Given the importance of the internet in connecting organizations with their customers and audiences, search engine optimization (SEO) has become a popular activity, playing a key role in making these games.

In short, SEO is the practice of increasing website traffic with natural search results. But not just any traffic – proper traffic is needed. After all, getting millions of visitors doesn’t help if they aren’t interested in what your site has to offer.

Given the importance of SEO, it is not surprising that 64% of marketers spend time learning digital Marketing strategies. Since there are currently no SEO degrees or set up courses to become an “expert” in SEO, expertise is often acquired through hard-earned knowledge and, increasingly, through SEO certification.

After all, getting all the training needed to do SEO professionally is a tricky task as many different skills are required. For example, see our Global State of Content Marketing 2019. A person specializing in content marketing will have a mixture of strong skills (marketing, social media, strategy, statistics, etc.) and soft (like leadership, respect for deadlines, written communication).

What is an SEO Certificate?

SEO certificates are usually offered on educational platforms, digital marketing agencies, and some are often done online, which makes sense when given a job. Usually, a certificate is issued after completing an exam at the end of a particular course.

You can take courses and get certificates in beginner SEO, advanced SEO, internal marketing, link building, competitive analysis, keyword research, and much more.

Costs of obtaining certificates range from as little as thousands of dollars.

It is noteworthy that Google does not offer any kind of Google SEO certificate, so if anyone says “You are a Google Certified SEO Professional,” you are speaking ill of yourself. The search engine giant offers Google Ads, Display, AdSense, and Google Analytics certificates. Some of this applies to SEO, but, again, it is not an official SEO certificate.

Google creates a search algorithm, constantly refining it to do its job better. Therefore, in its view, it does not make much sense to offer practice certificates designed to plan the best results from its algorithms.

Is an SEO Certificate Appropriate?

Is it worth getting an SEO certificate? The answer is, depending on. If you already have a lot of SEO and customer experience and proven tracking success, you can probably do without it. If you are just starting or want to review your qualifications, a structured SEO program taught by an industry expert, with your certified understanding of certification testing, would be a good idea. If you just want an SEO expert’s certificate to add you to your LinkedIn profile or resume, it’s probably a lot of work just for the sake of appearance. However, if you are trying to hone your knowledge of specific skills and programs, it is a good way to market yourself to potential employers and clients and consult with like-minded professionals.

Excellent SEO certification programs

The following are some of the best search engine optimization certificates out there. They are offered to companies and organizations with unqualified qualifications, following well-structured courses taught by experienced professionals and well-tested tests of what is being studied.

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Course

This Internal Marketing Study is provided by HubSpot, known for its in-house marketing and sales software that helps companies attract visitors, change leads, and nearby customers. With seven lessons, 34 videos, and eight questions, the course, which lasts approximately 4.5 hours, teaches inbound marketing strategies ranging from content creation and community promotion to transforming and enhancing leads.

Well-produced videos include social media promotion, conversion strategy, lead growth, marketing, and sales coordination, conversational growth strategy, conversion strategy, customer marketing strategy, and, of course, the basics of internal marketing.

This SEO certification course is the best: Especially for beginners who want to learn more about incoming techniques and strategies.

Cost: Free.

Blueprint Training for SEO Professionals

Blueprint is a platform that provides SEO training for beginners in the industry for experienced professionals. They built courses that help with end-to-end agency management – from finding clients to doing comprehensive SEO research.

Their courses can be completed by cart or assembled, depending on your needs. Topics range from additional performance (e.g., client and agency rides) to client delivery (e.g., keyword research and professional SEO). Their site shows what courses are free or in need of money, allowing you to see what the class is like before investing in the big ones.

Other benefits of a wide range of complete training include access to all the training modules in their area, specialized webinars from industry experts, and access to the Slack private community full of like-minded professionals.

This SEO certification course is the best: Marketing professionals who want to test or expand their SEO services.

Cost: Free up to $ 2,999 with the full training package.

Any of them are easy to pass. Passes lead to brand awareness.

What’s the best SEO certification?

After researching countless Seo Certifications and taking three of them, my opinion is that there is no ‘best SEO certification.’ I can’t recommend any of the ones I completed—at least not for the certification alone.

If I were judging these ‘certifications’ for their course content, it would be a different story.

Each of the ‘certifications’ I took had well-produced videos, explained concepts well, and shared accurate SEO knowledge overall. Google’s SEO Fundamentals certification had annoying background music and looked a bit dated, but that’s a minor point.

It was the exam and certification aspect that let all of these courses down, in my opinion.

For starters, if you failed the exam, you could retake it shortly after (between 0 and 12 hours) your initial attempt. That might sound like a positive if you want to pass, but all it does is diminish the value of the certification. If things were this way for college exams, the job market would soon become saturated with graduates and degrees would lose much of their value.

But that fact was nothing compared to the exams themselves

Here is just one of the questions on one of the exams:

If you’re new to SEO, the issue here is that all links are ‘beneficial’ to a site’s authority. That doesn’t mean all types of links will help you to rank higher in Google, but that’s unrelated to site authority.

Here’s another question from a different exam:

This isn’t a true or false question, as Google recommends that you use hyphens rather than underscores in URLs.

Here’s another question, this time from Google’s SEO Fundamentals certification:

You can see that I got the answer wrong. I’m guessing that the correct answer is “optimizing site keywords,” but I genuinely have no idea what that means. It sounds like something you’d see on Warrior Forum in 2009.

In short, the certification aspect felt like an afterthought for each of the certifications I completed. It felt like someone created the course, then tasked someone far less knowledgeable to watch the course and create an exam.

Does that mean this is the case for all SEO certifications?

Probably not. There are plenty of other SEO certifications, so it may be that paid certifications are of higher quality.

Here are a few paid SEO certifications that came up during my research:

ClickMinded SEO Training — $997

Moz SEO Essentials — $595

Yoast All-around SEO Training — £89/year

To be clear, I didn’t take any of these certifications. They’re simply the ones I found that are SEO certifications (not courses) and were created by reputable companies/people.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t include other popular resources (e.g., Brian Dean’s ‘SEO That Works’) commonly found on lists of ‘SEO certifications,’ it’s because they aren’t certifications. They’re courses. There’s no exam or certificate.

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