Google Adds Positive Attributes To Look For When Hiring An SEO

Jul 1, 2008 at 8:56am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they have updated the content of the What’s an SEO page to provide examples of how SEOs can help your site. Previously, the page mainly focused on scams and things to watch out for from SEOs. Now, Google added some of the benefits of search engine optimization and what qualities to seek when hiring an SEO company.

The “before” page can be viewed at the WayBack Machine. You can clearly see that Google added several paragraphs to the top of the old article.

Google classifies SEOs as providing the following services:

Reviewing and providing recommendations on your site content or structure
Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
Content development
Managing online business development campaigns
Keyword research
SEO training

Google then discusses the difference between paid and organic results. In addition, Google provides a link to Google’s webmaster guidelines and some useful articles. Google then gives us a list of questions that might be useful when making a decision on which SEO firm to hire. The list includes:

Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
Do you offer any online marketing services to complement your organic search business?
What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
What’s your experience in my industry?
How long have you been in business?

After this section, Google simply gives a list of things to watch out for when hiring an SEO company.

In addition, Google is open to advice for this page. So if you see ways of improving it, go to the blog post and add your comment.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

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