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. 

It's worth being clear about what spam score is and isn't: Spam Score is Moz's own proprietary metric, not an official Google signal. Google has its own internal quality assessments that it doesn't make public. Monitoring your spam score is useful as a proxy for identifying risky site patterns, but a high score doesn't automatically mean Google has penalized you — it means you should investigate.

Here's how to interpret your score at a glance:

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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.
• Suppressed domain authority — Spam Score and Domain Authority are separate metrics, but a high spam score often correlates with weaker link quality, which can impact your DA over time. A lower DA affects how link equity flows from your site to others and how SEO tools assess your competitive standing in keyword rankings.

What factors influence your spam score?

Understanding what drives your spam score up is the foundation for fixing it. Moz looks at dozens of signals across your backlink profile, content, and site structure. These are the ones that move the needle most.

Low link diversity and unnatural link patterns

It's not just about having bad links — it's about having a suspicious pattern of links. A healthy backlink profile includes a mix of domains, link types (editorial mentions, press coverage, directory listings), and anchor text variations. 

If all your backlinks come from the same type of source — even if none of them are individually toxic — the homogeneous pattern can still trigger spam signals because it doesn't reflect how authority is built organically. 

Similarly, a large site with very few inbound links relative to its size can appear low-trust to Moz's scoring model. A large site with very few backlinks can appear untrusted, as legitimate sites typically attract links over time, so this imbalance may signal weak authority or artificial growth patterns.

Thin or duplicate content

Thin content refers to pages with little substantive value — typically short pages with no unique insight, pages that exist primarily to target a keyword rather than help a user, or auto-generated pages with templated text. 

Duplicate content refers to pages that copy or closely mirror content from other pages on your site or across the web. Both patterns are associated with manipulative SEO and contribute to a higher spam score. 

To audit for these issues: use Google Search Console to identify low-traffic, low-engagement pages, then decide whether to expand them with meaningful content, consolidate them into a stronger page, or noindex them if they serve no user purpose.

Unmoderated user-generated content

If your site has a comment section, forum, or any area where users can submit content publicly, unmoderated submissions are a meaningful spam risk. Spammers frequently post comments containing links to low-quality or irrelevant sites, and if those links sit on your pages unchecked, they contribute to your spam score. 

The fix is straightforward: enable comment moderation so submissions require approval before going live, apply nofollow attributes to all user-submitted links, and consider a CAPTCHA to reduce automated spam submissions.

Technical site health signals

Certain technical conditions make your site look low-trust to crawlers even without any intentional manipulation. Two worth flagging specifically: sites without HTTPS (an SSL certificate) are marked as insecure in browsers and are treated as lower-trust by Google's crawlers — if your site is still running on HTTP, fixing this is a prerequisite for everything else. And because Google uses mobile-first indexing, a site that renders poorly on mobile devices exhibits the same low-maintenance signals as other spam patterns, which can contribute to a higher spam score over time.

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.

Link diversity matters here, too. A healthy backlink profile includes a mix of domains, link types, and anchor texts. A site where all inbound links come from the same category of source — even if those sources are not individually flagged — can still raise spam signals because the uniformity looks engineered rather than earned.

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How to identify toxic backlinks

Not all low-quality links are harmful, but certain patterns consistently signal risk. During your audit, pay close attention to:

• Irrelevant niches — Links coming from industries unrelated to your site (e.g., casino or adult sites linking to a SaaS blog)
• Low-traffic or deindexed domains — Sites with little to no organic traffic or that don’t appear in Google search results
• Foreign-language sites with no audience overlap — Especially when anchor text is unrelated or appears auto-generated
• High outbound link volume — Pages linking out to hundreds of unrelated websites (a common link farm pattern)
• Over-optimized anchor text — Repeated exact-match keywords across multiple backlinks
• Spammy domain patterns — Domains with random strings, excessive hyphens, or obvious automation footprints

If multiple of these signals appear together, the link is likely toxic and worth removing or disavowing.

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 duplicate pages — content copied from other sites, scraped product descriptions, or near-identical pages created to target slight keyword variations — are frequently flagged as spammy. This kind of content exists primarily to manipulate rankings rather than to help users, which is exactly what Google's Helpful Content Update targets. 

If a significant portion of your site's pages offer no unique insight and could be removed without any user noticing, that's a signal worth acting on.

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 low-value content (including poorly generated AI content), it may experience a massive loss in ranking and traffic.

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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 unnatural spikes in backlinks—especially from low-quality sources (those can raise red flags). 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.
• ‍Not mobile-friendly: Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates your site as a mobile user would. A site that renders poorly on mobile exhibits the same low-maintenance, low-quality signals associated with spam patterns — even if the desktop version is perfectly fine.
• No HTTPS/SSL certificate: Sites without HTTPS are flagged as insecure in browsers and treated as lower-trust by Google's crawlers. If your site is still running on HTTP, this is a foundational issue that compounds every other spam signal on this list.

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:

Before taking action, it’s important to understand the difference between removing and disavowing links:

• Removing a backlink means contacting the website owner and asking them to delete it — this is always the preferred approach. 
• Disavowing a backlink, on the other hand, tells Google to ignore the link when evaluating your site. Since Google already devalues many spammy links automatically, the disavow tool should be used cautiously and only when you’re confident the links are harmful and cannot be removed manually.

Take these steps to remove the bad links:

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, use Google's Disavow Tool (search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links) to tell Google to ignore it. Create a plain .txt file with one URL per line — use domain:example.com to disavow an entire domain — and upload it via Search Console. Treat this as a last resort: contacting the webmaster to remove the link is always the better first step.
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, or GPTZero’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.
5. Avoid keyword stuffing
   
   • Don’t repeat the same keyword phrase unnaturally throughout a page. Modern search engines detect semantic patterns, so writing naturally across related terms and synonyms is better than exact-match repetition, and won't trigger stuffing penalties.

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 natural editorial backlinks organically.
   • 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

6. Set up ongoing site monitoring

Reducing your spam score is not a one-time fix — it's an ongoing maintenance task. New toxic links can appear without warning, spam comments can accumulate, and content quality issues can creep in as your site grows. Building a simple monitoring routine prevents small issues from becoming large ones.

Monthly checks

• Run a backlink audit in Moz, Ahrefs, or Semrush and flag any new domains with low authority or irrelevant niches
• Review your comment sections and user-generated content for unapproved spammy links
• Check Google Search Console's Coverage report for any new crawl errors or indexing issues

Quarterly checks

• Run a full site crawl using Screaming Frog or Semrush's Site Audit to catch broken links, duplicate content, and thin pages that have been added since your last audit
• Review Google Search Console's Security Issues report for any malware flags or manual actions
• Reassess any pages with high impressions but low engagement — these may have drifted into thin content territory and need updating

Ongoing

• Set up Google Alerts or Ahrefs Alerts for your brand name and primary domain so you're notified of new mentions and backlinks as they appear
• Keep your disavow file updated — if you identify new toxic links that can't be removed, add them to the file and resubmit

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.