Lyric website Rap Genius found out the hard way that Google doesn’t appreciate people trying to manipulate search rank results. What happened? Last Monday, Rap Genius sent out a Facebook post asking users to insert Rap Genius inbound page links in blog posts. In turn, Rap Genius would re-tweet their posts, making them “blooowwwww up!” or so they predicted.
Instead of posts blowing up, Google found out, and promptly removed Rap Genius from all search results. According to Business Insider, the number of unique visitors going to the site dropped from about 1.4 million to 500,000 after this happened.
What’s the takeaway here? The last thing you want is for your site to get caught with its hand in the link fraud cookie jar by Google. Instead of seeing your rank climb, you’ll see it fall from online visibility completely. Here are three web marketing SEO tips for engaging in safe and useful online search engine optimization.
1. Keep a Blog on Your Page, and Update with Original Content
Did you know that blogs increase pages for search indexing by 432%? You need to do more than just copy paste in fun facts about your products, though. Blogs are great for generating keyword rich organic content. For it to be relevant to SEO, you need to concentrate on producing copy that readers will actually find engaging. Rarely are readers engaged by a company promise of quality and perfection. Instead, they’re likely to find unique tips and suggestions more handy.
2. Avoid Obvious Link Schemes
The saying “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is” holds true with many web marketing SEO practices. Google rankings are quite competitive. Does it seem likely that you could buy 100 links for $25, and be able to wash your hands of the issue until next year? Quality web marketing solutions have a corresponding price you need to pay. The problem with participating in cheap link buying schemes is that they can actually hurt your Google ranking. As evidenced by Rap Genius, Google doesn’t take kindly to cheaters, and it can demote you even in cases you didn’t realize that you were doing something wrong.
3. Use Free Search Engine Marketing Software
Did you know that there are many search engine marketing tools available for free online that can help your website? There are multiple sites that can do everything including checking the legitimacy of your backlinks, checking for broken links, checking for repetitive copy, and seeing which keywords are best for your website. All of these things are factors in how Google determines page rankings. Broken links, for example, help clue Google in to the fact that a webpage is probably older, and therefore less likely to be relevant to someone searching for information.
What are your tips for web marketing SEO? Let us know in the comments. Find more on this here.