Designing and making a website isn’t nearly enough in today’s day and age. You’ll also need to consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and security measures if you expect your website to succeed.
Oddly enough, these two aspects of a website’s success have something in common. Those are SEO spams, which, through awful website security measures, can decrease your website’s SEO and infect it and its users.
Today, we’ll tell you all about preventing such situations, which can be done with SEO spam scanners, which you can find out more about below.
SEO spam explained
Anything that accesses websites without permission or through vulnerabilities, or adds strange content or links to nefarious websites, can be considered SEO spam. It’s a way for cyber-attackers and hackers to use infected websites and manipulate their search engine rankings by creating backlinks on infected websites and redirecting traffic to theirs.
Different types of SEO spam
SEO spam isn’t a single thing, either. There are several different types of it, such as:
- Keywords – this type of spam involves keyword stuffing into all page aspects and even hidden areas.
- Hidden links – just because they’re invisible to users doesn’t mean they’re invisible to a search engine.
- Link spam – an SEO spammer can also create many links that lead to a website of their choice, and implement them into your website’s pages, stealing traffic.
- Cloaking – it’s a type of SEO spam where one thing is shown to users and another to a search engine crawler.
- Malware – by injecting malware, SEO spammers can infect other visitors through your website.
There are other types, but the list would be too long if we included everything.
How SEO spam affects your website
By using your infected website, injecting various types of SEO spam, and building backlinks to their websites, SEO spammers effectively ruin your website’s trustworthiness and SEO while building up their own and increasing their website’s search engine ranking.
Such infiltrations to your website are primarily done to add a link to their website or a site of their choice in hopes of stealing traffic, increasing rankings, or infecting visitors.
How to recognize SEO spam
Whether you can recognize SEO spam depends on your skill and experience as a website owner and the amount of spam there is. Namely, most SEO spammers often leave just a few subtle links here and there, making them incredibly difficult to recognize.
Others just straight-up copy entire pages and leave them on your website. This type of SEO spam is transparent, but you can’t check every link on every blog post and look for various types of SEO spam throughout the website. You’re not entirely powerless, either.
Using SEO software to recognize the issue more quickly
Getting rid of SEO spam manually would be a nightmare and a process that would take an immense amount of time. However, various SEO spam scanning tools exist, making getting rid of SEO spam a piece of cake. You should always choose such methods instead of a manual one.
Best SEO spam scanner tools comparison
Automated SEO spam removal with various scanner tools is your best option as a website owner, and there are more than a few tools to choose from. Currently, the best SEO spam removal tools come from companies like Sucuri, Getastra, Malcare, and Siteguarding. They’re the best in the game, and it’s why so many people trust and use them.
| Sucuri | Getastra | Malcare | Siteguarding | |
| Features | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – various features come with all plans | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – offers a lot of features but not in its cheaper packages | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – different malware and scanner features | ⭐⭐⭐ – lacks features that the competition has |
| Pricing | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – competitively priced but not the cheapest | ⭐⭐⭐ – one of the more expensive services | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – cheaper than the competition but still expensive | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – cheaper than the competition but rather expensive |
| Security | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – perfect security measures to stop anything nefarious | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – excellent security features | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – excellent security features | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – decent security |
| Review total | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Top 4 most popular SEO spam scanner tools
Sucuri’s spam removal and repair tool can quickly fix your website’s SEO spam problem. The tool detects the issues, removes SEO spam entirely, and helps ensure the infection doesn’t happen again.
Key features
- Website Firewall – protects your entire website from hacks, exploits, and attacks.
- Active Monitoring – scans your website for potential threats.
- Performance Boost – various optimization algorithms speed up your website’s performance.
Pricing and plans
Sucuri comes in three different packages.
Basic Platform
- $199.99 per year
This plan is intended for smaller website owners and bloggers that need occasional SEO spam cleanups.
Pro Platform
- $299.99 per year
It’s intended for smaller and mid-size businesses and can ensure no disruptions on your website.
Business Platform
- $499.99 per year
This plan is perfect for large enterprises and offers frequent scans, quick responses, and fast cleanups.
Getastra is the perfect choice if you’re looking for a complete service that includes an SEO spam scanner and protection from phishing and social engineering hacks, SQL injections, malware, plugin vulnerabilities, etc.
Key features
- Prevention of injections – whether it’s SQL code or malware, Getastra has your back.
- Great firewall – 24/7 protection and can block IPs and countries.
- Vulnerability scans – constantly searching for holes and patching them up.
Pricing and plans
Getastra offers three monthly plans, but you can get two months free if you get the yearly subscription or get up to 10% off if you get the service for 3+ websites.
Pro
- $25 per month
- $249 per year
The Pro plan gives you the essential security ideal for individuals.
Advanced
- $79 per month
- $799 per year
Getastra Advanced offers security rules, advanced vulnerability scanners, and 12h chat and ticket support on top of everything in the Pro plan.
Business
- $199 per month
- $1,999 per year
Getastra Business is excellent for enterprises and includes everything a company needs.
With automatic malware scans and easy removal, great WordPress firewalls and backups, and advanced vulnerability scanning, Malcare can keep your website both high-speed and free of bad players and bots.
Key features
- Malware Scanner – find even the most complex and hard-to-find malware.
- WordPress Backups – incremental backups are prepared and always ready to restore in case there’s ever a need for it.
- Bot Protection – speeds up your website by preventing bots from consuming valuable resources
Pricing and plans
Malcare’s SEO spam tool comes in four plans.
Free
- Free of charge
This plan gives you essential security and is excellent for individuals.
Basic
- $99.99 per year
The Basic plan gives you much better security tools and is a fantastic choice for smaller businesses.
Plus
- $149.99 per year
The Plus plan offers complete security and backups, which is excellent for mid-size and larger businesses.
Pro
- $299.99 per year
The Pro plan is perfect for large enterprises as it offers everything a large company might need.
With SiteGuarding’s security measures, you can easily find all types of SEO spam that can ruin your website’s reputation. The service includes protection against bad bots, malicious users, and website spam.
Key features
- Prevention of spam bots – various tools constantly protect from cyber attacks.
- Protection from web scraping – by removing the ability of web scraping bots to run on your website, SiteGuarding can effectively speed it up.
- Performance optimization – increases the speed of your website.
Pricing and plans
SiteGuarding offers three different monthly plans including a 14-day free trial.
Basic
- $3.95 per month
The Basic plan can block spam bots and brute force attacks and protects you against scraping.
Standard
- $9.95 per month
This plan adds XSS injection prevention, fraud and DDoS protection, and blacklist removal to the basic option.
Premium
- $24.95 per month
This option gives faster response times, live chat support, high-priority cleaning, and more.
Conclusion
SEO spam is a danger to all website owners. It comes in many forms and can mess with the website’s SEO and inject links to other, even worse, malicious websites or tools.
Fortunately, various automated SEO spam removal tools and scanners can help. These tools can scan, detect, and clean up SEO spam and also protect your website from future infections. Many are readily available online, but we’ve reviewed and given you the best four.
