What is Spam Score & How Does It Affect Your Website?

We all know that spam score is a bad thing for websites. However, most people are unaware that it doesn’t directly impact ranking. Google doesn’t consider it while ranking a website. Now, the question is, why does it matter a lot?

In this blog, we will help you know everything about spam score. Let’s dive in straight away!

What is a Spam Score?

Spam Score is a metric developed by Moz. It estimates the likelihood that a domain may be penalized or banned by search engines. Think of it as a red flag system based on specific markers found in low-quality or blacklisted websites.

Moz and other spam checker tools like SmallSEOTools Spam Score Checker calculate spam scores by analyzing dozens of factors that might affect a website’s credibility and trust. These signals are called “Spam Flags.” The more flags your site matches, the higher your spam score is.

The score ranges from 0% to 100%. Lower is better. For example:

• 0–30% is considered low
• 31–60% is moderate risk
• 61–100% is high risk

Importance of Checking Spam Score

Most site owners don’t monitor it. But you must not be one of them. Otherwise, you might not know about it unless the damage is done. Actually, ignorance here can silently drain your SEO efforts.

Search engines don’t use Moz’s Spam Score directly. But the factors that influence it often align with what Google actually penalizes.

So, tracking it can help:

• Catch SEO issues early
• Fix problems before they affect rankings
• Keep your backlink profile clean
• Avoid long-term search visibility loss

Analyzing spam scores is not just for SEO experts. Even content creators, business owners, and marketers can benefit by keeping their sites within safe SEO territory.

Why Is Spam Score Bad in SEO?

Let’s talk about why a high spam score is bad for websites!

Impacts on Search Engine Ranking

Search engines want to serve quality content. Spam-like signals push your site away from that standard.

If your site or its backlinks trigger enough red flags, search engines won’t rank it at all. Or if it’s already ranked, your rankings can drop dramatically. Although search engines may not instantly drop your rankings, in the long run, it will surely have an impact.

For instance, you may notice:

• Keywords slipping from top spots
• Pages falling off search results
• Lower crawl frequency
• Reduced organic traffic

Loss of Trustworthiness

As a website owner, you must build authority and earn both search engines’ and users’ trust. However, when you continue using black hat tricks, you will lose both of these things. Users pay attention, even if they don’t know what the Spam Score is.

They spot red flags like:

• Broken pages
• Suspicious URLs
• Thin content
• Spammy outbound links

These elements can boost the bounce rate and reduce engagement. As a result, your website will stop providing any benefits.

Leads to SEO Penalties

If your spam score is high and you keep using the same outdated practices, you might get severe penalties for that. In extreme cases, your site can be flagged manually or algorithmically by search engines.

Those penalties could include

• Total deindexing
• Lower domain authority
• Content disqualification
• Broken ranking momentum

Once you are hit, it may take months to recover from it. And in some cases, your website might never bounce back. Therefore, prevention is far better and easier than repairing a damaged reputation.

How to Analyze the Spam Score of a Website?

Fortunately, analyzing the spam score of any website isn’t too tricky. Even if you are new to this world, you can quickly discover your website’s spam score. The only thing you need for that is an online spam score checker. 

Once you open a spam checker, paste your website’s link, and the tool will instantly show you the spam score of your website. For further information like DA, PA, referring domains, or some other essential metrics, we recommend you to use our DA PA Checker, which can help you to get details about where you are lacking

Common Causes of a High Spam Score

Certain behaviors trigger red flags faster. Here are some of the usual suspects:

Low-Quality Backlinks

It’s one of the biggest reasons for a high spam score. If your site is being linked from spammy directories, link farms, or hacked websites, it gets flagged. Remember, not all backlinks are good. Therefore, always prioritize relevance, authority, and context.

Thin or Duplicate Content

Pages with little to no useful or copied content are also significant spam indicators. Google always values originality and depth. If your site has hundreds of shallow pages, you are signaling low value. So, always create and post high-quality and original content on your website.

Over-Optimization

Too many keywords or keyword stuffing in titles, URLs, or meta descriptions are also harmful to your website. They reflect spammy behavior that leads to a higher spam score. Even good content can get caught in the net if it's overloaded with SEO gimmicks.

Random Domain Name Patterns

Domains with numbers, dashes, and non-brandable names also raise suspicion. For example, “bestbuy4u-2025-free-download.xyz”. This domain name doesn’t look good and shows that the website owner has created the website for harmful purposes.

Lack of HTTPS

No matter what, you must get the SSL certificate for your website. Sites without secure certificates seem outdated. Worse, they signal potential vulnerability. Website security isn’t just about user protection; it also affects trust across the board.

Best Practices to Decrease the Spam Score of Your Website

Already have a high score? Don’t panic. You can fix it with just a few techniques. Here’s how you can fix it!

Audit Your Backlinks

Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz or Semrush to pull a complete backlink list.

Then:

• Identify spammy or irrelevant domains
• Use Google’s Disavow Tool for harmful links
• Reach out to webmasters and request removals

This one step alone can drop your score significantly.

Fix On-Site Issues

If disavowing backlinks doesn’t help, analyze the on-site issues and fix them. For instance, review your pages for:

• Thin content
• Broken links
• Duplicate blocks
• Spammy internal linking

Solve all the issues, and you will be able to decrease the spam score in no time.

Use Clean and Natural SEO

Remember, black hat tricks don’t work anymore. Yes, they can rank your website for a few days, but they will harm its SEO score and boost its spam score. Therefore, avoid such tricks and focus on organic content, real keywords, and honest optimization.

Secure Your Website

Install HTTPS and secure every subdomain. Also, make sure your SSL certificate is up to date. Moreover, monitor for malware or unusual redirects, which often trigger spam alerts.

Build High-Quality Content and Links

High-quality and relevant backlinks can also help you manage your spam score. Therefore, invest in:

• Guest posts on real sites
• Original research or reports
• Educational content with genuine backlinks

The more good links you get, the less impact spammy links have.

Final Thoughts

Spam Score is a warning system. It's not the law. However, the signals it tracks are often similar to those monitored by search engines. A lower spam score won’t guarantee top rankings. But a high one can absolutely destroy your search performance over time.

Therefore, you need to treat it seriously and analyze your website frequently. Moreover, address weak areas, clean up your link profile, and create more effective content. These simple techniques can help you reduce your spam score and avoid the associated troubles of a high spam score.