Search marketing certification in the West is well documented and supported by most search marketing organizations. However, in China the search marketing industry is still embryonic, so the need for a certification program to establish a skills level and professional competence is the first steps in promoting skills, knowledge and confidence for employers and clients.

In the past month SinoTech has validated through this certification program more than 100 people (outside the SinoTech group). The multi-choice exams are conducted online in Chinese and the exam is time limited to 30 minutes. This exam leads to a Chinese search marketing certification and the questions are specifically aimed at the search engines in China. You can read more about our certification program by visiting http://www.sinotechgroup.com.cn/certification/certification1.html

As the readers of this blog know, I work for SinoTech Search one of the leading Search Marketing firms in China and represents many Chinese and International companies in building keyword campaigns in Baidu, Google and Yahoo!. Therefore when I can across this article in Adweek Few Shops Practice Paid Search Skills, it was surprising to me that of the largest 56 US agencies assessed by Adweek, only five had sponsored links tied to their names on Google. The others did not have paid search links.

It’s very difficult to recommend certain things to our clients if we are not doing these things. I will be exploring the use of paid search within Chinese digital agencies in the coming weeks and will let the readers of this blog know if we are also like US agencies or we have a better appraication of SEM at the agency level.