links to your website. Free listings require displaying the Launchpadly badge; paid tiers remove that badge requirement and add placement or editorial benefits.
Domain Rating fluctuates over time (shown live on Launchpadly’s homepage). Treat the link as one trust citation among a focused set of Tier-1 directories such as Product Hunt, Crunchbase, G2/Capterra where relevant, and niche boards in your category.
What makes a directory backlink useful: editorial review, topical relevance (startups/SaaS), indexable listing URLs, and ongoing site authority. Spray-submitting to 100 dead directories is the playbook that stopped working.
After approval, keep your listing complete — screenshots, pricing model, tags, tech stack — so the linking page earns engagement and stays worth ranking. Incomplete listings get fewer visits and waste the citation.