What is MOZ Spam Score and How to reduce it to 1%?
Last Updated on 20th February 2023 by Ajmer Singh
Moz is a website that provides tools and resources for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professionals and businesses.
One of the tools they offer is the Spam Score, which is a metric that measures the likelihood of a website being penalized by search engines for spammy or low-quality content.
In this guide, we will discuss how to reduce your website’s Moz Spam Score and improve your website’s SEO.
What is MOZ spam score?
Moz spam score is an indicator of the quality and reputation of your site, which can affect how well Google ranks you in search engine results pages.
This article provides some simple ways to reduce your Moz spam score so that it reflects positively on your site’s ranking ability.
You may want to try these methods if you are tired of researching what could be wrong with your website or haven’t had any luck finding a solution online.
The spam score of a domain name is based on various parameters that are calculated by Moz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) tool.
The spam score is an indication of the likelihood that the page’s domain you’re checking out may be sending out spammy link building tactics, either now or in the past.
The idea behind this algorithm is that a spam score below 40 is a good indication that the site has little to no spammy links pointing to it.
In general, you want your spam score as low as possible!
You should aim to keep your spam score as low as possible (ideally <40) and pay attention to it changing over time.
A spam score that suddenly rises to 50+ could mean that the domain is engaging in manipulative linking practices.
Such as buying links, participating in link schemes or building dodgy blog networks.
In order to reduce your spam score, you should focus on removing any spammy links pointing to your site.
And disavowing any bad links using the ‘disavow backlinks‘ tool found within Google Search Console.
In the past, there were some cases where MOZ tracked a negative spam score (i.e., for some types of “negative SEO”).
Given that such cases could be abused by spammers (because negative scores can sometimes help with link-building efforts), they have decided to change the spam score calculation for negative SEO.
The new spam score works as follows:
– For example, if you have 5 links pointing to your domain with a ‘negative’ value, this will not affect the spam score.
– If you have 10 links pointing to your domain with a ‘positive’ value and 1 link pointing to your domain with a ‘negative’ value,
then the spam score will increase by more than if you had 10 links pointing to your domain with a ‘positive’ value and 0 links pointing to your domain with a ‘negative’ value.
– The spam score is only affected when the total weight of the good links minus the total weight of bad links exceeds 1.
20+ Tips to reduce MOZ spam score!
1. If you have gotten a manual spam penalty from Google, check the Google Search Console ‘Links to your site’ section for any bad links.
And use the ‘disavow backlinks’ tool found within this section of GSC.
2. Remove any spammy or low-quality links pointing to your site that you can find, using Open Site Explorer.
3. Use the ‘Remove Links’ tool found within Open Site Explorer to remove any spammy or low-quality links you find in your profile.
4. Try removing some of the spammy or low-quality links pointing to your site,
by sending out an email campaign targeting the webmasters of these sites asking them to kindly remove the links.
5. Get as many of your bad links as possible removed from Google using the ‘Remove URLs’ tool found within the ‘Disavow Links’ section of Google Search Console.
6. Learn which backlink profile you have by checking your Open Site Explorer reports.
And then carrying out a Link Audit on this report using the Backlink Audit Tool found within Link Research Tools.
7. Clean up any bad links you find in an Excel file created using the ‘Find Bad Links’ tool found within Link Research Tools, which follows Google’s Disavow File Guidelines.
8. Use Google Analytics to check how users are finding your site, in order to identify backlinks that may be sending low-quality visitors to your site.
9. Use the ‘List of Bad Links’ tool found within Link Research Tools, which follows Google’s Disavow File Guidelines.
10. (Mainly for PBN owners) Preserve your PBN by having it audited by Link Detox, to ensure you don’t have any bad links pointing to it.
11. Delete any PBN sites that were created using a service such as Fiverr or Upwork, because these may contain a large number of low-quality links.
12. Monitor backlinks to your site on a daily basis.
If you notice an increase in the number of bad links pointing to your site, consider disavowing the spammy or low-quality ones.
13. Request removal of your site from directories with spammy or low-quality links pointing to it.
14. Remove any redirects that you find sending users to pages of your site, since these may be causing spammy or low-quality links to your site.
15. Remove any content from your site that you find is receiving spammy or low-quality links, especially if this content was not added by you (e.g., it has been scraped).
16. Identify any web 2.0 properties that you own sending spammy or low-quality links to your site, and remove these.
17. If you have any social media accounts that are sending spammy or low-quality links to your site, particularly if they have a large number of followers, consider closing them down.
18. Ensure that any outbound links on your site are do-Follow (e.g, Are they on your About Us page? Are they on the Contact page?).
19. Ensure that any outbound links on your site are relevant to your site topic.
20. Remove any links from your site that have been added as a result of you or someone else purchasing a backlink package.
Since these may contain spammy or low-quality links.
21. If you are using automated SEO software to manage your link building campaign, ensure that it is not adding low-quality links to your site (e . g., links in blog comments)
And if it is, consider switching to a different SEO tool.
What are bad or spammy links?
Bad links are links that point to your site and either:
(a) no longer work (broken links),
(b) go to a page of your site other than the one they claim to link to (spammy anchor text pointing to your site), or
(c) go somewhere on the web that is very spammy, such as a pharmacy website (spammy destination URL).
Moz is an online service that analyzes your website to determine what keywords are driving the most traffic – paid or organic.
When Moz started in 2004, it provided a free backlink index in order for webmasters to see where their pages ranked for specific keywords in Google search results.
With this information, webmasters could make adjustments to their content in order to rank higher.
Moz has since expanded its service offerings with additional tools, but the foundation of all Moz services is still based on providing webmasters with accurate and up-to-date keyword, link and site data.
To determine where your website ranks for specific keywords, Moz uses a ranking system called Link Metrics score.
This score is a metric consisting of the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a single page.
PageRank, Moz’s proprietary ranking algorithm, assigns each site a score from 0 – 100 based on the authority of sites linking to it.
The Link Metric score calculates this authority by analyzing link data from Mozscape, Semrush, and Ahrefs.
A high Link Metric score suggests that your website is trusted, authoritative, and well-linked to sites with similar target audiences.
As a result, you’ll likely rank highly for competitive keywords in Google search results.
A site with a Moz Link Metrics score of 100 will likely outrank one with a score of 70, even if that site has more backlinks.
FAQS on MOZ spam score!
Q: What does the MOZ spam score mean?
A: The MOZ spam score is a number between 0 and 100, where 0 = no spammy links, and 100 = very spammy links.
Q: How do I find out what my MOZ spam score is?
A: You can find out your MOZ spam score by checking your Open Site Explorer reports.
And then carrying out a Link Audit on this report using the Backlink Audit Tool found within Link Research Tools.
Q: How do I reduce the Moz spam score?
A: Steps include identifying and removing any bad links pointing to your site,
monitoring backlinks for increases in the number of spammy links,
and disavowing any spammy or low-quality links that can’t be removed.
Q: How does MOZ treat spam content?
A: If a site has mostly good links, but contains one or two pages of spammy content, MOZ will ignore those pages.
But if there is a lot of spammy content on the website, even if most of the linking domains are good ones,
then MOZ will not trust the whole website and give it a high MOZ spam score.
Q: Why does MOZ list good and bad links?
A: MOZ said: “When we display a link in the Open Site Explorer report, this means that we have seen it and it is pointing to an active page on your website.”
“Now whether or not we consider that link to be “good” or “bad” is another question.”
MOZ ranks the quality of a link by one simple criterion: does it help us to determine how well connected your site is?
If yes, then that link is considered a “good” link.
Q: What is a “bad” link?
A: A bad link is one that either no longer works or points to spammy or irrelevant content.
Q: How do I find out if my site contains any spammy domains/pages?
A: Use Link Research Tools’ Backlink Audit Tool. This will list all the pages on your site that are receiving links.
If you then carry out a Link Detox on these pages, any that have a MOZ spam score above 50 will be marked as containing low-quality links.
Q: What is a “low-quality” link?
A: A low-quality link is a link pointing to a page with a MOZ spam score above 50.
Q: What if I can’t remove a low-quality link to my site?
A: If you can’t remove a low-quality backlink, we recommend that you disavow these links.
We do not recommend adding them to the disavow file – only add links that you cannot get removed and which are low-quality.
Q: What can I do to maintain my MOZ spam score?
A: Some of the ways you can maintain your MOZ spam score include monitoring backlinks for changes in number or quality,
cleaning up any pages with bad links pointing to them and avoiding purchasing “bad” links.
Firstly identify and remove any bad links pointing to your site.
Secondly, monitor backlinks for increases in the number of spammy links.
If you then see an increase in this number, it is likely that there are more “bad” links pointing to these pages.
Q: How do I identify whether a link has gone bad?
A: If you spot a link in an Open Site Explorer report which is pointing to a page on your site, but this link isn’t in the backlinks section of the account,
or if you are looking at the Link Detox results and see that this link has been assigned “Bad”. This indicates that there is a problem with this link.
Q: How long does it take for MOZ to update link information?
A: It usually takes around 2-3 weeks for a link to be added to your backlinks,
but can take up to 6 months for a link to be removed from the Open Site Explorer database.
This is why we recommend you monitor backlinks regularly and clean up any new “bad” links that you find.
Q: What is the MOZ spam score for a new domain?
A: The MOZ spam score for a new domain is based on the number of incoming links and the authority (PageRank) of those links.
Q: What if all my backlinks are no-follow?
A: A no-follow tag merely means that Google’s search engine bots shouldn’t follow this link, but other search engines like MOZ may follow it.
Q: What if I have no links pointing to my site?
A: You should be aware that even if you have no external links to your site, this doesn’t necessarily mean that your site won’t attract search engine traffic.
If you develop high-quality content and include keywords for which there is search demand, you’ll likely still attract search engine traffic.
Conclusion
Really, it’s all about the numbers.
Moz Spam Score (MozSS) is a third-party metric that measures how likely your website content might be considered spam on search engine results pages.
It can help you determine if there are elements of your site or marketing strategy which could potentially lead to penalties from Google and other search engines.
With this in mind, I hope you have a better understanding of what Moz Spam score is and how to reduce it.
So that your business won’t suffer from low rankings because of mistakes made on SEO related tasks!