New Penguin

[seoanalytics]

I just read that a new Penguin might be coming up.

My question is :

Can you rank if you have good content but bad links ?

In other words does the content quality take over the link quality or will google penalize you for the quality of your links even though your content is great and deserves to rank ?

Thank you,

[AL123al]

Hi,

First off it is my understanding that Penguin is operating in real time now - so it is part of the algorithm and as such it will be dealing with spammy links on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, the latest release of Penguin will devalue spammy links and not punish whole sites. So having a bunch of low value spam links is like having no links at all. This is worth reading: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/penguin-update/

Regarding content over links, good content is always required to rank by search engines and your website users. But in a competitive market good content will also need some quality links to be able to do well.

[TakeshiYoung]

In my experience, links take precedence over content. Mediocre content on a high domain authority site is going to outrank excellent content on a site with no links or poor links.

This is a completely separate issue than Penguin, which is an algorithm that mainly penalizes sites that are actively trying to manipulate rankings with poor links.

[seoanalytics]

Thank you for both of your answers. So from my understanding no need to worry if you have a few bad links, google will ignore those and better work on attracting good links than trying to remove those bad links, correct ?