Required · 01
Domain Rating 30 or higher
Every placement sits on a domain with Ahrefs DR 30+. DR alone isn't enough — it's the entry condition, not the standard.
Link Quality Standards
The exact bar every placement clears — and what fails it.
“Verified” is a marketing word unless someone tells you what verification actually involves. This page is the standard we hold every AnchorApe placement to, written out so you can check our work against it.
Every Placement Must Clear
What we require.
Six non-negotiables. If a publisher fails any one of them, the placement doesn’t happen — regardless of what the domain metrics look like.
Required · 02
Real organic traffic from Google
The host site must show at least 500 monthly organic visitors in Ahrefs. A DR 50 site with 200 visitors is almost always manipulation; we treat it the same as a DR 10 site.
Required · 03
Topical relevance to your niche
We match every placement to your industry. A B2B SaaS campaign gets placements on real SaaS, marketing, and software publications — not a generalist lifestyle blog. Evaluated at the section and page level, not just the domain.
Required · 04
Clean referring-domain profile
We audit where each publisher's own links come from. If more than ~15% of their backlinks are spam or PBN-sourced, the site is disqualified regardless of its DR.
Required · 05
Active content within 90 days
Dead sites don't pass authority. Every publisher must have editorial content published within the last 90 days and an active publishing calendar.
Required · 06
Editorial placement, not author-bio or sponsored blocks
Links go in the body of real editorial content, where a human editor would plausibly cite your page. Not the footer, not the author bio, not a 'Sponsored partners' row.
The Vetting Bar
What we reject.
The easiest way to tell a verified vendor from a paid-placement mill is to ask what they refuse. Here’s what fails our bar — even if you ask for it.
Reject · 01
Private blog networks (PBNs)
Zero tolerance. PBNs have respectable-looking DRs because they're built on expired domains, but they exist only to sell links and carry known-risk footprints. Not worth the short-term gain.
Reject · 02
Dead or deindexed domains
No new content in 90 days, or dropped out of Google's index. DR doesn't matter if the site isn't earning traffic.
Reject · 03
DR that doesn't match traffic
DR 50 site with 200 monthly visitors. Classic signature of link exchanges, traffic-buying footprints, or expired-domain plays. The DR number is real; the authority behind it isn't.
Reject · 04
Topic-agnostic link mills
Sites that publish across finance, gambling, crypto, SaaS, and lifestyle with no editorial identity. These are paid-placement farms dressed up as publications — a real site has a beat.
Reject · 05
Sponsored-only sites
Publishers where nearly every outbound link goes to a paying customer. Editorially hollow and increasingly being devalued.
Reject · 06
Excluded and regulated industries
We do not work with adult content, gambling, payday lending, pharmaceutical claims requiring regulation, firearms, or anything illegal in Canada or the target publisher's jurisdiction.
Verification Process
How we verify.
Four checkpoints between order and delivery. The goal is for a failed placement to get caught before it reaches your report, not after.
Step · 01
4-point pre-placement check
Every candidate publisher runs through DR, traffic, topical fit, and outbound-link profile before we spend a dollar on outreach. Roughly 70% of sites that clear the DR bar fail one of the other three.
Step · 02
Content and link review
Before the placement goes live, we review the host article, anchor text context, and surrounding outbound links. If the editor makes a change we didn't approve, we flag and renegotiate.
Step · 03
Live URL verification
Every placement is verified on the live URL before we mark it complete in your report. Broken links, noindex tags, or last-minute edits get caught here, not after billing.
Step · 04
Documented in the report
Live URL, target URL, anchor text, link attribute, host DR, host organic traffic, and topical category — recorded for every placement so you can verify the work independently.
Every Report Includes
What you receive.
Every placement is documented in your report with the same fields, so comparisons across campaigns are apples-to-apples.
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Live URL | Click-through to the exact placement. If it's not clickable and indexable, it doesn't count. |
| Target URL | Which page on your site received the link. |
| Anchor text | The exact clickable text, for distribution tracking. |
| Link attribute | dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, or ugc. Publisher-dependent and always disclosed. |
| Host domain rating | Ahrefs DR at time of placement. |
| Host organic traffic | Ahrefs monthly organic visitors at time of placement. |
| Topical category | How the placement was matched to your niche. |
| Placement date | For anchor velocity and replacement-window tracking. |
Placement Quality Guarantee
What happens if a link fails the bar.
The vetting process catches most problems before placement. For everything else, this is the backstop.
- Doesn't meet the standards above?We replace it at no charge.
- We can't deliver a qualifying replacement?We refund that placement.
- Link is removed within 30 days of delivery?We replace it once at no charge.
- Completed placements delivered to spec?Not refundable — but subject to replacement under the conditions above.
- Replacement request window?14 days from delivery. Email order number + issue to info@anchorape.com.
Ready to see it in action?
Now see the deliverable.
The sample report shows what these standards look like when they’re applied to a real Growth plan campaign.