The spam score is a metric created by an SEO platform known as Moz. It is an estimation of the chances of a site getting penalized by Google. This metric was shaped by evaluating the sites which actually got penalized by Google.
So, if your site has anything in common with such sites, then it will have a higher spam score. As a result, your site’s search engine performance will be at a higher risk of taking a hit. It is quite obvious because if your content is potentially spammy, you can’t perform well in search results.
In this article, we are going to talk about how much this spam score actually affects your site’s SEO. After that, we will also show you some methods to reduce this spam score.
Understanding Spam Score
Before getting a grasp on the concept of spam score’s effect on SEO, we need to understand spam score itself. To do that, we will discuss some of the factors that provide support to increase your spam score.
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These points will help you understand what kind of problems your website has.
1. Low-Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are known as hyperlinks that redirect the user from your website to a relevant source. These backlinks are a sort of accreditation method. They help your website in avoiding plagiarism claims.
And not just that, these links are also quite beneficial for SEO. But when you don’t pay much attention to these links and use low-quality sources, your spam score will rise. Similarly, incorrect citations can also lead to a higher spam score.
2. Thin Content
The quality and value that your content provides to your users is one of the most important factors in deciding spam score. If you provide bland and uninformative content, you will see extremely low dwell times. As a result, the spam score might experience a spike.
That’s why you should provide high-grade content that is backed up by creditworthy sources. If Google notices that your audience likes your work, it will direct more traffic toward your site.
3. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing might have been an acceptable practice back in the day. But now, this is unacceptable and quite harmful. Modern search engines are well-equipped to notice and uncover keyword stuffing.
If that happens, your spam score will increase, and the chances of you getting penalized will become extremely high. Keyword stuffing can also cause your website to be permanently flagged. That’s why it is extremely prohibited.
4. Cloaking and Hidden Text
Using hidden text for unethical purposes is also an old and scammy trick that doesn’t work anymore. Content creators used to cloak keywords so that they weren’t visible to users, but search engines could detect them.
Now, however, search engines can understand if the keywords are cloaked or not. As a consequence, your website can face penalties, and obviously, your spam score will increase significantly.
5. User Generated Spam
When talking about search engine scams, the user-generated type is one of the most common ones. In this, web owners use fake reviews and feedback to enhance their site’s legitimacy, but the results are quite the opposite to that.
Just like the other frauds, this one can also be caught fairly easily. However, user-generated spam can also come to your site without your involvement. In such a case, Google will alert you before taking action so you remove the spam.
6. Malware and Hacking
Sometimes, hackers can damage your site by adding various malware or inappropriate content to your site. Unfortunately, this is a technical issue that some of you might not be able to handle yourself.
You will have to ask your programmer or the ‘computer person’ to take care of things for you.
Popular Spam Score Tools
Now that you know what factors might be causing your site to become spammy. Now, it is time to introduce some online tools that can check spam scores for you.
These tools can check your spam score in an efficient manner. Once you know your site’s spam score, you can decide whether to make changes to it or not.
Impact of Spam Score on SEO
Moving on to the main topic of our article, let’s analyze how spam score affects SEO. We have broken this section into three brief sections explaining the impact of SEO.
1. Search Engine Penalty and Rankings
You might have already figured this much out by yourself. High spam scores result in search engine penalties. This means that your site won’t get ranked decently on search engine result pages. This is a direct impact of spam score on SEO.
2. Negative Impacts on Website Visibility
Decreased website visibility is seen as a result of poor SERP performance. When your website doesn’t get shown in the result pages, no one new will be able to visit your website. In this way, the level of traffic will substantially fall, and your website will deteriorate constantly.
3. User Perception and Trust Issues
Some websites have such high spam scores that even ordinary users can start feeling uncomfortable. Things like unoriginal and invaluable content, tons of ads, and spammy links, make users think that the site is not trustworthy. As a result, they leave your site and contribute to increased bounce rates.
Best Practices to Prevent High Spam Scores
By now, you should be able to determine what is the spam score of your site and what is causing it. This list of steps will help you decide on how to reduce your spam score.
- Create high-quality backlinks that lead to trusted and authoritative sources.
- Create connections with credible influencers to build trust with your users.
- Provide up-to-date and informative content to your audience.
- Keep your content one hundred percent original.
- Adjust keywords as naturally as possible without disrupting the flow of your content.
- Review user-generated content and take proper action against it if it is spam.
- Conduct regular site security audits to avoid data breaching and hacking.
Conclusion
The spam score is an important indicator of where your site stands generally and also SEO-wise. You should regularly keep a check on it so that you always stay updated on whether your site content needs modification or not. If you are able to keep your site’s spam score to a minimum, your SEO might get a considerable performance boost.