Free Resource
The high-authority, mostly-free link sources your competitors have not claimed. 55 sources across 7 tiers, led by .gov.au state supplier portals that sit on Australia's most-trusted top-level domain.
Google rewards backlinks from high-trust domains. AI search systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) weight references from authoritative sources when deciding which businesses to recommend in their answers. In both cases, the same principle applies: a link from a domain Google trusts is worth more than ten from domains it does not.
Here is what most Australian businesses do not know. Every state and territory government runs a free supplier registry portal. Listing creates a real backlink plus a citation from a .gov.au domain, which Google treats as one of the most authoritative domain types on the web (the .gov.au TLD is only issued to verified Australian government bodies). Almost no business outside the tender world claims them.
These are not link farms. They are official, vetted government supplier registries that exist for procurement to work. You are not gaming anything. You are using a free, legitimate registry to build a high-authority footprint that compounds across both Google and AI search.
Important: legitimate suppliers only
Tier 1 and Tier 1b are real procurement registries for verified suppliers. Only register if your business genuinely supplies the goods or services those portals procure. Listing without legitimate supplier capability risks rejection, removal, or being flagged. Treat them as procurement opportunities first, SEO leverage second. Tiers 2 through 7 do not have this restriction.
The sheet groups every source by tier, with the URL to apply, the type of listing (backlink, citation, profile), and a status column to track what you have submitted, verified, and live. Make a copy and work top-down.
The highest-leverage backlinks in this list. Every state and territory plus the federal government runs a free supplier registry portal. Each one creates a real backlink and citation from a .gov.au subdomain. These are the links almost no business outside the tender world has bothered to claim.
State portals do not cover most council procurement. These do. Particularly useful for trades, building services, professional services, and any business that wants to supply to local councils.
These four are not optional. If you are not on all of them, fix that before anything else. Each one feeds a different ecosystem (Google search and maps, Bing and ChatGPT search, Apple Maps and Siri, professional and B2B search).
Traditional directories. Authority varies, but the strong ones still rank for local-intent queries and feed niche aggregators. Pick the ones that fit your category, not all of them.
Less Australia-specific, but every one of these sits on a high-authority global domain. They build brand-search dominance (your name appears repeatedly in the top results) and feed AI search citations.
Only worth your time if your business fits the category. When they fit, they convert. These are search-driven directories where the visitor is already looking for the kind of service you provide.
The last two tiers do two different jobs. Tier 6 builds trust signals (and gives AI systems social-proof references they can cite). Tier 7 sets-and-forgets, syndicating your details to dozens of smaller directories you should never manage individually.
This checklist was built by the StudioHawk team across 500+ client campaigns. The .gov.au insight in particular comes from running procurement-positioned SEO for clients across construction, professional services, and trades.
