Been running link building campaigns for a while now and I keep seeing the same mistake from agencies and business owners: buying backlinks based on Domain Authority alone.

DA is a vanity metric. Moz stopped being the industry standard years ago. Here's what actually matters when you're evaluating a guest post opportunity:

1. Topical relevance beats raw authority every time. A DR 40 site in your exact niche will move the needle more than a DR 70 site with zero topical overlap. Google's helpful content systems weight relevance heavily now.

2. Check the site's own organic traffic trend. Ahrefs or Semrush — if the site's traffic is declining, it's either been hit by an algo update or is being actively deprioritized. A link from a dying site is a wasted link.

3. Real editorial sites reject content. If a site will publish literally anything you send them with zero pushback, that's a signal it's a link farm, not a real publication. The best placements come from sites with actual editorial standards.

4. Do-follow only matters if the placement is permanent. A lot of cheap guest post vendors will quietly remove your link after a few months, or convert it to no-follow. Always get it in writing that the placement is permanent.

5. Anchor text diversity protects you. If every backlink uses your exact match keyword as anchor text, you're building an unnatural pattern that's easy for Google to flag. Mix branded, naked URL, and partial match anchors.

We built our whole vetting process around these five filters — every site in our network is checked for topical relevance, real traffic, and editorial standards before it's ever offered for a placement. Happy to answer questions if anyone's evaluating a link building vendor and wants a second opinion on what to look for.