HOW TO REDUCE WEBSITE SPAM SCORE
Are bad backlinks the main cause
of a website having a high spam score? There are several myths about spam score
and Trybeweb will be addressing most
of them in this article.
Moz Spam Score Breakdown
Website
Spam Score was introduced by Moz in 2015 as a guide for
webmasters to know how good their website is. Spam Score is a web analytical
data created by Moz’s web research and development department based on
extensively analyzed data culled from Google for ranking of websites in their
database.
Initially, there were 17 factors (signals) used to determine the spam score of every
website, but as time and Google ranking metrics changed these factors has increased
to 27.
Table Of Contents
How to Identify a Good spam score
According
to Moz, they are spam score levels (flags) that determine the health of your
website. Website’s with spam flag between 0 – 4 is in the safe zone
and the web owners have nothing to worry about. You should probably run some
analysis on your website when your spam flag is between 5 – 7 because
your website is drifting into the troublesome territory. Your website has a high
risk of suffering from Google penalties when your spam flag is between 8 –
17.
Does Spam Score Affect Website’s SEO?
Having
Spammy Backlinks is the quickest way to increase the Spam Score of every
website. Although one spam backlink does not kill your website, gathering more
spam links to your website is like hoarding lots of viruses on your computer
without an anti-virus (it will lead to the death of your computer).
It has
been proven that Google always check the health of a website as a ranking
factor, the higher your website’s Spam Score, the harder it becomes for it to
rank at the top of Google’s search result.
Spam
links are the number one contributor when a site loses its Google ranking,
suffers deindexing, or gets penalized. Keeping away from spam links is an
essential way to keep a low Spam Score.
How To Check Spam Score?
There
are several websites that offer free Spam Score checker but they are all
linked back to MOZ. To check your MOZ Spam Score, all you need to do is visit https://www.moz.com/free-seo-tools,
enter your website’s URL and click on Analyze. It will give you details of your
Domain Authority, Linking Root Domain, Ranking Keywords and Spam Score
Percentage.
You
will also get details about your;
· 7 top
pages based on their Page Authority.
· 6 top
linking domains (backlinks based on how high their Domain Authority).
· Lost
and discovered backlinks in the past 60 days.
· Top
ranking keywords.
· Top
featured snippets.
· Branded
keywords.
· Keyword
ranking distribution.
· Top
competitors (websites with similar keywords).
To get
the full features of MOZ, you will have to subscribe to the MozPro package
which is valued at $99/month. A 30-days free trial is available to everyone who
is interested (I recommend you use the 30-days free trial to get a feel of its
maximum potential).
How To Reduce High Spam Score?
We
will be talking about some the 27 signals used by MOZ in determining the Spam
Score of every website. Having a high Spam Score doesn’t necessarily mean your
website is spammy, but it serves as a warning system used to alert you that
your website has similarities to other websites that have been penalized by
Google.
MOZ Signals for checking spam score
High
CPC Anchor Texts: Anchor texts are the visible words displayed
when linking another URL on a website. Spam sites usually use this tactic to
lure visitors into clicking unrelated links (which are mostly malicious). Fix:
Make sure your anchor texts are related to the URL and also the URL does not
lead to malicious websites.
Poison
Words: These are specific words that when used constantly on a
website, triggers search engines to ignore your website (they regard your
website as low quality), poison words are usually placed on the title and
header of blog posts. Words related to adult contents, gambling, and narcotics
are mostly poison words. There are also common words that are regarded as
poison words and they are being updated constantly. Fix: make an extensive
research on poison words related to your niche, remove those words or exchange
them with more friendly words.
Abnormal
URL length: URL length are known to be important I SEO, they are also
important in identifying a spam site. Most spam sites have unusual URLs lengths
that might be too long or too short. Fix: URLs are recommended to be from (15
to 50 characters), if your website URL is very short (5 characters) or very
long (100+ characters) your spam score might increase.
Hyphens
In Domain Name: Hyphens (-) are usually used in the
domain name of spam websites, making it hard for visitors to remember the
domain name. Using hyphens in your domain name might increase your spam score. Fix:
This is self-explanatory.
Consonants/Vowels
In Domain Name: Consecutively placing vowels or consonant in
your domain name is another way to increase your spam score. An example (https://bbheeaazz.com)
would easily be flagged as a spam site.
Abnormal
External Links To Content Ratio: If the ratio of external
links pointing to contents in your website is not regular, your spam score
might increase. Fix: Avoid building links illegally, allow other
websites to manually give you backlinks, buying of backlinks is bad for
websites.
Facebook
Pixel: Facebook pixel is a Facebook developed code that
webmasters place on their websites. This code collects data that can be used to
track and understand conversions from Facebook ads, arrange target audience,
optimize ads, and also remarket products to people who had earlier interacted
with your website. Spam sites do not use Facebook Pixel on their website
because they do not invest time and resources into their website. Fix: Adding
Facebook Pixel on your website will increase its trust level.
Favicon: Favicon
is a very small icon that appears at the top tabs (title location) of a web
browser, Favicons are usually 16x16 pixels, they are usually the small version
of the website’s logo. A favicon helps the visitor to easily locate your website when
they are browsing with several tabs opened in the web browser. Fix: They are
lots of free favicon web applications, create and add a Favicon to your
website.
Meta
Keywords Length: Spam sites usually use long meta keywords
(some which are not related to their niche) as a strategy to drive traffic from
search engines. Fix: Check your website’s HTML code for all meta
keywords and remove long, unrelated keywords.
Meta
Description Length: Meta Description gives users a hint of what
to expect from your website when they click your link on search engines. Search
engines usually use some keywords in the meta description to display search
results, so using the right meta description is a good way to increase your
SERP.
Title
Element Length: Title elements show the title of the current
page in the web browser, it is normally found at the browser tab (browser title
bar) and it is a good way to know which page to open when you have several tabs
of the same website. Spam sites traditionally use very short or very long title
elements. Fix: Ensure that each webpage has its unique title element.
Rel
Canonical: This is an HTML element used by webmasters to prevent
having problems with duplicate contents in SEO, every web page is specified to
be the “preferred” or “canonical” version of the webpage.
HTTPS: Hyper
Transfer Protocol Secure best known as HTTPS is a secure transfer protocol used
for data transfer and communication over a computer network. Getting a domain
name without HTTPS (SSL Certificate) sends a warning to your visitors that their
connection to your website is not secure. Spam sites do not really care about
this, so it is common for spam sites not to HTTPS. Fix: Buy SSL
Certificate and switch from HTTP to HTTPS.
COMMENTS