To get started, you just give them your name and email address. Then, it takes you to a page where you can download the course material. For this certification, it was a 157-page PDF. By no means do you necessarily need to read all of that if you already have experience with search engine optimization. That being said, it was really good material and I did read through pretty much all of it. Even if you don’t want to take the test, having the book as a reference is kind of nice.
Anyway, eMarketing Institute just sends you a username and password that you use to log into the site the first time so that you can take the test once you’ve read the material. You only need a 50% to pass the test, so it’s not particularly hard to do. Nevertheless, it is useful information, so it’s worth learning and hopefully scoring much higher than a 50% in the 60 minutes you have for the test (I got an 84%). The test doesn’t allow you to come back to questions you have already answered. I had at least two questions where I hit the wrong answer and then immediately realized I was wrong, but couldn’t change it. So keep that in mind.
I have to admit that I found a few typos and some weird grammar in the book and the test, which seemed a little unprofessional, but it didn’t make the information less relevant. Overall, I learned a lot about SEO, but I’m not sure I learned enough to really apply it to my own website. My final recommendation: this certification as an easy way to introduce yourself to the topic of SEO, but you’ll probably want to look into other certifications to really be able to “do” SEO well for yourself."
-Amy