Most bad guest posts aren’t bad because of the writing. They’re bad because of the website they were placed on. A link from a site with fake traffic, no clear topic and fifty other paid articles that month is unlikely to help your rankings, and it can make your link profile look manipulated.
Here are the 12 checks we run on every publisher site before it goes on a client’s list. You can run all of them yourself with a free Google search and a free (or trial) account on an SEO tool.
What you need before you start
- An SEO tool that shows organic traffic history and ranking keywords: Ahrefs, Semrush or Similarweb. The free versions are enough for spot checks.
- About 10–15 minutes per site.
- A simple spreadsheet to record each check, so you can compare sites side by side.
The 12 checks we run on every guest post site
1. Organic traffic is real, and stable or rising
Open the domain in Ahrefs, Semrush or Similarweb and look at the last 12 months, not just today’s number. A healthy site shows a steady or slowly rising line. A sudden spike followed by a crash usually means a Google update hit the site, or that the traffic was bought or manipulated.
2. The traffic comes from the countries you care about
A US SaaS brand gains little from a site whose visitors are mostly from countries it doesn’t sell to. Check the country split in your SEO tool. It should broadly match your own target market.
3. The site ranks for real keywords in its own topic
Look at the keywords the site ranks for. A cooking blog should rank for recipes, not for casino terms, essay services or unrelated product names. Odd keywords are a common sign the site was built only to sell links.
4. It has one clear topic
Scroll the homepage and the latest 20 posts. If you see health, crypto, home décor, CBD, travel and law all on the same site, it is a general “write for us” site. Those sites help you far less than a focused one, and they attract Google’s attention.
5. Sponsored posts don’t outnumber real content
Count how many recent posts are obviously guest or sponsored posts. If most of the site is paid articles pointing to other businesses, it exists to sell links. A real publication mostly publishes its own work.
6. It doesn’t advertise links on every page
Banners such as “DA 50+ permanent dofollow links” in the header, sidebar or footer are a red flag. Real publishers don’t make link selling their main message, and Google treats paid links that pass ranking credit as link spam.
7. Outbound links per post are few and relevant
Open three recent guest posts. If each one has five or more links to unrelated businesses, your link will be one of many in a crowded, low-value page. One or two relevant links per article is a healthier pattern.
8. Its authority score matches its traffic
A DR or DA of 50 with almost no organic traffic is a classic sign of a manipulated metric, often from a network of sites linking to each other. Trust traffic and rankings over a single authority number.
9. Google has indexed the site
Search site:domain.com in Google. If few or no pages appear, Google may have removed or demoted the site, and a link there is worth little.
10. It isn’t part of a private network
Check whether the same template, author names, contact email or “about” text appear on many other sites. If they do, you are probably looking at a PBN, which is exactly the kind of link scheme Google’s spam policies describe.
11. It ranks for its own brand name
Search the site’s name in Google. A genuine site appears first for its own name. If it doesn’t, the site may be penalised or very new.
12. The publisher is honest about link labelling
Ask whether paid posts are marked as sponsored and whether links use rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”. Google’s spam policies say paid links are fine when they are labelled this way. A publisher who promises “guaranteed permanent dofollow” on paid posts is selling something that breaks those policies.
Red flags at a glance
| What you see | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Traffic spike, then a crash | Hit by a Google update, or traffic was manipulated |
| High DR, near-zero traffic | Inflated authority metric |
| Every topic under the sun | Built to sell links, not to serve readers |
| “Permanent dofollow” banners | Paid links sold against Google’s link spam policy |
Few pages in site: search | Deindexed or demoted |
What a good guest post site looks like
A good site has a clear subject, real articles written for its readers, organic traffic from relevant countries that has held steady for a year, and only an occasional guest or sponsored post. Its editor reviews what you send and labels paid content honestly. That kind of site is harder to find, which is exactly why it is worth more.
Want us to vet sites for you?
Every site on our list has passed these checks, and you approve each one before anything is published. Tell us your niche and we’ll send 10 matching sites for free, or see how our guest posting service works.