SEO Building

Same idea here. Would also check the ranking keywords and traffic sources of the site to ensure there is really an audience overlap. A site that is related and has topical authority is more valuable than a site with a high DR but is not related to the niche.

I spend more time reviewing the site's niche, traffic trends, and content quality than looking at DR. Those factors have given me better SEO results over the years.

Yeah same here, I put relevance first, content quality too, real organic traffic, and the audience fit over DA/DR. Metrics are helpful to sort things out, but a niche-relevant site with genuine visits usually brings more SEO value than some high metric site with weak relevance, or almost zero audience alignment.