Vetting a donor: chasing DR vs. chasing real traffic

Vetting a donor: chasing DR vs. chasing real traffic

The metric you optimize for changes which donors you buy from.

— An agency blog laid out the DR-first approach: filter by Domain Rating, fast and scalable, good for sorting a list of 200 prospects down to 30.
— Counterpoint from a thread: organic traffic and keyword count tell you the site is actually alive, where DR can be propped up by a handful of bought links pointing at the donor itself.
— Also circulating: a sharper take favoring traffic value on the specific target page, not the domain — a high-DR site with a dead target URL passes you nothing useful.

Editor's note: DR vets the domain, traffic vets the reality, and page-level traffic vets the actual link. Use all three in that order.

Pick of the week: never buy an insert into a URL that has zero organic traffic, whatever the domain DR says.