SEM: Why There’s A Need For Search Marketing Standards
The support team at Regency Interactive read a good blog article last week from Ken Clark titled “The Next Frontier for Search Marketing Standards” that was posted on Search Engine Journal. Ken Clark is the Executive Vice President of Onward Search.
According to Ken, (and we agree) there are no standards for accessing the skills and knowledge level of a search engine marketing professional. In this line of work, it is critical that the person you hire to do you SEO / SEM work on your website is very knowledgeable and skilled.
The basic criteria for search marketing skills assessment should include the following:
- A goal to validate a candidate’s knowledge, as opposed to measuring his or her tactical approach;
- Frequent and regular content updates to adjust to changes in the search marketing environment;
- Using a quantitative, and therefore comparative, measurement to assess a company’s skills.
- Providing different assessments for each search marketing discipline, i.e. SEO, SEM, analytics, etc.
Every professional industry has developed tools for skills assessment so hiring organizations can accurately assess the professional workforce. For instance, in the IT industry, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification has become the standard for Windows administration positions and NurseTesting has a variety of skill assessment tests for the nursing industry.
Developing skill assessment standards for the SEO industry provides benefits to both the company that is trying to locate and retain talented SEO / SEM employees and the search marketing professional who is focused on growing his or her SEO / SEM career. You can read more of his article here.
