Is SEO Certification Valuable or Not?

There has been plenty of discussion about SEO certification in the search engine marketing world and to date there is still no standardized or recognized method that can be applied throughout the industry. Probably never will be, at least until major universities start offering degrees.

So why bother with certification? It’s a very good question so I’d like to examine it in a little more detail. First I think we need to expand the question and ask not only is it of value overall, but is it valuable to you as an individual.

Some comments that come up fairly often:
1. There is no industry-wide accepted method of SEO certification and therefore it is meaningless.
2. SEO/SEM certification is not valuable because the industry keeps changing. What you learn this year may not apply next year and your certification will then be useless.
3. If you have a portfolio of past work that illustrates your knowledge and success you don’t need certification.

Let’s examine these ideas.
1. There is no industry standard SEO certification but that does not mean there are no good SEO training programs out there. Valuable training does indeed exist. If you are looking for a good program that offers certification make sure the organization and instructors have some credentials. How long have they been around? Can they demonstrate their own success? What do past students say about the training?
2. If the industry keeps changing, what good is certification issued in the past? Depending on the individual it may not be any good at all. One thing that a good SEO training program should do is teach you how to keep up with an ever-changing industry, but whether you take the time to do that depends on your own personal commitment to your business and clients. Annual re-certification from a credible organization can demonstrate that you are committed to learning the latest skills and not using outdated practices. It will also ensure you are getting your information from trusted sources and not picking up any of the vast amount of nonsense and rumour that proliferate on the internet.
3. If you have an extensive portfolio of results certification may be of less value to you. But what if you are relatively new to search engine marketing or your past work has been for an employer who does not allow you to share client results for confidentiality reasons? Certification/recertification completed in the current year can help not only with securing clients but also finding a job with an SEM firm. The more you know, the less they will have to teach you and the quicker you will be of value to them.

So do you need SEO certification? It depends. If you’re a seasoned industry professional with your own reliable method of staying current, probably not. If you are still building your career, if you are relatively new to the world of search engines or if you want to make yourself more employable it can be extremely beneficial.

If provided by a credible organization, basic SEO training and certification will ensure you start off with the right skill set and are armed with the tools you need to keep up to date. Advanced SEO training and certification can help you progress much more quickly to the skills that others have spent years learning.

So the question becomes not whether SEO certification is valuable, but whether it is valuable to YOU. And it is crucial to remember that once you have received your training you are never finished learning. Changes in search engine technologies and policies are guaranteed. Certification and regular re-certification will demonstrate that you are committed to ongoing learning and are skilled in the latest techniques.

Tags: certification, seo, seo certification, seo training

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 8:18 am and is filed under Articles and Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.