Key Takeaways
- We analyzed 7,548 of our own backlink placements — every live link at DR 40 or above. The median came in at DR 81. In the data, high authority is the norm, not the exception.
- 83% of placements sit at DR 70 or higher, and 55% clear DR 80. Fewer than one in thirty fall in the DR 40–49 range.
- 87.7% were earned editorial coverage — articles and mentions — rather than paid link insertions or exchanges.
- The sites linking back pull a median of 793,000 monthly organic visits, and 89% have at least 10,000. Authority and real traffic, not one without the other.
- The links span 1,481 distinct publications across 201 client programs.
Every link building agency on the internet promises high authority backlinks. Almost none of them show you what that phrase means in practice — what domain ratings they actually hit, whether the links are earned or bought, and whether the sites linking back have any real audience. So we pulled our own numbers. This is an analysis of 7,548 backlink placements we have built for clients, covering every live placement at DR 40 and above, with the Domain Rating and organic traffic of each linking site recorded at the time it went live.
What follows is the full breakdown, and what it says about what a high authority backlink should actually look like — whether you build them yourself or pay someone else to.
What we analyzed
The dataset is our own placement records, not a survey or a scrape. Each row is a single link we secured for a client, logged with the publication, the live URL, the anchor, the type of placement, the linking domain's Domain Rating, and that domain's monthly organic traffic. We filtered to placements at DR 40 and above — the floor we actually bill on — which left 7,548 links across 1,481 distinct publications and 201 client programs.
A few honest caveats. Domain Rating and traffic were recorded at the time of placement, so a site's score today may read differently. Traffic figures were available for 68% of the links, so the traffic numbers below describe that subset. And this is a sample of our work, not every link we have ever built. With that out of the way, the findings.
The median high authority backlink is DR 81
Domain Rating is the clearest single proxy for how much authority a linking site can pass, so it is where we started. Across all 7,548 placements, the median Domain Rating was 81 — not an average inflated by a handful of giants, but the middle of the distribution. Half of every link we placed sat at DR 81 or higher.
The shape matters more than the single number. More than four in five placements (83%) were DR 70 or above, the range most SEOs would call genuinely high authority. Over half (55%) cleared DR 80. Fewer than one in thirty landed in the DR 40–49 band — the low end we will accept for relevance or a specific niche, but rarely the goal. The full distribution:
| Domain Rating | Share of placements |
|---|---|
| DR 90–100 | 29.5% |
| DR 80–89 | 25.3% |
| DR 70–79 | 28.3% |
| DR 60–69 | 8.9% |
| DR 50–59 | 5.0% |
| DR 40–49 | 3.1% |
If Domain Rating is new to you, we cover how it is calculated and what counts as a strong score separately.
88% was earned editorial, not bought
A high Domain Rating means little if the link was bought on a page Google already distrusts. The more important question is how the links were acquired. Here is the split: 78.9% were editorial placements — links inside articles written and published by the outlet. Another 8.7% were editorial mentions, where the brand was cited in coverage. Together, 87.7% of the links were earned editorial coverage. Paid link insertions accounted for 7.5%, and everything else — exchanges, guest posts, and the like — made up under 5%.
That ratio is the difference between digital PR and link buying. The bulk of these links came from pitching journalists and editors real stories through our digital PR work, not from paying for placement. We do use link insertions deliberately — they place a relevant, contextual link on a high-authority host page — but they are a minority of the mix by design, not the foundation. When a provider's high authority backlinks are almost entirely paid insertions, you are buying something structurally different from what is in this data, even if the Domain Ratings look similar.
Authority backed by real traffic
The most common problem with high-DR links is that the score is the only real thing about them. Plenty of high-Domain-Rating sites pull almost no actual readers — the authority is technical, not human. So we looked at the monthly organic traffic of every linking site we had data for. The median was roughly 793,000 visits a month. Nearly nine in ten placements (89%) were on sites pulling at least 10,000 monthly visits, and 70% were on sites above 100,000.
Almost half the links — 47.8% — came from sites with over a million monthly visits. This is the part that is hardest to fake and easiest to verify: a link is only worth the audience and trust of the page it sits on, and these placements skew heavily toward sites with both. A DR 85 domain with 2,000 monthly visitors and a DR 85 domain with two million are not the same link, however identical they look in a backlink tool.
The real publications behind the data
Numbers describe the portfolio; names make it concrete. Below is a representative sample of outlets we have earned editorial placements on, grouped by the category they cover — not a ranked list, and filtered to direct placements rather than the syndicated pickups that pad most agencies' logo walls. Domain Rating in parentheses, recorded at the time of placement.
| Industry | Example publications |
|---|---|
| Health & wellness | Healthline (DR 92), Verywell Mind (DR 90), Everyday Health (DR 88), Psych Central (DR 88), SingleCare (DR 77) |
| Finance & business | Forbes (DR 94), Entrepreneur (DR 91), Fortune (DR 91), Inc. (DR 91), Fast Company (DR 91), Bankrate (DR 90) |
| Technology | CNET (DR 92), Mashable (DR 91), TechRadar (DR 90), Lifewire (DR 90), Digital Trends (DR 90), Tom's Guide (DR 86) |
| Real estate & home | Realtor.com (DR 90), The Spruce (DR 90), Martha Stewart (DR 88), Homes & Gardens (DR 79), Real Homes (DR 75) |
| Food & recipe | Allrecipes (DR 92), Simply Recipes (DR 82), Eat This, Not That (DR 81), Tasting Table (DR 80), Mashed (DR 79) |
| Lifestyle & consumer | HuffPost (DR 92), Bustle (DR 89), PopSugar (DR 88), Real Simple (DR 87), Parents (DR 87), Parade (DR 85) |
These are a slice of the 1,481 publications in the dataset. We match outlets to each client's category and audience across a dozen industries — the publication that carries authority for a SaaS brand is rarely the one that moves the needle for a recipe site.
What makes a good backlink: the benchmarks
Put the three findings together and you get a usable definition of a high authority backlink — one you can hold your own links, or a vendor's, against. None of these is a hard rule, and relevance always matters alongside the metrics. But as a screen, they catch most of what separates a link worth having from a number on a report. The first three rows are what this data measured; the last two are standard quality checks worth applying to any link.
| Signal | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Domain Rating | DR 70+ for genuinely high authority. Median in this data: 81. |
| Link type | Earned editorial placement or mention, not a paid insertion or exchange. |
| Linking-site traffic | 10,000+ monthly organic visits; 100,000+ is stronger. |
| Relevance | The page and site relate to your topic or audience. |
| Anchor | Reads naturally — branded or contextual, not stuffed with exact-match keywords. |
If you are evaluating a provider and their placements do not clear most of this — or they will not show you live examples to check — the Domain Rating on the proposal is not telling you much. For how the wider industry thinks about link quality versus what actually gets built, our link building statistics roundup is a useful companion to this data.
Want high authority backlinks like these?
Every placement in this study came from the same editorial process we run for clients. If you want links that look like this — high Domain Rating, on sites people actually read — let's talk through your targets.
Frequently asked questions
What is a high authority backlink?
A high authority backlink is an editorial link from a website with a strong Domain Rating and a real audience. In our placement data, the median linking site sat at DR 81 with roughly 793,000 monthly organic visits, and nearly 88% of links were earned editorial coverage rather than paid placements. It is authority, audience, and editorial origin together — not a high score on its own.
What makes a good backlink?
Four things: a strong Domain Rating (DR 70+ is a reasonable bar), an editorial rather than paid origin, a linking site with genuine organic traffic, and topical relevance to your site. A link that clears the first three but has nothing to do with your industry is weaker than its metrics suggest.
What is a good Domain Rating for a backlink?
DR 70 and above is generally considered high authority. For context, 83% of the placements in this analysis were DR 70+ and the median was DR 81. Links below DR 50 can still be worth it for relevance, but they should not be the bulk of a high-authority campaign.
Are editorial links better than link insertions?
They serve different purposes. Editorial placements, earned through coverage, made up the large majority of our links and are the strongest signal of authority. Link insertions add a relevant, contextual link to a high-authority host page and are useful in moderation. The warning sign is a high-authority program built almost entirely on paid insertions or exchanges.
Source: analysis of 7,548 Reporter Outreach link placements at DR 40 and above, with Domain Rating and linking-site monthly organic traffic recorded at the time of placement. Domain Rating via Ahrefs. Traffic data available for 68% of placements.
