SEO Certification – Is There Such a Thing?

SEO Certification – Is There Such a Thing?

IT Training Solutions is in the process of designing a course on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on this topic. One of the problems, as outlined in the article below, is how quickly the search engines change their search algorithms. So it’s very easy to find yourself learning SEO tips that are no longer applicable.

I found the article below on http://www.seo-theory.com/ written by Michael Martinez to be very enlightening as to the reality of SEO certification.  I’ve take the liberty to edit some of his personal opinions for the purpose of staying on the topic of certification.

“SEO Certification is a really scary topic. There are dozens if not hundreds of Web sites offering SEO Certification and, in an industry that has no professional standards, many of these sites claim to base their certifications on “peer reviewed” processes and nationally recognized standards. I know of only one established peer-reviewing group and that is Search Engine Marketing Journal. I’m not aware of any publications by the body on standards or certification.

In fact, there is only one internationally recognized organization that has anything approaching the credibility of being a “standards body” and that is the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Association.
SEMPO does teach classes and offer certifications in its own courses but their certification isn’t really worth much more than the certifications offered by unknown agencies who pop out of nowhere.

The need for SEO certification is certainly very real but with so many practitioners in the “art” of SEO it’s impossible for a naive consumer to know what is going on. There is no market value in SEO certification, except in so much as anyone selling certifications can pull in money for these classes. If people want to teach basic SEO principles from their own experience, that’s fine. They can help newcomers get started, although I have no doubt many bad lessons are included in the basic curricula of these companies.

At some point community demand for search engine optimization classes will drive universities to develop some sort of curriculum. The first generation of academic courses probably won’t be very good, but they will offer some structure and they’ll require term papers, projects, and readings in the field. Students will have to learn to compare source A’s opinion to source B’s opinion. The good professors will try to qualify their opinions in class while showing the students how to construct rigorous tests.

The proliferation of SEO certifications will help bring more people in tune with our industry. It will contribute toward mainstream understanding of basic search optimization practices. But it also inflicts some harm on us and inevitably on the people who believe in SEO certifications enough to pay for them. You may be learning yesterday’s bad SEO techniques or you may be learning absolute drivel. And you will probably learn basic terminology so that you can start browsing SEO blogs and forums and reading the free online tip sheets. It’s a mixed bag of results.

Search engine optimization needs to be taken with a grain of salt. While it’s not rocket science neither is it something you can learn out of an Acme SEO Manual. All the SEO books out there constitute a body of literature that together makes search engine optimization a credible practice. But every author invents his own terms and standards and there is no real consensus on what the true standards should be.

Standards are not really techniques. An SEO standard should require that you use multiple resources to conduct your keyword research, not that you use specific resources. An SEO standard should require that you understand which keywords are likely to draw real converting traffic, not that you choose keywords on the basis of some arbitrary formula. An SEO standard should require that you create a sensible reporting plan, not that you check rankings on a periodic basis.

Most of the truly influential people in our industry are afraid of standards and certification. I think they view certification as a time-wasting process. They already know how to do this stuff so they don’t want to be forced to take a test. But I think people are confusing certification with licensing. You can have standards and certification without licensing. We the grandpas and grandmas of search engine optimization don’t need to prove we know the basics by taking certifications. But we owe it to the next few generations of SEOs to stop gibbering about what constitutes “best practices” and agree on what the real basics are.”

Stay tuned for our up-coming half day SEO seminar for small business owners!

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