Matt Cutts warned early this year that guest blogging for SEO was dead.  Then Matt Cutts announced Google took action on a large guest blog network, and it was Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest that was penalized.  And now guest blogging has made its way into Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as a violation.

Brian Ussery was the first to notice the change to the violations page.

What is worth noticing about the change is that it is specifically referring to low-quality guest blog posts, and not guest blog posts in general.  This was a sticky subject that many people took issue with, as not all guest blogs are low-quality.

There is the question of why Google decided to include scraped content on the same line as low-quality guest blog posts, as there is quite a difference between the two (aside from the low-quality aspect).  So there is understandably confusion – is the violation copying low quality guest blog posts from other sources?  Or is the blogger who is submitting the low-quality blog post considered the source?

But regardless, there is no question that low-quality guest blog posts are not effective as they were a few years ago.  But it also seems as though quality guest blogging is still perfectly fine in Google’s eyes, except from the potential linking perspective… when it doubt, no-follow links in a guest blog post you are accepting for publication.  And if you are the potential guest blogger, do it for reasons other than a may-or-may-not dofollow link.