Why the distinction matters
A directory listing takes fifteen minutes and is worth a little. A useful answer in a community takes months of participation and can be worth more than everything else you do. Both appear on the same lists under the same heading, which is why so much link building time is spent badly.
Sorting the work by type makes the trade-off visible before you start. It also makes the order obvious: the cheap, permanent, low-risk things first, the slow and valuable things continuously, and the tactics that stopped working not at all.
The six types
Directory submission sites
Directories are the oldest form of link building and the one with the widest gap between the useful and the worthless. This is how to tell them apart, and what a submission is actually worth in 2026.
149 catalogued · 97% pass a following link · 84% suitable for a first campaign
Profile creation sites
Profile links are the easiest links to build, which is exactly why most of them are worthless. Here is the version of the tactic that survives, and how it connects to being found by name.
99 catalogued · 74% pass a following link · 85% suitable for a first campaign
Social bookmarking sites
Bookmarking was a genuine link source for about a decade and then stopped being one. This page explains what changed, what still works in its place, and why the lists you find are largely obsolete.
19 catalogued · 74% pass a following link · 95% suitable for a first campaign
Article submission sites
The article directory era is over, but publishing platforms are not. The difference is whether the platform has readers, and it decides everything about whether the effort is worth it.
51 catalogued · 90% pass a following link · 59% suitable for a first campaign
Web 2.0 sites
Free blogging platforms are the most abused link tactic still in circulation. They also have a legitimate use, and the difference between the two is easy to state.
20 catalogued · 95% pass a following link · 95% suitable for a first campaign
Forum posting sites
Forum links have the worst reputation of any link source, earned by a decade of signature spam. The communities themselves are still there, and they are one of the few places where a link is a by-product of something useful.
114 catalogued · 83% pass a following link · 86% suitable for a first campaign
A sensible order to work in
- First, the floor. The national and industry directories your competitors are already in. Twenty to forty listings, done once, done properly.
- Then, your name. Profiles on the platforms that rank when someone searches your company. This is as much reputation work as link building.
- Then, the writing. Publishing platforms, if you were going to write anyway. Skip it if you were not.
- Continuously, the communities. The slowest and the most valuable, and the only one that brings customers directly.
What is missing from that list is anything that promises volume. There is no step where three hundred links appear, because that step is the one that causes the problems the rest of this site exists to avoid.
What we do not cover
Paid link placements, private blog networks and automated submission are outside what this catalogue is for. Not on principle alone: they are the tactics that produce the link profiles that later need cleaning up, and cleaning up costs more than the links did.