Put several of your sites in Google's top 10 for competitive phrases, and your clients will know you are a SEO expert.

take seo exam on webceo to have seo certificate. By reading all the known facts about seo in webceo, youll learn how to become one. And youll learn each day ...

you don't need a cert to be seo expert although I have one. What you need is a proven result for some competitive keywords not lousy crappy keywords that no one is searching for.

Results, and Proof.

If you want to do SEO for your article writing only than you do not have to do much ... Just ask for niche and their website and on the base of that search for the keywords which have less competition and easy to rank.

When you submit your work to them put some example of your work so that they realise you work hard.

You don't need any certificate in order to have a title such as SEO expert. IMHO, SEO knowledge and experience are the two things you all need to have. Ranking for lucrative keywords that are hard to target is a good indication of being a good SEO.

I agree, as long as you know SEO and how to get ranked for your keywords, you are on your way. If what your clients want done, you don't know how to do it, tell them. But if you think you can do it, try it.

Actually, there are no STANDARDS in the SEO industry... so a certification doesn't mean a whole lot. It would be subjective. A certification implies there is some sort of standards baseline, which does not exist in the SEO world.

Your best bet is to learn like the rest of us did... study the SERPs, figure out how other people got their rankings, experiment, and just do it.

Oh yeah.... and don't believe everything you read... 90% of it is garbage. Good SEOs only tell the basics... the stuff that's kindergarten level. You can reverse engineer many SEOs "secret sauce" by studying the SERPs.... it's all right there for your discovery if you look closely.

i didnt say that it is "required". Im just saying that take the exam if you want to and dont if you dont want to.

Just to test your knowledge about seo basics is what im pointing out.errR

There is lots of tutorial online about SEO, read these articles and try to do the techniques on sites. Practical practice would be better then reading.