Before we get started on how a high spam score can hurt your business, you should know what a spam score is and what it determines.
According to Moz, a spam score indicates the percentage of backlinks to your website that have either been penalized by Google or banned from its database.
So, backlinks are like votes. Based on these votes, search engine algorithms such as Google determine good websites for users vs. those they should avoid.
Now, if your website has a high spam score, then there is a chance that Google will flag your website and push it down the ranks. So, your website might no longer appear on the top search results page (SERP). This will affect your search traffic severely.
This is technically why a high spam score is terrible for your business. This article shall briefly discuss an incident regarding high spam scores and how a high spam score can hurt your business.
A Real Case: How One Company’s Spam Score Damaged Their Rankings
About a year ago, we landed a client who could not determine why his business was not yielding expected returns.
Well, he knew that it had something to do with SEO, but failed to figure out what it was. The client had spent substantial money to rank his pages, but Google would not heed the efforts.
It was miserable, as our client’s product line was in high demand. There was no question about product quality as well. When we started working for the client, we ran a site audit and discovered the issue. The site had a spam score of 54%!
Google and other search engines are not generous towards websites with high spam scores.
Search engines consider spammy sites unhelpful for their users and don’t display content from such sites on top result pages. That’s why it’s a problem you must solve as soon as possible.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into the issue.
Worth noting: this case happened under Moz’s spam score methodology as it existed at the time. The specific percentage figures may not translate directly under current scoring, but the underlying pattern, spammy backlinks actively suppressing rankings, holds regardless of which tool measures it.
Reasons Behind a High Spam Score
There are many reasons why a high spam score may occur, but I will briefly explain the major ones.
1. Bad Link Building
One of the essential strategies to rank your site’s pages is to build good-quality backlinks. If you skip the ‘good’ part and only focus on ‘link building,’ you invite a horrible spam score.
Search engines have become way more advanced than before, and irrelevant links from low-quality websites will do more harm than good.
So, what constitutes a low-quality website? A few things: below-standard content, low domain authority, slow page speed, irrelevant niche, and last but not least, high spam score (read more about it here)!
You heard it right! You should not be getting links from websites that already have high spam scores. You’ll get some share from their spam scores if you do so.
The number of links you build is not the only factor here. It is also vital to build links from different authority sites. Search engines will consider it spam if you build too many links from the same site.
2. Low-Quality Content
The main objective of search engines like Google is to give their users the best possible experience. How does that happen?
If a user searches for something and finds pages that fulfill the objective of their search query, then the user gets satisfied. To ensure that, search engines aim to rank helpful pages.
If your site’s content does not match the high standards set by search engines, link building will not help you if you target a keyword, write articles that repeatedly mention that keyword, and forget about getting ranked. Instead, your site’s content, as well as the site itself, will be flagged as spammy.
Even if you somehow trick search engines into ranking your low-quality content, it won’t last for too long. Readers will simply leave your site right after a few seconds of clicking the link. This will result in a high bounce rate, contributing to your site’s spam score.
Also, if your site contains duplicate content, be prepared for a high spam score. Copying someone else’s content may lead to harsh penalties from search engines, and trust me, these are difficult to recover from.
3. Black Hat SEO
Don’t trust someone if they promise to bring you tons of traffic overnight. They likely apply black hat SEO techniques.
I know, it’s a broad term, but in brief, black hat SEO stands for practices that try to con the search engines into ranking a page even if it does not have good quality, relevant content.
These practices include but are not limited to content automation, keyword stuffing, hidden links or text, doorway pages, cloaking, link manipulation, and sneaky redirects.
How to Reduce Your Spam Score: A Step-by-Step Process
Step 1: Audit Your Full Backlink Profile
Pull a complete list of every domain linking to your site. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool both work well for this; check both if you have access, since no single tool indexes every link.
Step 2: Identify Disavow-Worthy Links Using Specific Criteria
Not every low-quality link needs disavowing, and over-disavowing can hurt as much as ignoring the problem. Flag a link as disavow-worthy if it meets two or more of these criteria:
- The linking domain has zero organic search traffic (check in Ahrefs or Semrush)
- The linking site’s content is in an unrelated, unrecognizable, or auto-generated language pattern
- The link sits in a footer, sidebar, or comment section rather than in the content
- The linking domain shares an IP range or hosting pattern with dozens of other low-quality sites
- The site has no real editorial content, just link directories or spun text
- The domain itself has a high spam score or low authority score across multiple tools, not just one
Step 3: Build Your Disavow File
Google Search Console’s Disavow Links tool accepts a plain text file listing the domains or specific URLs you want Google to ignore when assessing your site. Use domain:example.com to disavow an entire domain, or a specific URL if only one page on an otherwise legitimate site is the problem.
Step 4: Submit and Wait, Don’t Expect Immediate Results
Submit the disavow file through Search Console. Google doesn’t process disavow files instantly; expect a lag of several weeks before the effect shows up in your metrics. This isn’t a same-day fix.
Step 5: Monitor Over 60-90 Days, Not Days or Weeks
Track your spam score (and, per the updated scope above, your Authority Score and DR) on a monthly cadence for at least 60-90 days after submitting a disavow file. Expect gradual movement, not a sudden drop. If nothing has moved after 90 days, revisit whether the disavowed links were actually the primary issue, or whether ongoing low-quality link building is still adding new spam faster than the disavow is clearing old spam.
Step 6: Fix the Root Cause, Not Just the Symptom
A disavow file cleans up existing damage. It doesn’t stop new spam signals from accumulating if the underlying cause, thin content, aggressive automated link building, or an unmanaged guest post program, is still active. Address whichever of the three causes covered earlier in this article (bad link building, low-quality content, black hat SEO) actually caused the problem in the first place, or the score will likely climb again.
How a High Spam Score Hurts Your Business
The first harm caused by a high spam score is pretty obvious. When your targeted audience searches their queries, your site won’t be displayed on the first result pages they see.
This means little to no traffic from search engines. Search engines are very strict in ranking sites with high spam scores. Even spending tons of advertising money will not generate a steady traffic flow if the spam score is high.
Secondly, if you have a high spam score, there is something wrong with your site in the first place. Probably your site’s pages take forever to load, or the quality of your site’s content is so bad that no one wants to read it.
In cases like these, the spam score is just an indication that your site is not helpful for search engine users. So, why would someone come to pages that are not helpful to them? Again, no traffic, no sale.
Thirdly, a high spam score is horrible for your business reputation. Your business website is like your online storefront. Now compare it with a brick-and-mortar storefront.
Would that look good if the storefront says, ‘This business does spam activity? This is a branding nightmare, and you will fall behind competitors for being tagged as a spammy business.
Dealing with Spam Scores
Remember the client we mentioned at the beginning of this article? We brought down the spam score for that client from 54% to 3% in less than 3 months.
And guess what, they went through 600% traffic growth since then, yielding roughly 800% growth in sales.
We had to take a lot of trouble to achieve that, like replacing bad content with quality content, disavowing spammy backlinks, building high-quality links from authority sites, and many more.
One must follow this due process to maintain a good spam score.
There’s no reason we can’t do the same for you!
We understand how complex it can be to identify the issues responsible for a high website spam score.
If you are having difficulty figuring them out on your own, it is best to have your website checked. You can sign up for our Deep SEO Audit. Alternatively, you can also check out our Free SEO Audit, but a Deep SEO Audit is highly recommended.
If you want to discuss the issue or have any questions concerning spam scores, you can book a Free SEO Consultation. Our experts will get in touch with you shortly.
