Edit: mirror, since I'm betting the text will be modified soon considering the reactions here. http://pastebin.com/dMh7dgxp
Other than that, i have no concerns.
Take a look at the source of the very reputable: www.usatoday.com/sports/ and search for "NFL Tickets". Blatant link buying by vivid seats. SeatGeek does this all over the place as well. When you have really strong competitors buying links like this and getting away with it--it's the only way to compete.
In my experience Google has never penalized a competitor for doing this in my niche, therefore to compete I have to do it as well.
What Rapgenius is doing is very innocent compared to a lot of what is going on out there.
This is my first hand experience: I was contacted by an "SEO Consultant" who wanted to publish an article in one my sites for $40. I went along, exchanged a few emails, and managed to get the "article" this company wanted to publish.
Bottom line was that they wanted to place link's to Tesco's LED bulbs site:
Text: decorative and useful living room accessory
URL: http://www.tesco.com/direct/home-garden/lighting/cat3376614.catMore importantly, any strategy that is against Googles quality guidelines that works today, probably wont work forever, or even for another several months. The pain and suffering of getting slapped by google is much too intense to justify the short term gains.
Matt Cutts himself said recently that the best way to discourage spammers is not just to hurt their bottom line, but to "Break Their Spirits." http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-search-spa...
That's why Google has to have these scare tactics to stop people from doing them. If they didn't work then Google and you and everyone else who's up in arms over this would just ignore these links.
I can guarantee you that if you do a backlink analysis of everyone ranking ahead of rapgenius for these search terms they will have thousands of these types of backlinks.
I definitely agree that Google wouldn't be so vocal about buying links, if it wasn't a real threat to the quality of their SERPs.
That being said, this particular strategy from Rap Genius most certainly does not work. There are just too many obvious signals that those links are unnatural.
Why not go for the single link, in content, without exact match anchor text, with content near the link with the text you want to rank for...
http://wiep.net/link-value-factors/
If you're gonna ask bloggers for links, start with legit outreach strategies, why open with an obvious barter. I bet broken linkbuilding http://www.brokenlinkbuilding.com/ is a treasure trove of opportunity in the lyrics vertical. or simple Start with just sharing great content that is relevant, and nurture relationships with bloggers. Why buy them off, when you have such a great web property?
For a list of more strategies... http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
why not try this strategy while your at it... It would work perfectly for Rap Genius. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5688175
Just checking but have you reported the competitors?
it's about traffic. thus spake zara.
The apology seems to indicate that they only think they did something grayhatish. In reality it was the worst kind of link spam...buying links.
When you know your competition is playing dirty, you can join them or choose to rise above. There are legitimate arguments for both. They chose to play dirty, and I wouldn't be surprised if this weakened their position in the long term
They chose the short long way... They should have chosen the long short way.
Can we get them banned on HN? NSA-level penalized? Insta-dead?
This also isn't the first time a YC company has had ethical issues called out on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711
They aren't using HN to submit content spam. (fwiw, there was another YC startup in a similar niche doing just that earlier this year. That startup appears to be dead/zombie now.)
The argument that you only tweet out high quality content is nil when you consider you were "Paid" with a link to tweet it out. How do you remove the inherent bias? Wouldn't you tweet out a high pr site you want more links from, even if it wasn't relevant?
You are in a high interest sector with SO MANY LEGIT STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT HIGH VALUE LINKS NATURALLY... Why are you wasting time with spammy strategies that haven't worked in several years?