How to Vet a Website Before You Publish on It

Why you should vet a website before you pay to publish on it

Once an article is live, it is meant to stay there. That permanence is the point of a placement, and it is also the reason to check carefully beforehand: a weak host is expensive to fix. You cannot edit the surrounding site, you cannot move the page to a better neighbourhood, and a link on a poor site may bring you little, while the association can hurt your reputation.

This article is a practical checklist to vet a website for guest posts, advertorials or press releases before you commit. It uses free tools and common sense, takes about half an hour per site and works whether you are choosing from a portfolio of publishing sites, a marketplace or a single email offer. For a framework of which criteria matter most for your goal, see how to choose a site for an advertorial; this piece is the hands-on screening that comes after the shortlist.

A word of caution about expectations. None of the checks below can tell you how Google will treat a page in the future, and none is a guarantee. They reduce the chance of a bad surprise.

The checklist at a glance

Step 1: check indexation with the site: operator

Type site:example.ro into Google, replacing the domain with the one you are checking. You see the pages Google has chosen to list. This is a rough indicator rather than an exact count, and Google does not guarantee that the numbers are precise, but it answers the questions that matter:

• Are recent articles in the results, or only old ones?
• Do the titles look like what the site claims to cover?
• Does the homepage appear at all? If not, ask why.

Try one more search: put a distinctive sentence from a recent article in quotation marks. If Google returns the site, the page is indexed and is not buried. If the sentence appears first on another site, you may be looking at copied content. For more on how pages get discovered and listed, see our article on getting a new article indexed.

Step 2: compare estimated traffic with authority

Authority scores such as DA and PA are built from backlinks; traffic is built from visitors. When the two tell very different stories, you should be curious. A site with a strong authority number and a small, shrinking audience may owe its score to links earned years ago. A site with modest authority and a rising audience may be a better home than the number suggests. For what the scores mean and how they are calculated, read what DA and PA mean.

Use two or three free or freemium tools to obtain traffic estimates, and compare. They are models, not measurements, and they disagree, especially for small sites in smaller languages. Look at the shape of the line over a year, not the exact figure, and see whether the keywords the site is said to rank for match its subject. If a Romanian local news site appears to rank for unrelated English terms, something is odd.

Step 3: read the articles, not just the homepage

Open five articles from different months and read each one fully. You are looking for signs of care. Does the writer know the subject? Are facts sourced? Are there obvious errors, repeated paragraphs or sentences that read like automatic translation? Are images sensible? Is there an author or a team named? Your advertorial will be read next to these pages, and readers will judge it partly by its surroundings.

Pay attention to the proportion of sponsored material. A few clearly labelled sponsored pieces among genuine editorial content are normal for a publication funded by advertising. A site where every article appears to be sponsored is a different thing, because readers have learned to ignore it and search systems may treat it with scepticism.

Step 4: look at outbound links and spam signals

Open a handful of recent posts and examine the external links. What kind of sites do they point to? Are the anchors natural, or are they commercial keywords such as “cheap loans”? Check a few older posts as well. Compromised or abandoned sites sometimes carry hidden or injected links to casino, pharmacy or adult pages, sometimes in text that readers never see. If you spot such links in unrelated articles, walk away.

Google’s spam policies describe the practices it treats as spam, including link schemes and hacked content. Reading them gives you a vocabulary for what to avoid, although a site that breaches those policies may not look obviously broken from the outside. Also look for a page that openly sells posts to anyone, with wording such as “write for us” next to a price list for dofollow links. That is not automatically disqualifying, but it is a reason to apply the other checks more critically.

Step 5: topic, freshness, mobile and ads

Four quick checks complete the picture.

1. Topic. Scan the categories. A coherent site has a clear subject or a small set of related ones. Sites that mix cooking, loans, football and cryptocurrencies with no common thread are usually built for link placement.
2. Freshness. Check the dates. Regular updates over several months suggest an owner who still cares. Long silences followed by sudden bursts do not.
3. Mobile. Open the site on your phone. The text should be readable without zooming, buttons should work, and pages should load in a reasonable time. Many readers will see your article on a small screen.
4. Ads. A few clearly separated adverts are normal. Pop-ups that block the text, forced redirects or content hidden beneath banners are not.

Also look for the basics of trust: an “about” page, contact details, a privacy and cookie notice and a named publisher. They do not prove quality, but their absence makes it harder to hold anyone accountable.

What published metrics can and cannot tell you

When a publisher or agency lists its sites with scores, that is useful transparency, and it saves you the first step. In the Succes Grup portfolio, the 450 sites show DA and PA publicly, taken from PrePostSEO and last updated on 29 September 2026, so you can filter and compare before deciding. We would still encourage you to apply the steps above to any shortlist, ours included, because a score summarises links and says little about how a particular site feels to read.

The same caution applies to every number in this article: estimates are estimates. Use them to compare, not to predict. If you are planning something larger than a single article, such as a launch, the model press release in our piece on a product launch press release shows what the finished text should look like before you choose where to place it.

Free tools that are enough for a first screening

You do not need an expensive subscription to complete this checklist. A handful of everyday tools cover most of it.

• Google Search itself. The site: operator, quoted phrases and a search for the brand name show indexation, copied content and reputation.
• A traffic estimator. Many SEO suites offer a limited free view. Use two so you can compare rather than trust one.
• A backlink and authority checker. Free versions show the main score and a sample of links, which is enough to spot an odd pattern.
• Your phone and a second browser. They reveal layout problems, slow loading and intrusive ads better than any report.
• A spreadsheet. One row per site, one column per check, so your decisions stay comparable.

Paid tools offer more detail, but none can turn a poor site into a good one. Time spent reading the articles is worth more than any extra dashboard.

A quick worked example (hypothetical)

Suppose you are considering an imaginary regional business blog, Afaceri Locale Online. A site: search shows plenty of articles, including some from last week. Two traffic tools give different figures but both show a slow rise over a year. Of five articles you read, four are carefully written and one looks like a lightly edited press release. External links are few and usually point to official sources. On the phone, the layout works, with one banner that is easy to dismiss. The topic list is coherent, covering small business, finance basics and local events.

The verdict is green, with one note: ask whether sponsored pieces are marked as such. Now picture a second imaginary site, with a strong score but no pages from the past year in the results, articles on loans, football and gardening, and links to pharmacies in every post. That is red whatever the number says. The two cases are invented, but they show how quickly the checklist separates a good candidate from a poor one.

Turning findings into a decision

Keep a simple record for each site you vet: date checked, the five or six findings and a final mark of green, amber or red. Green means proceed. Amber means proceed with a small first order or ask the owner a question. Red means walk away.

It helps to decide in advance which findings are deal-breakers. For most buyers these are hacked or injected links, copied content, a topic that does not match yours and an unwillingness to answer simple questions. Weaker signals, such as a slow site or a mediocre design, can be traded off against other strengths. If you set these out in advance, you are less likely to be talked out of them by a persuasive seller.

Finally, remember that vetting is not a one-off. A site can change owners, direction or editorial standards. Re-check the pages you care about from time to time, especially before you place a second or third article on the same host.

Your next step

Pick one site you are considering and run the checks now: the site: search, three articles, five outbound links, the phone test. Write down what you find. It will take half an hour and it will show you immediately whether the method works for you.

If you prefer to start from a list of sites that publish metrics openly, open the portfolio, filter by category and shortlist a few candidates, and then vet them with this checklist. For the publishing rules each text must meet before it goes live, see our publishing rules.

Frequently asked questions