There certainly is good SEO. Good SEO is often indistinguishable from good accessibility, good marketing, good design, good conversion optimization, good information theory, good metrics.

You use sites because they used good SEO. You can find StackOverflow posts ranking at one, because they used the good SEO that the good content deserved.

Anyone with an internet business taking your comment at face value will find herself ranking not in the top 20, no matter how good their content.

Good SEO has worth, has value. Even Matt Cutts promotes good SEO and sees the worth. Without SEO analytics you are sailing blind. Without knowledge of how to interpret them. Without knowledge of the guidelines you get gaffs like these.

There is good SEO and there is vandalization. Rap Genius vandalized their rankings.

No industry needs to die. If it needs to, explain why.

Optimize your site for all users, not just search engines.

If you stay in this naive view of SEO you will never have a successful internet business in many niches. What is sad is that some developers and designers can not deliver a website that is SEO optimized, so a business owner has to pay double to get an SEO to fix all on-page accessibility issues.

This penalty is entirely the result of that blogpost and the PR it generated. I am willing to bet that Google already discovered many of these links, through spam reports, through manual spam fighters and through algorithmic detection. This PR, and the open letter, forced Google's hand. Of course they have to visibly act on it. Of course they are well aware that that niche has some scummy shady practices, and Rap Genius is not the only one. Of course they have a better internal tool than OSE and can check link profiles and detect networks in a manner of minutes.

Besides, you can be a great SEO and never do a single link-building campaign. There is tremendous value in simply finding new content and articles to rank for and drive traffic. I loath black hat SEO, not for the unfair temporary advantage it gives, but because it creates posts like yours. Because it burns companies that are now much more careful to hire good SEO's. Because I know that good SEO helps people access relevant content.

Like e-mail spam, search engine spam will die. SEO's will be retrained to create websites that are accessible, user friendly, give content that is relevant to the search query.

Just read: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/...

And try to find a single practice in there that is either manipulative, entirely done to service search engines alone, or hampers accessibility and user friendliness.

Good SEO builds authority. Creates quality mark-up. Makes descriptive website titles. Implements breadcrumbs and a sane website hierarchy. Rids the index of duplicates. Drives more users to your sites. Makes sure that blind people can access your content, like images or video. Makes sites load faster. Makes content more trustworthy etc. Good SEO needs no manipulation. There is a lot to gain by simply aligning yourself with Google's vision.

Please reconsider your tone, or realize you do not add anything of value to the debate, or to the many online business owners on HN. Can you imagine raising funds for an online startup and then have your post be the slide for "online marketing"?