If you have a website, there are likely some terms you’ve heard but need to become more familiar with, such as spam score. We’ll elaborate more about some of those terms, specifically, how to find your spam score and how it affects your overall SEO efforts.

What is Spam Score?

You may wonder what spam score is and if it has something to do with your website or business. You may also wonder what the relationship is between SEO and spam score. We’ll answer all those questions in this article.

The term spam originally referred to unwanted e-mails. That being said, in the context of SEO, spam refers to any form of unwanted content that affects your ranking in search results. This type of content includes user comments, forums, backlinks, and spam submission sites.

When a spam score is assigned to a website, it indicates how much that website contributes to the internet’s harmful SEO activity. The higher your website’s spam score, the more it contributes to your overall ranking on Google. For example:

(Image Credit: Monitor Backlinks)

Why is It Important to have a Low Spam Score?

If you have a low spam score, you are not contributing to the black SEO aspects of the online sphere; this is important because it helps your website stay safe, and you won’t face any penalties from search engines, the largest and most influential being Google.

SEO has always been a competitive field, with people always trying to go the quick route instead of the honest one. Be careful with the practices and tools you use to boost your ranking and lower your spam scores. If your website has a low spam score, it will rank higher in the search engine results pages than those with higher scores and benefit the website owner in the long run.

However, if your website has a high spam score, it may end up ranking lower than it should, even with your efforts to earn more organic traffic; this will result in you having a hard time ranking and, consequently, you’ll make less money.

What Factors Influence Spam Score?

Some factors contributing to a spam score include:

1. A Large Site with Few Links

If your site is large, it makes sense to have numerous links. If it has few links, it will more than likely be seen as spammy.

Smaller websites can have more than ten links, but they will be penalized by Google if they don’t add a sufficient amount of value to the industry. Many users prefer smaller websites because they look cleaner and encourage users to visit them often.

2. Low Site Link Diversity

Ensure there is a considerable variety of sources as you insert backlinks. If you have many backlinks from similar websites, this may indicate that they need to be more natural. If they are not natural, Google will penalize your website.

A higher number of links from different sources also indicates high quality and diversity; this is because it shows that your website is popular and has been cited by various people and websites.

For instance, if you have 50 links coming in from different sources, it means that many people have referenced your website; this is a good thing because it means that your website will be seen as credible and of high quality.

3. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing refers to inserting keywords in your articles, blogs, and website content as often as possible in a nonsensical way. This will, in turn, make people who visit your site realize that there is something wrong with it because you’ve gone to such great lengths to insert the words over and over again. The more you stuff the keywords, the higher your spam score will be.

4. The Presence of Thin Content on Your Website

Thin content indicates a small amount of valuable content on your website; this shows that your site needs more content and isn’t worth visiting; this will also put you at a disadvantage because users won’t be interested in visiting.

A higher spam score means you negatively contribute to black SEO practices. What is worse than having a high spam score? Not ranking well because you have contributed to black SEO activity.

5. The Presence of User Comments on Your Website

User comments on your blog, posts, and pages should be avoided at all costs. Google doesn’t like websites with user comments; in most cases, it will penalize your website if it has many.

(Image Credit: Wix Help Center)

How to Lower Your Spam Score?

Several factors contribute to one’s SEO and spam score. The more you take advantage of negative SEO practices, the more it will hurt your SEO. Thus, we want you to mimic the actions of those who are more “tech-savvy” to lower the spam score.

For those who want to learn how lower spam scores, some of the techniques to use include:

1. Acquire Quality Backlinks and Get Rid of Spam Links

Each spam link will bring about losses when it comes to rankings. Removing the spam links may help erase those losses since you’ll have a lower spam score.

The best way to do this is by identifying the spam links, removing them, and ensuring that no other spammers can use your website. Identifying and removing the backlinks generally involves scanning websites for spam links, reporting them to Google, and then making sure they are removed from your website.

2. Avoid a Domain Name that is Keyword-rich and Long

Your website’s domain name should be a manageable length; an overly long name may make your website appear spammy. A long domain name also has the effect of making your website look unreliable and low in quality.

3. Remove User Comments on Your Website and Blogs

User comments indicate that your website is low in quality because they only attract people who are too lazy to read the content; this results in a lower amount of traffic, which will, in turn, negatively affect search engine rankings.

4. Acquire HTTPS

Use HTTPS as it is ideal for both SEO and security. Once you have a secure connection, ensuring your content is free from malware and spam will be possible.

5. Acquire Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a vital tool because it allows you to monitor pages and activity using Google Analytics, AdSense, and other analytics platforms. This will enable you to track the robots and spam that the URLs from your website attract.

(Image Credit: Eixo Digital)

6. Ensure that Your Site is Mobile-friendly

Mobile-friendly sites are ranked higher by search engines than non-mobile-friendly sites because they are easier to use on mobile devices, which is why many people access the internet through their phones these days.

7. Monitor Your Site for Malware

Malware is a nasty nuisance. It usually comes in the form of large numbers of robots, which can severely damage your site’s content and presentation. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that there are no malicious robots associated with your site so that it can rank well in search engines like Google.

8. Monitor Your Site for Spam Comments

Spam comments are created to ruin the content of your website. Usually, they come from guest books used to collect email addresses. They can be easily detected, especially with many links and keywords. You should report and eliminate spam comments as soon as you see one, or it will lower your credibility with search engines.

9. Monitor Your Site for Unnatural Links

Unnatural links go through two or more web pages to get to your website; this is a big no-no in search engine optimization as they indicate that you’re up to something. They are also an issue because they can be used by others who want to take advantage of your site’s content. Here is an example of a tool to help you monitor your unnatural links:

(Image Credit: Search Engine Journal)

10. Monitor Your Site for Multiple Open Links

Open links allow search engines to see that you have a lot of incoming links; this will put you at a disadvantage with them as they will think that your site is too popular and affects other websites’ rankings. The more open links there are, the higher your spam score will be.

11. Monitor Your Site for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is when your website has pieces of similar content in multiple places; this is something you want to avoid because it will only lower your credibility.

12. Monitor Your Site for SEO Plugins

Using SEO plugins can be a good thing if they are used correctly. However, if the plugins are misused or added in too many places on your website, you will move from being a spam site to an artificial spam site; this is something that you should avoid at all costs because it means that someone is trying to manipulate search engines into giving them free rankings.

If you didn’t know how to lower your spam score, you’re now equipped with the proper techniques.

Finding Your Spam Score

There are different ways of finding a spam score, and they include the following:

1. Use Google Webmasters Tool

The purpose of the Google Webmasters Tool is to allow you to manage your site’s robots.txt file, and it is beneficial as it will enable you to detect any spam that your site is likely to attract. This spam score tool, however, shows a different spam score.

(Image Credit: Dejan Marketing)

2. Use Google Search Console

If you’re interested in finding your spam score, Google Search Console will come in handy. The Search Console can be used to check the position of your website within SERPs (search engine results pages). This spam score tool, however, does not show your overall spam score.

3. Use Google Search Console for Chrome

Google Search Console for Chrome is another spam score tool that you can use to check whether your website has been banned or blacklisted by Google. This tool will notify you of any penalties search engines might have given your site. However, it doesn’t provide information about your website’s SEO and spam score.

4. Use Google Analytics

This is a free tool that you can use for your website’s traffic and visitors. This is the most helpful tool as it will provide you with the details of any spam users and any other information that can be used to help you increase the number of visitors to your site.

5. Use SEMrush or Similar Tools

SEMRush is a great tool that you can use to check whether your website has been banned or blacklisted by search engines. This tool will also tell you if you have been penalized for any reason, although it does not provide information about spam.

(Image Credit: 99 Signals)

6. Use Google Index Status Tool

This tool allows you to check whether your website has been affected by Google’s latest algorithm updates or has been removed in recent updates. It is a valuable tool because it will allow you to fix any mistakes and prevent your site from being deleted by search engines altogether. However, it doesn’t provide information about the spam score of your website.

7. Use Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free tool that you can use to monitor your website for any mentions of it in Google search results and other places on the web. This is an excellent tool that will notify you whenever your website is going to be mentioned in a certain way, but it needs to provide information about the spam score of your site.

8. Use Blekko or Similar Tools

Blekko is another alternative for checking the spam score of your website through an online search. This tool will allow you to see whether your site will likely be penalized or blacklisted by Google in the near future, and it can also help you find out who is responsible for that penalty. However, it needs to provide information about the spam score of your website.

Diib® Digital: Lower Your Spam Score Today!

Finding spam on your website can be very frustrating, and you must take the necessary steps toward eliminating spam to ensure that your website stays well away from being penalized by Google. With Diib® Digital, you can easily see your spam score with easy-to-follow objectives to improve it. Here are a few of the features of our user dashboard you’re sure to appreciate:

• Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
• Blacklist monitoring and objectives for repair
• User experience and mobile speed optimization
• Bounce rate monitoring and repair
• Social media integration and performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
• Technical SEO monitoring

Click here for your free scan or simply call 800-303-3510 to speak to one of our growth experts.