Whats your process for finding niche relevant sites before pitching them?

Before reaching out for guest post/link insertion, how do you actually vet a site beyond just checking just DR
Do you look their existing outbound links , chck if they have been penalize before , or just go by traffic + niche
match
Curious what a solid vetting chcklist looks like for you guys before you even send the first email.

I check the competitors on ahrefs. If it works for the top ranking competitors, it works for me.

i check out for the traffic, pricing, history, niche/category filtering, historical performance, replacement and refund policy and more

In Ahrefs, I usually check organic traffic and its trend to see if the site is growing or dropping. I also check organic keywords and top pages to understand where the traffic comes from. Then I review referring domains, anchor texts, and outgoing links for spamy patterns. Finally, I check historical data to see if the site has changed niches or had major traffic drops.

SumbalLinkBuilder said:

Before reaching out for guest post/link insertion, how do you actually vet a site beyond just checking just DR
Do you look their existing outbound links , chck if they have been penalize before , or just go by traffic + niche
match
Curious what a solid vetting chcklist looks like for you guys before you even send the first email.

Click to expand...

DR will surely be my last test. first i will ask myself do i even want to have my link on this website?” next i will analyze the topical rellevance, traffic patterns, quality of content, links nd growth history of the website. only when i see naturalness in all of this, the metrics start making sense.

I always check the traffic trend. Got burned before by sites that had good traffic when added to my list but dropped hard a few months later. Current traffic alone doesn't tell the whole story.

Most of the replies here are Ahrefs metrics, which is fine as a first filter but it is not vetting. Metrics tell you a site has traffic. They don't tell you whether a link from it will do anything.

What I actually check in order..

Outbound links on the page, not the domain. A site can be clean overall and still have a "resources" page with 200 casino and CBD links on it. That page passes nothing and might cost you.

Whether their existing guest posts rank for anything. Pull five recent guest posts, check if any of them have a single keyword in the top 100. If none do, the site is a link farm with a nice DR and Google already knows it.

Traffic trend over 12 months, not the current number. A site at DR 50 that has lost 70% of its traffic since March is a site Google has already downgraded. You are buying a link on a corpse.

Whether the topic actually connects. Not "same industry", actually related. A dog food review site linking to a dog training page is relevant. A generic "lifestyle" blog is not, no matter what the DR says.

That process takes ten minutes a site and rules out about two thirds of what looks good on paper. Worth saying I only bother with it for the handful of links that go to the money page. For the tiers underneath I stopped vetting targets individually years ago and pay a list provider to do it, ser verified lists and gsa link surge are what I run currently, have used ser links too. They all have ups and downs, but the point is the same, someone has to check targets before you post to them, and at volume you cannot be that someone.

Honestly, I don't focus too much on DR anymore. I usually check if the site actually covers my niche, has real traffic, and whether the outbound links look natural. If every other post is clearly selling links, I normally just skip it.

i’d check organic traffic trends, relevance, indexed pages, outbound link quality, and whether the site looks overloaded with sponsored posts. also review its history for sudden drops or deindexing, since dr alone can be pretty misleading.

I don't just look at the number of direct users (DR). Niche relevance and organic traffic quality are more important to me. I also check the site's existing external links to see if it's excessively linking to irrelevant/spammy sectors.

I usually check the site’s traffic niche and the links they already have If it’s full of random outbound links, that’s usually enough for me to skip it

SumbalLinkBuilder said:

Before reaching out for guest post/link insertion, how do you actually vet a site beyond just checking just DR
Do you look their existing outbound links , chck if they have been penalize before , or just go by traffic + niche
match
Curious what a solid vetting chcklist looks like for you guys before you even send the first email.

Click to expand...

I’d check traffic quality, niche relevance, outbound links, and signs of previous penalties rather than relying on DR alone.

usually check topical relevance first then organic traffic trends indexing and outbound link patterns DR is useful as a quick filter, but I never rely on it alone.

SumbalLinkBuilder said:

Before reaching out for guest post/link insertion, how do you actually vet a site beyond just checking just DR
Do you look their existing outbound links , chck if they have been penalize before , or just go by traffic + niche
match
Curious what a solid vetting chcklist looks like for you guys before you even send the first email.

Click to expand...

Relying solely on Domain Rating is a significant trap, as these metrics can be easily manipulated. While traffic and relevance may qualify a site for consideration, thorough vetting is what ultimately safeguards your site and ensures the backlink delivers real impact.

SumbalLinkBuilder said:

Before reaching out for guest post/link insertion, how do you actually vet a site beyond just checking just DR
Do you look their existing outbound links , chck if they have been penalize before , or just go by traffic + niche
match
Curious what a solid vetting chcklist looks like for you guys before you even send the first email.

Click to expand...

DR is k the only starting point. I check traffic relevance outbound links and spam signals.