The SEO Profession Gets Serious: Third-Party Certification on the Horizon

I know my response to this post is a little late to the dance but I do agree with you Jessica, it is a good idea. I especially think it helps legitimize newbies such as myself. We don’t have many clients to showcase, so a certification at least says to the customer that we have undergone some formal training.

I know that there are a few “SEO Thought Leaders” or Gurus that are against it. But, it’s easy say no to certifications when you have been in the game for a long time. Question for you, have many of your experienced SEO colleagues disagreed with your opinion?

Regards,

Johnny
http://www.JohnzSEOGuide.com

Interesting piece. It will also be interesting to see if any type of standards in either the practice of SEO or the certification of SEO evolves in the coming years.

lol.. that would be “no nos”

hmm.. Thinking a list of “no-nons” might be better than any type of certification…

as in a form,with lots of radio buttons…

In SEO, we do the foillowing.
[] link wheels
[] doorway pages
[] auto query tools not using approved Google API
[] hidden keywords
[] multiple domains with slightly different content.

etc..

This is a great development. Something needs to be done to keep all the overnight SEO guys from popping up and promising the world.

There are pros and cons to this. SEO is seen as a dark and secret art when it really is not. So a certification to dispel these beliefs are good. Also, there are Adwords certification courses so why not SEO? On the down side, like mentioned before already here, one method SEO is not the case anymore. We use a range of methods in varying situations. Plus who will certify it, Google? Bing?

What happens when Google changes its algo’s, shall we retrain? Like MCSE’s have to every other year.

It would be good from an employer’s point of view, that’s for sure!

Adam makes a great point. If it is like CompTIA or Microsoft certs it might finally mean something. I think the participants would almost have to specialize in one aspect vs. hitting all at once. Between back links/link prospecting, conversions, analytics, paid inclusion, social media.. would be much better to get very specific on one vs. being somewhat skilled at all.

This certification idea comes around every few years or so. There are so many ways to do SEO that certification often penalizes someone because they don’t approve of a method.
I think we should work on a better hub for clients to rate companies. There are some of those out there but they don’t seem to get any traction.
The proof is in the results.

This is something that is so badly needed. There is to much misinformation out there. I know many people that do SEO work are not welcoming this, but I believe it is a positive. Just like my previous field, I would love to be able to show people that I have a degree, or certification, and that I took the time to learn from some of the best. The certs that I have looked into now, leave me thinking that they are nothing more that a weekend course over a book that I could buy at a garage sale. For those that don’t like the opportunity, just as with any other profession, more certifications and more training means more money. Embrace the changes. I hope that they happen soon.

SEO is something that is ever evolving just like web analytics. The WAA (Web Analytics Association) has a certification program that’s got little followers basically because of the price and the limited places you can actually take the certification. As someone that’s gone through the Web Analytics program at UBC I can tell you it had a lot of value based on the principles it offers. What’s good about it is that it offers the foundation to build on and approach from a professional angle.

In SEO there’s no such professional angle at the moment and the only thing distinguishing us is our web analytics and Adwords certifications which is something. However, I think we can all agree some standards in SEO are necessary. The misinformation out there and garbage I keep hearing about SEO is really hurting the industry. One of people’s biggest complaints about SEMPO currently is that their courses are quite dated. ISO accredited certifications are required to update content every three years but when it comes to SEO it would be at the very least annually to be productive.

While I doubt most search professionals are going to give up most of their proprietary information/sources on search there’s definitely a lot of us that would be more than happy to share the fundamentals to straighten out the industry. If this is going to happen things need to be current, and professional like any CompTIA or Microsoft certifications.