Yesterday we wrote about Rap Genius and the penalty they incurred by trying to game Google’s system with questionable SEO. Essentially, they were trying (and succeeding) to bribe people to give them links with very specific, very rich anchor text and Google brought down the penalty hammer on their entire domain. Now, they don’t even rank for their own name, never mind any of their oh so targeted anchor text strings, and it’s already starting to take a toll on the site.
According to Search Metric, Rap Genius has suffered a precipitous drop in rankings since the ban, to the tune of 92 percent of their total search visibility. That’s right, they’re only appearing in 8 percent of the results that they did just two short weeks ago. To illustrate this point, here are the graphics from Search Metric and Quantcast:
In case you were still on the fence about the possible risk/reward of using black hat SEO techniques for your own website, look no further than Rap Genius and their terrible fall from grace. Black hat techniques work, I’ll admit that, but they only work for a short while until you suddenly find yourself in a worse position than when you started. So keep your nose clean and keep your link profile natural.