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..