A friend (Matt Inertia) wrote a post today that struck a chord with us, asking a question that we have pondered before, and that is:
Is it ethical to market your SEO services under the banner of “Google Consultant?”
Here’s Matt’s post Google Consultant – Should this job title be allowed?
We do work primarily on Google, so Google SEO is fair, but Google Consultant? hmm. It’s a catchy name for sure, and is also something you could see potential customers typing in, but to us it also sounds like you’re implying (if not actually saying outright) that you “work for” or are “approved by” Google, and that’s clearly not the case (whatever the phone-spam (cold calling etc) ) dodgy SEO operations tell you.. Don’t believe a word of it, there are no Google Authorised SEOs, although we think there may well be Google profiled SEOs but that’s a different story.
In the IT contract labour market for example, you have for example SAP Consultants, and Lotus Notes Consultants, all of whom work on those systems, and some of whom have gone and gotten qualified at outrageous expense, to be able to say SAP Authorised Consultant etc.
Other (some fantastic) contractors have simply never had the time or the inclination to get their $5k out just to get an “Approved” badge, or have just simply been too busy in contract and too in-demand to ever find the time to do so.
But the point is, that these job titles do exist, it is possible to be a SAP (Authorised) Consultant, but with Google it is not. We’ll be calling ourselves “Google Engineers” next or Google Reverse Engineers 
So when you find companies using calling themselves Google Consultants, without explaining what they mean in conjunction with images like the one below.. ?
..What do you all think? ..if it’s alright we might as well rank for it too.. 
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I think that Google don’t ever want anyone trying to manipulate the SERP and therefore there will never be any Google approved SEOs.
If it was up to Google, there wouldn’t even be any more SEO, just well built useful websites that rank well because they deserve to not because someone knows how to spoof the signals that Google rewards with high rankings.
Hello Rich.
Yes well we’ve had this discussion before havent we?
were not manipulating the SERPs we’re just sorting out their shoddy web design work and then they (coincidentally) happen to rank better..
Its kinda funny because if it was up to google there wouldnt be any professional SEOs. They’ed be happy if we just submitted the occasional sitemap and setup an adwords budget. They want the organic results to happen as naturally as possible and i think we get in the way.
BTW any jobs going in your place?
Thanks P
Hey Paul.
well some of us get in the way more than others I think
I did get your mail but promptly deleted it by accident, or it wasnt there when i thought about replying anyway
mail us again and we’ll chat on there?
Cheers for the backup bredren! I dont see any reason why people should be allowed to label themselves as a Google consultant, unless you have had hands on experience of building and maintaining Google indices and ranking algos then how can you possibly be a consultant?
Its like labelling yourself a pilot because you regularly fly on planes.
[...] emailed his www.schiffforsenate.com site offering free SEO (Google consultancy) and haven’t heard anything so we thought we might come and say hello in the charts to prove we can do that kind of thing
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I never thought about using that as a sales pitch, i think it work because whether or not you believe so, what’s the main search engine SEO’s care about? for me it’s Google, so… I’m a Google authorized web marketing consultant
lol