SEO Certifications? What is good/recommended? Is it still relevant?
-
Hi All,
I'd really like to up my expert game in the SEO/PPC/Web Optimization game and I'd really like to get some strong credentials. So, I'm looking for some legit certifications. Of course, besides Google Analytics/Adwords Certs, is there anything else people here recommend? Is SEMPO still relevant? Check these out:
http://www.sempo.org/events/event_details.asp?id=298553
http://www.instantetraining.com/online-marketing-workshop/coached/seo-training
Let me know what you think! Thank you.
Cheers,
Pedram -
Good point yet again, EGOL. Thank you.
-
SEO is a competitive industry. You are going out there to fight the heavyweight champ. Do you want to send a guy who has kickass rankings or do you want to send the guy who sipped coffee and farted through a bunch of meetings?
I point to the Adwords professional exam. What is the passing score? Do you want a guy doing bidding who got a 70% on his exam? That means 30% of your money is being blown. Google should require 98% for a passing score.
-
All,
Thanks so much for your help. All great answers.
So, you all are saying that even for the sake of added leverage to be considered (eventually) at expert level, no extra "stamps on the resume" besides actual work is recommended?
-
Being able to point to a site in difficult SERPs that has white-hat kick-ass rankings and being able to say that you helped that site succeed should be fairly good proof.... but then there is the question of how much did that cost vs how much is the site earning.
Honestly... so many people go to training sessions to sit there, sip coffee and fart... they are putting in their time away from the office thinking that they are getting educated. Field performance paired with ROI is the only real metric that you can count on.
And.... an SEO who turns down jobs because he can't see good potential ROI in the project for the client is probably an honest person and a good SEO. How many SEOs turn down jobs for that reason?
-
As Chris stated, I think salesmanship and discussing your experience weighs heaviest. Typically, when I recruit (btw-not very much), I focus specifically on what the candidate has done in the real world. Specifically project examples & experiences and ask questions like this:
- What was the issue/problem that the site was facing?
- How did you come to that conclusion?
- What data did you looked at and what tools did you use?
- What did you use as a baseline for measurement and why?
- What strategies did you implement to overcome that issue?
Quickly you can access if the candidate knows what they are talking about. So IMHO, I think describing projects you worked on weighs much more heavily than a bunch of fragmented certs you can place on your resume.
-
In this ballgame, I don't think you can put "expertise" and "certification" in the same sentence and have them mean what you hope they will to peers, clients, and employers. I don't know of any certification that industry experts will agree is a must have in order to call yourself and expert. I don't know if many legitimate experts could actually pass so-called certification tests put out by many of the courses out there--on the first go, anyway. And, I think most employers are generally confused about the whole shebang--they can't look to any specific certification as an ideal employee requirement, they can't wrap their arms around the specific skill sets they require or whether a prospective employee has a good grasp on them or not.
As Vadim states, there is a lot of "who-you-know " in this industry. There's also a lot of get-your-foot-in-the-door through salesmanship involved. That said, it's possible Market Motive might be as close as you can get but to tell you the truth, I don't know of anyone who's taken the course or read any reviews on it.
-
Hi Pedram,
Generally not so relevant in this creativity, experience, and w_ho-you-know_ focused industry.
Here are more thoughts here at moz on the topic:
http://moz.com/community/q/is-seo-certification-org-worth-having
http://moz.com/community/q/certification-of-internal-seo-training
http://moz.com/community/q/seo-certification-seo-experience-ideal-seo-consultant
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Attributing Lead Source/Medium on Squarespace forms
Hi Mozzers Happy new year! We've recently picked up a client for some PPC and SEO work and their website is built using Squarespace. It's a B2B business, so enquiries don't always get sent straight from a landing page. Often a user hits our desired landing pages then checks out a few other pages before sending an enquiry. The problem we have is with attaching the source/medium of a lead to the enquiry that we receive. For example if Joe Bloggs completes a form, what we'd like to receive is:
Paid Search Marketing | | ZestUK
Name: Joe Bloggs
Email: joe.bloggs@email.com
Phone: 123456
Source: Google
Medium: CPC With the latter as hidden fields. We've tried the hidden field feature built into the form builder, but this only works if the user completes the form on the landing page they arrived on without leaving the page. We've tried to used event tracking but this only gives us accuracy on the number of enquiries from that channel, not who the user was that enquired, so we can't consolidate with our order and revenue report to work out ROI from each activity. Has anybody in the community ever solved this issue on Squarespace? Thanks
Mark0 -
Adwords inital offer / plan towards a client
This must have beeen asked before, but I have been Googleing all day to find a sample offer made by some premium agency. I am working on my very first Adwords offer and although I certainly have my own ideas what to include, I would love to see an offer that has a great flow and layout. Could somebody please give me a link where I can find something?
Paid Search Marketing | | Valdo22220 -
Does sitewide SEO affect PPC Quality Score?
When evaluating a PPC landing page for Quality Score, does Google evaluate the other pages that the landing page is linked to? For example, if we have a well optimized page on the site for "Widgets", can it outscore a well optimized PPC landing page that is isolated in a "disallow" directory with no links into or out of the page? I'm not sure if I am making myself clear...
Paid Search Marketing | | CsmBill0 -
What is a good CTR for a Google AdWords Remarketing banner campaign?
Hello there, given that in the banners we offer a promotion with "some bonus if you sign up", what is from your experience a good CTR for a Google AdWords Remarketing banner campaign? Many thanks to everyone that answers. YESdesign
Paid Search Marketing | | YESdesign0 -
Is ReachLocal Killing My SEO Work?
I have a customer that I did SEO work for. I cleaned up title tags, content, image tags, the works. Recently, they signed up with Reach Local to do some Pay Per Click. The problem/question I have is that reach local completely copied the entire site and put it on their server. So all my work for this company is now completely replicated. Now there are two sites. ex. windowname.com and windowname.reachlocal.net. It appears they do this for all their customers. Does Google view this as duplicate content? Does my regular website lose positioning to the more powerful ReachLocal?
Paid Search Marketing | | smartlinksolutions0 -
Best Way Optimize SEO for a Multi-service Company Serving Puget Sound, WA.
We offer several services (carpet cleaning, tile cleaning, fire & water restoration and rug cleaning and repair) in about a 50 mile geographic area (Puget Sound, WA.) We have optimized our main site, set up 4 microsites to support our main services and are now running 4 Adwords campaigns. We believe we are on the right track, but would like to hear from others who have multiple products/services to sell primarily in about 10 major city areas. What has worked for you? Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | ibizworks0 -
Recommended tools for PPC competitive intelligence?
Do you guys have any tools you recommend for spying on your PPC competition? Trying to figure out which competitive intelligence tool offers the most value. http://searchengineland.com/tips-for-spying-on-your-ppc-competitors-89988
Paid Search Marketing | | qlkasdjfw0 -
PPC + SEO - Both well ranked, which penalty if there's any.
Hello everyone, I have a doubt about the PPC and SEO. For example if i rank at first page ( something like 5th position ) for one specific keyword, and then I decide to add this keyword to my PPC campaign. My 5th rank will be penalized by google if i buy the PPC keyword ? Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | augustos0