All about the Google Digital Champions program

If you follow new web trends for digital marketing, or are interested in different SEO strategies (SEO and SEA) you have probably heard of the Google Digital Champions program. For some time now, Google has aimed to train Internet users in good web practices. This is evidenced by the Google Partner Premier certification and other Google Ads certifications. The Digital Champions program is also part of this approach.

In this article, we will review the whole of this challenge. We will explain in particular its purpose, its content, and the results you can expect to get from it!

What is the Google Digital Champions Program?

Summary

• What is the Google Digital Champions Program?
• Credibility of the Google Digital Champions program
• The interest of becoming a “Digital Champion” for agencies
• The content of Google’s Digital Champions program
  • Google Ads training (SEA strategy)
  • You SEM
• How to prepare for the Digital Champions program?
• Google Digital Champions: FAQ
  • What are the latest major updates from Google?
  • What are the other Google competitions
    • Google Solution challenge 2022
    • Kick Start
    • Hash Code
    • Code Jam
• What to remember about the Google Digital Champions program
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • What is the Google Digital Champions program?
  • How do I participate in the Google Digital Champions program?
  • What are the benefits for participants of the Google Digital Champions program?

As its name suggests, the Google Digital Champions program or GDCP is used to train future web champions

The Google Partners program has created a European championship in which several web agencies specializing in SEO, SEA or e-commerce are invited. The goal behind this project is to create a competition based on the evaluation of web skills and the mastery of the new Google directives.

The ambition of this championship is above all to train agencies with the aim of improving their performance. Through collective emulation – somewhat like a hackathon – the agencies will be able to learn new skills and put them to good use during a major competition!

Credibility of the Google Digital Champions program

The “Digital Champion” certification is very popular in the industry, as is the Google Partner Premier certification.

As the challenge is only accessible to the best agencies, and the title of champion is only awarded to the most deserving, agencies accredited as “Google Digital Champion” are among the elite of web agencies.

At the end of the training course, all the concepts and techniques taught are evaluated. For the anecdote, during the last program of 2021, 3 French agencies climbed to the first steps of the podium!

Accreditation allows trained agencies to become trainers themselves. In this way, the participating agencies will be able to teach their new knowledge to their collaborators. Suffice to say that the application of these new methods will be of great help in standing out from the competition and obtaining the favors of the search engines.

This will also allow digital agencies to offer more qualitative services to their clients. These same people who will work on your WordPress or Shopify CMS to help you improve your branding, your email marketing, your SEO or your conversion rate…

Google Digital Champions provides in-depth insight into all of the most advanced performance tools, as well as comparisons with Google product experts on mindful automation and customer value propositions.

The program takes place over 12 intense weeks of webinars, discussions, case studies, followed by a series of exams to be taken at the end of each module to attest that the skills have been assimilated.

Google Partners also required that official participants in turn share what they learned with their respective paid advertising teams. In fact, during the last edition of the challenge, the employees of the people trained also had access to the key points of the training.

The interest of becoming a “Digital Champion” for agencies

The benefits are legion for agencies. Before being a competition, the Digital Champion is a place of exchange with Google experts. Regardless of the result, this is an opportunity to discuss with the best SEO for Entrepreneurs there are. These are at the heart of Google’s updates and the development of its tools. They are therefore better informed than anyone about good SEO practices, whether natural or paid, and its future developments.

For some participants, it’s also a way to stay informed and comfortable with Google product innovations and updates.

Obtaining the certification can also have an impact on the activity of the people who will follow Digital Champions. In addition to having a preview of clues about new Google practices, in particular thanks to access to beta versions of new software implemented, agencies will be able to discuss with real experts and then pass on their newly acquired knowledge to their teams.

Being Digital Champion certified is therefore the assurance of benefiting from the following advantages:

• Support, advice and guidance from the experts at Google Smart Bidding
• Early and often exclusive access to the beta version of many tools.
• Have previews of the most recent optimization techniques.
• An overview of new tools for analyzing and implementing opportunities using Google Ads AI technology.

The content of Google’s Digital Champions program

The purpose of this competition is that the tests remain unknown to reserve the surprise for the candidates of a digital agency. We therefore do not have access to the GDCP proofs. Nevertheless, we can give you some ideas of the themes that await you if one day you are selected for the Google Digital Champion Program!

Google Ads training (SEA strategy)

Search Engine Advertising or SEA refers to paid search strategies that help businesses make their ads more visible by paying to appear at the top of search results. It is a form of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising where marketers bid for relevant search queries and pay for each click their ad receives. This is the whole principle of ” Google Ads ” or ” AdWords “, namely, paid referencing on Google.

Within the Google Digital Champions program, training in ads and paid search will necessarily be offered.

You SEM

The term Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to digital marketing strategies in the broad sense. This means both SEA, branding and any other search engine-oriented paid action for marketing a website.

How to prepare for the Digital Champions program?

To be prepared to face the ultimate tests of Google and to be able to claim the title of “Digital Champion” one day, you will already have to master the strategies of the Net at your fingertips. It goes further than just learning SEO, SEA and SEM that we were talking about a few lines above…

The first piece of advice we can give you is to experiment for yourself and compare the different techniques to each other in order to define which ones work best.

For Web Marketing for Electricians, you can also improve by learning new skills like coding. In this regard, Google also has programs and challenges dedicated to writing computer code (we will come back to this).

Of course, you’ll also need to keep up to date with the latest updates from Google and stay on top of what’s new. Frequent updates of the search engine guide us and inform us about future developments in SEO, SEA, user experience, web marketing, etc. it is therefore necessary to know them well!

Google Digital Champions: FAQ

What are the latest major updates from Google?

Here are two recent updates from Google that have had a big impact on SEO and digital strategies:

• August 22, 2022: HCU Helpful Content Update: this update which favors content written for Internet users at the expense of pages and other content written exclusively for the purpose of optimization for search engines.
• May 2020: EAT Expertise, Authority, Trust: this mainly focused on the authority of the web editor, favoring content written by experts in their field and giving greater importance to the Trust Flow of a site web rather than its notoriety.

What are the other Google competitions

We will not talk here about the many Google training courses like Google Digital Active which are already well known to web professionals. We will only mention here the different challenges and other competitions offered by Google. That said, they are also very formative, as you can imagine!

Google Solution challenge 2022

The Solution Challenge is an annual competition presented by Google that invites students, mostly from business schools, to develop solutions to local community problems using one or more Google-associated products. University students around the world are invited to enter the competition through Google’s Student Developer Clubs.

The contest’s mission is to enable hands-on learning and challenge student developers to come up with real-world solutions to real-world problems using Web Apps.

This teaches them to organize themselves as a team and prepares them to enter working life: community manager, marketing manager, marketing director, product manager, influencer, marketing manager are all jobs that require knowing how to collaborate effectively. The Google Solution Challenge also allows them to discover the different web professions from customer relations, to e-reputation management, through inbound marketing and digital communication.

Kick Start

Kick Start, formerly known as APAC, is also one of Google’s famous coding contests. Held annually, coders from all over the world attend with a view to improving their coding skills. Online events are held regularly throughout the year.

Each of them is open to everyone and no prequalification is necessary. So, you can participate in one or all of them. Each round is three hours long and features a variety of algorithmic and mathematical problems. Participating in any round provides a taste of the skill set required for a career at Google. After each round, you can check your overall ranking and performance analysis for that particular round.

Hash Code

Hash Code is one of the most famous coding challenges organized by Google each year, for students and professionals. Due to the current pandemic situation, the Hash Code 2023 will be a virtual event, as it was for the 2021 and 2022 editions. It is a collective event where you must assemble a small team comprising 2 to 4 coders and a project manager. In this challenge, the team attempts to solve a real Google engineering problem through an online qualifying event. All teams compete virtually in locally coordinated Hash Code Hubs and the top teams from that round then compete for the Virtual Global Finals.

In the qualifying round, each team has four hours to provide an optimized solution to the problem using the programming language and other tools of their choice. In the Virtual World Finals, all teams code together to solve another challenge and compete for cash prizes.

Code Jam

Code Jam is another well-known coding challenge held annually by Google. This is Google’s longest running global coding competition where coders around the world participate and test their coding skills.

There are three rounds held online before the annual Code Jam Global Finals held annually at an international Google office. In each round, participants must solve difficult algorithmic puzzles within a limited time. At the end of these rounds, only 25 entrants compete for cash prizes and the coveted title of champion at the annual Code Jam Global Finals.

What to remember about the Google Digital Champions program

Although it is common for Google to organize or participate in the organization of contests, Google Digital Champions is an exception. Rather, it is training for digital agencies where competition drives productivity and learning. The premium and selective nature of this “web agency championship” makes the “Digital Champion” certification a sure sign of trust.

If you have to call on a digital agency to carry out an online service, make sure that it has a recognized certification. For example, you can entrust the management of your Google Ads campaigns to a Google Partner Premier agency. And if you yourself are the owner of an agency, obtaining certifications to guarantee the quality of your services is no longer an asset, it is a necessity!