A seller emails you a list: DR 60, DR 55, DR 70, all at a tidy per-post price. The domain ratings look great. Half those sites are worthless, and a couple are actively risky. Learning to tell the difference in ten minutes per site is one of the most valuable skills in B2B link building, and it is entirely learnable.
Check organic traffic first, not domain rating
Domain rating measures a site's link profile. It does not measure whether Google trusts the site enough to rank it. A site can have DR 65 from a pile of purchased links and pull almost no organic traffic. Open the domain in Ahrefs or Semrush and look at the organic traffic graph. If a supposedly authoritative site gets a few hundred visits a month, the authority is fake.
The trend matters as much as the number. A traffic line climbing over the last year is a healthy sign. A line that fell off a cliff after a Google update means the site got hit, and a link from it inherits that problem.
| Signal | Healthy | Walk away |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly organic traffic | Meaningful for the niche and rising | A few hundred visits despite high DR |
| Traffic trend | Stable or growing over 12 months | Sharp drop after a known update |
| Traffic sources | Ranks for real, relevant keywords | Ranks only for its own brand name |
| Top pages | Genuine content that earns traffic | Only guest posts and thin filler |
Confirm topical relevance
The site has to actually cover your world. A payroll platform belongs on HR, finance, and operations publications, not on a general "business tips" blog that also runs posts about crypto and weight loss. Read the last ten articles. If they span five unrelated industries, the site sells to everyone and the relevance signal is close to zero. We explained why this kills B2B campaigns in why SaaS sites struggle to earn links.
Check the outbound link pattern
A site that stuffs every article with three or four external dofollow links to unrelated commercial sites is a link farm. Look at a few published posts. Natural editorial content links out occasionally and usually to relevant sources. A page with a paid link in every other paragraph is a footprint Google recognizes, and being in that neighborhood does you no favors.
- Count outbound dofollow links per article. A handful is normal; a dozen is a farm.
- Check where those links point. Relevant sources are fine; random commercial anchors are not.
- Look for a pattern of thin posts that exist only to host links.
- Be wary of sites that publish ten near-identical guest posts a day.
Verify indexation and reach
A link on a page Google never indexes is worth nothing. Before agreeing to a placement, confirm the site's articles actually get indexed and rank. A quick check: search a distinctive sentence from a recent post in Google. If it does not appear, the site has indexation problems, and your link will sit in a page nobody sees.
The red flags that end the conversation
- High DR with negligible organic traffic. The clearest sign of a manufactured profile.
- A traffic graph that collapsed after an update and never recovered.
- Content spanning unrelated verticals in the same feed.
- A visible "write for us and pay" page advertising placements to any industry.
- Sponsored or partner disclaimers on every post, signaling a pure link shop.
- Obvious AI-generated filler with no author, no expertise, and no editing.
Any one of these is usually enough to pass. We would rather place ten fewer links a month than put a client on a site that gets penalized next quarter. That standard is the core of our guest posting service, and it is also why our audit flags historical links from sites like these.
A quick vetting routine
Ten minutes per site is enough once you know the pattern. Traffic and trend, then relevance of the last ten posts, then outbound link density, then a quick indexation check. If a site clears all four, it is worth a real conversation. If it fails the first one, close the tab. The domain rating on the seller's spreadsheet is the last thing you should look at, not the first.