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Avatar Went Hot: January 28, 2008 - 3:44 pm
Posted By: martinibuster 178 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.netmagellan.com)
Category: In House SEM
Thoughtful post discussing the challenges of verifying the qualifications of prospective SEO/M employees.
7 Comments     

Comments

from iBrian 177 days ago #
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"The main barrier is ego."

IMO the main barrier is impracticality - the only way to verify a SEO's real impact is to demonstrate client positions - but do that, and you invite confidentiality, intellectual property, contractual, and competitive advantage issues.

People new to SEO define themselves not through certification but through success, the likes of which other SEO's will inevitably notice as their own walled gardens are breached.

2c.

from trainsem 177 days ago #
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OK, I can see how success is getting equated with certification. I refer to certification as a baseline qualification, not the pinnacle.

If I were certified, I could answer correctly the fundamental questions of SEO theory above some minimum  threshold (80%?) and show some period of experience, say, six months. I would not need to list any successful examples.

The effort to gain success varies depending on niche, so it would be unfair to compare someone who gets a top 10 result for "debt consolidation" versus someone who gets #1 for "Lower Podunk cosmetic surgery".

Compare to the movie industry. Actors can go to acting school and get a diploma and others can simply get plucked off the street. But the Oscars, etc are the reward for success.

from wheel 177 days ago #
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This is a very tough thing to pin down, something I've chewed on through the years.

There are two considerations IMO. First is actual training - taking someone fresh and showing them how to do effective SEO. I think to a certain extent that may actually be doable. You can teach someone 80% of what we do. I mean, SEO is either onpage or offpage stuff, boil it all down from there. Certainly an SEO expert doesn't need to be the super Google killer, just know enough to rank most sites for some decent secondary terms. There's folks like sugarrae and jim boykin that already have systems to train newbs to the point where they can do SEO. So it can be done.

The second consideration is ensuring that the certification actually means something - that they did prove they know how to practice SEO. So you define some standards, number of links, give them a nonsense term and make them rank, so on.

It's doable, but will the SEO community actually be interested in enough volume to make this profitable? Doubtful. As has been noted, the top tier SEO's are known by their results and pick up their clients on the web and at conferences and networking not through some professional certification.

So, great idea. It's needed. But my suspicion is that there's little paying market for it. What's to be done? Well, if I was an enterprising SEO retailer I'd be sitting here thinking to myself, wheel (that's what I'd be thinking), wheel old fella, I should develop a decent online training course and make it available for free or very low cost. Then allow people to post "I'm an SEO professional" badge on their site. Said badge of course links back to my site for verification purposes....ala better business bureau. Does that give me large numbers of ontopic decent PR relevant backlinks to my SEO site? Why yes wheel, I believe it does. Do it online and for free, and you'll have the entire DP forum at your doorstep. Heck, if the certification was halfway decent, I'd give out some backlinks myself.

And here I am being accused in another thread of not knowing how to develop decent one way inbounds in competitive sectors. :)

from crazycat 177 days ago #
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Especially that many are now into SEO, only those who are real pros should be given certificates. Meaning, they've gone trainings and the sample/s of what they have done like a maintained site.

from peteyoung 176 days ago #
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I think there is one point missing here as well - much of the conversation here seems to be whether there is a market for it - however this seems to be purely biased to the SEO market in particular.

Surely however - any such certification is only going to gain popularity if there is demand from the wider public - ie clients which as yet there is not and I would suggest most commercial decisions regarding SEO in particular are based purely on experience/results or price (often I would suggest not the best metric to base such a decision on).

I have tackled this issue here based on the original Net Magellan post

from singpec476 176 days ago #
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Certification does guarantee success or show any kind of experience only showing your work can do this either by example or by trial. If you are top of your game you do not need certification or a job for that matter as you have the ability to promote any product to the top of the search engines.

from trainsem 176 days ago #
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Perhaps there is a good case for annual or biennial SEO certification as is the case with MCSE (when I last looked, which wasn't recently). A 1999 SEO qualification is worthless.


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