While optimizing any site, the focus of a person mostly lies on content included within the site. Webmasters tend to spend ample amount of time focussing on how to get good rank for particular keywords or ensuring that the site is free from any kind of duplicate content. Even though this proves quite helpful but there lies a big gap within the strategy. One thing which is not taken into account is spam that is user-generated. This can certainly have huge impact on the SEO efforts.
Some people might not be well aware of the exact description of spam that is user-generated. Wespam team’s Head at Google, Mr. Matt Cutts states that such kind of spam comes in different forms. Spammy posts are an extremely popular form within forums not excluding spammy profiles which are also common these days. Another example comes in the form of comments within blogs. These comments are stuffed with links and keywords along with content of low quality. Although, these are not the fault of owners of the site but spam posts in large numbers can bring down SEO which affect the ranking of the site negatively.
Google deals with these issues by punishing particular areas within the site which contains spam that is user-generated. Thus, it is quite clear that the search result of whole site does not get affected unless whole site contains spam.
After identification of the problem, next comes the task of fixing it. This will basically mean searching the site and deleting the spammy comments, posts and profiles. This can also be regarded as a cleaning job for the site. To make sure that SEO efforts do not go in vain in near future, measures need to be implemented for preventing spam that is user-generated to make their way back. Comment filters need to be put up within the forum or blog solely for the purpose of blocking spammy terms. One can also make use of CAPTCHA complicated to the extent that will prevent robots to automatically post spam comments. It helps a lot towards preventing spammy comments to make their way back and affect the rank of the site.
By promoting a moderator one can make sure that spam posts or comments which get through get addressed immediately. All these are necessary steps to make sure that the labour and work put in towards SEO do not go in waste.