The innovative music, poetry, and document annotation website Rap Genius has been making headlines across the SEO world for all the wrong reasons lately. A brilliant startup centered on the idea of allowing both content creators and end-users to provide annotations and interpretations for different forms of text, the company was recently hit by a massive Google penalty that saw its ranking on the search engine drop dramatically from its usual first place slot.

In a less-than-genius move, the company started an ill-conceived affiliate blog program that required blog writers to include a snippet of HTML code in exchange for Rap Genius’s promotion of the post through Twitter. Unaware of the implications, a blogger created a post with details of the scheme that later caught the attention of none other than Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

According to an article from the tech news website, The Verge, Rap Genius’s rankings have fallen to the fifth page on Google Search for the search term “rap genius” by December 25, 2013, the time of the article’s writing.

Rap Genius’s founders have already responded to the Google penalty by providing a lengthy apology. The company also provided details about its practices and requested that the search engine giant investigate the SEO strategies of its competitors, which it believes are even more unscrupulous.

The incident serves as a stern warning for website owners and internet marketing companies who are attempting to use such tactics to game the Google rankings system. It also reinforces the need for great content that doesn’t breech Google’s policies and provides valuable insight for companies involved in the business of providing search engine optimization in Sacramento.

“Quality is key,” assert the SEO experts at Champion Online Marketing, a trusted Sacramento search engine optimization provider. It notes that enticing ordinary, everyday users to engage in a site is far more important than trying to cheat your way up the Google rankings ladder. Great, natural content catches people’s eyes the first time and keeps them coming back. If you do this, you are following what Google has publicly laid out as the best course of action and as long as you adhere to their recommended strategies, you can steer clear of the negative consequences that Rap Genius and others that try to game the system experience.

(Article Information and Image from Rap Genius plummets in Google results, apologizes for spammy SEO practices, The Verge, December 25, 2013)