How I Grew My Startup Directory to DR 22 in 2 Months by Helping Indie Makers (No BS Strategy)

Hey everyone! Wanted to share a simple strategy that helped me grow my new site to DR 22 in about 2 months. I run Disrupt500, where we showcase cool startups and products from indie makers and solopreneurs. Instead of trying the usual link building tactics, I came up with something pretty straightforward: I look for interesting products and reach out to founders with a simple pitch - I'll feature their product on my site for free, create quality content about what they're building, and in return, I ask if they'd mention us either through a 'featured badge' or mention us in their blog with a dofollow link. That's it. Although this sounds so simple, it worked big time. I had to put in the work everyday sending these cold pitches but it is def worth it. The cool thing is that most founders are actually excited to be featured, and since we put real effort into showcasing their work, they're happy to give us a quality backlink. It's a win win situation - they get exposure, we get authentic backlinks, and our site's authority has grown way faster than I expected. And tbh this is not only the highest DR I've ever seen for any of my sites but also the quickest to reach this milestone. Now I'm not sure how much this is going to help in terms of traffic but working a lot on high quality content as well. Hoping this should help us rank better when we hit the right user intent on search. Recently started to see some traffic from ChatGPT as well which feels very nice. Just wanted to share in case it helps anyone else working on growing their site!