What Domain Rating should I be targeting?

Domain Rating is the metric every proposal quotes, and it is close to the least useful primary filter you could choose.

What DR actually measures

DR is a function of a site’s own backlink profile — how many domains link to it and how strong those are. It says nothing about whether anyone reads the site, whether it covers your category, or whether its outbound links carry any weight.

That matters because DR is straightforward to inflate. A site in the placement business can buy its way to DR 60 more cheaply than it can build an audience, and many have. The result is a large supply of high-DR, low-value inventory — which is exactly what gets sold to buyers filtering on DR.

What to filter on instead

Organic traffic, first. A site with real readers has editorial standards worth passing. Traffic is much harder to fake than DR. A reasonable floor is 1,000 monthly organic visits; in narrow B2B categories, 500.

Topical relevance, second. A link from a site your buyers actually read is worth more than one from a general-interest site with a higher score. Relevance also matters increasingly for AI answer engines deciding which sources to cite.

Publishing history, third. Does the site publish things other than outside contributions? A site whose recent output is entirely guest posts is selling placements, whatever it calls them.

Outbound link pattern, fourth. A page linking to eight unrelated commercial sites is a placement farm. One or two contextual outbound links is normal editorial behaviour.

Then, and only then, use DR to break ties between sites that passed the first four.

The price implication

Ahrefs data puts link insertions at around $141 typically and about $600 on DR 50+ sites. You are paying roughly four times as much for the DR band alone.

Sometimes that is justified — a genuinely authoritative publication with an audience is worth the premium. Sometimes you are paying a four-fold markup for a number that was purchased. The traffic check is what tells you which.

A practical target

For most B2B SaaS, a sensible brief to an agency looks like this:

• 1,000+ monthly organic visits (500 in narrow categories)
• Topically relevant to your product or your buyer’s job
• Publishes original editorial, not only outside contributions
• Fewer than about 40 outbound links on the page carrying your link
• DR 30+ as a tie-breaker, not as the entry requirement

That brief will produce fewer candidate sites than a DR filter and better links from them. It is also a written quality criterion, which is exactly what belongs in the contract.

Use it when auditing sample placements before you sign.

Questions