A storm in a tea cup has been brewing in the search industry over the past few days. It was prompted by Jill Whalen’s recent blog post titled We Don’t Need SEO Standards where she came to the conclusion that she didn’t think the search industry needed standards or regulation, at least in relation to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Here are Jill’s top 4 reasons why she believes we don’t need SEO standards:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat.

2. We can’t even agree on the definition of search engine optimization.

3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scams.

4. There’s no such thing as “cheating” in SEO. (more…)