Is a directory backlink badge worth it?

A launch directory offers you a free listing and asks for its badge on your homepage. It looks like a fair swap and it usually is not discussed at all, so it is worth being precise about what is being traded.

3 of the 13 directories we catalogue ask for one as a condition of their free tier. We do not, and this guide explains that decision as well, because it would be strange to write about the practice without saying where we stand.

What you are actually trading

• —A permanent link from your domain. Not a one-off. Every directory that asks for a badge re-checks it — we check every listing on a fortnightly cycle, and the ones that gate a free listing on it check too. If it comes down, whatever it bought comes down with it.
• —A slot in your footer. Small, but footers are where trust signals go, and a footer with six directory badges in it reads as a footer that will link to anyone.
• —An outbound link from a young domain. On a site with almost no links of its own, your outbound links are a larger share of what you are publishing than they will ever be again.

In return you get a listing you would otherwise pay for. Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on what the listing is worth, which is the question nobody can answer for you — see our attempt at it, including the part where we admit we cannot tell you the traffic.

Who asks, and what for

How to decide

Three questions, in order.

• —Would you pay their asking price for this listing? If the paid tier is $29 and you would not pay $29, the free tier is not a bargain — it is the same listing, and you are paying with a link instead.
• —Is the link do-follow, and do they say so? Most do not say. Of the directories we catalogue, only a few publish it. A no-follow link in exchange for a permanent do-follow link out of your site is a trade in one direction.
• —How many badges are already in your footer? The first is a signal. The sixth is a pattern, and it is not one that helps you.

Our own badge, since you are here

It used to be a requirement of the free tier, with a paid plan that let you skip it. We retired that plan and removed the requirement, because charging for an exemption from an obligation we invented is a worse business than being useful.

The badge is now optional and nothing is withheld for skipping it: same board, same queue, same page, same ranking on votes, and the readiness audit scores it at zero so it cannot even move your number. Carrying it earns three specific things and we would rather list them than imply more:

• —A verified mark on your listing and on your card in every list. It means exactly one thing — that a link to worthtotry.com was found in your page — and it is the only claim this directory makes about a product that it can prove.
• —A place in the verified filter, which is 0 of 155 published listings today.
• —The tiebreaker in the ranking, on the directory and on the weekly board. Two listings level on votes are separated by the one whose site links back.

And what it cannot do, in the same breath: it never lifts a listing above one with more votes, and it buys nothing from a moderator. If you add it and want to see the effect immediately, there is a button on your own listing in the dashboard that runs the check against your site there and then and tells you what it found.

So: worth it?

Ours is at /badge with the embed code, and launching without it is free and unconditional. What each of the others asks is on the directories page and in the submission guide.