First off, if you are looking for a Certified SEO to build your SERPS rank, or if you are a SEO looking to be certified, it is probably a scam. Google (or any company I know off) do not run such a certification, and I would treat a company that vaunts one with suspicion.
Should there be a certification for SEO’s?
A lot of people want it. Customers who don’t quite understand SEO feel they need protection that a certification provides. And service providers who want to show their commitment to a published code of quality, ethics and fair-play. The support of a well known and official organisation helps overcome a lot of suspicion in the mind of a buyer. It shows a general commitment to honest behaviour in a formalised context. It may all seem very fair and noble, but is it even possible in an industry like Search Engine Optimization? I don’t think that it is…
Good people want a badge that says they are ‘good’, it will surely lead to more work when people know it… right? Bad people want certification because it makes what they do seem more effective, important and ‘good’. ‘What the hell right? It will just be a light marketing-ethics course some ‘W3C’ stuff… we can send the office geek to that and ‘Bam!’ we stick the oak leaf cluster on the website right next to “Number 1 on Google Guaranteed*”
The Beauty Contest Accreditation Problem
I don’t think that you will ever see such a thing as an SEO accreditation. The idea seems as silly as having accreditation for beauty contest contestant advisers. In every sense an SEO will market themselves as providing the ultimate advantage. When the truth is they simply make a website what is should be: ‘good code that is semantically structured for indexing’. Beyond a very obvious level of optimisation you are into the realm or good research, good content, good promotion, and relevant network building.
Google does not, and would not endorse an SEO accreditation scheme any quicker than the Miss World Contest would endorse a Plastic Surgery provider as the best choice for ‘competition winning breasts’. Any endorsement by Google of an SEO standard implies knowledge of the ranking algorithm that is secret and constantly changing.
Google endorses a sort of natural beauty of websites that shouldn’t be manufactured. But in the real world of beauty contests and SERPs pages it doesn’t hurt to pay someone to rub Vaseline on your teeth and tape your bikini to your ass! What an SEO does clearly lies in a similar moral space of augmented beauty. “Include these key phrases in your speech: ‘World Peace’ and ‘Children are our future’.” Sound familiar?
Simple advice before hiring an SEO company
Here is my (very) simple advice for people looking for an SEO company. Anything done that can be called SEO (as well as any web marketing formal and informal) can be covered by The Advertising Standards Authority (or the equivalent in your country). These bodies publish guidelines for standards of honesty and morality that you should understand to the point where you can have a real discussion with your prospective SEO company.
Before you hire an SEO You should also have a good understanding of the Google Webmaster guidelines. When you want an SEO you are basically looking to outsource Webmaster responsibilities (As well as some marketing responsibilities). And like housekeeping, you should know what those duties are even if you choose to have someone else do them.
As for technical accreditation for web code: If you were only going to allow someone certified in Microsoft .Net to build it in the first place, then you want someone with the same certification to open the code and make any changes you want.
Ultimately no accreditation will protect you from unethical people in any area of business. People without ethics know how to appear to have them; it is the only way they can gain advantage by not having them. Usually the problem for the ethical person in business is to show you have them without looking suspect… but that is discussion for another time.
Philip Markwick is the principal at Papershark Media, a Online Media & Design Company mostly serving companies in Surrey, Hants, Berkshire & London.
Contact Phil at phil@papershark.co.uk about blogs, business, media… anything!
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by philipmarkwick: Should SEO’s have a certification? And why Google will never give it! Check out my latest blog entry: http://bit.ly/1bSvKU…
I agree with your last sentence, unethical SEO companies are all over the place. But, I do believe that a certification provided by a “authority” can make a difference. e.g The top search engines can provide one certification. or something on similar lines. I have come across so many clients who are vary of SEO organizations after wasting money with the scammer SEO orgs.
It’s too late. There are already a variety of search marketing “certifications” available. One in the US that comes to mind is http://www.sempoinstitute.com/faqs/general-faqs.aspx. Another is HubSpot.
Enron and more recent financial debacles demonstrate that not only certifications but even legal responsibility do not maintain an industry’s pristine reputation.
SEO is still relatively new and like other industries over time, it will mature and the market place will learn “how to shop” for these services more effectively.
Certifications to demonstrate knowledge at a point in time may be helpful. They are not however a silver bullet that will eliminate all the bad players in a relatively small industry.
One of the best efforts to be made in burnishing the SEO reputation is to set a very good example in our own work.
I cannot agree with this article, the reason being that certification would lead to better standards and guidelines. There is no ’secret formula’ but just the correct way of doing things for your SEO would lead to better results on the internet.
Am alot in favour of any international certification.