Best SEO certifications (from a professional SEO)
Absolutely none. SEO certifications are a waste of time.
Would you care for a Cisco Certification not issued by Cisco? An Amazon Web Services Architect Certification not issued by Amazon?
So why do you accept a SEO certification that does not come from Google/Bing? You are telling me, let’s say, SEMRush is going to guarantee that you have the knowledge to do SEO on a platform that they have no control at all? How can they even promise that?
Of course they are not. They are gonna teach you to use their tool. That has no direct relation at all with knowing SEO. The problem with that is that you learn exactly that: to use a tool. You learn to do things in a specific way because someone, who can have the best intentions, does believe that is the way.
You can have training from wherever you want, of course, but a certification? I disagree with this approach, and I think it can be dangerous for people who are starting at SEO. You can have several SEO certifications, and still be unable to properly understand how to get organic traffic. I’ve seen that, and even when I understand that maybe some headhunters can be blunt about “having certifications”, my advice it is to not pursue any of those SEO certifications.
For some entry-level positions, having completed some SEO courses can be helpful but are not mandatory since they do not accurately indicate your current level of knowledge nor experience. Trust me on this, I taught SEO for more than two years, and all students got their diplomas, even when most of them were utterly incapable of optimizing a website, let alone build an SEO strategy.
I never hired an SEO professional based on an SEO certification. If you are interested in learning Search Engine Optimization, I strongly suggest you take the long road.
Note: A survey made by Ahrefs supports my opinion: SEO certifications are unnecessary in the best of cases, and a waste of time and energy in the worst.
