“What DR do you need?” is usually the first question in any guest post deal. It’s a fair question, but the number on its own tells you less than most sellers suggest. A DR 70 site with no real readers can be worth less than a DR 35 site that Google sends thousands of relevant visitors to every month.
Here’s what DR actually measures, what a sensible range looks like, and the checks that matter more.
What DR is (and isn’t)
Domain Rating (DR) is a score from 0 to 100 created by Ahrefs. It estimates the strength of a website’s backlink profile, based on how many sites link to it and how strong those linking sites are. Moz has a similar metric called Domain Authority (DA), and Semrush has Authority Score.
Three things are worth knowing:
- It’s not a Google metric. Google doesn’t use DR, DA or any third-party score to rank pages. These are estimates made by SEO tools.
- It’s logarithmic. Moving from DR 20 to 30 is much easier than moving from 70 to 80, so the gap between two high numbers is bigger than it looks.
- It can be inflated. Because DR only looks at links, a site can raise it by buying or swapping links without gaining a single real reader.
So what is a “good” DR for a guest post?
There’s no official cut-off, but these rough bands help set expectations:
| DR range | What it usually means | Worth it when… |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 | New or small site | It’s highly relevant to your niche and has real, growing traffic |
| 20–40 | Established niche blog | Traffic is steady and comes from your target country |
| 40–60 | Strong niche site or small publication | Topic matches and the site isn’t full of sponsored posts |
| 60+ | Large publication, or an inflated score | Traffic and rankings back the number up |
Notice that every row ends with a condition about traffic or relevance. That’s the point: DR is a filter, not a decision.
Why organic traffic matters more
Organic traffic is the number of visitors an SEO tool estimates a site gets from Google each month. It’s harder to fake than DR because it depends on Google actually ranking the site’s pages for real searches. If Google sends a site steady traffic, Google trusts it, and that’s the kind of site you want a link from.
Traffic also tells you whether anyone will read your article. A guest post on a site with real readers can bring referral visits, brand mentions and enquiries, even when the link is marked rel="sponsored". A post on a site nobody visits brings nothing but a line in a report.
The DR-to-traffic mismatch
The most useful quick check is to compare the two numbers. As a rough rule, be cautious when a site has:
- DR 60+ but under 10,000 organic visits a month, especially if the topic is broad
- DR that jumped quickly in the last few months while traffic stayed flat
- Traffic for unrelated keywords, such as a tech blog ranking for casino or essay terms
None of these prove a site is bad, but together they are the classic pattern of a link farm.
Why sellers lead with DR
DR is easy to quote, easy to compare and easy to put in a price list. That’s exactly why so many guest post offers are built around it: “DR 50+ for $X”. Traffic is messier. It changes month to month, varies by tool and shows weaknesses quickly. A seller who only talks about DR and avoids traffic questions may simply be selling the number that looks best.
Ask for both, and ask when they were last checked.
What to check instead of (or as well as) DR
- 12-month traffic trend: steady or rising, not a spike followed by a drop.
- Traffic country: does it match the market you sell in?
- Topic relevance: would your customers actually read this site?
- Ranking keywords: are they related to the site’s subject?
- Sponsored post ratio: is most recent content the site’s own, or paid placements?
- Indexing: does a
site:domain.comsearch show its pages?
We go through each of these in How to Tell if a Guest Post Site Is Legit: 12 Checks We Run.
A simple rule to use
Pick sites in this order: relevance first, then real traffic, then DR. A relevant DR 35 site with steady traffic from your market is usually a better buy than an off-topic DR 70 site with little traffic, and often cheaper too. If you want to understand why prices vary so much, read How Much Do Guest Posts Cost?
Get sites chosen for traffic, not just DR
Our site lists show organic traffic and DR side by side, so you can judge both. Browse sample sites by niche or tell us your niche and get a free list with prices.