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I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get signifi

I feel for Rap Genius. They have a far superior user experience than any other lyrics site out there--but unless they use these tricks they'll never get significant organic Google traffic. The problem is Google's algorithms heavily favor older sites that have been accumulating massive amounts of backlinks with targeted anchor text for years & years. An upstart like Rapgenius doesn't stand a chance. Another problem is that Google seems to only selectively enforce "violations" of their terms of service like this. Some sites get away with these violations forever, so you'll never be able to catch them in traffic unless you play dirty too. I should know: I have a niche e-commerce site with a blatantly obvious better shopping experience than most competitors, but unless I use similar tricks I'm nowhere to be found in Google's results. And "natural" link building doesn't really work for us, there's not enough people writing about my niche and quite frankly its not really that interesting--so it's not really possible to get "natural" links without coercing people. Google, your system is totally broken.

diydsp 13y ago
As massive as it is, I can see Google's needs moving more towards the mainstream. Finding results beyond the first page will fall to other search mechanisms as their inertia develops into a... character. For example, it's hard to search for certain medical information because of so many pop songs clouding out results for "how the heart beats," etc. There will be more and more aliasing and hacking through keywords to distinguish between pop uses of heart and medical uses of heart until eventually people will learn which search mechanism to use for what purpose. Google will most likely ride the mainstream into the sunset, the Sears of our generation.
davemel37 13y ago
Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius. There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem. The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.

diydsp 13y ago

As massive as it is, I can see Google's needs moving more towards the mainstream. Finding results beyond the first page will fall to other search mechanisms as their inertia develops into a... character. For example, it's hard to search for certain medical information because of so many pop songs clouding out results for "how the heart beats," etc. There will be more and more aliasing and hacking through keywords to distinguish between pop uses of heart and medical uses of heart until eventually people will learn which search mechanism to use for what purpose. Google will most likely ride the mainstream into the sunset, the Sears of our generation.

davemel37 13y ago

Googles algorithms Also favor fresh content that gets updated often like rap genius. There are certainly many ways to generate legit quality links in boring niches, which rapgenius is certainly not plagued by that problem. The challenge here is putting too much stock in search traffic. I find when I focus on audience building and generating referral traffic that serp rankings follow.