A What question

What credentials should an SEO company have?

3 min read Cites 1 source

No certificate or badge shows directly that a company does good organic search work, so the credentials worth asking for are the ones you can check against the work itself: examples you can look at, references you can call, and people who can explain their reasoning. Badges and certificates are still worth understanding, mainly so you know what they measure. One badge you may see, the Google Partner badge, is built around Google Ads, not around SEO.

What the Google Partner badge measures

Google describes its Google Ads certifications on its Google Ads certification page as “professional accreditations that Google offers to individuals who demonstrate proficiency in basic and advanced aspects of Google Ads.” For a company to hold the Partner or Premier Partner badge, “certifications are one of the 3 requirement categories”, and the certifications that count toward it are all Google Ads certifications: Search, Display, Video, Shopping ads, and Apps.

None of those covers organic search. A Partner badge tells you the company’s staff have passed Google Ads assessments and that the company meets the program’s other requirements. It says nothing either way about how well the company handles SEO. If a company presents the badge as evidence of SEO expertise, ask it to show you SEO work instead.

How long a certification lasts

A Google Ads certification is not permanent. Google states that it “will remain valid until the product area certification expires (one year)”, after which the holder has to pass the assessment again. If a company lists certifications, ask whether they are current and who on the team holds them. A certificate earned by someone who has since left the company is not a credential of the company.

Course certificates

An SEO course may end in a certificate. A certificate shows that someone completed a course. It can be a reasonable sign of interest in the field, particularly for a newer practitioner, but it does not show how the person applies what they learned to a real site. Treat it as background, not as evidence of results.

Credentials you can actually check

The credentials that tell you most are the ones that come with something to examine.

Ask for work you can see: examples of sites the company has worked on and what it changed, with enough detail to look at the pages yourself.

Ask for people you can call: references from clients whose situation resembles yours. Ask them what the company did, how it communicated, and whether they would hire it again.

Ask for reasoning you can follow. A senior person should be able to walk you through a recommendation for your own site: what they would do first and why. Someone who understands the work can explain it in plain terms without leaning on credentials.

Look at who owns the data. A company that keeps your analytics and Search Console in your name, and reports from them, is giving you the means to check its claims, which is worth more than any badge on its website.

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