SEOcertification.org certification is pretty much meaningless. I wouldn't trust it, and I don't know anyone else who would.

First, ask yourself if this certification provider is even up to snuff in their SEO skills. This particular site is not. Kris cracked me up on his post about seocertification.org :

"Before I’m even 10 seconds into the site I note that they didn’t even apply one of the most basic SEO fundamentals: Canonicalization

Observe:
http://seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org/index.php
http://seocertification.org/index.php"

The lack of fundamental canonicalization on their site is just one of many telltale signs of weak SEO-fu. It's 3/13/2013 now, at almost 3:13p.m. and their site looks dated circa 2006. Goodness, they even have text written on to images..! And what's more, their images lack keyword-rich filenames and have no alt tags at all! images/featuredImage.jpg" alt="" /> just ain't good SEO. I wouldn't trust them to teach me. If they are true masters, such as, perhaps Yoast or SEOmoz, they'd practice what they preach.

A better way to learn and master SEO is to learn by doing.

Build your own site, and then optimize it for people and search engines. Follow the checklists and tremendous detail here at SEOmoz, and participate in the forums here if you can't find an answer for your question first by searching the SEOmoz blogs.

If you want to learn SEO but don't want to develop your own site, you can always help build links to my site about rap similes and metaphors, Glennraps.com. Perhaps test your skills by trying to improve the ranking of the glennraps search result for https://www.google.com/search?q=haters+in+las+vegas&pws=0 

Good luck and godspeed!

Strategy A: Gather small bits of information gradually through "squeeze pages" and membership offerings leading to pre-filled forms, or the altogether elimination of the need for forms, with the data gathered from these squeeze pages along the way.

Strategy B: Try to gather all relevant information about a customer in one big form at the time they want whatever you got behind the form.

Success of strategies varies with niche. I generally recommend the longer term relationship building of Strategy A -- gathering small bits of information along the way, and developing the relationship between the brand and the customer as one gets closer to sale.

Thanks Steve!

You got me thinking about a related issue -- if links that sent referral traffic were VALUED more than links that didn't, one could easily game the system by sending mechanical turk traffic through a link, or something similar... so if that's a factor, it's likely an irrelevant one.

Kind regards!

Thanks for the great feedback and advice - in particular, for separating the facts from the speculation (which was also good stuff).

Now, I just have to find that perfect image of Link building (something).... the one I attached to this comment just doesn't work without explanation... hehe

gb-zelda.jpg

If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO?

Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic?

Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links?

5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg

I really like your list. Patience, consistency, and continual learning is the truly the core "skill set".

Indeed. I tried to explain this truth to my employer once. He didn't get it. Now he's not my employer, and their site's traffic plummeted to 30% of what it was when I "spent half my day farting around".

Farting around isn't. It's accessing inspiration. It's competitive research. It's market research. It's natural link-building. It's accessing actionable information. It's expanding your mind to think outside the box of your perceptions. It's relationship-building. It's really important, even though it's difficult to forecast the ROI of such "R&D"

Indeed. I tried to explain this truth to my employer once. He didn't get it. Now he's not my employer, and their site's traffic plummeted to 30% of what it was when I "spent half my day farting around".

Farting around isn't. It's accessing inspiration. It's competitive research. It's market research. It's natural link-building. It's accessing actionable information. It's expanding your mind to think outside the box of your perceptions. It's relationship-building. It's really important, even though it's difficult to forecast the ROI of such "R&D"

Thanks Steve!

You got me thinking about a related issue -- if links that sent referral traffic were VALUED more than links that didn't, one could easily game the system by sending mechanical turk traffic through a link, or something similar... so if that's a factor, it's likely an irrelevant one.

Kind regards!

If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO?

Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic?

Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links?

5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg