SEO Certification: Scam or Necessity? >>

Companies that are in the SEO certification business appear to be trying to bridge the gap between trust and education in an industry that is fairly new and currently without a central governing body.

The problem with the term 'Certified SEO Consultant' is with the term 'Certified'. The search engines do not certify anyone in SEO, but do give basic guidelines. Google even lists theirs under webmaster guidelines, but they do not specifically tell anyone or show anyone the criteria on how to rank a website in the top ten on Google for the term 'SEO Certification'.

If you were in the financial consulting business and desired to become a financial planner, you could study to become a CFP - a Certified Financial Planner. In order to achieve a designation as a certified financial planner, you would receive third party training, as you would if you desired to achieve a SEO Certification.

The main difference with a CFP designation and an SEO certification (other than the fact that they are for two different industries) is the fact that it the CFP designation is administered by the CFP Board (the creator of the CFP designation) and to possess the CFP designation - means that you studied and passed a uniform set of exams and adhered to a set of uniform standards, which isn't the case with SEO.

Why? Because a uniform set of standards does not exist in the search engine optimization industry. The one thing that is certain in the SEO industry is the fact that no one seems to agree on anything and the search engines are forever changing the ranking criteria - which they do not disclose anyway.

So how should someone go about becoming SEO Certified? The only true SEO Certifications, in relation to the way all other accredited certifications are issued, should come from directly from the search engines themselves, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask - AOL is not a search engine, they are a portal that currently uses Google's search engine as their own.

Now the problem with this is one fold, none of the search engines offer, not planning to offer a SEO certification on how to manipulate their search results.

With all of that said, is SEO Certification still worthwhile? As an educational tool maybe, but not as an actual certification standard for an industry that is not bound by traditional training methods.

And when the costs are factored in, which can be in the thousands, the concept of becoming a certified SEO professional becomes a bit more questionable.

The question then becomes, how can a third party offer a SEO certification? These companies, some very respectable, are not part of, nor affiliated with any of the search engines. They did not invent, work on, or develop the search engine algorithms. And surely they are not authorized, nor sanctioned by any of the search engines to offer a SEO certification.

So why do companies offer SEO Certifications, when all of the search engines are so very different from each one and other, and none of the search engines endorse it? The bottom line becomes more evident...because there is someone willing to pay for it. Post a comment.

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