A spam score alone does not guarantee that a link is spammy.
There are other factors that will always play a role. Factors like the number of external links a page has, its top-level domain position, and its other ratings like MozTrust.
Here’s what it all means:
This means that a subdomain with a spam score of 8 does not automatically make a page spammy.
A subdomain with a spam score of 2 does not guarantee that a backlink is not spam.
I cannot emphasize this enough:
Make sure you research both the website and the page before deciding whether to remove or disavow a backlink due to the possibility that it is spam.
Spam Score’s 16 spam flags
Now let’s take a closer look at each of rcs database the 16 spam flags that Spam Score uses to determine the possibility that a subdomain is spam.
They fall into two main categories (as used by Moz) and include (in no particular order):
Link flags
1. Large website with few links
This essentially means that the website has a large number of pages with very few links pointing to them.
Websites like this have a higher tendency to be spammy because it is a clear sign that the page does not contain high-quality and valuable content (i.e. content that is not worth linking to).
2. The variety of page links is low
This flag covers websites where the majority designated broker dag gulbranson of links to it come from a handful of domains.
For example, let’s say a website has 100 links pointing to it. But those 100 links come from only five domains. This website has low link diversity and is most likely spam.
3. Ratio of followed to unfollowed subdomains
These are websites with a high number of followed links compared to unfollowed links.
This flag typically indicates that a website is not getting links naturally and is instead using paid link platforms to generate followed backlinks to their website, which indicates spam.
(This also proves that you should never remove or disavow nofollow links from your backlink portfolio simply because they are nofollow .)
4. Ratio of followed to unfollowed domains
This is the same as number 4 above. Only now it refers to root domains.
To illustrate this, take a look at SEoptimer’s own page:
- seoptimer.com would be the root domain of the site
- seoptimer.com/blog would be a subdomain of the site
5. Small proportion of brand links (anchor text)
Brand links are links that contain brand keywords (e.g. “Buffer” or “Backlinko”).
Websites with organically generated link portfolios tend to have a significantly higher number of links with branded anchor text.
So if a website has the opposite (a higher number of non-branded anchor text links), that is a strong indicator that the website is spam.
On-page flags
6. Thin content
Thin content is content that offers little to b2c fax no value to visitors.
State of Digital sums it up well:
“Some of the pages that fall into this classification are pages with duplicate content, auto-generated content, affiliate and scraped content, and doorway pages can be classified by Google as thin content.”