Is a high spam score hurting your SEO? Here’s what you can do

Imagine for a moment that your website is a beautiful, thriving garden. You’ve worked hard to plant the right seeds, creating great content and building a stunning design. You’ve even invited other trusted, high-quality gardens (websites) to link to yours, and they’ve done so with pride. Everything seems perfect.

But what if, beneath the surface, a hidden problem is slowly choking the life out of your plants? What if some of the links pointing to your website aren't from beautiful, trusted gardens but from overgrown, toxic wastelands?

This is what a high “Spam Score” can indicate. It’s a silent, often invisible threat to your website's health, and it can have a serious impact on your ability to rank on Google.

At Adicator, we believe that a strong, healthy digital presence is built on a clean foundation. Our team of SEO experts specializes in helping North American small businesses identify and fix hidden problems like this, ensuring your website gets the respect it deserves from search engines. This guide will walk you through what a Spam Score is, why it matters, and what you can do about it.

What Exactly Is a Spam Score? A Friendly Explanation

First things first, let’s clear up a common misconception: a Spam Score is not an official Google metric. Google doesn't use it directly to rank your site. It’s a metric created by Moz, one of the most respected companies in the SEO industry.

Think of it as a helpful warning label. Moz’s Spam Score is a predictive score, ranging from 1 to 17, that indicates the likelihood that a website has a high number of low-quality, spammy, or unnatural backlinks. A score of 1-4 is generally low-risk, a score of 5-7 is medium-risk, and anything 8 or above is considered high-risk.

Moz determines this score by analyzing a website's backlink profile against a sophisticated list of over a dozen “spam flags.” These flags are based on the common characteristics of websites that have been banned or penalized by Google in the past. Understanding a few of these flags gives you a clearer picture of what a high score means:

Domain-Level Flags: These flags are intrinsic to the website’s name itself. Examples include domain names that contain numerals (e.g., buy123meds.com), are excessively long, or have a non-standard ratio of vowels and consonants (e.g., crptgrphc.biz).
On-Page Flags: These flags relate to the structure and content of the linking website. For example, a site with a very low number of pages (e.g., a simple landing page) may be flagged, as can sites with an excessively high ratio of external links to internal links, making them look like a "link farm."
Technical Flags: These flags point to a lack of technical credibility. A website without an SSL certificate (meaning it starts with http:// instead of https://), or one that has no clear contact information, is often flagged as being less trustworthy and more likely to be spam.

In essence, a high Spam Score tells you that your website is attracting the kind of links that Google's algorithms are trained to devalue or, in extreme cases, penalize.

The Problem with a High Spam Score: Why It Matters to Your Business

Even though Google doesn't use the specific term "Spam Score," it's a powerful indicator of a problem that Google does care about: a toxic backlink profile. A high Spam Score is your website's way of telling you, "We've got bad company."

Here’s why this is a serious issue for your business's SEO health:

It Erodes Trust and Authority: Search engines are all about trust. They use links as a vote of confidence. When your site is linked to by hundreds of low-quality, spammy websites, those "votes" are worthless. In fact, they can be seen as negative signals that undermine the value of your good, high-quality links. Your domain authority, a key factor in your ranking, can slowly but surely be eroded.
It Can Lead to Algorithmic or Manual Penalties: Google has sophisticated algorithms, like the famous Penguin algorithm, that are designed to combat webspam. These algorithms are constantly at work, identifying and devaluing websites with unnatural link profiles. A high Spam Score can leave you vulnerable to one of two kinds of penalties:
- Algorithmic Penalties: These are silent penalties. Your rankings will suddenly drop without any warning. This is Google's algorithm deciding that your backlink profile is not trustworthy.
- Manual Penalties: These are direct actions taken by a Google human reviewer. You will receive a notification in your Google Search Console alerting you that "unnatural links" have been found pointing to your site. This is a very serious penalty that requires immediate action.
It Wastes Your SEO Efforts: You could be doing everything else right—creating amazing content, optimizing your on-page SEO, and engaging on social media—but a toxic backlink profile can act as an anchor, holding you back from ever reaching the top of the search results. All the good work you do to build high-quality links can be diluted and overpowered by the sheer volume of spammy links, making your organic growth efforts nearly impossible.

In short, a high Spam Score is not the disease itself, but a very clear and undeniable symptom of an underlying issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

A Comprehensive Backlink Audit: Your First Step to Recovery

The first step to fixing a high Spam Score is to understand exactly what’s causing it. This requires a thorough backlink audit. While you can use free versions of tools, a professional audit is the only way to get a complete picture.

Here is a more detailed look at the audit process:

Run a Backlink Report: Using a professional SEO tool, you will get a list of every single website that links to your site. This list can be thousands of links long, so don’t be intimidated. You can use the tool to sort your links by Spam Score, Domain Authority, or other helpful metrics.
Identify the Culprits: As you review the list, look for links that are clearly spammy. These are often easy to spot and fall into a few common categories:
- Irrelevant Foreign Sites: Links from websites in a foreign language that have no connection to your business (e.g., a link to your Canadian plumbing business from a Russian forum).
- Blog Comment Spam: Links left in the comment section of a blog with generic or overly promotional text.
- Link Farms or PBNs (Private Blog Networks): Websites that exist for the sole purpose of linking out to other sites, with little to no original content.
- Unnatural Anchor Text: Links using overly optimized or keyword-stuffed anchor text (e.g., "buy cheap running shoes online") rather than natural, branded, or URL-based anchor text.
Categorize the Links: As you go through the list, you'll categorize the links as either "Good," "Suspicious," or "Toxic." This allows you to create a clear plan of action, so you aren't accidentally removing valuable links that you worked hard to build.

Taking Control: Your Step-by-Step Guide to a Healthier Profile

Once you’ve identified the toxic links, it’s time to take action. This process is crucial, and it’s where precision and caution are paramount.

Step 1: The Google Disavow Tool: This is where you take matters into your own hands. The Google Disavow Tool is a way to tell Google, "I am aware of these links and I want you to ignore them." This is a very powerful feature that should be used with extreme caution. Incorrectly disavowing good links can cause significant harm to your SEO and is not easily reversed.
Step 2: Create a Disavow File: You must compile a list of the toxic domains and URLs into a specific file format. The file must be a simple text file (.txt) and follow these strict rules:
- One Link Per Line: Each domain or URL you want to disavow must be on its own line.
- Disavow by Domain: To disavow an entire spammy website, you must use the format domain:spammydomain.com. This is the most common and effective method for dealing with a bad domain.
- Disavow by URL: If you want to disavow only a specific page on an otherwise good website, you can use the full URL.
- Add Comments: For your own clarity and records, you can add comments by starting a line with a # mark. This helps you remember why you disavowed certain links.
Step 3: Submit the File: Once you have your disavow file, you’ll submit it through the Google Search Console Disavow Links tool. It’s important to remember that this process is not instant. It can take several weeks, or even a few months, for Google to recrawl the web and reprocess its index to fully incorporate your list. You will not get a confirmation email or a direct result; you will simply notice that your SEO health metrics begin to improve over time.

The Adicator Advantage: Your Partner in SEO Health

While the steps above are a valid DIY approach, they are also time-consuming, complex, and filled with risk. For a busy small business owner, the hours spent auditing a backlink profile could be better used serving customers and growing your business.

This is where Adicator comes in. Our team of certified SEO experts is here to be your partner in digital health. We don't just provide a generic service; we provide a personalized strategy.

Professional Audits: We use advanced SEO tools and our years of experience to perform a professional, in-depth backlink audit, accurately identifying every single harmful link without missing anything. We categorize them and provide a detailed report so you know exactly where your website stands.
Safe and Strategic Disavows: We have the expertise to safely and effectively use Google's Disavow Tool, ensuring that you only remove the links that are genuinely hurting your SEO, without accidentally harming your site’s authority.
Comprehensive Link Building: A healthy backlink profile is not just about removing the bad; it’s about building the good. We work to build a clean, authoritative link profile from scratch through ethical, white-hat strategies, ensuring your site's long-term success. Our link-building is an ongoing process designed to prevent future spam score issues.

A high Spam Score is a warning, but it’s not a death sentence. With the right strategy and a trusted partner, you can clean up your backlink profile and build a solid foundation that will support your business's growth for years to come.

Ready to find out if a high Spam Score is holding your business back? Contact Adicator today for a free SEO health check. Let's work together to make sure your website is thriving and not just surviving.