I stopped booking Product Hunt weeks mainly for the SEO

For a while I treated a Product Hunt launch like an SEO deposit. Get on the board, get the link, collect the authority, move on. That story does not match how the listing is marked up. The website link on a Product Hunt page is usually nofollow. You can still get a spike of visitors, and some of those people will stick. You are not picking up a clean dofollow from the product URL itself. If that link was the reason you blocked a whole Monday, you planned the week around a job the page does not do.

I am not telling anyone to skip Product Hunt. The room is still huge when the product has a clear screenshot and a sentence that survives the first hour. I am telling myself to stop lying about why I am there. PH is an attention bet. It is a bad primary plan if the goal written at the top of the doc is "backlink".

When the goal actually is a lasting page plus a dofollow I can explain, I look at a weekly board where that is the product, not a side effect. On IndieHunt the free launch is homepage visibility for the seven-day week, and the project link is nofollow by default. Premium is $19 for that same launch, and the thing you are paying for is a guaranteed dofollow backlink, no badge requirement, a launch story, and the week of homepage time. Free can still earn a dofollow if you finish top three and put the badge up. Those are two different offers. I would rather say the $19 number out loud than pretend the free badge path is the same link.

The page is the other half. A weekly listing that stays up after the votes cool down is a URL you can send later. A nofollow spike that expires as a screenshot in a tweet is not. I keep Product Hunt Alternatives next to this note so I do not turn "not PH" into "every other board". The comparison is narrow: attention today versus a link and a page you still own on Friday.

I run IndieHunt, so take the price with that context. The markup is public on the pricing page. Projects go live Monday at 8:00 AM UTC. Premium is $19 once per launch, not a subscription I am hiding in a footer. If you want the dofollow, pay for the dofollow. If you want the crowd, plan for the crowd. Mixing those two goals is how people launch for SEO on a site that marked the link nofollow, then feel like distribution "doesn't work".

Write the job on one line before you pick the room. "I need a backlink I can show a customer." That is not a Product Hunt job. "I need a loud day and I already have people who will show up." That one might be. IndieHunt sits in the first sentence for me, because the week and the link are the offer, and the $19 is small enough that I stop inventing a strategy around a nofollow URL.