*Free Google Certifications* 

I don't know about you but i do love me some  google i probably use google at least 10 times a day to search for whatever information i need or freak myself out by occasionally diagnosing myself with the rare disease in the past decade or maybe even longer google has invested immensely into offering free online courses that can help you to take your digital skills to the next level  is known to be home of some of the most talented individuals on the planet i don't know about you but if they say they're offering free courses and they're dishing out knowledge at no cost to me

 i'm all in i recently took a free online google course got certified and now i'm using it to not only further my career but also to start and run my own online business in this blog i'm going to share with you five google courses that have been offered for free right now and you can actually start taking them online and you can be able to grow your career or business one important thing that i'm also going to talk about in this blog is how to prepare for your exams and assessments and of course passive flying colors i also talk about what happens when you fail the exams if you're new here welcome to break it out through pharaoh 

i'm referring your host who occasionally shows her face when she believes that it'll actually add value to your viewing and learning experience on this channel you learn about all things entrepreneurship and gain new skills on how to navigate life like a boss if you like what you see and would love to stick around all you have to do is subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss out on any new videos the google digital garage is an online learning platform from google that helps you to learn new or simply polish up your existing digital skills in the world of digital marketing career development and data and technology those three categories you do not need to have a background in any of these areas as these are also very beginner friendly and introductory courses these courses are done online and at your own pace some include certification and some do not if a course does not have certification this should not discourage you because you can still apply everything that you learn certificate or not what i like about the google digital garage is that it not only offers courses directly from google  

first course that you're going to go through is called the fundamentals of digital marketing this course comes with free certification which you can put on your resume or your cv on your linkedin profile or even on your personal website i took this course because i've always wanted to pursue a digital marketing related career and if you haven't noticed i'm really into making money online so learning how to build a strong online presence around a successful online store as well as build or just understand basic seo and sem concepts is what i'm all about it took me at least six months to complete this course not because it was hard or anything but because i was juggling work and side hustle it was tough to squeeze everything in this course has been super helpful to me it comes with an exam and if you get a pass mark of it at least 80 percent you get a certificate which like i said you can use on your cv or your linkedin profile since taking this course i'm not helping others to run their own online businesses 

i'm also helping to review websites and also of course just to grow my own youtube channel i've also been using it at work and getting more and more involved in website content creation projects as well as any seo optimization projects so the fundamentals of digital marketing comes with 26 modules and it's a 40 hour long course and yes the certification is free the certification for the fundamentals of digital marketing does not expire so it's something that i can use forever and i do not have to retake the course to remain in good standing growth google is an online platform where you can get free google courses which you can use in your business or you can use as an individual academically to polish up your knowledge as a student the platform offers a lot of courses for entrepreneurs digital marketing professionals youtube content creators like myself students and tutors one of my favorite courses from that platform is called google analytics for beginners which have just started but have not yet completed and you can also find this in the google 

analytics academy the analytics academy provides you with resources to help you learn how to measure website traffic for your online business whether it's an e-commerce store or just a basic corporate website the google analytics for beginners course teaches you the basics of how to create an account navigate the interface set up dashboards and reports this course is also self-paced so you can complete it at your own time and you get a free certificate of completion at the end but of course you need to take an assessment and the pass mark for this particular course is at least 80 if you'd like to get a certificate that says like you're now a guru in google analytics then you'll need to take a couple of more courses and they take a more serious exam which is like one and a half hours long on skillshop and it's called the google analytics individual qualification exam or simply the iq the exam comes in 70 questions but once again you don't have to pay for it but it's good to have under your belt if you're interested in this type of thing or if your career is leaning towards google analytics and how to measure website traffic the reason why this is one of my favorite courses is because there is access to a free google analytics demo account which you can literally hop on to today and start doing practical lessons for everything that you're learning this will also help you when you're preparing not only for the google analytics exam but some of the other courses that i mentioned in this blog the certification for the google analytics course is valid for one year this means that you'll have to retake the course after year to maintain your qualification as a youtuber 

it would be crazy of me not to mention free courses that are currently being offered by google to help content creators and content partners to effectively manage and grow their youtube channels the creator academy is really helpful for youtubers to understand how to monetize their content and understand their reports how to build their seo and grow their channels but google in partnership with skillshop have actually come up with a more detailed reach a specialized course or different courses that you can take if you are not a content creator the youtube courses are for free and some of them even offer certificates of completion for the youtube courses specifically it's important to know that only content creators or partners with access to content ids can enroll in these courses and they're just not open to everyone if you want to check if you're eligible you can try to take the assessment and see the response you get from google the youtube creator academy has more resources that are helpful to content creators but the other youtube courses also can help if you really want to know stuff about copyrights and maybe music copyrighted stuff if you want to learn how to advertise and grow your business online then the google ads course is worth taking a look at you can find it on skillshop and i've shared the link in the description as well google ads is a very broad area so the courses are split into different sections from search ads to how to measure the impact of your ads each of the courses are free and they're all at beginner level so anyone can literally just get started and start building the career or their knowledge around this particular area you will have to complete an assessment at the end if you want to get a certificate of completion which is something that seems to be standard with most google courses that have come across the certifications for all the google ads courses are valid for one year this means that you'll have to retake the course after a year to maintain your qualification if you're interested in developing technology products for google or want to become a google product expert then the google developer expert program will help you to get there the simple explanation is that you'll be learning how to develop google web and mobile apps popular examples of these google developer products are google play store android and youtube the google developer expert program has a series of mini courses assessments and tutorials that you can start and complete at your own pace it does not come with a certification but it comes with badges that you can accumulate across each of the different stages or levels these stages or levels are also called pathways and you can track your progress on your profile badges are just as good as certificates in my opinion 

because you can put them on your cv or your professional website and they validate that indeed you're qualified as you say you are and because it's from google i mean who's going to doubt that google gave you a badge and you didn't really earn it the developer courses have different expiration or validity time periods some are 36 months but you need to really confirm how long the specific course you want to take is valid for before you start the program now that i've mentioned my top five favorite free google courses that you can start taking today let's get into how to prepare for exams and assessments google has a ton of resources that can help you prepare for these assessments and exams they want you to succeed i've seen that the goal is not to make it impossible to get certification but you just have to show that you've really gone through the course and you have understood what you're supposed to have learned to prepare for exams you literally just google exam preparation tips for the course that you're doing and you'll get study guides mock exams practice tests and online communities full of people just like you and me who are helping others to prepare for these exams this information is also here on youtube i've seen content that even takes you through the actual exam questions and answers but that is not how you'd want to earn your certification because remember that you're going to apply for a job or get paid for consultation and it will show if you're fake and you did not actually earn your way to getting certified as mentioned before there is a google analytics demo account 

which you can access and get more realistic and practical approach to learning about some of the courses that have been mentioned in this blog this will go a long way into preparing you for your exams of the exams that i have taken or just taken a look at a peak all of them are multiple choice if you fail the exams you don't get penalized anything like that they just give you another date and time of which you can retake the exam you usually just have to wait for like 24 hours and then retake the exam the following day okay so these are my five google courses that are for free that you can find online and you can start today whether you want to be a digital marketing whether you want to do google analytics you want to be a developer you want to do youtube management there's definitely something out there for someone who is interested in all things digital marketing even just a portion of digital marketing but anyway i really hope that you've enjoyed this blog and you found it useful i've also put a link in the description for some google courses that may not necessarily be for free but you can you do have to pay maybe a small amount for you to be able to get certification or to complete the course but nonetheless they are also from google and you can get them online in their self-paced anyway

 thank you so much