Nine ways to reduce your website’s ‘spam score’ – and help to avoid SEO penalties
Does Google think your website is a spam site? And if so, is it hurting your SEO? Here are nine ways you can help to lower your ‘spam score’.
We all know the concept of spam – unsolicited mail or emails that are sent out to a large number of people for commercial reasons, with very low actual value or use.
Similarly, spam websites are low quality websites that have been set up to make money, while offering the minimum actual value. And as a result, they’re not popular with search engines like Google.
Because spam sites have a low genuine value, search engines don’t want to serve them in their results pages. So they try to sniff them out, and give them a lower SEO rating.
Why do you need to know all this? Because if your website looks like it could be a scam website to Google, you could be penalised. And you’ll undo all your good SEO efforts in trying to help your site rank.
How to check your spam score
So how can you tell whether your site might look like a spam site? Moz handily gives you your spam score when you check your website here.
Here’s what your spam score results tell you:
- 1-30% is low.
- 31-60% is medium.
- 61-100% is high.
It’s important to note that a high spam score doesn’t mean that your site is spammy! It just flags up that your site has a number of things in common with websites that are often spam.
And if you’ve not had any penalties it doesn’t mean you need to make panicked, urgent changes. But it is a good idea to look at what the spam signals are, and make any changes you think might help – especially if you want to avoid future penalties if Google decides to crack down on these particular spam signals.
What are the nine spam signals you need to look out for?
Different websites list different numbers of spam signals. Moz lists 27 spam signals in total (you can read them all here).
To make this list accessible to the average small business or freelancer, we’ve amalgamated most of Moz’s signals into nine key things to look at. And particular, nine things you can do to help avoid your website being seen as spam and potentially hurt your SEO. Here they are.
1) Avoid ‘dodgy’ domain extensions
This is a tricky one if you’ve already bought your domain and built your site on it, but useful to know if you’re choosing one.
According to Moz, there are particular top-level domain extensions (these are the .com or .co.uk) that many spam domains use. So if you don’t want to raise a potential red flag, it’s best to avoid these if you can.
So what are these dodgy domain extensions? Here are the top 10 most abused top level domains:
- .rest
- .buzz
- .gq
- .tk
- .fit
- .cf
- .top
- .ml
- .work
- .ga
2) Make sure you add the right pages
A site with only a few pages is a spam score indicator. Now this can be quite a tricky one to avoid for a freelancer or small business, but it’s worth noting. Many spam sites that are set up for a single purpose and have no desire to offer genuine value, have very few pages. So a site with too few pages might risk being grouped with them.
If you have a small website for your business, it’s unlikely you’ll have many pages. But there are some useful pages to include that spam sites often don’t bother with.
According to Which, not having a contact us page is an indicator of a scam website. So adding one of these to your site is a good idea (you’ll find out later on how this helps in another way too).
Other good pages to add are an about us page (again something a spam site probably won’t bother with) and a regularly updated and well written blog or news page.
As with links, which we’ll get to shortly, think ‘natural’ when planning and building your website. What would an honest, genuine business website usually have on it? If you tick those boxes you’ll help to reassure Google that you’re legit.
3) Don’t use a long, keyword-rich domain name
When choosing your domain name you have up to 253 characters to play with, but for many reasons (least alone memorability and risk of errors when typing it in) it’s not advisable to use them all.
Indeed, while domain name length in itself isn’t apparently counted by Google for SEO, it can count as a spam signal. Why? Because often spam sites will create keyword-driven URLs, rather than a branded domain, which a genuine business is more likely to use.
For example, which one of these sites do you think is more likely to be a genuine businesss website, and which a spam site:
- Londonhealthstore.com
- Buyvitaminsatlowpricesintheuk.ga
So when choosing your domain name, consider whether it might send a signal to Google that it could be spammy, and avoid long, keyword driven names.
While we’re on the subject of domain names, it’s also wise to avoid numbers unless they’re part of your business name, as this is another spam signal – as are hyphens in a domain name.
4) Include your phone number, email address and/or LinkedIn links
If it’s relevant to your business, include your phone number, email address and/or a link to your LinkedIn company page or profile on your website.
Why? Because these are all things that spam sites rarely have. So if you want to send a sign to Google that your site is safe and legit, then include some or all of these on it. Another good reason to include a contact us page!
This is especially important if you have a local business and want to boost your SEO.
5) Get https
If you haven’t already secured your site with https (rather than http) it’s a good idea to do so. Not only will it help your SEO, but as most spam sites don’t bother with https, it sends a clear signal to Google that your site is safe.
6) Use links wisely
As we explain in our SEO Masterclass, links are a vital part of your SEO, and it’s important that you get them right. From a spam signals perspective, here are three things you need to be aware of:
- Your external links – when linking to other websites, make sure you link naturally. Spam sites will be at extreme ends of the spectrum, with either an abnormally high or low number of external links for the size of their site or quantity of content. Rather helpfully there’s no magic ratio, just use your common sense about what a ‘natural’ amount might be for your site.
- The number of domains you link to – again, spam sites are more likely to link to an abnormally high or low number of external domains. So make sure you link to a range of different websites. Don’t have one pet favourite; vary your external links so it appears more natural.
- The quality of your links – if you’re going to link to another website, it makes sense to choose high quality websites. By association you’ll look better to Google. (It’s a bit like being judged by who you hang around with.) So make sure you link to trustworthy websites, and choose the best possible link for the context. By this we mean choose links that are relevant to the subject of your content (and the words you are linking from) and to the best possible sources.
The key term when it comes to using links is ‘natural’. If you’re talking about SEO, for example, (as we are doing here) then it makes sense to link to sources when stating facts or using figures. It also makes sense to check that you’ve chosen a high quality, authority source for your link.
It’s also natural that if you only have 10,000 words on your site that you may only have 10-50 links. But if you have 100,000 words, you might have 100-500 links.
If you have a site with 10,000 words and you have either 1 or 1,000 links then that ratio looks a little unnatural. Likewise if you have 100,000 words and either just 10 or 10,000 links then, again, something seems off.
7) Avoid ‘poison’ words
There are some words (sometimes known as ‘poison’ words) that are a red flag for spam sites to search engines. So if you can, it’s a good idea to avoid them on your website – both in your web copy and, in particular, your anchor text (these are the words you use to link to another page on your own website or to an external site).
It’s not hard to guess what the poison words might be – just think about the kind of topics that dodgy sites might be about, such as pharmaceuticals, adult content, gaming etc.
That’s not to say you can mention ANY of these words on your site. Just be careful about the amount of times you use these words, and the phrases and links you use them in. Just ask yourself, “Would a spam site say that/use that anchor text?” If the answer is “Yes”, then maybe reconsider.
8) Get Google Tag Manager
If you don’t already have Google Tag Manager set up on your website, it’s a good idea to do so. It’s almost never present on spam sites, so is a signal that yours might be in that group if you don’t have it.
You can find out how to set up and install Google Tag Manager here.
9) Get a favicon and Facebook pixel
Two easy things to include on your website that will help you stand apart from spam sites are a favicon and a Facebook pixel – both useful to have anyway.
A favicon is that tiny image (usually your logo) that appears in browser tabs. Here’s how to add one to your site if you don’t have one.
And here’s how to create and install a Facebook pixel.
Need help with your SEO?
Keeping a low spam score is just one tiny part of helping your website to rank highly on search engines like Google – and reap the financial rewards of the extra traffic and awareness that brings.
If you’d like more practical tips to help boost your SEO, watch our SEO Masterclass. In the hour-long class we explain how SEO works, so you have a much better idea of what search engines are looking for, and how you can give it to them.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The three parties who matter in SEO, and what their different agendas are
- The ONE thing Google needs to know in order to rank your site in their search results (and why that’s useful to you)
- The three main clues search engines like Google look for in your site when deciding where to rank you
- Why your SEO isn’t finished when someone visits your website, and four things that will help
- The three main types of keyword – and the big mistake many small businesses make with them
- Which two type of keywords you should aim to rank for – and the magic three things they’ll give you
- The two big keyword mistakes to avoid, and an easy trick to help you find the right ones
- The seven different places you should use your keywords
- Why the right backlinks are important, and the two questions you should ask when getting links
- The EIGHT factors Google looks at when judging your backlinks
To help you put your new knowledge into practice, we also share a simple, five-step SEO strategy you can start using today to confidently improve the SEO of your own website, and help your site to rank higher in search engine results.
You can watch our SEO Masterclass right now. Plus get a copy of our masterclass worksheet, class slides and an ebook of the class, to make it really simple to start using our strategy straight away.
So watch our SEO Masterclass now – and start working on your SEO with your newfound knowledge this today.
Photo by Bruno Gomiero
