Here is a comprehensive guide on how to reduce the spam score of your website.
Spam is one of the major setbacks of content marketing in a website.
Precisely, It depicts that a website is somehow using blackhat methods to get more visibility on search engines, while providing little or no value.
These websites are known to scam and make money awkwardly alone.
If you have been in the digital marketing field for a while, a website with high spam score is likely to have problem getting traction on search engines.
So, at all time, it is important to find a way to bring the spam score to the lowest minimum.
This page has everything you need to know about spam, reducing spam score, website spamming and their effect on ranking etc.
Please read on.
What is Spam Score?
Spam score is a metrics that Moz uses to measure how spammy a website is.
According to Moz, a score of 0%-30% is considered low, 31%-60% is considered medium, while any above 60% is considered high.
Though, Moz still stated that their spam score does not mean your website will be penalised or banned by Google.
Besides, their software only compares your website and similar websites that have been banned earlier.
The more familiarity, the higher the spam score.
I do really think there is something wrong somewhere if a website has high spam score.
And if your website has a high spam score, you should have it in mind that it might be on the brink too.
Anyways, Can you check if your website is spammy?
How to Check your Website Spam Score?
To check your website spam score, go to moz domain analysis page, here.
Input your website URL, it would display your score.
Can you Lower your Website Spam Score?
Yes you can reduce a website Spam Score.
In my own books, your spam score must not be less than 10% in order to ascertain ranking, search engine trust and credibility to searchers.
Tips on How to Reduce Spam Score
- Get HTTPS
- Write high quality contents
- Build quality backlinks
- Avoid comical domain extensions
- Avoid external links in Navigation
- Add the right pages
- Avoid using long domain names
- Avoid inane or spam attracting words
- Get a Favicon and Google Pixel.
1. Get HTTPS
Amongst one of the first things used to define an ideal website is it’s security.
If your website does not have an SSL, then it is always going to show an “unsecured notification” anytime visitors are to check in.
This means that your visitors information are not safe on your website.
HTTPS will improve visitors trust and your website credibility.
So, if your website is not in HTTPS yet, buy an SSL or rather register on Cloudflare for free.
2. Write high quality contents
Content is King. Your website pages must contain high quality and valuable contents.
The contents on your website should be able to proffer solutions to your readers’ query almost immediately.
Google do penalise website with thin contents because they don’t provide sufficient information to searchers query.
Like I explained earlier, a spammy website is one that is not providing valuable information to their audience.
So, strive hard to provide values and quality over shitty quantity contents.
3. Quality backlinks
Backlink is one of the ranking factors of google. In fact, Good backlinks means better ranking and higher authority.
Link building too is as important as writing quality contents on a website.
For some reasons, low quality backlinks might result in higher spammy conditions for your website.
In fact, if your website is getting linked periodically to disastrous and spammy website, then you are likely to fall off the trail too.
Here are some of things you should look out for in a website that’s linking to you:
- Topical authority.
- Niche relevance.
- No or less penalties from Search engines.
- Avoid redirect links or website.
- Compare your No follow & do-follow.
4. Avoid laughable domain extensions
According to a reports from Ionos, the most trusted domain extension is .com, followed by the likes of .co, .org and the trends go on like that.
Those are popular TLDs searchers would easily trust online and they are used by authoritative websites.
…But some low level domain extensions such as .ml, .buzz, .tk, .rest, .work, .ga, .money etc are used by spam websites.
This extensions are used to duplicate the stuffs of the main authority website. E.g spammers can create a duplicate of forbes.com to be forbes.ml.
Although your case might be different, the website would still find it hard to gain trust from search engines and searchers if it’s using any of the laughable domain extensions.
5. Avoid external links in Navigation
Quality Outbound links might be a way to get more authentic to search engine bots but it is the other way round for Navigation.
Avoid adding external links to navigation. It would help to reduce spam score and improve your website SEO.
Spammy websites are known to add external links to their navigation.
And if you don’t want to be considered one of them, you should avoid using external links on your site’s navigation.
6. Add the right pages
Always add the right pages to your website. Google considers website with the right pages to be serious.
Important pages you should add to your website are:
- About page
- Privacy page (showing CGPR)
- Terms and Conditions page
- Disclaimer page
- Contact us page
This are pages that shows your website audience about the values of your websites.
In fact, a report from Which states that not having a contact page is an indicator of a scam website.
7. Avoid using long domain names
Gone are the days, when website domain names are always keyword reach and long. Right now, long domain names are not appreciated anymore.
Besides, authoritative websites are more likely to use a brandable domain name than to focus on long, keyword reach domain names.
Why?
First of all, they are difficult to memorize so your visitors would probably find it difficult to return to your website.
Psychologically, searchers don’t even like websites with very long domain names.
Finally, spammy websites uses long, keyword rich domain names to convince their proposed audience that they can provide solutions to their query.
In addition, avoid adding numbers or hyphen to your domain name except they are part of your business name.
8. Avoid inane or spam attracting words
Website with inane words are not usually considered for ranking.
Words such as: m*d, s*x, k*ll… mostly violent and sex oriented words are regarded as inane words.
Similarly, there are some words which are very common to spammy websites. When this kinds of words are too common on your website, they can be regarded to as spam too.
9. Get a Favicon and Google Pixel
A favicon is a simple logo that displays when your website is being searched online.
They signify authority, uniqueness and credibility of a website.
Reduce Website Spam Score Using Google Disavow Tool – Ultimate Remedy
Google Disavow tool is used for disavowing spammy backlinks from pointing to your website.
When your website has Redirect backlinks, toxic links and so many no-follow backlinks, then you need to find a way to remove them.
If you don’t know, they are one of the notorious causes of a website being penalised by Google and other search engines.
So, how does this work.
First off all, we will find a way to identify those spammy backlinks and save them in a .txt file.
Afterwards, we will then upload to Google disavow tool.
To identify and save those links in a .txt file, we will be using Semrush – the free version can do this too.
Create a semrush account and go to Backlink Audit.
Input your domain name and wait for it to process all your backlinks.
Finally, choose all of the backlinks you wants to disavow and then download them in a text file.
If you have the links of the website(s) you want to disvow from your own website, put all the links together in a text file (.txt) and upload it to GSC Disavow tool (The one associated with your website).
How have you been dealing with Spam score?
Spam score is a thing of major concern.
You should take a time out once in a while to check your spam score.
Or rather Would you check now and drop a comment about it?
