What DA or DR is good for guest posting?

Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's score. Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs'. Both run from 0 to 100 on a logarithmic scale, so moving from 70 to 80 is much harder than moving from 20 to 30. Both are built from each tool's own crawl of the links pointing at a site.

What they do not measure:

• Whether the site has readers.
• Whether it covers your subject.
• Whether an editor reviews what it publishes.
• Whether Google trusts it, or has quietly stopped counting its links.

That is why the same score can mean very different things on two sites.

Use them as one input in a four-part check.

1. DA or DR as a floor. Set a minimum that fits your goal and budget, then ignore sites below it.
2. Organic traffic as the reality check. Check it in Ahrefs or Semrush, with the twelve-month trend. A strong score with very little traffic is a warning.
3. Relevance as the decider. The site should cover your subject and rank for terms in your industry.
4. Editorial quality as the tiebreaker. Read recent posts. Look at outbound links.

Rough guide by range

These are tendencies, not rules.

• DA/DR 30 to 49. Often niche blogs and specialist publications. Can be excellent if relevant and read.
• DA/DR 50 to 69. Often established industry titles and larger blogs. Usually more selective.
• DA/DR 70 to 89. Often well-known publications and big media sites. Check which section your article would sit in.
• DA/DR 90+. Major news and media domains. Strong for credibility and visibility. Check whether the placement is in editorial content or a sponsored section, and what attribute the link carries.

• High DA or DR, but organic traffic close to zero, or falling steeply.
• The site's own backlinks come mostly from low-quality or unrelated sites.
• Posts on every subject, each with an outbound commercial link.
• DA and DR disagree wildly, for example DA 15 and DR 70.
• A recent change of owner and subject.

Scores can be pushed up by pointing large numbers of cheap links at a domain. Traffic is much harder to fake for long.

• Buying by score alone. It is the most common way budget goes to sites with no readers.
• Rejecting every low-score site. A relevant, read DA 25 site in a narrow niche can be a better fit than a general DA 60 one.
• Assuming a big domain means a big result. On large sites, the section matters. A sponsored subfolder may sit apart from the site's editorial strength.
• Comparing DA on one site with DR on another. They are different scales from different tools.

Hypothetical. Say you sell accounting software to small businesses in the Gulf and you are comparing three sites.

• Site A: DR 72, a general news site. Your article would go in a "partner content" section with no links from the homepage.
• Site B: DR 48, a regional SME and finance publication with steady organic traffic for accounting and VAT terms.
• Site C: DR 65, covering travel, crypto, health and home décor, with traffic down sharply this year.

Site C is out first: no relevance and a falling trend. Between A and B, B is the better match for rankings and readers. A could still be worth it for credibility in a sales deck, if you know what you are paying for.

Every row in the portal shows DA, DR, turnaround and price, so you can compare scores at a glance. See what guest posts cost by DR before you set a budget. The catalogue is vetted for topical fit, real traffic and editorial quality before a site goes in, so the scores sit on top of those checks rather than replacing them.

Our 9,000+ placements, earned articles and newswire releases combined, break down by authority as DA 90+ 18%, DA 70–89 34%, DA 50–69 31% and DA 30–49 17%. High scores are common in that mix because news and established titles carry them. We still choose by relevance first, and we will point you to a DA 40 specialist title over a DA 80 general one when it fits your page better.