Google recently rewrote their article about what an SEO is and if they recommend them. The rewrite now includes how an SEO firm can help a company with valuable services as well as the warnings about common SEO scams that were there previously.

Some highlights from the article include Google’s definition of SEO and what SEO firms can do including the following list:

•    Review of your site content or structure
•    Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
•    Content development
•    Managment online business development campaigns
•    Keyword research
•    SEO training
•    Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Google also offer the following list of questions as helpful questions you can ask an SEO firm when thinking of hiring them to help increase your search engine rankings.

•    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 or advice to complement your organic search business?
•    What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
•    What’s your experience in my industry?
•    What’s your experience in my country/city?
•    What’s your experience developing international sites?
•    What are your most important SEO techniques?
•    How long have you been in business?
•    How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

Finally, Google provides a list of things to be wary of if you run across them when dealing with an SEO firms. They are as follows:

•    owns shadow domains
•    puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
•    offers to sell keywords in the address bar
•    doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
•    guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
•    operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
•    gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
•    has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google
•    requests your FTP account information or root access to your server

Overall, it’s a good to see that Google is showing support for search engine optimization firms that follow their guidelines and can help increase your rankings as a result.