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On behalf of staff and tutors at Search Engine College, I’d like to offer congratulations to our latest graduates for 2010.

All students named below have successfully completed a course at Search Engine College and attained official certification status (requiring a passing grade of 70 percent or higher.)

Search Engine Optimization 101

• Cedric Black
• Wendy Ertel
• Jayeeta Maity
• Mamoun Ali
• Stacy Jackson
• Alessia Eroe
• Bill Marvin
• Jeinmy Lluberes
• Megan Glynn
• Linda Le
• Andrew Hackler
• Ben Williams
• Puja Dakhera
• Doug Smith
• Poppy Roy
• Tim Holleman
• Jacqueline Christian
• Ann Merrill
• Peter Worrell
• Graeme Gibbon
• Denise DeVaney
• Trina Tune
• Yvonne Brandon
• Ignacio Rojas Martínez
• Rachel Sachs
• Shazad Sarwana
• Leon Hostetler

Search Engine Optimization 201

• Bawantha Perera
• Cedric Black
• Victoria MacGregor
• Haresh Gobin
• Alessia Eroe
• Bill Marvin
• Stacy Jackson
• Gary Murphy
• Doug Smith
• Poppy Roy
• Toni Jackson
• Peter Worrell
• Linda Le
• Rachel Sachs

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

• Bawantha Perera
• Mike Diamond
• Joan Sommerer
• Mamoun Ali
• Alessia Eroe
• Bill Marvin
• Haresh Gobin
• Poppy Roy
• Jennifer Carmichael
• Stacy Jackson
• Cedric Black

Pay Per Click Advertising 201

• Mamoun Ali
• Alessia Eroe
• Bill Marvin
• Joan Sommerer
• Mike Diamond
• Jennifer Carmichael

Web Site Copywriting 101

• Hillel Wachs
• Poppy Roy
• Rachel Sachs
• Csilla Kosa

Web Site Usability 101

• Mohammed El Hakawati
• Bill Marvin

Link Building 101

• Alessia Eroe
• Mike Diamond

Article Marketing & Distribution 101

• Peter Worrell

Copywriting for PPC 101

• Joan Sommerer
• Jennifer Carmichael

Certified Search Engine Optimizer

• Bawantha Perera
• Mohammed El Hakawati
• Haresh Gobin
• Peter Worrell
• Rachel Sachs

Certified Pay Per Click Marketer

• Jennifer Carmichael

Certified Search Engine Marketer

• Alessia Eroe
• Bill Marvin
• Mike Diamond
• Joan Sommerer

Well done all of you! Please contact your tutor if you haven’t yet received your hard copy certificate, Status Page or certification seal.

Also, don’t forget to fan of our Facebook page and follow our Twitter profile @secollege for College announcements such as lesson updates, press releases, new courses, events and milestones.

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Like to learn more about our online training courses? Download our free SEO sample lesson.

Some very exciting news came through email today.

If you are a privately owned New Zealand business with less than 50 staff and you take one of our Search Engine College courses between now and the end of September 2010, it appears that you *may* qualify for reimbursement of 50 percent of the course fee (up to a maximum of NZD 250 including GST) via the NZTE’s Management Training Assistance Scheme.

I say *may* at this stage, because I am fairly sure our courses qualify but NZTE is unable to offer pre-approval of courses or applicants for this scheme so you will need to make the final decision yourself on whether to apply. I am currently awaiting confirmation from NZTE as to the likelihood of our courses qualifying so will update this post when I have more information.

Important dates:

This scheme covers management training courses or workshops:

* booked and paid for between 1 June 2010 and 30 September 2010 and;
* attended between 1 July 2010 and 30 September 2010 and;
* for which applications for reimbursement are received between 1 July 2010 and 31 October 2010.

General eligibility criteria:

The Management Training Assistance Scheme is open to the owners/operators, and managers of small and medium businesses that meet the following criteria:

* Are privately owned (by an individual or individuals)
* Have few, if any, specialised managerial staff
* Have less than 50 full time employees (30 hours is considered full time)
* Are commercially trading
* Are not part of a larger business enterprise

The following are not eligible:

* Not-for-profit entities
* Charitable trusts

But never fear, charities and NFPs can apply for our free online training initiative instead.

Please note that NZTE will reimburse applicants after their application has been lodged and assessed by them and approval and payment of the claim will be at the sole discretion of NZTE.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about taking one of our but needed an extra incentive? Well now’s your chance. We offer courses in the following disciplines:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click Advertising (e.g. Google AdWords)
• Link Building
• Web Site Copywriting
• Article Marketing
• Web Site Usability
• Copywriting for PPC

So if you’re a qualifying New Zealand business and want to take advantage of the Management Training Assistance Scheme to save yourself NZD250 on our courses, you’ve got less than 3 months to do it. That’s right, the cut off date is 30 September 2010.

So don’t leave it too long. Enroll today, have some fun learning how to better market your web site online and save yourself some cash.

Some of you might remember that last year, Search Engine College launched a free search engine marketing training initiative for charities and not-for-profit organizations worldwide.

The initiative provides 25 charities or not-for-profit organizations per year the opportunity to learn search marketing skills at no cost, to help them make the most of their limited marketing budgets.

Well the idea launched with more of a whimper than a bang, so today we’ve distributed an official Press Release to try and drum up more publicity.

If you know of a charity or not-for-profit that might benefit from free online marketing training, please direct them to our release, encourage them to get in touch, and/or spread the word by linking to this post.

Thanks!

I was lurking on Twitter today when I saw Rand Fishkin tweet about a new e-book SEOmoz have launched called The Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

I haven’t had a chance to review it yet, but I’m always on the lookout for new white papers, e-books and instructional guides to help my Search Engine College SEO students become SEO Ninjas, so it caught my eye.

I’ll let you know what I think of the content when I’ve given it a thorough look.

We’re pretty excited at Search Engine College this week, because we are getting VERY close to having students enrolled from 50 different countries around the world.

The College reached the 49 country milestone this week when a new student from Bulgaria enrolled online. We thought this was newsworthy enough to warrant a press release over at PRWeb.

Since its inception in 2004, Search Engine College has set new industry standards for education and training in the field of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing and we are very proud to have produced over 1,000 happy graduates.

Here’s a list of countries where we have enrolled students to date:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Barbados
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
China
Croatia
Czech Republic
Dominican Republic
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hong Kong (China)
Iceland
India
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jordan
Kuwait
Latvia
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Montenegro
New Zealand
Norway
Pakistan
Philippines
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden
The Netherlands
Trinidad and Tobago
Turkey
UK
United Arab Emirates
Ukraine
USA
Vietnam
West Africa

What country do you think will be #50? Please comment with your best guess.

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