Back in the 20th century Danny Sullivan, a guy who seems to get ‘it’ long before most of us know what ‘it’ is, wrote about sem seo certification in an article entitled “Promoters Call For Certification”. In that article he describes an open letter from Beyond Interactive, Mercury Seven, US Web and Web Ignite to the major search engines. These four firms were calling for the establishment of a certification program for optimization professionals from the search engines. After Danny gave his reasons why he believed certification wouldn’t be viable, he added, “Given this, it may make sense for the major search engines to consider experimenting with the GoTo model and accept paid links, especially for competitive terms.”

Practical tip #1 – Whenever Danny Sullivan speaks, listen, whatever he writes, read.

Emphasis added, I'm sure he'll have a lot of readers.