Before you buy a guest post, check five things about the site: that its organic traffic is real and stable, that it covers your topic, that it does not link out to every casino and pill shop on the internet, that its pages get indexed, and that a real editor reviews what it publishes. A site that fails any of those is unlikely to help your rankings, whatever its domain rating says.
Key points
- Traffic trend matters more than domain rating. Look for steady organic traffic over at least a year.
- Topical fit is the strongest single quality signal for a guest post.
- Outbound link patterns reveal sites that exist to sell links.
- If recent guest posts on the site are not indexed, yours will not be either.
This checklist is about judging individual sites. If you are judging a provider, read our separate guide to vetting a link building agency, which covers contracts, reporting and trial orders.
Traffic Checks
1. Organic traffic is real and stable
Use an SEO tool to view the site’s estimated organic traffic over the last 12 to 24 months. You want a stable or rising line. A site whose traffic dropped sharply after a core update may have been hit for low quality, and links from it carry less weight.
Estimates are not exact, so look at the shape, not the number. Sudden spikes followed by cliffs are a warning. A slow, steady line is a good sign.
2. Traffic comes from relevant keywords
Check which keywords the site ranks for. A home improvement blog ranking for home improvement terms is healthy. The same blog ranking mainly for celebrity net worth or random viral topics has been chasing traffic, not building an audience your customers belong to.
3. Traffic is in the right countries
A site with most of its traffic in a market you do not serve sends no useful referral traffic and is less relevant to your local rankings. For a law firm or a regional business, this check matters a lot.
Topical Fit Checks
4. The site covers your topic regularly
Look at the last 20 articles. Do most of them belong to the same broad subject as your business? A finance site that publishes about personal loans, budgeting and credit is a fit for a lending brand. A “general news” site that publishes about everything is not, even with a high DR. We explain why in why topical authority matters more than domain rating.
5. Your article would look natural there
Imagine your guest post next to the site’s own articles. If it would look out of place to a regular reader, it will look out of place to Google too.
Outbound Link Checks
6. Outbound links are not mostly commercial
Open five recent posts and look at where they link. A healthy site links to sources, references and its own content. A link-selling site links to a random mix of casinos, loan sites, supplements and ecommerce stores from posts on unrelated topics.
7. There is no “write for us” farm
Many sites accept guest posts, and that is fine. A warning sign is a site where almost every article is a guest post with an external commercial link, often with a “sponsored” category holding hundreds of posts and a public price list.
8. Links are labelled honestly
Google asks publishers to mark paid links with rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”, as set out in its guidance on qualifying outbound links. Check how the site treats links in its existing guest posts, so there are no surprises about how yours will be published.
Indexation and Technical Checks
9. Recent guest posts are indexed
Search Google for the exact title of two or three guest posts published on the site in the last few months. If they do not appear, the site may be partly deindexed or Google may be ignoring its newer content. That is one of the clearest signs not to buy.
10. The site is not penalised or shrinking
Use a site: search to get a rough sense of how many pages are indexed, and compare it with how many the site has published. A large gap is worth investigating. Combine this with the traffic trend from check 1.
11. Pages are crawlable and load properly
Open the site on mobile. If it is covered in pop-ups, loads slowly or has broken pages, readers will not stay, and Google’s view of the site will reflect that. Links must also be standard HTML links that Google can follow, as described in its documentation on crawlable links.
Editorial Standards Check
12. A real editor reviews submissions
Look for signs of an editorial process: named authors with bios, articles that are edited and well written, an about page that describes the publication, and guidelines for contributors. Sites that publish anything sent to them are rarely worth the link.
A good sign is when the editor asks for changes to your article. It means the site protects its quality, which is exactly what makes a link from it valuable.
Guest Posts on Vetted Publishers
Original 1,000+ word articles written for each publisher, placed on DR 30+ sites with real organic traffic and topical relevance. You approve every article before submission. 21-day delivery with a white-label report.
Questions to Ask the Site Owner
When the data looks good, a short exchange with the editor or owner fills the gaps the tools cannot.
- Who reviews submitted articles, and what are the editorial guidelines?
- How are links in guest posts marked: followed, nofollow or sponsored?
- Will the article appear in the site’s normal category pages and internal links, or only in a separate section?
- How long does the article stay live, and what happens if the site is redesigned?
- Are there topics or industries the site will not accept?
Clear, consistent answers are a good sign. Vague answers, or a reply that only mentions price, usually confirm what the outbound link check already suggested.
Findings That Rule a Site Out
Some findings are serious enough that the rest of the checklist does not matter.
- Traffic dropped by more than half after a recent core update and has not recovered.
- Recent guest posts are not indexed.
- The site links to gambling, adult or pharmaceutical sites from unrelated articles, unless your own site is in a regulated niche and the publisher genuinely covers it.
- The site offers a guaranteed “dofollow permanent link” for a very low price with no content review.
- The same site appears on dozens of link sellers’ lists at different prices.
Restricted Niches Need Extra Checks
In gambling, crypto, CBD and health, the pool of willing publishers is small and the bad ones are numerous. Add two checks. First, confirm the site’s guidelines actually allow your category, so the article is not removed later. Second, check whether the site applies the rules its readers expect: responsible gambling messaging for iGaming, no medical claims for health and CBD, no return promises for crypto. The CBD link building case study and the law firm guest posting case study show how these checks shape a real campaign.
Using the Checklist at Scale
Running twelve checks on every site takes time. Most of the checks take a minute or two once you know where to look, and the first four eliminate most poor sites. Keep a simple sheet with a pass or fail for each check, so you can compare sites and reuse the results.
If you prefer not to do this yourself, ask your provider to show the checks they run and the data behind them. A provider who cannot explain how a site was vetted is a provider worth questioning, and the cost of getting this wrong is covered in our guide to what link building should actually cost.
This Ahrefs video covers guest blogging tactics, including how to find sites worth pitching, which pairs well with the checklist above.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most important check before buying a guest post?
Real, stable organic traffic from relevant keywords, followed closely by topical fit. Domain rating alone is not enough, because it can be high on sites with little real audience.
How can I tell if a site sells links?
Look at outbound links on recent posts. If unrelated posts link to casinos, loans, supplements and stores, and most articles are sponsored guest posts, the site exists to sell links.
How do I check if a guest post site is indexed?
Search Google for the exact titles of a few recent guest posts on the site. If they do not appear, the site’s newer content may not be indexed, and yours is unlikely to be either.
Is a high DR site always a good guest post site?
No. A high DR site with falling traffic, unrelated topics or a link-selling pattern is worth less than a lower DR site with a real audience in your niche.