9 checks, 15 minutes: the donor vetting sequence

9 checks, 15 minutes: the donor vetting sequence
Median time to disqualify a bad prospect drops to 4 minutes once these run in fixed order. Sequenced across 600 evaluated domains, the first three filters kill 71% of junk before you ever open the live site.

Run top to bottom, stop at first fail:
— Organic traffic floor: under 500/mo Ahrefs estimate, drop
— Traffic trend: 6-month line falling >40%, drop (penalty risk)
— Outbound link count per post: median over 12 dofollow, drop (link farm)
— Topical match: target page within 2 clicks of a relevant category
— Indexed pages vs sitemap: gap over 60% signals thin or deindexed
— Author byline present and clickable
— Traffic-to-referring-domains ratio sane (not 50k RD, 200 visits)
— Last publish within 30 days
— Contact path that isn't a generic form

Sample: 600 manual evaluations, 2023-2024 window. Directional on the trend cutoff.
Order the filters cheapest-first; you'll halve review time.