Somebody has sent you a list. Forty domains, prices next to each, most with a domain rating that looks impressive. You have a budget and a client waiting.
Here is how to sort the publications from the inventory, in about ten minutes per site, without paying for anything.
1. Does it rank for anything but its own name? (2 minutes)
The single most useful check. A site with genuine authority ranks for topic terms — actual things people search. Inventory sites rank for their own brand name and nothing else, because nobody has ever linked to them for a reason.
Free tiers of the major SEO tools will show you top organic keywords for a domain. If the list is entirely brand variations, there is no authority to pass on, whatever the domain rating says.
2. Are recent articles indexed? (1 minute)
Open a post published in the last month. Copy a distinctive sentence from the middle of it. Search that sentence in quotes.
If the article does not come back, it is not indexed — and yours will not be either. You would be paying for a page that, as far as search is concerned, does not exist. This check alone eliminates a surprising share of cheap inventory.
3. Is there editorial coherence? (2 minutes)
Scroll the last twenty posts. A publication has a subject. Inventory has a category list.
If a site published pieces on cryptocurrency, wedding venues, dental implants, forklift hire and CBD oil in the same fortnight, it is not a site with broad interests. It is a site with broad customers, and search engines have got very good at recognising the difference.
4. Count the outbound commercial links (2 minutes)
Open three articles at random and count the links pointing at commercial sites.
One or two is normal editorial behaviour. Three is fine. Ten or twelve, all to unrelated businesses, means every article is a shared vehicle — and your link is one of a dozen, on a page that exists to hold them.
5. Check the authors (1 minute)
Click a byline. Does the author have a real profile, a plausible history, other writing anywhere on the internet?
Eleven authors with stock-photo faces, one-line bios and no presence anywhere else is a tell. It is not disqualifying on its own — plenty of genuine small publications use house bylines — but combined with anything else on this list it settles the question.
6. Read one article properly (2 minutes)
The oldest test and still the best: would a real person read this to the end?
You will know within two paragraphs. Filler written to hold links has a texture — no specifics, no opinions, no examples, nothing that could not be swapped for any other company in any other country.
If you cannot imagine a human choosing to read the article your link will live in, you are not buying a link. You are buying a coordinate.
What not to weight too heavily
Domain rating. A third-party estimate, inflatable on purpose, and silent on the thing that matters most — whether the site is relevant to yours. Useful as a rough filter, useless as a decision.
Traffic estimates. Also estimates, often badly wrong for smaller sites, and easily distorted by one page ranking for something irrelevant.
Age. An expired domain rebuilt last month can show fifteen years of history. Age without continuous, coherent publishing means very little.
Red flags that end the conversation
- The seller will not name the site before payment
- A "write for us" page pricing placements by domain rating tier
- Recent posts not indexed
- No rankings beyond brand terms
- Casino, CBD or adult links already present in the body content
- Identical site structure across several domains from the same seller
- Guaranteed rankings offered alongside the placement
That first one does more work than the other six combined. There is no legitimate reason to hide the host domain from a buyer, and the reason it gets hidden is always that the buyer would say no.
Applying it to us
It would be poor form to publish this and not invite the same scrutiny. Every site in our network is listed publicly on the publications page, with live links, so you can run all six checks before you spend anything. We show host URLs before payment on insertions too.
That is not generosity, it is just the only version of this business that survives contact with a buyer who knows what to look for. If you want to skip the spreadsheet entirely, tell us what you need and we will come back within a working day.
Frequently asked
How do I know if a guest post site is any good?
Check that it ranks for terms other than its own brand name, that recent articles are indexed, that it has a coherent editorial focus, and that individual articles are not carrying a dozen outbound commercial links. Those four checks eliminate most bad inventory in under ten minutes.
Does domain rating matter when choosing a guest post site?
Less than the industry implies. Domain metrics are third-party estimates that can be inflated deliberately, and they say nothing about topical relevance, which is the stronger predictor of whether a link does anything.
What are the biggest red flags on a guest post site?
Recent posts not indexed, no rankings beyond the brand name, articles covering wildly unrelated topics, authors with stock-photo profiles and no history, a dozen outbound commercial links per article, and a pricing page that tiers by domain rating.
Want this done rather than explained? We own 38 UK publications and place editorial articles and links on them from £65. Send the target page and we'll come back within one working day with a plan.