I have been asked this question a few times by people shopping for SEO training, and I appreciate the directness. It is a good question to ask, and the answer is not complicated — but the implications are more significant than most people realize.

The Still-Doing-the-Work Test

The most important qualification for an SEO instructor is that they are currently practicing SEO on real sites with real stakes. Not case studies from 2021. Not a blog they maintain to rank for their own name. Actual client campaigns or business sites in competitive categories where they have to stay current or their clients stop ranking.

This matters because SEO changes constantly and the changes accumulate. An instructor who stopped active client work three years ago does not know that AI Overviews are now a real traffic consideration. They may not have implemented schema markup for a live client since the spec expanded significantly. Their link-building frameworks may reflect a pre-Helpful Content environment. None of that is immediately obvious from a course sales page.

Through Salterra, I run active campaigns for clients in the Phoenix metro and beyond. What I teach in the SEO University cohort reflects what I am doing and adjusting in real campaigns right now. That connection between practice and instruction is something I consider non-negotiable.

What Else to Look For

Specificity Over Vagueness

Good SEO instructors are specific. They give you concrete answers about what to do, why, and what to expect. An instructor who talks in generalities — ‘create great content,’ ‘build quality links,’ ‘make your site fast’ — is not giving you anything you can act on. Ask potential instructors specific questions and see whether you get specific answers. For instance: what keyword research process do they use for a new client site? What is their current link-building approach in a post-Helpful Content world? What does their on-page SEO checklist look like for a service page? Vague answers to specific questions are a signal.

Honest About Trade-offs

SEO involves trade-offs and judgment calls. A good instructor will tell you that some tactics carry risk, that different approaches work better in different contexts, and that results depend on many factors outside your control. Anyone who promises specific ranking outcomes or guarantees traffic growth from a course should be approached with skepticism. I have had clients in the Phoenix market see meaningful movement in 90 days and others where it took eight months to see traction. The honest answer is that timelines depend on competition, site history, and how well the recommendations get implemented.

Current Curriculum

Ask when the curriculum was last significantly updated. Ask whether it covers AI Overview optimization, structured data, and entity SEO. Ask whether it addresses GA4 for measurement. If the answers are vague or the instructor seems uncertain, that is informative. A curriculum that was built in 2022 and has not been substantially revised is teaching you what worked before the Helpful Content updates, before AI Overviews became a standard SERP feature, and before Google’s entity understanding matured to where it is now. Those are not minor details.

Access During the Course

Pre-recorded video courses are better than nothing, but they cannot answer your specific questions. A good instructor is accessible during the training period — not just in recordings, but in live sessions where you can ask about your actual situation. The value of instruction scales significantly with the ability to get specific feedback. A hands-on workshop format where you can bring your own site or client problem and get direct input is worth substantially more than passive video consumption. This is the differentiator I built the SEO University cohort around.

Track Record You Can Evaluate

Not vague testimonials — actual evidence. What sites have they ranked? What clients have they worked with? What have they written or presented publicly? I co-host the SEOST / SEO Spring Training conference in Chandler with Clint Butler each year, which is a public, practitioner-audience event. My presentations there are based on what I am doing in campaigns, not what was working years ago. That is the kind of verifiable track record worth looking for.

The Certification Question

People sometimes ask whether SEO certifications matter when evaluating an instructor. The honest answer: they are almost irrelevant. There is no governing body for SEO. Certifications from tool vendors (Semrush, HubSpot, Google) show familiarity with specific platforms, not that someone can run a campaign and get results. I have worked with practitioners who hold multiple certifications and cannot read a Search Console report accurately, and I have worked with practitioners who hold zero certifications and run excellent campaigns. Judge instructors on their actual work, not on what certificates they list.

That said, if an instructor has completed rigorous technical training in adjacent areas — web development, data analytics, UX — that depth often shows in how they explain the technical side of SEO. It is context that matters, not the certificate itself.

Red Flags to Watch For

  • Instructors who have not published anything recently on SEO topics
  • Courses with no live component and no instructor access
  • Curriculum that does not address technical SEO, structured data, or AI search
  • Instructors whose primary business is selling courses rather than doing SEO
  • Vague claims about results with no verifiable specifics
  • No mention of keyword research methodology, link building approach, or analytics process
  • Testimonials that focus on how enjoyable the course was rather than what participants were able to do afterward

The Honest Self-Assessment

I want to be straightforward: I am the instructor at SEO University, and I have an obvious interest in you choosing my program. So take my perspective here with that in mind. What I can tell you honestly is that the criteria above are the ones I would apply if I were looking for training myself. If an instructor passes the still-doing-the-work test, is specific and honest about trade-offs, has a current curriculum, and is actually accessible during the course — that is a reasonable bet regardless of whose program it is.

The best SEO training compresses years of trial and error into weeks. The worst wastes your time and money teaching you frameworks that Google has already made obsolete. The difference is almost always the instructor’s connection to current practice.

One more practical filter: ask an instructor what they got wrong recently. A practitioner who is genuinely doing the work has stories about a campaign that underperformed, a technical assumption that turned out to be incorrect, or a tactic that stopped working after an update. Someone who only has success stories is either not being candid or is not close enough to live campaigns to have hit the inevitable failures. The willingness to talk about what did not work — and what they changed in response — is one of the clearest signals that an instructor is teaching from real, current experience rather than from a static framework.

The SEO instructor overview has more on my background and approach if you want to evaluate me against those criteria.