Between July and September I sent 11 pitches to 11 sites. Most of them are in the SEO and marketing industry. Five of them asked for a link. Four offered a guest post. Two suggested my article for a roundup page. Three sites replied and all three wanted money.

This article walks through those pitches: what I wrote, where it went and what response came back. If you’re looking for guest post pitch examples, these are real ones, mistakes included. Each site is described by its niche and authority score, not its name. After the replies, I go through what went wrong and rebuild the pitch from scratch, along with two templates you can copy.

On October 30, 2026, I checked six websites as link prospects. One of them had a Domain Rating of 71 in Ahrefs and a Domain Authority of 24 in Moz. Same site, same day, 47 points apart.

A second site looked like an easy yes. DR 56, DA 43, a clean Spam Score. Then I opened its traffic report in Semrush. Its US organic traffic had dropped 98% in a single month.

If you buy links, sell them or vet sites for clients, you run into this every week. Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush and Majestic all score the same domain. They rarely agree, and the gaps can be large enough to flip your decision.

The short answer: no single authority score deserves your full trust. Each one measures something different. Use them to build a shortlist, then judge the site on its traffic and its backlinks.

Links still matter a lot for rankings, as these link building statistics show. That is exactly why picking the wrong site hurts. Below, you’ll see what each score measures and the real numbers from my six sites. Then we’ll cover why the scores clash and the checks I run before I approve a site.