Guest post on exploringthenorth.com: the site brief

51 DA sits comfortably above the index median of 40, which is the level where editors start enforcing real standards.

There is a second job these placements do that is worth naming: they make a young or thin profile look normal. A domain that acquires 51-level links from a spread of ordinary publications, in drips, over months, looks like a business that has been around. A domain that acquires forty links from aggressive networks in a fortnight looks like a campaign, and it is the pattern rather than the individual link that gets noticed.

Within the General section of the index — 1,576 listings, 39 median DA, 5k median traffic, $70 median price — this placement is 7% below the median on cost and in line with the index median on audience. Listings in that section range from $30 at the cheap end, so the question is not whether $65 is high for a link, but whether it is high for this one.

General-interest publications are the workhorses of a link profile and the easiest place to overpay. The article shape that works is boringly specific: a problem, the method used, what happened, what it cost. A general title with 6.7k monthly visits survives because it answers questions well, not because it loves contributors, so a piece with nothing verifiable in it gets edited down to a bio link.

Our observation on this host is do-follow outbound links in editorial content. That is the attribute, not the value: the 51 DA and 6.7k monthly visits are what the attribute is attached to.

Two comparisons decide whether exploringthenorth.com at $65 is a good buy: this listing against the 1,576 other General entries we index, and against the whole 2,000-site index. The gap between those two answers is where a price is either justified or inherited from a rate card nobody revisited.

exploringthenorth.com has 32 DR against an index median of 51, 6.7k monthly visits against a median of 5.5k, and a placement price of $65 against $70. Where those three numbers point in different directions, the traffic figure is usually the honest one: it is what a publisher has to protect, and it is what decays first when a site starts selling too much inventory.

exploringthenorth.com out-ranks 55% of the index on audience size (in line with the index median) and 81% on authority. The placement costs $9.70 per thousand estimated visits, and mid-priced for a site carrying DA 50-59. Those two figures, not the DA column alone, decide whether $65 is a good trade or just a listed one.

• Local and service businesses whose market has few specialist publications left.
• Agencies filling a monthly quota with links nobody will object to.
• Thin profiles where diversity matters more than raw authority.
• Do not buy this if you need the anchor to be your money keyword and the host is marked Do-follow. Attribute and anchor politics matter less than the page's survival, and a forced anchor is the easiest thing for an editor to change.
• Do not buy this as part of a burst. 7–12 days is the delivery window for one placement; a month's worth of placements across several hosts is the pattern that works.

Pitch angle: a practical guide that solves one named problem for your market. That is the shape we take to a General audience, because it is the version the host's own editor has a reason to keep.

• Put one link in the body Exactly one, in the sentence where the article needs the source. A second link to your own domain is the most common reason a piece gets rewritten before publication.
• Write 900–1,300 words Long enough to be worth crawling and citing, short enough that a real desk will read all of it. Anything longer gets skimmed and trimmed, and trimming is where links go.
• Name a real author A person with a title and a bio. Anonymous contributions on General sites are the first thing an editor distrusts, and the first thing a reader discounts.

Anchor plan for this host

• a descriptive anchor that repeats a phrase the article already uses naturally
• no two anchors to the same target page from one article

• Ownership. Several of the listings in our index turn out to share a publisher or an ad network. Relevance does not multiply when five links come from one hand, so we check the footer, the registration and the ad slots.
• Template stability. Redesigns and CMS migrations kill placements. We check the age of the site's oldest surviving article as a proxy for how long a page there tends to live.
• Whether the exact placement URL is indexable. A 51 DA domain happily serves noindexed contributor pages. We read the robots meta tag on the article template, not on the homepage.
• Disclosure policy. Whether the host labels paid contributions. A label costs you nothing in link value and protects the host from the penalty that removes the page.

1. You send the target URL and your angle The page you want the link to point at, the subject, and any author you want credited. Five minutes of input.
2. We confirm availability on exploringthenorth.com Publisher slots move week to week, including on 51 DA properties. Nothing is promised until the section and the placement URL are confirmed, and we tell you before you pay if the slot has gone.
3. You approve the brief and the shortlist Where the host gives a choice of section or existing article, we send options with the numbers that matter: traffic, indexation, neighbours.
4. The article is drafted and edited for the host Written for exploringthenorth.com's audience rather than for your keyword, then checked against the site's own style before submission.
5. The host publishes; we verify the live URL Placement live, correct target, link attribute as recorded, indexable. Only then does the order count as delivered.
6. You get the report, and the replacement cover starts PDF and CSV with the live URL, anchor, placement date and target page. Twelve-month replacement on the link itself, no ticket required.

If the article you want published needs expert authorship, data or photography, that work is included; if it needs a regulated-industry review, say so early, because it changes the timeline rather than the price.

What comes with this placement

• Link attribute verified on the published page and reported as found.
• The article itself, drafted to the host's style and edited before submission.
• White-label PDF + CSV report — forward it to a client unchanged.
• Anchor and target page exactly as approved in the brief, or the placement is not counted.

Browse the index: all 2,000 briefs · General listings · domains beginning E (72) · DA 50-59 band (302)