Google made it easier for smart white hats to abuse serps

[goodroi]

There has always been a bunch of "black hat" ways of jumping up the serp rankings. Actually there still are a bunch of ways to spam Google like using crowdsourcing. Taking those shortcuts could endanger brands and your long term profits. Now with Google rewarding https and mobile friendly sites, you can give yourself a significant boost just by following the rules and think it is safe to say that boost grow even more. I'm surprised by the large number of big and small websites that still haven't implemented https or mobile friendliness.

[EditorialGuy]

Getting back to the topic of this thread, I question the notion that "Google made it easier for smart white hats to abuse serps."

- First of all, people who abuse the SERPs aren't "white hats."

- Second, following Google's guidelines regarding https, mobile-friendliness, etc. isn't "abusing the SERPs"--not Google's SERPs, anyway.

Also:

- I'm skeptical about the claim that implementing https will result in a "significant boost," since Google has said that https is a minor ranking factor.

- Whether mobile-friendliness will result in a "significant boost" is likely to depend on how many mobile searches there are on your topic. For some sites, it won't have much impact--and even if it does, the value of the additional mobile traffic may be minimal.

[rish3]

EditorialGuy: You seem to have read the title, but not the content, of the original post. After reading the OP, the title is clearly a little tongue-in-cheek. I think you've been successfully, though unintentionally, trolled :)

[EditorialGuy]

i was responding to the content of the original post. (It's a bit late for April Fool's Day.)

[rish3]

i was responding to the content of the original post.

Hmm okay. Your first two points seem more aimed at the clickbait worthy title. The post itself doesn't actually characterize white hat activity as abuse. In fact, it just seems to boil down to "you should use https and mobile friendly design, because Google says both are signals".

Just felt like you might be tilting at windmills a bit.

Also Google did say https was "a very lightweight signal", but the full context was "For now it's only a very lightweight signal " and "But over time, we may decide to strengthen it".

[eek2121]

I keep seeing cost mentioned. I paid $4/year for my 5 year comodo SSL. How is that expensive? You can afford a domain and hosting, but not an SSL cert?

[Lorel]

@edge "How much time, effort and money should one commit chasing Google's latest "thing" or preference? No, I'm not off subject.. "

I totally agree with you here. I've had to chase so many of Google's latest whims/penalties on Client sites for things that Google used to promote, that I no longer have time to fix my own site and it's slowly drowning in Google mire.