I do believe… there’s no such thing as Google certification for SEO. I do! I do!
Have you ever wondered whether it’s possible to get some sort of endorsement, approval or extra accreditation from Google if you’re an SEO firm?
Sometimes you might see on SEO company websites a line which says ‘we are Google approved’. People look at that and think “Oh, they’re Google certified or approved, that means they must be a great SEO company to work with.”
The truth is, there is no Google certification program or endorsement or approval process for SEO companies that somehow gives them extra favor in Google’s eyes. It just doesn’t exist.
The closest thing is the AdWords certification program where you get the chance to demonstrate your knowledge when it comes to AdWords. But let’s be quite clear about this, that is for AdWords and has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO!
So, if you see companies saying they’re ‘Google approved’, run a mile. You might also ask yourself the question, what else are they bending the truth about?
You might now wonder why Melbourne SEO Services says, ‘we work with Google, Yahoo and Bing’. Simply they’re the search engines we focus on and have proven to get great results with. The majority of our attention goes to Google, since it’s sending the lion’s share of the traffic.
Hope that clears things up for you regarding the concept of Google certification for SEO. To sort out more of the facts from the fiction, give us a call here at Melbourne SEO Services.
Matt Cutts, through Google’s own YouTube channel, answered a question on whether they certifies any SEO company. He said they don’t. But he proceeded on giving tips on how to spot a good one. Primarily a company that follows their guidelines.
From what Google give out, generally all that it takes to make them happy is to simply create high quality unique content, share it with your friends, keyword optimize it without acting all spammy, and then wait for people to link to you.
Its almost like a “I wanna be a rockstar” kind of mentality really. Not the kind of thing that I would like to be certified for, even if it did exist. 🙂
I had no idea about this, I have been comparing companies and was using that as a ‘plus’ towards them- I need to go through my list of options again and weed those out- I am amazed at how many I found with that ‘claim’
I did dig on this but I cannot find any other certification from Google other than the Adwords one. Can you give us a heads up if you can find one other than this?
@Ryan
They could be rockstars in their own right, but not in every people’s eyes 🙂 At the end of the day, people find you ‘special’ if you made sense out of their questions and really offered something of value to them 🙂
@Ryan, I have a couple of blogs in Blogger for which I own the domain names. What you described is exactly what Google wants. Blogger is so clunky and their virtual police is so eagle-eyed that SEO is so hard to implement on any Blogger blog. They want SEO to happen so naturally (getting your blog picked up and linked to by passersby) that most blogs are doomed to fail.
Don’t take me wrong, I do see Google’s point but even if they do come up with an SEO certification in the future, I don’t think lots of SEO experts will be lining up to get theirs.