Each tier records a specific level of audit competence verified against a private master answer key. Thresholds are published. The mapping to seniority is published. The methodology is published. What's not published — by design — is which issues are planted on the test site.
Maps to Junior SEO competence
Foundational SEO competence verified. You demonstrated the basics of a working manual audit: methodical surface coverage and accurate reading of what each page presents.
Maps to Mid-level SEO competence
Mid-level SEO competence verified. You went past the visible surface and connected what the page renders to the underlying structure that makes it crawlable and indexable.
Maps to Senior SEO competence
Senior SEO competence verified. You read past the rendered page into how it was assembled, validated, and served. The bar most senior candidates aim for, and the bar most hiring teams should set.
Maps to Principal / Head of SEO competence
Mastery-level SEO competence verified. You audited the site as a user, then again against what its metadata claims about itself, and reconciled the two. Reserved for SEOs who treat each layer of a page as a separate surface.
Every credential has a verifiable badge URL. Open it directly, or look the candidate up by name in the public registry. Below: a rendered example of what you'd land on.
Awarded for finding 41 of 60+ planted SEO issues — submitted 12 March 2026.
Sample only — the candidate, score, and date above are illustrative. Real credentials are at /leaderboard and /verify.
Hiring teams use this mapping to convert a candidate's tier into a seniority signal. Full hiring guidance — including how to read in-line, below, and above the bar for each role — is on /for-employers.
Submit your findings and the scorecard returns inline in seconds. Each credential comes with a verifiable badge URL you can drop on a CV, LinkedIn, agency bio, or speaker page — employers can confirm tier and submission date by opening the URL or by looking you up in the public registry.
Public listing is opt-in. Your badge URL works either way: list publicly so employers can find you, or keep private and share the URL only with the people you want to see it.
Scorecards do not list which issues you missed. We tell you how much headroom there is, not what's in it — past scorecards do not become study guides.
Serious credentialing bodies tell you what they don't claim. Here's what a tier from us doesn't mean.
The credential measures audit skill on a real (broken) site. It doesn't measure judgement honed by shipping work, or the strategic instincts that come with a decade in the trade.
Anyone can call themselves an SEO. The credential signals you can do the work; it doesn't certify you to give advice nobody can give without context.
We don't grandfather practitioners by reputation, employer, or years on a CV. The only way to hold a tier is to audit the test site and submit findings.
Each credential records the date the audit was submitted. SEO moves; a verification from 2026 is exactly that. Re-audit when you want a fresher record.
Sign up, audit manually, submit. The credential measures auditing skill — not which crawler you happen to subscribe to.