#toxic score

When it comes to improving your website's SEO, it's not just about keywords and backlinks — it's also about the quality and trustworthiness of your content and links. That's where two important metrics come in: Spam Score and Toxic Score.

While they sound similar, they evaluate very different things. Understanding both is essential for protecting your site's rankings and reputation.

Spam Score is a metric developed by SEO tools like Moz. It measures the likelihood that a website or page might be considered spammy by search engines based on specific indicators.

Toxic Score is a metric used by tools like SEMrush to evaluate the risk of individual backlinks harming your SEO

What are the Factors that Influence Spam Score ?

1)Usage of spammy or over-promotional language

2)Usage of too many external links

3)Thin, duplicate, or low-quality content

4)Suspicious TLDs (like .info or .xyz)

5)Keyword stuffing or unnatural anchor text

6)An unusually high ratio of ads to content

What are the Factors that Influence Score ?

1)Links from penalized or blacklisted domains

2)Links from unrelated or irrelevant websites

3)Overuse of exact-match anchor text

4)Participation in link farms or PBNs

5)Unnatural link patterns or sudden spikes in backlinks

How to Manage & Reduce These Scores ?

For Spam Score:

Publish original, high-quality content

Avoid excessive outbound links or popups

Use natural anchor text in internal/external links

Steer clear of clickbait titles or keyword stuffing

For Toxic Score:

Audit your backlink profile regularly

Disavow harmful or toxic links using Google’s Disavow Tool

Avoid buying links or joining link schemes

Build high-quality, niche-relevant backlinks

So, both Spam Score and Toxic Score are risk indicators — they don’t directly impact rankings, but they signal deeper problems that can.

Use Spam Score to assess the quality and trustworthiness of your own site (or sites linking to you).

Use Toxic Score to clean up bad backlinks that could damage your SEO.