Your launch listing is a backlink. Most of them are worthless.

Launch your product on twenty directories and you'll collect twenty backlinks. Sounds like an SEO win.

Most of them are worth nothing. Here's why, and how to check in ten seconds.

A backlink is a vote. Nofollow is an abstention.

When one site links to another, search engines read it as a vote of confidence: this page is worth your attention. Enough votes, and you rank higher.

rel="nofollow" makes the link say "don't count this vote." It still works for humans — people can click through — but it passes no ranking credit to your site. For SEO purposes, it's decoration.

Why directories love nofollow

Directories get spammed. Thousands of submissions, plenty of them junk. So most of them do the safe thing: every outbound link on the site gets rel="nofollow" automatically.

The result: their "get listed, boost your SEO" pitch is empty. You get the listing, whatever traffic comes with it, and zero ranking credit. Sometimes you're paying for it — with money, or with a backlink badge on your own homepage — in exchange for a vote that was never cast.

Some directories are honest about this. Many aren't. The marketing page says "dofollow backlink"; the actual listing page says rel="nofollow". Always check the page, not the pitch.

How to check in ten seconds

Open a listing page, view the page source, and search for the listed site's domain. Find the <a> tag pointing at it:

• <a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow"> — worthless for SEO
• <a href="https://yoursite.com"> — a real vote

If you see nofollow, sponsored, or ugc in that rel attribute, the link passes no ranking credit. Google treats all three as "don't count this."

What we do instead

Every DebutPin listing links out to the maker's site as a dofollow link. No rel="nofollow" on the way out — view-source any product page and see for yourself.

Why: it's reciprocal. Our free tier asks makers to put a dofollow link back to DebutPin on their own site. You give us ranking credit; we give it back. A one-way deal would be us taxing your SEO for nothing.

One honest caveat: a backlink helps, but nobody can promise you rankings or traffic — not us, not anyone. Anyone selling a guaranteed position is selling something they can't deliver. What we can promise is simpler: the link we give you is a real vote, not an abstention.

The short version

Before you submit anywhere for "SEO value":

1. Check an existing listing's page source for rel="nofollow" on outbound links.
2. If it's nofollow, value the listing for traffic and community only — not SEO.
3. Never trade a dofollow link from your own homepage for a nofollow link back. That's a bad trade.

Submit your product, get a real link. That's the whole pitch.