This is a post I initally pusblished in Portuguese way back in 2008, but I think it’s useful to have it in English as well since I’ve noticed some buzz about it on Twitter and some blogs I follow. But before I start let me get this out of the way: this is my personal opinion on the subject, although Google’s take might not be very far from this.
We all know that Google certifies Analytics Partners (GACP), AdWords Partner (GAP), among other Google Partner Programs available. If we take AdWords as an example — in which basically you can become certified either as an individual or a business or both — in order to obtain a GAP certification, you must go trough the AdWords Certification Program. Upon successful completion of the test/exam you will receive an “AdWords Qualified Professional” or “AdWords Qualified Individual” badge that you can happily display in your site.
A Google AdWords Certified Professional manages AdWords accounts for clients by creating and setting-up campaigns and doing the necessary adjustments to ensure the maximum ROI (Return On Investment). Such adjustments are always made trough the AdWords API or web interface and often have to comply with AdWords policies in order to get approved. In other words, not only this is something that doesn’t happen physically on a site, but Google has the control of approving or suspending any kind of activity that infringes on policy and best practices. To sum up, neither the Analytics Partner or AdWords Professional certifications interfere with the organic ranking of a website.
Now lets imagine Google would certify someone as an SEO Professional. After providing SEO certification Google would be partially responsible for any actions and techniques executed by a professional in any website on the Internet. It would be nearly impossible to guarantee that a professional would always comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. SEO is something that belongs and should remain in the private side of a website or professional, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want Google to control everything what you put in or take out of any website! I don’t think anybody would… All Google wants is to control the quality of its index.
Google always liked to keep money away from the organic part of Search, this in one of the main pillars that allows the Search Quality team to treat big and small websites equally and fairly. Independently of any site having any relation with Google or being a client of any other Google product — although some of you might think differently.
And in a nutshell, this is why Google doesn’t provide SEO certification :^)
See also Matt Cutts take on SEO certification:
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it would be impossible for google to certify SEO
* what happens when you hire a google certified SEO and your site does not rise to the top of the SERP? do you complain to google?
* what happens when google changes the algorithm? how does it decide to notify the people who have become certified, versus the other who are not.
*would certified people have an inside track to the algorithm? very dangerous to even suggest, but if you did there would be many who would believe it
* if google certified SEO, then it would be promoting building web sites based on SEO, instead of based on visitors, content, product, services, etc. … this would not be a good thing for the internet
* if google certified SEO then the SERP page would take on a different outlook as visitors would believe that the top links have been manipulated by “google”, instead of the most objective pages based on merit
I have been saying this for years that Google should have some sort of SEO certification. The fact is that Google hates SEO people because for the most part we push data in an unnatural fashion at times by understanding how the search engines work. Google should offer a web marketing certification because the SEO people who do it the right way really push the marketing approach.