Yes, you should STILL be using Guest Blogging...but be careful!

• We've heard that Google now disapproves of "Guest Blogging" in general and they're suggesting we nofollow all of these links. We're still offering guest blogging services to our clients and they seem to be working. Should we stop? And what should we be doing to minimize our client risk?

You certainly have reason to be concerned. There was a lot of talk early last month when SearchEngineLand.com published a Barry Swartz article titled Google: Guest Blogging for Links? You Better Nofollow Them. This was in response to another article put forth by fellow penalty audit specialist Maria Haynes.

The general premise of these articles is the apparently clear evidence that Google wants you to nofollow links in content you write, particularly for guest posts on other sites (especially when used solely for link building). Google even went one step further in clarifying their position when they updated their link schemes section within the Google Webmaster Guidelines to address guest blog posting. The guidelines now say that Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links may negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

This clear change by Google builds upon previously recorded direct quotes from noted Google Engineers Matt Cutts and John Mueller on the topic of guest blogging and look like this:

These are just a couple of sample quotes and we'd urge everyone to take a moment to visit Barry's article above and review the videos yourself. The bottom line: guest bloggi...