A customer of mine got 11 paying clients in their first month from search, and their own site still doesn't rank for the phrase that brought them in. They didn't try to rank. They rented the keyword from directories that already do.
Here is what they did, step by step, and why it works.
How I noticed
Most people treat directories as a backlink chore: submit everywhere, collect the links, hope the domain rating moves.
This customer's listing copy looked wrong. The tagline wasn't a slogan. It was the exact sentence a buyer would type into Google. So I asked them what they were doing, and this post is what they told me.
One thing up front. These are their numbers, not mine. I haven't seen their CRM, so read "11 clients" as reported.
The problem: a new domain can't rank for buyer phrases
Their situation will sound familiar:
- B2B product, domain a few months old.
- Buyers search for three or four specific phrases, a few hundred searches a month each.
- The first page for every one of those phrases is held by sites that have been around for years.
Their site was nowhere near page one, and that's normal. A new domain does not rank for a phrase people buy from in its first year, however good the page is.
What they did, step by step
1. Pick the phrases buyers actually type
Problem phrases, not category names. Think "invoice reminders for freelancers", not "invoicing software". That example is mine; theirs is their business. The category name has giants on it. The problem phrase usually doesn't.
2. Rewrite every form field around those phrases
Directory forms ask for roughly the same fields, so they wrote one set of copy and kept it identical everywhere:
- Tagline. The main phrase, word for word, inside a sentence a human would write.
- One-liner. The phrase plus the audience.
- Description. The other two phrases, once each.
- Categories. Whichever of the platform's own categories was closest to the phrase. Never the broadest one.
3. Choose directories by whether they already rank
They searched each phrase and wrote down which directories showed up on the first two pages. Those went first. After that, high domain rating directories in general.
This is the step most people skip. They don't submit to "every directory". They start with the ones Google already shows for their words.
4. Submit the same copy everywhere
They had an AI agent fill the forms with the same copy each time. Forty-odd listings, the same phrases in the same places, on forty trusted domains. Forty pages titled with your phrase do far more than forty pages with forty different taglines.
5. Wait about three weeks
Directory pages get crawled constantly, so the listings were indexed within days. Then they started showing up for the phrases.
The result: 11 paying clients in the first month, and new ones every week since. Their own site still doesn't rank for the phrase. It doesn't need to yet.
Why it works
Google judges a page mostly by the domain it sits on. A listing for an unknown product on a DR 70 directory outranks that product's own homepage for the same words, because Google trusts the directory and doesn't yet trust the product.
Thin is enough for a narrow phrase. Listing pages are thin. For a specific phrase with little competition, that's fine: the title matches, the domain is trusted, and nothing better exists.
Several listings crowd the result. Five directories carrying your listing under the same phrase can hold two or three first-page spots for a phrase you hold none of yourself.
Nofollow doesn't matter here. The listing page is what ranks, not your site. So every directory people skip for being nofollow is back in play.
AI answers read the same pages. Ask ChatGPT for "a tool for X" and a good chunk of the answer comes off directories.
Why I call it renting
You don't own the position. The directory does. If it removes the listing or gets demoted, the ranking goes with it.
Treat it as a bridge while your own domain earns standing. And keep your product name and URL identical in every listing, so people who later search for you by name end up on your site.
Where it goes wrong
- Keyword-stuffed taglines get rejected. Most good directories review by hand, and a tagline that reads like a list of search terms gets binned. One phrase per field, used once, inside a real sentence.
- Broad phrases don't move. "Project management software" has the directory's own category page above any listing, and the rest of page one belongs to companies with sales teams.
- Some high-DR directories don't get their listings indexed at all, because of scripts, noindex or deep paging. Check first: search the directory's name plus a product you know is listed there. If that listing isn't in the results, yours won't be either.
- Most directories let you edit after you go live. If a phrase hasn't taken in a month, change it.
The checklist to copy
- Write down three or four problem phrases your buyers type.
- Google each one. Note every directory on the first two pages.
- Write one tagline, one-liner and description with each phrase used once, in normal sentences.
- Submit that same copy to the directories from step 2 first, then to high-DR ones.
- Before submitting to a big directory, check that its listing pages actually get indexed.
- Wait three weeks, search your phrases, and rewrite any listing that hasn't moved.
You can do all of this by hand. The mechanism is the part I'm confident about, because it's the same reason my own directory's platform pages outrank some of the platforms themselves.
Disclosure, so nobody has to ask: this customer was using my product, SubmitMap. It's a directory of launch platforms and startup directories, each written up with who it accepts, the exact steps, cost, approval time, domain rating and whether the link is followed. Browsing it is free and needs no account. The paid part is the AI agent that connects over MCP and does the submitting, which is what this customer ran their forty-odd listings with.
