According to my friend Ward Tongen who is attending the SEMPO meeting in NY at the SES Conference 2005, SEMPO has no plans for certification. Where does that leave us when the largest (currently) industry association has no plans to either offer or even promote some sort of certification? Am I wasting my time looking for something? Should we certify our team for naught?
Let’s wait and see what SMA-NA has to say. Terry Van Horne at SEO Pros has recommended either Dan Thies’ SEO Research Labs or Kalena Jordan’s Search Engine College for certification.
SEO Research Labs - The cost of this course is $895.00, including all class materials, six live training sessions, access to private support forums, completion certificate, and a CD with all class sessions recorded as digital video.
Search Engine College - Search Engine College is an online training institution offering instructor-led short online courses, online classes and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects. Online instructor led courses you can pick and choose, nothing about certification. Kalena said she would customize something for us when we talked with her last year.
[...] In my original post about associations offering certification or training, I noted that SEMPO had no position on certification and the only assocation to address the issue was SEOPros. They were endorsing Search Engine College and SEO Research Labs. SEOPros now has their own certification program. [...]