Why a DR 55+ backlink beats another launch badge
Every directory hands out a badge. Most of them are a nofollow link and a PNG for your footer. Lirkaff's prize is different on purpose: the tournament winner earns an editorial dofollow from a DR 55+ page. Here is the reasoning, and why we refuse to blanket-dofollow the directory.
A badge is a decoration; a backlink is a vote
Search engines read links as endorsements. A dofollow link from an authoritative page passes ranking signal — informally, link equity — to the page it points at. A nofollow link, by design, tells crawlers not to pass that signal. Most launch badges are nofollow, so they look like endorsements to visitors but count for nothing to a crawler.
That is not a scam; it is the correct default. User-submitted links should be nofollow, because otherwise every directory becomes a link farm and the signal stops meaning anything. The problem is that many directories dress up a nofollow badge as if it were an SEO win.
Why Lirkaff gates the dofollow behind winning
We default every product link in the directory, matchups, and leaderboard to nofollow. That keeps the graph honest and keeps us out of spam territory. The dofollow is editorial: it is granted to the tournament winner (and, case by case, top-three finishers) because a human curated that placement and is willing to vouch for it.
That scarcity is the whole point. A link that everyone gets is worth what everyone paid for it. A link that one product per week earns by beating a bracket of peers carries real weight — both as a ranking signal and as social proof.
What to do with the link when you win
Point it at the page you actually want to rank — usually your homepage or a flagship feature page, not a buried blog post. Use descriptive anchor text that reflects the destination, and don't over-optimize it into an exact-match keyword; that reads as manipulation.
Then give the ranking time. Some link effects show up in days; most take weeks. Watch it in Search Console rather than refreshing your rank tracker every hour.
Ready to put this into practice?
Enter your product in this week’s launch tournament.
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