How to get backlinks for a startup, with AI doing the legwork.
A new startup gets its first backlinks from startup directories and launch platforms, profiles on the platforms it already uses, and the partners it integrates with. Stronger links come later, from outreach and from things worth linking to. AI can do most of the searching, drafting and form filling. You keep the accounts, the approvals and anything written in your name.
We make LaunchDistro, which does the directory part from Claude, Cursor, Codex or VS Code. The rest of this guide works whatever tools you use.
—First
What counts as a backlink.
A backlink is a link to your site on a page someone else runs. It counts once it's on a live, public page, not when you submit a form or get a thank-you email. Plenty of submissions never become links: the directory rejects them, forgets them, or publishes them months later.
Not every link passes ranking credit. A link marked rel="nofollow", "ugc" or "sponsored" asks Google not to count it, as Google's own documentation explains. Those still bring visitors and make your profile look natural, so you want some of each.
And not every link helps. A link from a site in your field, which real people use, is worth more than a dozen from sites that exist to host links. Google calls the second kind link spam, and ignores it at best.
—The ways
Seven ways a new startup gets backlinks.
In the order they pay off. The first three work before anyone has heard of you; the last four need a bit of reputation or a lot of patience. For each, what an AI agent can take on and what stays yours.
1. Startup directories and launch platforms
Pays off in: Days
Product Hunt, BetaList, AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, Uneed and hundreds of smaller directories list new products, and most have a free listing. It's the one kind of backlink a product can get in its first week with no audience and no outreach. Pick the ones that fit your category, not every one on a list.
AI can: Pick directories that fit your product, adapt your copy to each form's limits, fill the forms, then check which listings went live.
You: Approve the list, sign in where a site wants an account, solve CAPTCHAs, and decide on paid upgrades.
GitHub, dev.to, Crunchbase, Gravatar and your social accounts all have a website field. These links are usually nofollow, so they pass little authority, but they make a young domain look like a real company with a real footprint.
AI can: List the platforms that fit your product and write each bio from one profile, so your name and tagline match everywhere.
You: Create the accounts; they're yours, and several need you to verify an email or phone.
3. Integration, partner and showcase pages
Pays off in: A week or two
If your product works with another tool, that tool may list its integrations. Frameworks, hosting companies and UI kits often run a showcase of things built with them. These pages are on-topic and rarely crowded.
AI can: Read your package.json or requirements and find which of your dependencies and partners run an integrations page or showcase.
You: Apply or email the maintainer yourself. A short, personal note works; a templated blast doesn't.
4. Unlinked mentions
Pays off in: Ongoing
Once people talk about you, some will name your product without linking to it. Asking for the link is the easiest outreach there is, because they already chose to mention you.
AI can: Search for your product's name, filter out pages that already link, and draft a two-line request per page.
You: Send it, from your own address, only where the mention is friendly.
5. Journalist and podcast requests
Pays off in: Weeks
Journalists and podcast hosts post requests for expert sources on request services and on social media. A useful, specific answer can land a link from a publication you'd never reach cold.
AI can: Watch the requests for topics you know and draft a first answer from your notes.
You: Rewrite it in your words with a real example. Editors spot generic AI answers instantly.
6. Something worth linking to
Pays off in: Months
A free tool, a calculator, original numbers from your own product, or the best explanation of a problem in your niche. People link to these on their own, which makes them the strongest links you'll get, and the slowest.
AI can: Help you build the tool or crunch the data. That's coding, which is where AI coding agents are strongest.
You: Choose the idea. The data and the opinion have to be yours, or there's nothing to link to.
7. Guest posts
Pays off in: Months
Writing for a blog your customers read still works when the post is good and the site is real. It doesn't when the site exists to sell guest posts.
AI can: Research which blogs your audience reads, check they publish outside writers, and help outline a pitch.
You: Write the post. A guest post an AI wrote for a site that accepts anything is the kind of link Google ignores or penalises.
—AI link building
Where AI helps, and where it shouldn't.
AI is good at the tedious half of link building: finding places, fitting copy to forms, filling them in, checking what happened. It's bad at the half that depends on trust, because the people on the other side can tell.
Google's spam policies name “automated programs or services to create links to your site” as link spam. That's aimed at tools that post links wherever they can: comment sections, forum profiles, sites nobody reviews. Submitting to a directory where a person approves each listing is a different thing. But the line is why the approvals, the pacing and the choice of sites should stay with you.
Task
Let AI do
Keep for yourself
Finding places to be listed
Filtering a catalog by category, authority and link type
The final list
Writing listing copy
Fitting one profile to each form's length and fields
The facts: never let it invent features or pricing
Filling forms
Tested per-site playbooks, run in a browser you can watch
Sign-ins, CAPTCHAs, payment steps
Outreach
Research and first drafts
Sending, and anything that sounds like you
Checking results
Opening each live page and reading the link's rel attribute
Deciding what to do about a dropped link
—Step by step
Directory submission with an AI agent.
Directories are where automation earns its keep: the same facts, typed into dozens of slightly different forms. Here's how it runs with LaunchDistro in Claude, Cursor, Codex or VS Code. Any good setup follows the same five steps.
1. Write one product profile
Name, website, tagline, a short and a long description, categories, logo and screenshot. Ask your AI assistant to draft it from your README and landing page, then fix anything it got wrong. Every submission uses this one file, so your details match everywhere.
2. Ask for a plan, not a blast
“Submit my product to 5 directories that fit it, DR 50 or higher.” The agent picks from the catalog and shows you the list first. Nothing is submitted until you say so.
3. Watch the forms fill
Your agent opens each directory in your own browser and fills the form from a playbook tested on that directory: what each field wants, what the free plan gives, where to stop. When a site wants a sign-in, a CAPTCHA or a fee, it stops and waits for you.
4. Keep the receipts
Each confirmation page is recorded in your dashboard. Some directories email a confirmation link; nothing is reviewed until you click it.
5. Check what went live
A submission is not a backlink. A week or two later, the agent opens each public listing, looks for your link and reads its rel attribute, then checks again later in case a listing is removed or turns nofollow.
LaunchDistro has 47 directories with a playbook tested by hand, and says so rather than claiming hundreds. Set it up in Claude, Cursor, Codex or VS Code; the first 10 submissions are free.
—Pacing
How fast to go.
Google publishes no safe number of links per week, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What looks unnatural is easy to picture, though: a domain nobody had heard of on Monday with a hundred new links by Friday, all with the same anchor text.
So spread directory submissions over a few weeks, start with the ones closest to your product, and let most anchors be your product's name or its URL. That's also simply what happens when a product launches and people find it.
The other reason to go slower: the list. I bought a directory list after launching my first product. It had 325 entries, including W3.org, IBM, AOL and MySpace, none of which take submissions. Only 47 held up when I tested them properly. Checking each site before you submit saves more time than any automation.
—Honestly
When this isn't for you.
If there's no working product yet, wait. Directories want a live site, a logo and real pricing, and a listing for a waitlist page is wasted.
If you're after rankings next month, backlinks won't get you there alone. They help pages that deserve to rank; they don't make up for content nobody searches for.
And if the plan is a thousand links by the weekend, no tool will make that safe, ours included.
Getting backlinks with AI, answered
It depends on what the AI does. Researching, drafting and filling forms on real directories that review each listing is the same work you'd do by hand, done faster. Letting a tool post links wherever it can, write throwaway guest posts or join a link exchange is link spam in Google's own policy, whoever or whatever does it.