Narrowing your SEO chances not so ‘genius’

Published December 26, 2013 at 9:40 am

The founders behind the annotation lyrics website “Rap Genius” and its sister sites have been the source of some controversy recently for angering some very powerful online players. If you’re looking to get your brand message out to as many people as possible, then there’s no sense in limiting the means in which your content can be accessed.

That seems to be what has happened to this family of sites as they are now being ignored by Google searches, having made their way onto the major search engine site’s blacklist for tampering with the search process.

According to Business Insider, the RG family was found to have been trying to get others to disseminate links to their site in ways that have garnered massive disapproval from Google. As a result, Rap Genius has been pushed off of the top pages of all results, a huge blow in an era when so much information about new websites comes from searches.

Although the Genius sites are arguably well-known enough that their fans will have no trouble finding them in other ways, the Washington Post reports that the founders of the site have been behaving badly in other ways as well.

Though they’ve denied certain other dubious practices in a statement on their website, they also admitted to having “messed up.”

“Rap Genius is the product of many passionate communities collaborating to create a massive, living knowledge base for the world to enjoy,” the statement reads. “We do not want to break Google’s rules, and will do whatever it takes to learn them inside out and comply with them.”

Proper SEO behavior should indeed be recognized in order to maximize your marketing. Illicit tactics might be attractive in the short term, but could only hurt you in the long run. That’s why a diverse marketing strategy, which includes direct mail and other online methods, is so critical.