Busy busy busy & our adventures with Google

Wow things have been hectic for me over at Code Required recently so apologies for the lack of posts since early December - ouch!

We've been doing some really cool stuff with the Google API recently and have spent several hours geeking out with the guys down at Google HQ in London - which has been great fun and a steep learnign curve for us!

We'll be publishing some articles on Google Apps, Google Sites and the Enterprise Search application in the next few months so watch this space! We must admit we're very very excited about the Google Sites stuff so suggest you all check it out and post your samples back here as we'd love to see what everyone is doing!

Anyway - we're still alive so watch this space!

Google helps make your 404 pages more useful

Here at Code Required we're always trying to make the user experience the best it can possibly be for the sites we develop and we've just discovered Google's new custom 404 widget.

Basically this little snippet will analyse the url which returned the 404 and display close matches from Google's listings... Awesome - certainly saves us writing custom handlers and pattern matching for the urls!!

Check it out... Google's new custom 404 widget

What do you mean you can't get me to rank #1??

One question that always comes up when people ask about SEO (search engine optimisation) services is "does that mean I'll rank number one on Google?... But Company X said they'd guarantee they could get me to number 1".

You've all heard it right? Well the guys at Google have further updated the Webmaster Blog post:
"What's an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?"

I really do urge that anyone offering SEO services and equally anyone looking for SEO services should look at this article NOW!

Social networking for SEO... the next big thing?

We all know the huge benefits of social networking when it comes to SEO - there is no better way to get new visitors than those on recommendations from existing customers... I mean you're hitting your target audience without even trying.

Social Networking and content sharing have rapidly become the de facto standard in marketing on the web well Google might have just taken that to a whole new level with Google Friend Connect.

Still in a preview release (ie. not even beta yet) it's pretty exciting stuff and I strongly suggest you check out Mussie Shore's (he's the project manager) post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog entitled "Becoming Social".

Google Friend Connect let's you interact with users on social networking site such as Facebook and invite them to check out the website, post directly to their diaries etc and invite their friends - potentially increasing your audience virally with minimal effort... According to Mussie Shore you only need to know very little coding to get going in minutes!

Google's use of Meta tags... The debate goes on...

So we've all heard how Googlebot no longer uses meta description or meta keyword tags to index your webpages in it's SERPS listings; and how it uses the actual page content to evaluate the "PageRank" etc... Well with that in mind many web developers/agencies/SEO "experts" often neglect to include meta tags in today's market... Well think again!

A recent post on the Offical Google Wemaster Central Blog explains how Google DOES use meta tags (well the meta description tag at least). Now, although this may or may not have an impact (our research shows that it most certainly does have an impact) on your actual positioning as such, it certainly can have a huge effect on your links "clickability".

The post explains how the meta description data is used to support the link so people can determine if it's your content they were actually looking for... Therefore, our research certainly indicates, that as more people visit your site, Google increases it's importance... Thus how you sell your content in the meta description tag must have an impact on your SERPS positioning.