Today I have to think, is this not the time to get SEO certification? Our search engine optimization industry is still young so have lots of non-professionals who are taking seo on a course where webmasters and website owners have to ask some stupid questions like “Is seo dying?” what answer can an expert SEO give to such brainless question? I don’t say I am an expert but this immature behavior has really put me in turmoil of thinking about exploiters who are claiming to offer search engine optimization certifications.

Is this the way to go in this high potential seo industry? All major search engines have their own strategies to rank websites. Whether its Google, yahoo or MSN, no search engine will reveal its myths of search engine rankings as it is their source of success which claims them million dollars of business each year. Then how these so called SEO colleges or SEO institutes claim to offer SEO certification for few dollars and in one month or even in some cases they say to get search engine optimization certification in a matter of few days. How? How is this possible? What I can say it more than a certification scam?

It has taken long time for SEO experts to define basics of SEO and still these SEO experts are in the age of learning things and improving their SEO knowledge. Competition is increasing as more and more people are coming into the industry each day so search engines are revising their ranking rules day by day. Then let me ask one question, how an seo certificate obtained in 2008 can be valid in 2009 or in coming age of SEO?

With the school of thoughts who are considering SEO as an ever evolving field, there should be some thing that can give a better comparison of professional and non-professional people in the industry. But who will decide the worth? Will this be an organization run by industry professionals or some other way of checking its legitimacy? In this regard one professional organization SEMPO is taking measures to combine people and ensure the professionalism in our industry.  Still for some organizations like this I am of the view “we can not afford politics in our field by promoting only few people”.

Our Search engine optimization field is very vast so no one have rights to make any seo conduct on his own. Only search engines can decide their ways of optimization so why we should pay these politicized organizations.

Finally, need is there but who will evaluate its worth? There might be a time when major search engines will think about it but still at present there is no legitimate search engine optimization certification available. It would have been good if we can have one like Google Adwords Professionals. For the time being I am of the view, experience is the best certificate. Though certificate is a handy thing in professional environment but true value of a certification is not in the piece of paper rather its in the experience gained by working in competitive environment along with professionals who live with SEO on daily basis.