Would Renaming or HIding Posts With the Same Title Reduce My Spam Score?

[bryndonovan]

On my blog (which is about writing), I have a recurring monthly feature where we all share excerpts of our work in progress. The title is always the same: "WIP Wednesday – Share What YOU Are Up To!" I've been doing this on the blog for about 4 years.

Is the recurring title giving me a higher spam score? If so, will it help if I add the date on the end, as I've started to do? " WIP Wednesday – Share What YOU Are Up To! January 2020" etc.?

Or would it help if I made all the posts from before 2020 private?

Or does this actually have nothing to do with my spam score (which is 9%, and I'd like to bring it down)? Thanks!

[DarinPirkey]

Spam Score is a representation of sites with similar features that Moz found to be penalized or banned by Google.   Moz uses 27 different signals to make up their spam score.  Recurring title isn't one of them.  Doesn't mean recurring title is good or not.  Just means that Moz's Spam Score is a representation of how potentially likely you are of getting banned or penalized by Google based on historical data.

You can see a full list of the signals used by Moz here https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score#use-score

As far as SEO goes I use a different strategy for my recurring content piece.  I have a segment on one of our sites that talks about technology in a particular industry.  We do it every Thursday.  Instead of each post called the same with different dates, we made the category the name of the segment and gave the name of the post an interesting title to get people to read it.

Think about Moz's Whiteboard Friday segment.  If they all were named "Whiteboard Friday" you would never know if it was worth looking at.  But they use the name Whiteboard Friday as a category and the topic of that particular one is the title of the piece.  Hope that makes sense.

[bryndonovan]

Thank you! That's really helpful. For this particular feature, it's just a group participation event with no long-term value for traffic. My regulars know they can play along on the first Wednesday of the month, and nobody looks at it afterward. I don't want it to compete in searches with my finished work for sale, so it wouldn't help me to be more specific!

[DarinPirkey]

My only counter argument to that would be "What if someone who is a regular wanted to go back and see an old one but couldn't' find it because they are all named the same?"