How to Reduce Spam Score of a Website in 5 Simple Steps

Have you recently checked your spam score and are worried about the figure?

You have every reason to be.

A high spam score can put your website at risk of ranking penalties, loss of credibility, and reduced organic traffic.

While it’s not a direct Google ranking factor, it signals potential issues search engines may penalize, including toxic backlinks, shady SEO tactics, and technical SEO problems.

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to reduce the spam score of a website in 5 simple steps and how to identify and prevent spam risks to keep your site safe and authoritative.

What is spam score and why does it matter?

Spam Score is a metric developed by Moz to assess the likelihood of a website being penalized by search engines due to potentially spammy signals. 

It is based on a set of indicators Moz identified to be common to low-quality or penalized websites. 

Although Spam Score is not a direct Google ranking factor, it serves as an important warning sign that your site has risky attributes that might raise red flags for search engines.

Why reducing spam score is important for search rankings

A high spam score can birth several challenges:

• Loss of credibility – Visitors tend to bounce from sites that exhibit characteristics of spam. Excessive pop-ups and keyword stuffing, for example. It can also deter potential partners who check this metric before collaborating.
• SEO risks – While Google doesn’t use Moz’s Spam Score, the score tells you how close you are to being penalized. An act that harms rankings.
• Lower organic traffic – Search engines prioritize authoritative, trustworthy, and user-centric sites because, as the saying goes, "Parasite SEO gets you there fast. Authority keeps you there longer." - Shahid Shahmiri. So if your site has spam-like characteristics, their algorithms might interpret it as manipulative or low-value and prevent them from ranking it.

What causes a high spam score?

Several factors contribute to a high spam score, including:

1. Toxic or spammy backlinks

Backlinks are essential for SEO, but not all links are beneficial. 

If a website accumulates backlinks from low-quality, irrelevant, or black-hat sites, it can increase its spam score. These links often come from link farms, private blog networks (PBNs), or sites filled with automated content.

For instance, if a legitimate business website suddenly gains hundreds of links from gambling, adult, or foreign-language sites with no relevance, search engines may see this as a sign of manipulation.

How Google may react:

Google’s algorithms ignore or devalue spammy links, but if a site has an excessive number of them, it could trigger manual penalties. In extreme cases, Google may remove the site from search results altogether.

2. Low-quality or duplicate content

Search engines prioritize high-quality, original content that provides real value to users.

Websites with thin content or duplicate pages are often flagged as spammy. The same goes for AI-generated content.

This is because such content offers little unique insight and may exist solely to manipulate rankings rather than help users.

For example, a website that copies product descriptions from other sites or generates entire blog posts using AI can be seen as low-value, and search engines may lower its ranking.

How Google may react:

Google’s Helpful Content Update specifically targets sites with unoriginal or low-value content. If a website is found to rely heavily on duplicate or AI-generated content, it may experience a massive loss in ranking and traffic.

3. Overuse of exact-match anchor text

Anchor texts are important. They help search engines understand the context of a linked page and may even influence rankings.

However, excessively using the same keyword-rich anchor text across multiple backlinks can appear manipulative.

If a website about "best running shoes", for instance, gains hundreds of backlinks where the anchor text is always "best running shoes for men", search algorithms may mark this as an attempt to game the rankings.

Organic backlinks usually contain a mix of branded, generic, and descriptive anchors rather than a repetition of the same keyword phrase.

How Google may react:

Google’s Penguin algorithm specifically targets manipulative link-building practices. If a website is found to have an unnatural anchor text profile, Google may devalue those links or, in extreme cases, apply a manual penalty that reduces search visibility.

4. Getting too many backlinks too fast

A site’s backlinks profile should grow naturally over time as it gains authority and credibility.

If a site then suddenly acquires hundreds of backlinks within a short period, it can appear to be engaging in artificial link-building.

For example, if a brand-new blog with minimal content suddenly gains 5,000 backlinks in a week, search engines may suspect that the links were bought, generated through spammy directories, or acquired via link farms.

Even funnier is the fact that such rapid link-building is only possible with these low-quality sources.

How Google may react:

Google’s algorithms monitor link velocity (the speed at which backlinks are acquired). A sudden unnatural spike can trigger algorithmic devaluation or even a manual review, potentially leading to ranking drops or penalties.

5. Technical SEO issues that trigger spam signals

Certain technical SEO issues can make a website appear spammy to search engines, even if there’s no intentional manipulation.

Here are some common technical red flags:

• Broken links: Too many dead links (404 errors) on a website may make it appear poorly maintained or abandoned.
• Excessive ads and pop-ups: Intrusive ads and pop-ups that disrupt the user experience can signal spam to crawling agents.
• Hidden text or keyword stuffing: Using hidden text to include target keywords in a page or repeatedly using the keywords unnaturally to boost the chances of rankings is considered a black-hat tactic.
• Cloaking: Showing one content to attract search engines but another one to users is also a black-hat tactic and a violation of Google’s guidelines.

How Google may react:

Google’s algorithms penalize sites that use deceptive SEO tactics. If a site has hidden text, cloaking, or excessive keyword stuffing, it may face deranking or even penalties.

6. Excessive outbound links to low-authority sites

Outbound links help provide additional context and credibility to a website’s content, but linking too frequently to low-quality, irrelevant, or untrustworthy sites can make a website appear spammy. 

This is often seen in affiliate-heavy websites and PBNs that care more about linking than providing valuable content.

For example, a blog that is characterized by posts containing several outbound links to low-authority websites, expired domains, or off-topic content may seem like an attempt to pass link juice artificially.

How Google may react:

Google’s algorithms analyze link quality and intent. If a website excessively links to other low-authority websites, it may be classified as a link farm or spam site, leading to massive drops in ranking. In extreme cases, Google may apply a manual penalty, reducing the site's visibility in search results.

How to check your website’s spam score

You can easily perform an SEO audit to check your spam score and other indicators. Many SEO tools even let you check spam scores for free. 

Best tools for checking spam score

1. Moz Spam Score

Moz is one of the biggest alternatives to Semrush and Ahrefs in the SEO world, and its Spam Score tool is arguably the most widely used tool for analyzing a website’s spam risk. 

It analyzes multiple factors, such as toxic backlinks, thin content, and unnatural linking patterns, to assign a percentage-based score (1%  – 100 %).

2. Google Search Console

To check backlinks health, Google Search Console is an excellent option. It provides a list of sites linking to your website and identifies suspicious or irrelevant backlinks.

While it doesn’t assign a spam score, you can manually inspect links and disavow harmful ones.

3. Ahrefs & Semrush

Ahrefs and Semrush offer advanced backlink analysis tools that help detect spammy, broken, or irrelevant backlinks. They assign toxicity scores to links, making it easier to determine which ones might be hurting your rankings.

How to check spam score using Moz

Follow these steps to check your website’s spam score using Moz’s Spam Score tool:

1. Go to Moz’s website and open an account
2. On the Moz Pro dashboard, open “Spam Score” under “Link Research”:

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3. Enter your website URL in the search bar and click "Analyze":

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4. Review the percentage score (1% – 100%) and spam signals detected:

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What is a good vs. bad spam score?

According to Moz, here’s how to interpret your spam score:

• 1% – 30% (Low Risk) – Generally safe, but still monitor backlink health.
• 31% – 60% (Moderate Risk) – Some potentially harmful signals exist. Investigate and fix to lower the risk.
• 61% – 100% (High Risk) – A strong indication of toxic backlinks or spammy elements that need urgent attention.

How to reduce your website’s spam score

1. Remove toxic and spammy backlinks

Analyze your backlink profile first with the help of the tools mentioned above. Then, take these steps to remove the bad ones:

1. Contact webmasters: Reach out to the site owners and request the removal of the backlink.
2. Disavow on Google Search Console: If a link can’t be removed, upload a disavow file in Google Search Console so Google can ignore it.
3. Avoid link-building on spammy sites: Verify and ensure future backlinks come from relevant, trusted, high-authority websites.

2. Improve content quality

Improving your content, especially blogs, can help lower your spam score. Follow these steps to improve content quality:

1. Refresh outdated articles
   
   • Regularly update blog posts and web pages to ensure accuracy and relevance.
   • Add new insights, updated statistics, and fresh examples to keep content valuable.
     
2. Detect and fix duplicate content
   
   • Use tools like Copyscape, Siteliner, or Grammarly’s plagiarism checker to identify duplicate content.
   • Rewrite or consolidate overlapping pages to improve uniqueness.
     
3. Enhance readability
   
   • Keep paragraphs short and scannable (3–4 lines max).
   • Use bullet points, subheadings, and images to improve structure.
   • Write at a readability level of 6–8 to ensure accessibility for a wider audience.
     
4. Avoid AI-generated spammy content
   
   • Focus on original insights, expert opinions, and personal experiences that are genuinely helpful rather than generic AI output.

3. Optimize anchor text usage

Revisit your anchor texts and ensure they are in line with these best practices:

1. Using branded anchors naturally
   
   • Use your brand name naturally where possible instead of always going for SEO keywords.
     
2. Diversify anchor types
   
   • Mix different types of anchor text, such as branded, generic, partial-match, synonymous, and URL-based, to create a rich backlink profile.

4. Improve technical SEO

There are several steps you can take to improve technical SEO. These include:

1. Fixing indexing issues
   
   • Use Google Search Console to check for errors and fix them.
   • Submit a sitemap to help search engines properly crawl your site.
     
2. Avoiding excessive pop-ups and intrusive ads
   
   • Keep pop-ups minimal and ensure they don’t block essential content.
   • Use exit-intent pop-ups instead of immediate pop-ups.
     
3. Optimize website loading speed
   
   • Use Google PageSpeed Insights (PageSpeed Insights) to check for performance issues.
   • Compress images and minify JavaScript to improve speed.

5. Monitor and maintain a healthy link profile

Regularly monitoring your backlinks and ensuring they come from high-quality sources helps maintain credibility with search engines.

Here's how to maintain a healthy link profile:

1. Conduct regular backlink audits to identify toxic, spammy, or irrelevant links.
   
   • Audit backlinks monthly or quarterly to stay ahead of potential risks.
   • Request the removal of spammy links or disavow them.
     
2. Build high-quality backlinks
   
   • Focus on creating valuable content that attracts organic backlinks.
   • Get featured on trusted websites, guest post on authoritative blogs, and earn links through press mentions.
   • Avoid link exchanges, paid backlinks, or private blog networks (PBNs).
     
3. Set up alerts for your brand
   
   • Use Google Alerts or tools like Ahrefs Alerts to track new mentions and backlinks.

Further read: 10 Best Backlink Checker Tools to Use in 2025

Keep your website’s spam score low

If you want to enjoy strong search rankings, visitors’ trust, and long-term SEO success, keeping your website’s spam score low is non-negotiable. 

By improving content quality, removing toxic links, improving technical SEO, and earning credible backlinks, you can maintain a trustworthy website that ranks well and avoids penalties.