How to buy guest posts in 2026: a buyer's checklist.

Buying a guest post looks simple: pick a site, send a brief, get a live URL. The difference between a link that helps and one that does nothing is decided before you pay, in a few checks most buyers skip. This checklist is the order we use ourselves.

A note on risk first. Google's spam policies treat links bought to influence rankings as link spam. The checks below reduce the chance of buying a link that is ignored or harmful; they do not make paid links risk-free. Decide how much of your link profile you want to build this way.

1. Start from the page you want to rank

Write down the target URL, the topic of that page and the market. A guest post for a German sports betting page and one for a SaaS pricing page need completely different hosts. Most wasted budget starts with picking sites first and finding a page for them later.

2. Check that real people read the site

Domain Rating measures links, not readers. Look at estimated organic traffic and its trend over 12 months. A DR 60 site with a few hundred visits is usually selling links, not publishing for an audience. Our DR vs traffic guide explains how to read the two together.

3. Check that new posts get indexed

Search site:domain.com and open three or four recent articles. If recent posts are missing from Google, yours will probably be missing too. More on this in why some guest posts never get indexed.

4. Look at what else the site links to

Open the last 15 posts. A few sponsored articles among real content is normal. A feed where every post links to a casino, a loan site or a CBD shop is a link farm, and search engines treat it as one. See how to spot a fake or resold listing for the warning signs.

5. Prefer topic fit over a few extra DR points

A relevant DR 35 site usually does more for a page than an unrelated DR 55 one. Browse by niche: casino, crypto, technology, business and finance, sports and news.

6. Plan anchors before you order

Brand and URL anchors should make up most of your profile, with partial-match phrases used sparingly and no commercial anchor repeated across many sites. The anchor text ratio checker shows your current mix.

7. Compare the price with the market

Across the sites we list, the median guest post costs $47. Prices for the same DR vary by a factor of three or more, so compare before accepting a quote. Guest post prices by DR has the full breakdown.

8. Agree the terms in writing

Confirm the exact domain, the link type, how long the post stays live and what happens if it is removed or never published. On Backlinksys, availability is confirmed before you pay, and a confirmed placement that cannot be delivered is replaced or refunded.

Where to start

If you are new to this, start with five to ten placements on sites that pass every check above, spread over a month. Measure, then scale. These are strong, indexed sites from the catalog to compare against:

Live list, refreshed every few hours from the catalog.

A worked example

Say you run a comparison site for online casinos in Germany and want the page “best online casinos Germany” to move from position 18 into the top 10. The pages above you each have links from 30 to 80 referring domains, most of them German gambling, sports and news sites.

A sensible first month: four German-language placements on sports or betting news sites with real traffic, two English casino sites with strong authority for the home page, and one link insertion in an older German article that already ranks for a related term. Anchors: the brand twice, the URL twice, “Online Casinos in Deutschland” once, and descriptive phrases for the rest. Then wait four to six weeks, look at movement, and repeat what worked.

Writing the brief

A good brief saves a round of revisions. Include the target URL, two or three anchor options in order of preference, the topic angle that fits the host site, any words or competitors to avoid, and whether you supply the article or want it written. If you supply it, keep it useful on its own: an article that would make sense without your link is the one editors accept and readers click.

Mistakes that waste the most money

Buying by DR alone. It is the fastest way to end up on sites nobody reads. Ordering everything in one week. A sudden burst looks bought; spread placements over the month. Reusing one money anchor. The same exact phrase on ten sites is a footprint. Never checking the result. Open every live URL, confirm the link and its attributes, and recheck after a month.

How long until results?

Expect four to twelve weeks before a placement shows its full effect, depending on how often Google recrawls the host page and how competitive the keyword is. Judge a campaign on two or three months of data, not on the first week.

Frequently asked questions