December 27, 2013: As reported in Search EngineLand.com, RapGenius.com — a fast-growing lyrics site that boasted of 30 million unique visitors per month, has been penalized by Google, which removed its top-ranked listings from its SERPS.
This made big news across the SEO blogosphere, because it showed that:
a) Google’s anti-spam offensive against sites engaging in “unnatural links” – which have in the past few months have included link network sites Anglo Rank and Ghost Rank 2.0 — continues to roll ahead.
b) Even a well-financed, high-profile site like RapGenius.com (which had recently received a $15 million investment from prominent Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz) could learn a thing about basic SEO do’s and don’ts.
By offering, via Facebook, the chance for 3rd parties to embed links in exchange for “massive traffic, it’s very clear that RapGenius.com’ offsite SEO efforts weren’t well considered. In fact they were downright bone-headed. But what hasn’t yet been discussed is what the site did right – at least in terms of its approach to on-page SEO.
RapGenius.com wasn’t a garage operation (according to its site, it employed 8 engineers to run it). A lot of work went into it, and an examination of the site yields some lessons that can be applied to the legitimate, ethical efforts of merchants to increase the visibility of their listed offerings. After all, from a content perspective, a lyrics site is structurally similar to a merchant site. The market for traffic is fiercely competitive, there are a finite number of products listed, and competitors list the same products elsewhere on the Web.
The problem is: how do you make these listings stand out?
Here’s what RapGenius.com did:
1. Applied an Ultra-Granular Philosophy to Content
Realizing that people apparently like to share Rap lyrics on a line-by-line basis, RapGenius.com’s system assigned each line of its hosted Rap poems a unique, shareable URL While one can argue whether it makes sense to for e-commerce merchants to break down their product descriptions to the parts level, or whether such granular URL-generation is regarded by the search engines as “spammy,” it’s clear that some products whose internal components are individually notable (e.g. high-end stereo systems, some automobiles) are eligible for this kind of granular treatment.
Think about whether your product descriptions are as granular as they need to be. Don’t do this for search engines – do it for your users if it’s logical and natural for them to share information this way. Just as each line in a rap poem has “its own story,” so do components in a complex product or service.
2. Deployed User-Contributed Annotations
Adding the ability to annotate favorite song lyrics on a line-by-line basis made it possible for RapGenius.com to contribute to the content, and make it more likely that this content would be shared via their own networks. Leveraging “social power” in this way results in amplified reach.
Most products don’t have the innate social shareability potential of a memorable song line. But some products do. Mentioning, say a “Nikon F” or “Mustang” in an appropriate post may cause a wellspring of associations to occur in a user’s mind that he/she is willing to share (“my first Nikon/Mustang,” etc.) Giving users a way to annotate lets them contribute their own take, which may add real value to your hosted content.
Obviously, you don’t want to repeat the off-page SEO antics of RapGenius.com. But consider what this site did well internally, and think about whether you’re being granular enough with the data you host. Consider adding a system by which your fans can interact with/annotate your products, share them, and therefore amplify your reach.
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