How to check a website before buying a guest post

Most bad purchases look fine on a metrics dashboard. Ten minutes of checking saves you from sites that have numbers but no readers.

Updated: 2026-10-04

The 10-point checklist

1. Run a Quality Score check. satelo.io/check shows traffic signals, index presence and age from open data in about 20 seconds. A score near 0 means no public evidence that anyone visits.
2. Ask for verified traffic. A screenshot is easy to fake; a connected analytics source or a platform's "verified" badge is not.
3. Search the site in Google. site:example.com should return real pages. Very few results or only tag pages is a warning.
4. Read three recent articles. Would you read them if you weren't buying? Thin, generic or auto-generated text means readers won't stay.
5. Count sponsored posts. If most recent articles carry outbound commercial links, the site is a link farm and its mentions are worth little.
6. Check the niche fit. A great site in the wrong niche sends no relevant readers.
7. Look at the domain history. A long gap in the Wayback Machine or a recent topic switch often means an expired domain repurposed for links.
8. Ask about link terms. Number of links, rel attribute, sponsored label, and how long the article stays up.
9. Check speed and mobile. Slow, broken mobile pages lose readers before they reach your mention.
10. Get a guarantee in writing. What happens if the article or link disappears? Refund to card or only platform credit?

Green flags

• Verified traffic and a stable or growing Quality Score.
• A real author, comments or community around the content.
• Few sponsored posts, clearly labelled.

Next: how much should it cost?

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