The directory submission checklist
Print this, fill it in once, and every submission after the first one takes four minutes instead of forty.
- Written by
- SpacerrApps
- Published
- Reading time
- 3 min read
Directory submission is slow for one reason: every form asks for something you have not written yet, so you write it badly at 11pm and paste that version everywhere for the next two years.
This is the whole set of fields, with the limits that actually cause rejections. Fill it in once.
The text
Name. The product name on its own. Not "Kettle: the fastest timer for macOS". Several directories render your name inside their own title template, so a name with a tagline attached comes out as nonsense.
Tagline, under 60 characters. What it does and who for. This is the hardest field on the list and the one that decides whether anybody clicks. Test it by reading it aloud to somebody who does not know what you built. If they ask what it is, rewrite it.
Short description, 150 to 300 characters. The tagline plus the reason to care. Most directories show this on the listing card and use it as the meta description of your listing page, which is why the range matters: under 150 the search result looks empty, over 300 it gets truncated mid-sentence.
Long description, 500 to 1,500 characters. Three short paragraphs. What it does, who it is for, what makes it different. No headings, no bullet lists, no markdown. Many forms strip formatting and what survives is a wall of asterisks.
Keywords, three to eight. The phrases somebody would type to find a tool like yours, not your brand's adjectives. "Inbox zero" and "unsubscribe tool" are keywords. "Effortless" is not.
The images
| Asset | Size | Rules |
|---|---|---|
| Icon | 512 by 512 | PNG, square, no shadow |
| Logo | Any, transparent | Some forms want this |
| Screenshots | 3 to 5, one size | 16:9, product in use |
| Cover | 1200 by 630 | Share card aspect |
Two mistakes account for most image rejections. Adding your own rounded corners to an icon, which then gets rounded again by the directory and comes out with a visible double curve. And submitting screenshots of an empty state, which shows a product with nothing in it to somebody deciding whether it does anything.
The facts
- URL, with https, no tracking parameters
- Pricing model: free, freemium, paid, or a trial, plus the actual starting number
- Platforms: web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, browser extension, self-hosted
- Categories, two or three, chosen from their list rather than invented
- Launch date, or the date you consider it launched
- Team size and location, for the Crunchbase-style directories
- A contact email that is not a personal address
The account
Several directories want to know you are the owner rather than a fan. Have these ready:
- An email at your product's own domain
- A social profile for the product, not just for you
- A live site that loads without a login and says what the product is above the fold
That last one rejects more submissions than every other rule combined. If your homepage is a waitlist form with a headline that does not name the category, a reviewer cannot tell what they are approving.
Before you submit anywhere
Four checks on the directory, not on you.
- Find a listing you know was submitted free and confirm it is live.
- View the source of that listing and check the rel attribute on the outbound link.
- Read one listing page. If it is a tile with 40 words, it cannot rank for anything.
- Search for a listed product's name and see whether the directory shows up at all.
Ten that pass all four are ranked in the best directories to submit your app.
A directory that fails all four is a link farm, and a link from it is worth less than nothing.
Rewrite the description for each one
The one habit worth building. Keep the first sentence, rewrite the rest to match what that directory is for. Lead with integrations on the integrations directory, lead with the price on the comparison one.
It costs four minutes a listing and it turns twenty copies of one paragraph into twenty pages a search engine can tell apart.
Then do the first one
You now have everything any form will ask for. The first submission is the one that proves the kit is complete, so pick one where the listing is a real page rather than a tile.
Submit your app here. It takes about five minutes with this checklist filled in, a person reviews it, and it gets a directory page and a written article about it. Both links are followed and both are free.