What people mean by web 2.0 links
The term describes a link from a blog you created yourself on a free platform. Because anyone can create one in minutes, the tactic has been used to build networks of throwaway blogs whose only purpose is to link somewhere.
Those networks do not work any more, and they have not for years. A blog with three posts, no visitors and an outbound link to a commercial site is a pattern that is trivial to detect at scale.
The legitimate version
A free blog is useful when it is a real publication that happens not to be on your own domain: a project log, a side interest, a regional blog that covers something you know about. It gets posts over time, it gets readers, and a link from it is a link from a site with a reason to exist.
This is worth doing when you would have written the material anyway. It is not worth doing as a link-building exercise, because the amount of work required to make the blog credible is the same amount of work that would have earned better links elsewhere.
National platforms are the exception worth knowing
In several markets the local blogging platform still carries weight that the international ones do not. Blogg.se in Sweden and Blogg.no in Norway are read, indexed and linked to domestically in a way that a generic international platform is not.
If you operate in one of those markets, the local platform is a better home for a genuine blog than the global default.
What we have catalogued in this category
Of the 527 places in the catalogue, 20 are of this type.90% of those pass a following link, and 95% are ones a beginner can complete without prior accounts or a verified business.
| Market | Platforms |
|---|---|
| 🌍 International | 12 |
| 🇸🇪 SE | 5 |
| 🇳🇴 NO | 2 |
| 🇩🇰 DK | 1 |
Counts describe our catalogue rather than the web as a whole. We publish the numbers, not the list: the list is the product.
3 of these are on the free tier
No payment and no card. These are the ones you can open and work through today, and they are a fair sample of how the rest are written up.
| Platform | Market | Link | Difficulty | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blogg.se | 🇸🇪 SE | dofollow | Easy | 30-45 min |
| Blogg.no | 🇳🇴 NO | dofollow | Easy | 30-45 min |
| Tumblr.com | 🌍 Intl | nofollow | Easy | 15-20 min |
What sits behind this
This category is one of 22. The whole catalogue holds 527 places across 5 markets, and every one of them is written up step by step in both English and Danish.
The work behind the list
- 133 of them have been opened and checked against the page that is actually there now, not just imported from a list.
- 156 of them have a link straight to the form, so you are not hunting for it on their front page.
- Authority figures from Ahrefs are refreshed on the first of every month. Last run 1 September 2026.
What we warn you about
A list you scraped yourself will not tell you what does not work. This one does, and that is usually where the hours go.
- 26 of them only count your submission once you have put a link back to them on your own site. That is in the guide before you start.
- 7 of them turned out not to be directories at all. They are flagged rather than deleted, because they can still be an opportunity.
- 10 of them have stopped responding. They carry a warning rather than wasting your time.
- 72 of them pass nofollow. We say so, including when the directory itself claims otherwise.
20 of the 527 can be opened and worked through without paying anything. They are not a selection of the weak ones.
Examples of this kind of platform
Names most practitioners would recognise, to make the category concrete: Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.com, Blogg.se, Blogg.no.
Common questions
Do web 2.0 backlinks still work?
As part of a private blog network, no. As a link from a blog that is actually maintained and read, yes, in the same way any other blog link works.
How many posts does a free blog need before it is credible?
Enough that it looks like a publication rather than a container: a handful of posts on a consistent topic, published over weeks rather than in one sitting.