Lead with the job, not the category
"An AI-powered productivity platform" tells a reader nothing, because it describes a shelf rather than a product. "Turns your meeting recordings into a list of who owes what by Friday" tells them whether to click.
The test: could a competitor use your one-liner verbatim? If yes, it is describing a category and you have wasted the only sentence anyone reads.
Name the reader
A listing that says who it is for gets fewer clicks and better ones. "For solo accountants" costs you everyone else and wins everyone who is one. On a directory where you are paying per placement, qualified clicks are the only ones worth having.
Specifics that reliably earn a click
- A number that is true — how many, how fast, how much, how long.
- A named integration or platform, if your reader already uses it.
- The price, or at least the shape of it. "Free tier" removes a reason to hesitate.
- What it does not do. Honest scope is disarming and almost nobody does it.
Things that look like effort but aren't
Keyword stuffing the description does nothing here — the link is nofollowed, so there is no ranking benefit to chase, and a reader can tell. Exclamation marks, "revolutionary", "game-changing" and "next-generation" are all noise that a reviewer reads as a lack of anything concrete to say.
The same goes for writing a listing aimed at the directory's algorithm rather than its readers. On a rotation that is a seeded draw, there is no algorithm to game — just people.