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.

The post got a few people fired up and they blogged fiery rebuttals pushing their case for standards. Their reasoning included:

The way you present your e-business to the world is the key to its success. Its so important that your website looks professional and credible so that customers will trust the products or services you are selling. Ideally, your site’s content will also be interesting and unique enough that they appreciate your brand and remember to shop with you again. You need to develop two types of content to make this happen: a “Hollywood pitch” and website copy.

The Hollywood Pitch

It’s important to have a clear idea of what your business does and what it offers to its customers—both for your own thinking but also because friends, family, customers, and even potential investors are all going to ask you, “So what does your business do?”

"If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-- Sir Isaac Newton

Warren Buffett. George Soros. Carl Icahn. Bill Miller. These names ring out among the giants of investing -- names of highly admired people with records to aspire to.

For years, Foolish investors have tried to tap into their genius by immersing themselves in their biographies, studying how they invest, and, with the advent of the Internet, trawling through their Form 13-F filings for hidden pearls of Foolishness.

Most SEO’s will agree that Blogs are an important part of their Toolkit. Blogs offer both on page and off page benefits for our client’s sites.

Implementing a Blog is relatively simple to do…the tough part is getting the client to agree to one.

This is the first in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at some of the typical objections clients have to implementing a Blog Strategy, and how to answer them.

The Client: Why would I think about implementing a Blog Strategy?

Blog growth is exploding. If you do a search on Technorati for “blog” you’ll receive over 15 Million search results.

There is a good reason for this.

Blogs are becoming the de facto source for news and information for our culture.

My greatest financial investment thus far is providing the start-up capital for my company The Motley Fool. I'm not here to write about that today -- maybe another time.

I'm here today to share the secret behind the second greatest financial investment I have yet made: The shares of America Online (now Time Warner (NYSE: TWX)) that I bought in 1994. 

By March 2000, I had made nearly 200 times my cost of just six years before. A 200-bagger! Ever had one of those -- purchased as a young person in your 20s? Quite a heady impression it made on me -- talk about creating a lifelong love affair with stocks. 

I hope I catch another 200-bagger sometime again. But this article isn't about hope. It's about how. You ready?