As web users and web developers we are constantly attributing human qualities to the different actors of the Internet. In my mind Google has always been the sexy, out of reach girl that we're constantly trying to impress. When courting a girl there is a well defined protocol that needs to be respected. You have to be polite, tactful, respectful (... it seems I am listening to my mom...), in any case there are rules that need be followed when your are trying to impress a girl and these rules go well beyond appearances.
As web developers we tend to forget some of the rules that need to be followed to make our sites more findable, more accessible, more secure, more maintainable... we typically only care about how do our pages look like in the common browsers without paying to much attention to the inner details. You can have great content but if your markup sucks you will have issues when trying to conquer important actors like Google.
Last week I wrote a post on how the lack of use of web standards can affect your SEO efforts. Lot's of small details that can really turn Google off.
At Aggiorno, the team is on a death march towards the release of V1.0 (soon... very soon...) and we need to relief some stress and at the same time try to educate more about the importance of good markup, the importance of following web standards on our daily work. We came up with a video called "Get a Chance at Google" that enacts an encounter between a very content intensive web site with ... some issues...
Take a look at the video and share it if you like it. Also, let us know what you think and if you have more ideas so this can become its own series!
Enjoy!