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Why SEO certification fails and how to fix the problem

Posted by Michael Martinez on August 27, 2007 in SEO Theory

Certification without standards is like grease without oil. You cannot ceritify anyone in an industry that has no standards. But how do you establish standards in an industry where people are paidly mostly to make guesses and try stuff that may or may not work?

The search engine optimization community does not agree on even the most basic definitions of terms (how well does your SEO glossary stack up against everyone else’s?). What, for example, does “search engine marketing” refer to? A lot of PPC people will give you one answer, a lot of PPC people will give you another answer.

Last October David Temple submitted an essay to Marketing Pilgrim that questioned the value of SEO certification programs. He raised some good points, but the most important one is the issue of standards — the lack of which has been widely recognized throughout the industry for years.

To the best of my knowledge, you can presently pay for an SEO certification at:

1. The Organization of Search Engine Optimization Professionals
2. Search Engine College
3. The Search Engine Marketing Profesionals Association
4. The Society of Internet Professionals
5. The Direct Marketers Association

I wouldn’t trust any of these certifications. If someone submitted an SEO resume to me that prominently featured a certification from one of these groups, I would not be impressed. There is no reason to be impressed with someone who pays for certification in an industry with no standards.

If we’re going to certify ourselves, the first thing we have to do is establish what the standards are. That doesn’t mean gleaning “best practices” from search engine Webmaster guidelines pages. It means determining what practices achieve optimal performance, taking all moral and ethical issues into consideration. To build a base of accepted standards, you need a community dialogue. That means you need a fair and impartial place to discuss ideas and share differences of opinion.

I don’t know of any SEO forums or blogs where the owners/admins do not currently ban people with whom they disagree. I don’t know of any SEO forums or blogs where all the leading voices in the industry come together. I don’t know of any leading voices in the industry who have not been blocked or banned on one or more SEO blogs and forums. I can think of two SEO forums where I was banned because people didn’t like the fact that I was blowing their crap theories out of the water with extensive citations and links to reputable sources of information that showed they didn’t know what they were talking about.

i.e., bias runs higher than B.S. in this industry. That’s a problem if you’re trying to establish standards.

Why on Earth should I or anyone else want to be certified in a program that caters to populist SEO myths? What assurances do we have that any of these SEO certifications don’t rely upon low-grade SEO ideas and tactics?

You have to have open discussion, unfettered if moderated, where everyone is treated equally. That means you cannot ban people or restrict their posting rights just because you don’t agree with what they say. That also means you cannot use your position as editor/moderator/admin to follow up to someone and try to discredit what they say on the basis of your authoritative position.

That means you need a true peer-review process where people write formal papers, publish them, and present them at conferences. That means you have an eons-long debate regarding the optimization of search listings through on-page and off-page factors.

It also means you have to have a truly professonal conference, not a trade show where people come together to share opinions, ideas, and business cards. A professional conference combines panels with solo presentations of studies, experiments, responses to papers, etc. You have to have a true SEO theory conference, not some gathering in the desert where people party and drink and tell each other it’s all about links.

The partying can happen, but the substance of a truly professional conference is very different from the schmoozing and cozy little get-togethers people have on-stage. There is no place for Web site clinics and “meet the search engineers” at professional SEO conferences. Representatives of the major search engines don’t have any incentive to be fair and impartial.

Now, I have, in the past, called upon the major search engines to offer core certifications for search marketers in their basic technologies. I would still want to see that. I would want the search engineers to attend a professional conference to explain and defend and promote their technologies and requirements. I would not want them to be treated as the final voices of authority because, frankly, they still have a lot to learn about search and I think if you asked them “Do you have a lot left to learn about search?” they would agree with me.

Without an impartial forum there is no hope of a concensus in the SEO community. Without an opportunity for every voice to be heard, there is no chance of establishing standards. Without a record of dialogue (blog posts from the audience don’t count), there is no hope of establishing credibility on the issues.

A great first step toward building the standards we need would be to convene the first Search Optimizaton Congress with the intention of defining the industry’s standards. There would have to be a Call For Papers. There would have to be a large committee of volunteers to review the papers (no single editorial authority would be acceptable). There would have to be a focus on letting people talk about what the industry is. There would have to be a sergeant-at-arms to escort out anyone who wants to talk about why their Web site doesn’t rank.

The congress must be announced at least a year in advance. Let people talk about it on the Web. Let people volunteer for the committees. Let people have the opportunity to save their money to purchase memberships and make travel arrangements.

The congress must publish quarterly progress reports, including who submitted which papers, who has volunteered to join which committees, and what the committees have been able to accomplish.

The congress organizers would have to be the first volunteers to step up to the plate. They would also have to step aside AT THE CONGRESS and give up control over the proceedings to a board elected by the members in attendance. The candidates for board membership would have to be announced in advance (last quarterly report before the Congress). The members would have to vote on candidates at the opening ceremonies.

Would that be clunky? You’d better believe it. The clunkiness would be the first staggering step out of the lethargy of commercialized certification grabbing toward establishing a truly professional industry.

Every organization that wants to have its certification standards considered and accepted would have to open them up to inspection prior to the congress. That doesn’t mean publish your tests and course work. It does mean, however, publish an extensive list of bullet points about what your certification requires along with the rationalization behind each bullet point.

Every proposed standard would be reveiwed and discussed at the congress (and, ideally, people would come prepared — having read the materials in advance and made notes).

The congress would vote on initial standards, appoint permanent organizing committees, and decide whether to issue its own certification or do something else. Personally, I would be okay with certifying the certification programs (program accreditation). If the various groups offering SEO certification agree to accreditation, then the SEO congress would not have to become the policing organization of the SEO industry. It would set a mark that anyone could shoot for on the basis of community ideas and consensus.

There should be one or more professional journals that publish true SEO theory papers, not the white wash tips and pointers articles we get in various Web marketing magazines. You’ll see considerable improvement in search engine optimization when people understand why shlock analysis like using Yahoo! Site Explorer to look at your backlinks is a waste of time. You’ll see companies demanding more consistent reporting tools, more flexibility in optimization, and greater attention to fundamental principles.

Fewer people will babble endlessly about “links, links, links”. Some people will always hang on to the garbage ideas that permeate SEO forums and blogs. And spammers will probably wear two hats. A truly standards-based certification has to look at why optimization works and leave the ethical issues aside for a different level of discussion. If you mix certification with ethics, you lose credibility because no two people’s moral perspectives are exactly the same.

SEO certification fails because it reflects the personal values of the people offering the certification. SEO certification is not open, not accredited by any governing body, and not likely to ever become an effective tool for organizing a community of diverse opinion.

If even 60% of the companies that have a serious investment in search engine optimizaton come together to form the first congress, you’ll see an amazing transformation in this industry over the course of about 2 years. A lot of the so-called “best practices” will be dropped from SEO technique discussions. New faces will appear because they take the business more seriously, conduct themselves more professionally, and prove they can really truly analyze the search process and document their observations.

The days of the cowboy SEOs who share glib comments on blogs won’t be over, but they’ll stop speaking for the industry except when the media want to find someone to look “slimy”. And you won’t lose your party conferences. They may even proliferate down to the local level. That trend has already begun. But the more professional conference will eventually help colleges and universities develop adequate programs to prepare people for careers in search.

In the meantime, don’t put so much value into the certificate you get from any particular organization. None of them speak for the industry. They certainly don’t speak for me. And until they are willing to put their methodologies and principles up for public scrutiny, they are no better for the rest of us than black hats sharing ideas in private forums.

We’ll only have SEO standards when we finally have truly open discussion of how we do the things we do.