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7 Best SEO Certifications: Are They Worth It?

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7 Best SEO Certifications: Are They Worth It?

I’ll give you one guess about the answer to the titular question: Is getting an SEO certification worth it?

It’s every SEO pro’s favorite response.

That’s right: It depends! (If it didn’t, this would be a much shorter article.)

SEO certifications can be valuable if you’re new to the industry or expanding your skillset into different disciplines.

But do you need a specific certification to be successful? Probably not.

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Certifications and courses are great for building your base skills and familiarity with industry tools. But SEO evolves so quickly that experience and testing are often the best teachers.

Experienced SEO pros who can prove results don’t need certifications for work they already do.

But you still might find something helpful in the right training. Everyone needs to upskill.

Let’s examine which certifications could be the most valuable for your time or money.

Is There An SEO Certification?

There isn’t one single widely-recognized SEO certification. There’s no SEO degree or common curriculum – which might sound discouraging if you’re trying to learn how to get started in SEO.

But it makes sense.

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SEO is a huge discipline that requires many skills and includes many people.

Developers, designers, writers, marketers, data analysts, influencers, salespeople, managers, and other professionals all have something to add to the SEO industry.

There are tons of ways to contribute and plenty of entry points.

However, the academic community seems to be taking more notice lately. Certifications offered by colleges have started popping up.

Should You Pay For An SEO Certification?

Many businesses offer their own courses and certifications. But, these can be pricy.

The short answer is: Pay for what you learn, not for the certificate.

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With the number of free resources out there, from SEO beginner guides to advanced SEO strategy guides, I don’t advise paying a lot of money for basic certification.

The certificate itself probably isn’t what’s going to move the needle for you.

This industry cares about what you can prove – and for the most part, all a certificate proves is that you can Google the answers to multiple-choice questions.

On the other hand, the courses themselves can be extremely valuable when they go beyond the basics. If there’s a course you want to take, and you think you’ll gain helpful skills from it, then it’s absolutely worth paying for.

So evaluate a certification or course based on what actual educational value you get from it.

I’ve also noticed that many paid certifications are companions to a specific premium SEO tool. So, they’re likely worth it if you’re committing to that tool.

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My advice is to check out the free content first. If you like what it does and feel like you’d get actual business value out of the course or certification, then go right ahead!

Is A Google SEO Certification Worth It?

Learning new skills and tools can propel your career and help you command greater compensation. Plus, a series of specialized certifications can build an impressive LinkedIn profile and CV.

If you’re new to the industry, certifications can help you prove your knowledge to attract your first clients or jobs.

Unfortunately, if you’re hoping for official certification from Google, it doesn’t offer anything directly that fits that description.

However, it does offer certifications in all of its tools. It also provides a variety of digital marketing, career development, and data courses – though not all of these come with certificates.

If you browse the Digital Garage, you’ll also find courses from providers outside of Google, such as Coursera and educational institutions.

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The Google resources are helpful in their granularity.

You should be able to tell which are relevant and useful to you quickly. Not all will be, but you should at least consider taking tool-specific courses.

The courses are categorized by time, skill level, and whether you’ll get a digital certificate at the end.

At the time of writing, they’re all free – so there’s really no reason not to check out something you’re interested in.

A Google account with a healthy selection of completed certificates can be helpful if you lack real-world experience with the tools.

Plus, Google partner organizations often require Google certifications.

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7 Best SEO Certifications

This list includes some of the most highly-regarded certifications that provide a lot of value in the learning process. I’ve focused on free certifications first, but we’ll talk about paid courses that might be worth it later on.

1. Google’s Fundamentals Of Digital Marketing Certification

This one’s not technically an SEO certification but features SEO modules, including modules about search ads and local search.

  • Level: Beginner
  • Hours: 40
  • Key learning outcomes: Analytics, business strategy, SEO, SEM, content marketing, and several other core aspects of digital marketing
  • Price: Free
  • Number enrolled: 300,000+
  • Learn more here.

2. Google Analytics 4 On Skillshop

If you’re going to be using Google’s tools, there’s no better teacher than the people who made them.

Plus, earning certifications for all the tools you regularly use is a great – and quick – way to communicate your technical expertise.

This one is particularly relevant to, well, everyone who used to use Google Analytics.

GA4 brings changes and new features, so you should keep up with the times!

  • Level: Beginner through advanced users
  • Hours: About an hour per course
  • Key learning outcomes: Analyzing your website and performance with GA4
  • Price: Free
  • Learn more here.

3. UC Davis Search Engine Optimization Specialization

University of California, Davis offers this specialization in SEO.

It’s a series of five courses culminating in a capstone project.

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Out of all the options, this is likely the most time-intensive. It’s also the most intriguing.

  • Level: Beginner-intermediate (two or more years of industry experience)
  • Hours: About 120 – six hours per week over five months
  • Key learning outcomes: Keyword research, marketing, SEO, how search algorithms work, competitive analysis, creating SEO reports
  • Price: Free
  • Number enrolled: Around 120,000
  • Learn more here.

4. HubSpot’s SEO Certification Course

HubSpot’s Academy is legitimately cool. It’s all free and online, not unlike Google’s learning resources. It’s also easy to search for certifications on various digital marketing-related topics.

  • Level: Beginner-intermediate
  • Hours: Just over 2
  • Key learning outcomes: Keyword research, link building, website analysis
  • Price: Free
  • Number enrolled: Around 250,000 (in the entire Hubspot Academy, not just this course)
  • Learn more here.

5. Semrush SEO Fundamentals Exam

Semrush structures its courses and certifications a bit differently.

It lists courses separately from the exams.

If you’re confident in your knowledge and up for a challenge, you can quickly jump into the exams and earn a certification.

Or, you can do as many courses as you like before tackling a single exam.

Alternatively, you can skip certification exams if you don’t care for them and just want to learn.

This certification exam is paired with a course of the same name, but Semrush features several SEO-focused courses and certifications.

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  • Level: Beginner-intermediate
  • Hours: Exam – about 30 minutes. Course – Four hours.
  • Key learning outcomes: SEO basics, technical SEO, ranking signals, mobile SEO
  • Price: Free
  • Learn more: ExamCourse

6: Ahrefs’ Complete SEO Course For Beginners

I’m cheating a little bit with this one. There’s no certification at the end of the course, but as I’ve already stated, I can be dubious about the sole value of certifications themselves.

So, you won’t get a digital certificate to add your LinkedIn profile – but you can still brag about it.

I like this one because it’s no-nonsense; it’s a YouTube playlist. Easy access, anytime.

  • Level: Beginner-intermediate
  • Hours: Around two hours of videos
  • Key learning outcomes: SEO basics, link building, on-page SEO, technical SEO
  • Price: Free
  • Learn more here.

7. Paid Certifications

I’m cheating again; I decided to group the paid certifications here. Trusted names in the industry offer these, so you’ll likely get a lot of value from them.

But if you’re new to the industry and just looking to get started, consider saving these for later on.

Moz Academy

The Moz training academy includes a variety of courses.

There’s one free course to get your feet wet, but the certifications are $395 or $595.

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Moz does offer a robust learning center where you can get a lot of insight from these industry veterans.

Yoast All-Around SEO Training

Yoast is the ubiquitous WordPress SEO plugin.

If you’ve done any work on the content side of digital marketing, you’ve probably encountered it.

Its training course is an annual subscription model for $99 a year. There’s a free course you can try out to get started.

Conclusion

There’s a critical difference between a course and a certification. Not all courses have certifications. Some of the best ones don’t.

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Certifications have their uses. They’re quick ways to demonstrate proficiencies to employers and clients – and if you don’t have a lot of experience, they can act as proof of your skills.

Getting certified in specific tools is great for your resume if you work with them. An at-a-glance list of your certified tools is impressive and helpful!

But the content you learn is much more important than the digital certificate. You shouldn’t discount a course because you don’t get a certification out of it.

In fact, a digital certification in and of itself isn’t particularly impressive.

Don’t let that dissuade you from seeking out learning opportunities. Digital courses, both free and paid, can be critical in your career.

You can learn new skills, keep up with the industry, and command higher rates with the right application of knowledge.

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Don’t focus on getting SEO certified. Focus on learning SEO.

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


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