Guest posting remains one of the most effective ways to gain high-authority backlinks and organic visibility. However, in 2025, as SEO gets more competitive and marketers look for shortcuts, the guest posting industry has become riddled with scams, shady websites, and deceptive sellers.

If you’ve ever been promised a DA 70 link for $15 or received a published article that never indexed in Google, you’re not alone. Today, we’ll walk through the most common guest post scams, how to detect them, how to verify link attributes like dofollow/nofollow/sponsored, and how platforms like BacklinksFusion are solving these problems through transparency and quality control.

Why Guest Post Scams Are on the Rise in 2025

Guest posting is in high demand. Agencies, SaaS businesses, affiliate marketers, and local businesses all want links on real, high-authority websites. But with growing demand, there’s a booming underground of low-quality sellers offering fake metrics, PBNs (Private Blog Networks), and sites built solely to look valuable but hold no SEO value.

Several things fuel these scams:

• The obsession with DA/DR: Buyers chase high Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) without checking if the site actually gets traffic or ranks for anything.
• Cheap sellers on Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook groups: Many of these sellers scrape expired domains, build fake content sites, and inflate traffic claims.
• Open marketplaces with no vetting: Some popular platforms list thousands of sites with no indexing or traffic checks.
• AI-written spam blogs: With tools like ChatGPT, AI-generated PBNs have exploded, often publishing guest posts that Google ignores or penalizes.

Common Types of Guest Posting Scams

1. High DA, Zero Organic Traffic

Sellers advertise a DA 60+ site for $10-$30, but when you check the metrics, the site has no ranking keywords, no traffic, and no visibility. These are often expired domains that have been rebuilt using scraped or AI content to trick buyers.

What to check:
Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Ubersuggest to see if the site has:

• At least 500+ monthly organic visitors
• Ranking keywords
• Consistent traffic (not just a one-month spike)

2. Fake Samples or Cloaked URLs

Some sellers show samples that don’t actually belong to them or send links that lead to unpublished drafts or cloaked redirect pages. If you can’t click the sample and verify its presence on a live, indexed blog page, it's likely a fake.

Ask for:

• 2–3 real published guest post URLs
• Specific niche-relevant links (not generic blogs)
• Internal linking within the article to other blog posts (proof it’s a real site)

3. Dofollow Promised, Nofollow or Sponsored Delivered

One of the most common scams: You’re told the link will be dofollow, but after publication, you inspect the HTML and see this:

html

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<a href="https://your-site.com" rel="nofollow">Link</a>

Or even worse:

html

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<a href="https://your-site.com" rel="sponsored">Link</a>

What’s the difference?

• dofollow: Passes link juice (SEO value). Default link.
• nofollow: Tells Google not to pass value.
• sponsored: Declares the link is paid (Google requires this for paid posts).
• ugc: User-generated content (used for forums, blog comments).

You can inspect the link using Chrome DevTools or extensions like Check My Links.

Note: Google now recognizes sponsored links as paid content and might ignore them for ranking, though it's safer from a compliance point of view. If you're paying for a backlink, this tag must be disclosed to Google — but it should be clear before buying.

4. Posts Published With noindex Tag

This is a silent scam. The guest post is published, live, and appears to be dofollow. But when you check the page source, you see this:

html

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<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">

This tag tells Google not to index the page, meaning it won’t show in search results, and your backlink won't count. Sellers often do this so they can recycle the same URL over and over — keeping it technically "live" but invisible to Google.

How to check:

• Visit the live guest post
• Right-click > View Page Source
• Ctrl+F for noindex

Also, test it with:

bash

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site:example.com/your-post-slug

If it doesn’t appear in Google search results after a few days, it’s likely noindexed or blocked via robots.txt.

Signs of a Fake Guest Posting Website

Here are key indicators that a guest post site is not legitimate:

• Every article is a guest post. No real editorial content.
• Spammy design. Ads everywhere, poor UX, broken menus.
• Multiple unrelated niches: Crypto + health + law + casino = 🚩
• Very low pricing: $10–20 for a DA 60+ site? Too good to be true.
• No About, Contact, or Team page. It’s a shell site.
• External links are all outbound, none internal.

The Problem With Relying Solely on DA/DR

Most people focus on DA (Moz) or DR (Ahrefs) when buying guest posts. But both are third-party metrics, and both can be manipulated. A domain can have DA 60 but get zero visitors.

More important than DA/DR:

• Organic traffic from real keywords
• Country-specific traffic (not just from bot traffic or India-only)
• Site age and history (use Wayback Machine to check for expired domains)
• Spam score (Moz) or link profile (Ahrefs)

How to Buy Safe Guest Posts: The Checklist

Use this 12-point checklist before paying any seller:

1. Does the site get organic traffic? (Use Ahrefs/Semrush)
2. Is it indexed in Google?
3. Can the seller provide 2–3 live sample posts?
4. Is the post permanent, or is there a time limit?
5. What’s the turnaround time?
6. Will the link be dofollow or sponsored/nofollow?
7. Can you choose the anchor text?
8. Will the content be original or spun?
9. Can you approve the content before it’s published?
10. Does the seller offer refund/replacement if the post is deleted?
11. Can you verify the post is not blocked with noindex?
12. Are the prices realistic?

If even 3–4 of these answers are unclear, you're likely dealing with a bad source.

How BacklinksFusion Solves These Problems

At BacklinksFusion.com, we’ve built a platform that prioritizes trust, visibility, and transparency for both buyers and vendors.

Here’s how we protect you:

• Manual vetting of every domain before listing
• Minimum organic traffic threshold
• Verified dofollow/sponsored tag disclosure
• No hidden noindex, no robots.txt blocking
• DR, DA, Traffic, Keywords, Spam Score listed transparently
• Niche-specific filtering: only see sites that match your vertical
• Live samples available on every listing
• Vendor-reputation scoring based on delivery, communication, and quality

You’re not just buying links — you’re buying peace of mind.

Final Thoughts

Scammers thrive when buyers lack knowledge. That’s why the best investment you can make — before spending on guest posts — is education. Don’t fall for inflated metrics, vague promises, or sketchy sellers operating in private groups.

Instead, look for:

• Indexed pages
• Real traffic
• Transparent pricing
• Confirmed link attributes
• Long-term support

If you're serious about SEO in 2025, your backlinks must be clean, indexed, and meaningful. And platforms like BacklinksFusion exist to make sure your money doesn’t go to waste.

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