It’s not always easy to be a SEO professional . It’s an industry like lawyers and plastic surgeons. There are great ones, but there are so many bad ones that the entire industry has a bad name. Now, SEO has come a long way from where it was 5-6 years ago and when first meeting with clients they slightly more informed on the concept of SEO then they were in the past. The only bad thing about this is that the information that they have is from bad SEO agencies. Things like meta keywords affecting SERP, being able to rank for a keyword you aren’t using, ranking for keywords that has no relevance to your site, SEO is a “Quick Fix”, Inbound links are the only way Google determines a site’s authority, SEO is a one time thing, and my all time personal favorite SEO Certifications.
There are so many of these less then honest, phony, scheming SEO companies in the market that are still infecting our industry with their on going “zombie lies” about organic SEO that are infecting their clients.
So in defense of the all of the honest and hard working agencies that have researched, studied, and evolved with the industry I am dedicating an area to put these lies and their companies on notice; expose their lies, and finally give these “zombie lies” a bit of mercy.
My 1st topic is going to cover my all time favorite lie!
Google SEO Qualified Professional
This is 100% fake / phony certification.
Google does not offer a SEO certification, they offer an Adwords certification but not a SEO certification. This is actually what inspired me to start this category. It’s really frustrating to see companies make up these fake certifications or add the certified Adwords partner badge to their site without actually having the certification. The exams to become a Google Adwords Certified Professional are long and difficult exams, and as someone who has completed and passed the exams it’s frustrating to see companies add badges to their site’s without actually completing the certifications.
This is the real Adwords Certification badge –
The badge will always be linked to the partners profile page –
Matt Cutts, works for Google in their web spam team, he explains more about this in the video below.