The headsetnews.com placement brief

Mid-market at $70: the band where judgement about the site matters more than the invoice.

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 38-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 within a few percent of the median on cost and about 2.6× the index median on audience. Listings in that section range from $30 at the cheap end, so the question is not whether $70 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 14.1k 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 38 DA and 14.1k monthly visits are what the attribute is attached to.

Two comparisons decide whether headsetnews.com at $70 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.

Two things the metrics cannot tell you, so we say them plainly: whether the host will still accept a contribution article this month, and whether the section your piece lands in is crawled weekly or monthly. Everything else on this page — 38 DA, 31 PA, 40 DR, 14,100 visits, $70, do-follow — is measured, dated September 2026, and available to you before you commit.

headsetnews.com out-ranks 71% of the index on audience size (about 2.6× the index median) and 36% on authority. The placement costs $4.96 per thousand estimated visits, and cheaper per visit than 76% of the DA 30-39 band. Those two figures, not the DA column alone, decide whether $70 is a good trade or just a listed one.

• Thin profiles where diversity matters more than raw authority.
• Anyone testing guest posting before committing to a premium title.
• Local and service businesses whose market has few specialist publications left.
• 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 if the site's topical distance from your market needs three paragraphs of explanation. Relevance has to be obvious to a crawler reading the neighbourhood.

Pitch angle: an experience write-up with numbers, dates and decisions. 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.

• Include one thing nobody else has A table, a chart, a worked example, a photograph you took. This is what earns the citations that make the $70 look cheap a year later.
• 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.
• Add a heading someone would search A question-style H2 phrased the way the reader phrases it. This is what lets the article rank on its own, which is the difference between a placement that gets crawled weekly and one that gets crawled yearly.

Anchor plan for this host

• one brand or URL anchor in the first half, and nothing else
• no two anchors to the same target page from one article

• Link attribute on a live example. Not the pitch, not the rate card: the rel attribute on an outbound link in a real article published this month.
• Indexation of the host's recent output. We run site:headsetnews.com and compare the count against the site's publishing rate. A property publishing weekly with a fraction of its pages indexed has a crawl or quality problem you would inherit.
• 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.
• 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.

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 headsetnews.com Publisher slots move week to week, including on 38 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 headsetnews.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

• The article itself, drafted to the host's style and edited before submission.
• Link attribute verified on the published page and reported as found.
• Anchor and target page exactly as approved in the brief, or the placement is not counted.
• Live-URL verification, with a dated record of the placement.

Browse the index: all 2,000 briefs · General listings · domains beginning H (74) · DA 30-39 band (892)