Introduction
If you’re applying for an SEO job, it is highly advisable to be well-prepared with all kinds of SEO questions. With this compilation of the top 101 SEO questions, you will get a very good head start to ace that interview. Interviewers want to know you have a good understanding about SEO before they hire you. You need to ensure that you are at the top of your game of SEO knowledge so you can get that job. Here is a list of 101 SEO interview questions to work up your SEO knowledge and get your dream job.
SEO Interview Questions
1. What is SEO?
When going for an interview, this will probably be the first question that you will be asked. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO helps to increase the visibility of a business and helps to make it appear in the organic results. Almost 95% of the online experiences start with search engines and it is important to get your website in the top 5 results. SEO helps in achieving this. People trust organic results more than paid advertisements and hence to attract the right traffic to your website, choosing the correct keywords is very important. With SEO methods, the business does not have to spend any dime on advertisements and gain the attention of the relevant audiences through organic or free results.
According to Moz, SEO is:
” the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.”
2. Why is SEO so important to any business?
In the web business, there is a running joke that you should put it on Google’s second page if you want to hide a dead corpse. Because just a small percentage of people go past the first page of Google results, your competitors will take all of your clients if your industry isn’t on the first page.
With each position, CTR falls gradually. It is critical to have a well-optimized website if you want your business to be successful in the internet world. One major advantage of SEO over PPC (Pay-Per Click) is that your results will not stop tomorrow, unlike PPC, even if you stop doing SEO today.
SEO is critical if a company wants to increase sales without spending a lot of money on marketing. Check out the SEO course by Great Learning to learn this critical skill from scratch.
3. What is a Search Engine?
A search engine, according to Google, is “a software that searches for and finds things in a database that match to keywords or characters supplied by the user, particularly for locating specific sites on the World Wide Web.”
Search engines respond to user queries by providing a list of relevant results depending on a variety of variables. These results can be classified into Organic and Inorganic results.
4. Name a few search engines besides Google.
This is one of the most often asked SEO interview questions. Other popular search engines include Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex. There are a lot of different kinds of search engines on the internet today. YouTube, for example, is a search engine that exclusively returns video results. In terms of traffic, YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine.
5. Name the founders of Google and the year they founded it in?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998 while they were pursuing PhD at Stanford University in California.
6. What does Google stand for?
The letters GOOGLE don’t have any meaning. It isn’t an abbreviation in any way. Backrub was the moniker given to the firm by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when it was founded.
They intended to call themselves Googol after realizing they needed a new moniker. They misspelled Google while registering, and the rest is history.
7. What are the most important Google ranking factors ?
There is a list of factors that affect the Google ranking but none of these can be considered as the most important. All of these are bases on experiments and industry best practices. These factors include:
- Quality Content
- Quality & Relevant Backlinks
- Mobile First
- Page Speed
- Brand Strength
- Domain Strength
- User experience
- Technical SEO
- Social Signals
- Content Freshness
- Schema Code
- HTTPS
- Domain Authority
- Content Type
- Content Depth
8. Define web crawling.
Search engine bots crawl webpages for indexing, and this process is referred to as web crawling. A spider, or a spider bot, is what these bots are called. Crawlers employ hyperlinks to navigate to other sites and documents, and then return the information to the web servers to be indexed. The crawler makes a copy of a page and adds its URLs to indexing as it visits it.
The more regularly you create fresh material the more frequently your website is crawled by search engine bots.
9. What does SERP stand for?
The term SERP refers to the Search Engine Results Page. This is the page where you may see all of the search results when you use a search engine. PPC and organic listings are both included in the SERP. Depending upon the term, listings are accessible in a variety of formats.
10. What exactly is an organic result?
Organic results are presented by search engines based on relevancy, quality, and other ranking variables, and are one of the two types of search results in SERP. Organic results are unpaid and are often known as “free” or “natural” outcomes. The ranking of organic results is determined by a number of variables. Underneath the sponsored results are the organic results. Organic results cannot be manipulated by paying Google, but they may be enhanced by providing high-quality content and enhancing the user experience.
11. What is a paid result?
Advertisers who pay to have their adverts appear above organic results on SERPs are referred to as paid results. Paid results are immediate, and advertisers are not required to improve their website or content in order to rank. Your Max CPC and quality score will be used to determine your rank. The higher your quality score, the less money you’ll have to spend.
12. What is Google Sandbox, and how does it work?
The Google Sandbox Effect is a notion that claims that new websites are usually on probation (within a box) and so cannot rank highly for their most essential keywords. According to the hypothesis, Google need some time to observe before leaving the fictitious location. It might be caused by constructing too many links in a short amount of time.
It was never formally announced, although it was discussed while Google was discussing various subjects.
13. What is Google Autocomplete?
Google Autocomplete is a search engine feature that works with Google and other search engines. When you start typing in the search box, Google autocomplete offers you a list of suggestions to help you finish your search.
It enables users to complete searches in less time and with less effort, which is especially useful while searching on a mobile device. Search recommendations are based on popular queries as well as your previous searches.
14. What is a Googlebot?
Googlebot is a web crawler that searches, crawls, and indexes online sites for Google.
15. What is DA?
In every SEO interview, this is one of the most often asked questions. MOZ created the DA measure, which stands for Domain Authority. It has a scale of 0 to 100. The greater the number, the better. The higher your DA, the greater your chances of ranking.
16. How important is DA?
For SEOs, DA is still an essential statistic. They utilize it to assess the quality of websites fast. It allows people to compare and comprehend the authority of various websites.
17. What is the difference between DA and PA?
Domain Authority is a term that refers to the authority of a website. It explains your whole website’s authority. The greater the DA, the more likely you are to rank. However, DA is just one of hundreds of ranking factors.
PA stands for Page Authority. It describes a page’s authority based on backlinks, social sharing, and other factors.
18. What is the meaning of WWW? What exactly is it?
The World Wide Web is abbreviated as WWW. The World Wide Web is a collection of websites hosted on web servers and accessible via local computers. Text, pictures, music, video, and other forms of information can be found on the websites.
Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989. If the WWW were a book, its pages would be stored on servers all around the world. How will we get from one page to the next? We can do so with the aid of hypertext. Users can utilize hypertext to find Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs.
19. What exactly is a domain?
People have trouble remembering numbers, yet they have no trouble remembering words. Domain names exist because it is easier to recall a single word or phrase rather than a large string of digits. Google.com, for example, is easier to remember than “74.125.127.147′′. It serves as a description and is just a component of the address.
20. What is a top-level domain (TLD)?
The final element of an internet address is the top-level domain (TLD). Many TLDs are accessible, such as.com, .net, .org, .co.in, and so on.
21. What exactly is a ccTLD?
A country code top-level domain is referred to as a ccTLD. Each country’s domain extension is unique. All ccTLDs consist of only two characters. For example, .in is for India and .us is for the United States.
22. What is the definition of web hosting?
If you compare purchasing a website to purchasing a home, web hosting is the land (space) that you purchase. Web hosting refers to the space that web hosting providers make available for you to create your website. The server must have access to the internet. Visitors’ devices connect to the server when they input the domain name, and the pages are sent.
23. What is the meaning of URL?
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It’s the URL of a webpage or document on the World Wide Web. There are several elements to a URL. It all starts with procedure (https, http, etc).
Let’s look at the various components of the URL:
- Protocol: the mechanism through which the URL is processed (https, http, etc)
- Domain: the domain name is the name of the website (ex: greatlearning.com)
- Path: the website’s folder and page are referred to as the path.
- Query String: Parameters for dynamic data in a query string
- Hash: locates a certain website area.
24. What is White Hat SEO, and how does it work?
In any SEO interview question and answer guide, this is one of the most often asked questions. White Hat SEO is a way of boosting your search engine ranking while adhering to search engine standards and not compromising your tactics. White Hat SEO does not entail using unethical tactics to manipulate search engines, but rather focuses on creating search engine friendly websites and user experiences. White hat SEO is producing high-quality content that adds value to users and allows them to earn links rather than just acquiring backlinks.
25. What is Black Hat SEO, and how does it work?
The technique of attempting to manipulate search engine algorithms in order to enhance search engine ranking is known as Black Hat SEO. It goes against the rules of search engines. Instead of creating a website with consumers in mind, Black Hat SEOs utilize tactics to obtain rapid results. They use a variety of Black Hat techniques, which search engines are aware of and penalize if they are discovered. While black hat tactics may be beneficial in the short term, they are not the best answer for the long run. If your site is penalized, removing it requires a lot of time and work.
26. What is the difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is the practice of employing aggressive SEO methods and strategies that are only focused on the search engine, rather than the human audience. White Hat SEO refers to the use of optimization SEO methods and strategies that focus on the human audience rather than the search engine and strictly adhere to the laws and policies of the search engine.
Those that are searching for a rapid monetary return on their website utilize Black Hat SEO. White Hat SEO enhances your search engine result page (SERP) performance while retaining the website’s integrity.
To deceive search engine crawlers and enhance ranking, Black Hat SEO incorporates junk and spam keywords into on-page material whereas White Hat SEO inclueds thorough research, carefully crafted titles, and Meta tags tailored to the webpage, industry, and relevancy.
27. Why should you avoid Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO may be detrimental to your website and business in a variety of ways.
- It can result in a site’s search ranks being lowered or perhaps disappearing completely from search results. Because black hat SEO practices violate search engine terms of service, search engines may penalize or even prohibit websites that utilize them from appearing on their search results pages.
- It only produces short-term outcomes (if any). Because black hat strategies take use of search guidelines flaws, the results obtained through these methods will vanish once the flaw is addressed. This occurs on a regular basis, since search engines are always looking for and patching vulnerabilities that individuals exploit to cheat the system.
- It gives audiences a bad, unpleasant, or deceptive experience. Many black hat methods degrade the user experience, causing visitors to abandon a page. It might also give the impression that a company is spammy and untrustworthy.
Avoid black hat SEO if you want to earn long-term search presence and user trust.
28. What are the black hat SEO practices to avoid?
The following Black Hat SEO practices should be avoided:
Publishing a bunch of Low-Quality content, keyword stuffing and duplicate content, cloaking, using misleading redirects, buying backlinks, using link farms and PNB, spamming blog comments, abusing structured data, Negative SEO or Falsely reporting competitor sales.
29. What is cloaking?
Cloaking is a black hat SEO method for getting search engines to rank material for a specific search phrase that isn’t related to the context of the page. Cloaking shows people one piece of material while search engines see a separate piece of content.
30. What is a PBN?
A website created on a dropped or auctioned domain is known as a Private Blog Network. Some black hat SEOs create them in order to connect to their main website and gain authority.
This approach is frowned upon by Google since it can elevate a spammy website, causing it to be hidden from search engines.
31. What are all the popular SEO tools available in the market?
This SEO interview question is designed to determine your tool competence. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahref, SEMRush, Alexa, Moz, Buzzsumo, and other SEO tools are among the most popular and significant.
If you’re an SEO, you’ll want to learn how to use Google Search Console. It allows you to verify the health of your website in Google’s eyes. It assists you in analyzing the performance of your website and improving its optimization. It assists you in locating a list of website problems. It is a Google tool that is entirely free.
Google Analytics: If your website is mid-level, the free edition of Google Analytics will suffice. It aids in the comprehension of your website’s performance, the understanding of visitor behavior, and the improvement of conversion rates, among other things.
If you want to learn the basics of google analytics then enroll in this free google analytics course and master the basics of Google Analytics.
Apart from these free tools, some other paid tools are
Moz: Moz is a prominent paid service that assists companies in analyzing and gaining insights about their websites and rivals.
Ahrefs: If you want to examine your or your competitor’s backlinks, Ahrefs is the finest tool to use.
SEMRush: SEMRush is a tool that allows you to examine the health of your backlinks, the position of your keywords, and website errors.
Screaming Frog: It scans your whole website and identifies all important components like as internal and external links, titles, descriptions, HTTP status codes, and more.
32. What is a do-follow link?
Without this question, no SEO Interview Questions and Answers guide would be complete. The default hyperlink is do-follow. When a do-follow link is found, search engines scan the page and pass authority (also known as link juice) from one domain to another. More do-follow links from high-authority sites imply a better chance of ranking higher in SERPs, since backlinks are still a significant ranking component.
Example of a do-follow link:
<a href=”https://www.greatlearning.com”>Do-follow link</a>
33. What is a No-follow link?
One of the most crucial SEO interview questions. Another form of backlink is a no-follow link, which allows webmasters to tell search engines not to follow a certain link.
However, this does not ensure that Google will not follow the links. When businesses connect to social networking sites or other third-party websites and don’t want their link juice to transfer to those sites, they employ nofollow links.
34. Do no-follow links hold value?
Despite the fact that no-follow links do not immediately enhance your website’s PageRank, they can nevertheless be beneficial in a variety of ways.
1. No-follow links are necessary for a natural backlink profile – Consider building a backlink profile that seems natural; you don’t need to contact every site that connects to you with a no-follow link and ask for a do-follow one.
2. No-follow links can improve traffic and brand exposure – Many high-traffic websites have no-follow links. While they may not immediately contribute to your website’s PageRank, they might provide a significant amount of traffic when visitors click through to visit your site. (Visitors that come at your site after clicking on a link from another website are known as Referrals in Google Analytcs.)
3. Nofollow links can assist in the growth of do-follow links – The visibility you get from links on famous websites might help you attract more attention. The more people who hear about you, the more likely you are to earn do-follow links naturally.
35. When should you use No-follow vs Do-follow link?
When linking out to third-party websites, you may wish to use the no-follow property.
The no-follow property should be used in advertising, sponsored blog posts, text link advertisements, and other links that come from paid connections, for example. This shows Google that you’re not trying to manipulate the system using a link strategy.
In addition, any content that may be deemed “untrustworthy” should utilize the nofollow tag for links. If you accept comments on your site, this should contain them. (You may control nofollow links for WordPress sites with the aid of a WordPress plugin.) If you do not have knowledge about WordPress, you can learn WordPress with the help of free courses.
36. What is the difference between do-follow and no-follow links?
A do-follow link transfers link juice from one domain to another, but a no-follow link does not. In terms of SEO, a Do-follow link is more useful, whereas a No-follow link is less beneficial.
37. What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO refers to a set of operations carried out on a website in order to improve its ranking, user experience, and conversion.
Page title, meta descriptions, meta tags, URL structure, body tags, keyword density, image, and internal linking are the most important components of on-page SEO.
38. What is a keyword?
Keywords are words or phrases that people use to discover relevant material on search engines. They’re also referred to as questions.
We must apply those keywords on relevant webpages and optimize them to rank better on search engines once we have figured out the list of keywords your target users use after a thorough analysis.
39. What is the frequency of keywords?
The number of times a given keyword phrase occurs on a web page is known as keyword frequency. When optimizing a web page, we must be careful not to overuse the term to the point of keyword stuffing.
40. What is Keyword Difficulty, exactly?
The keyword difficulty metric measures how tough it is to rank for a given term based on its popularity and competition. The more complex the keyword, the more time or backlinks may be required.
41. What is Keyword Proximity?
A search phrase might be composed of many keywords. The keyword proximity relates to the distance between the various terms in a search phrase.
42. What is Keyword Density?
The percentage of times a term or phrase occurs on a web page is known as keyword density. When the keyword density is far greater than the acceptable amount, search engines may mistakenly believe you’re keyword stuffing. As a result, we must ensure that the keyword density for any major or secondary search terms is not excessive.
For example, if a term appears five times in a 200-word piece, the density is 2.5 percent. Although there is no perfect keyword density, 3–4% is regarded great practice for SEO.
43. What is Keyword Stuffing?
Keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique that involves increasing the term density to an extremely high level in order to rank for a certain keyword. After the Panda update, keyword stuffing to manipulate search engines is no longer encouraged and should be avoided at all costs.
44. What is Keyword Stemming, and how does it work?
Keyword stemming is the process of determining a keyword’s root word and then adding suffixes, prefixes, and pluralization to create new keywords.
45. What is the Definition of Keyword Prominence?
The position of your keyword on a web page is determined by its prominence. Throughout a blog section, for example, it is preferable to include your keyword in the post, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
46. What is NAP?
NAP is an acronym for Name, Address, and Phone Number. One of the most important aspects of local SEO is the address. It aids search engines in comprehending and identifying the list of businesses that should be presented for certain location-based queries.
47. How can you tell whether you have the correct quantity of keywords on a page?
There is no such thing as a perfect number or range. You must ensure that the keywords in the article appear natural and not forced. It’s recommended to have three core keywords and a few secondary keywords, although this depends on the length, keyword complexity, competitiveness, page flow, and other factors.
48. What is long tail keyword?
Long tail keywords are phrases that contain more than four words and are highly specialized.
Long tail keywords, unlike short keywords, which are highly wide, reveal the intent and nature of the search, resulting in a high amount of conversions if we target them appropriately.
The ideal way to use long tail keywords is on a blog. Long-tail keywords have a lower search volume than wide keywords, but when numerous long-tail keywords are combined, we receive a lot of traffic with a high conversion rate.
49. What is bounce rate in SEO?
This question must be included in every SEO Interview Questions and Answers guide. One of the most popular interview questions for Google Analytics is this one. The percentage of website visitors that depart the landing page without viewing any further pages or taking any specified action is referred to as the bounce rate.
Bounce rate is defined as single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the proportion of all sessions on your site in which users only saw one page and made one request to the Analytics server, according to Google.
To reduce bounce rates, boost page engagement (using internal links, CTAs, etc. ), improve page performance, and match user experience and more.
The bounce rate criteria differ by genre. B2B sites should have lower bounce rates than blogs, which tend to have higher bounce rates. Benchmarks are also subject to vary depending on the industry.
50. What are header tags and how do I use them?
Header tags are just that: tags that appear at the top of your page. It varies in size from <h1> to <h6>, with H1 being the largest and H6 being the smallest. The headings H1 and H2 are thought to be the most significant for SEO.
It’s a good idea to use your secondary keywords in header tags wherever it’s natural and possible.
51. What are meta descriptions?
Meta descriptions are HTML characteristics that describe the content of a page. It not only gives search engines, but also people, a description of the webpage. In the search engine results page, users may see the meta descriptions beneath the title of the web page.
One of the most essential SEO elements is the meta description, which should be optimized for keywords. Apart from that, designing a meta description in such a manner that people want to read more about your web page and therefore boost your CTR is critical.
52. What are Internal Links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that connect one page of your domain to another. The structure of internal links is critical for both user experience and search engine optimization.
Internal link structure should be properly thought out with users in mind so that they may easily traverse the website. Every essential page should be just 2,3 clicks away from the main page. The amount of clicks necessary to get to a page from the home page is known as link depth. All of your major main page links should be kept on the home page.
Internal links assist search engines in crawling and indexing the website’s web pages, as well as allowing link juice to move from one page to the next. Internal link locations that are appropriately adjusted can reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a task.
53. What are outbound links?
Outbound links are links that point to another website from your own. Outbound links transmit link juice from your site to other domains, thus having too many might damage your SEO. To prevent passing on authority, no-follow links to outbound links are advised. Keeping a few outbound links to high authority sites may be beneficial since it informs search engines about the material you have and establishes a relationship between your website and other relevant websites.
54. What are inbound links and how do they work?
Inbound links are links that point to your website from another website.
55. Difference between an inbound link and an outbound link?
Inbound links are links from other websites that point to your website. Outbound links are links that point to another website from your own.
56. What is the purpose of robots.txt?
It’s a text file called robots.txt. It’s everything done through this file. It tells search engine crawlers how to index and cache a webpage, a website or directory’s file, and a domain.
57. What are anchor texts and how do you use them?
The clickable text in a hyperlink is called anchor text. Anchor texts assist users in understanding the purpose of the page. If keywords are used, it also has SEO value. However, if you are overly optimized, Google may penalize you.
Natural anchor text is crucial, as is variety, such as branded, long tail, graphic links, partial and precise matches.
58. Why is anchor text important to SEO?
Anchor text is used by search engines to determine the context of the page to which it is linked. This has some SEO significance in terms of determining what the page is about for search engines.
59. What is the purpose of a title tag?
The title tag aids Google and users in deciphering the objective of a website. Page title optimization is a crucial on-page activity where your major keyword should be used. In addition, the title tag should be compelling enough to entice search engine users to click on it and visit your website.
60. What is SEO Friendly URLs?
One of the most common SEO interview questions. SEO Friendly URLs are those that are simple to comprehend for both search engines and users. Static rather than dynamic URLs, without parameters, keyword optimized, reader-friendly, and short.
61. What is the Meta Tag for Robots?
With instructions like FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW, INDEX, and NOINDEX, the Robots Meta Tag informs search engines how to treat the page.
62. How does a 301 redirect work?
This SEO interview question is designed to assess your technical abilities. A 301 redirect is a way of permanently redirecting visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new URL. When a webmaster wishes to redirect from one URL to another for a variety of reasons, 301 is the ideal option since it transfers the majority of link juice from the old page to the new one.
In terms of transferring authority and value, 301 is better for SEO than 302 or other JS-related redirection.
63. What is Search Console / Webmaster Tools?
Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, is a Google tool that allows webmasters to monitor the health of their site in Google’s eyes.
Not only can a webmaster examine indexing status, crawl errors, crawl status, keyword performance, and backlinks, but he or she can also disavow urls, apply for page reindexing, and submit an XML sitemap, among other things. If you’re going to an SEO interview, you should study more about this and put it into practice.
64. What is ALT Tag?
The alt tag is an HTML property that allows us to provide each picture on our website a description. If the picture cannot be shown in the browser for whatever reason, viewers can read the alt tags to figure out what the image is about. It also aids search engines in deciphering the image’s meaning, allowing them to learn more about the website. Alt tags can help search engines rank pictures on a website higher in Image search.
65. What is Off-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
The list of operations conducted away from the website to increase the ranking and exposure of the website is known as off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO’s main features include:
Social Networking Sites, Guest Blogging, Reverse Guest Blogging, Press Release, etc.
66. What are backlinks in SEO?
Backlinks are created when one website links to another website. Backlinks are a crucial ranking element in SEO. Backlinks are divided into two categories. There are two types of backlinks: no follow and do follow.
When a web page receives numerous relevant backlinks from authoritative sites, Google and other search engines consider the page to be more relevant to the search query, increasing its rank.
The quantity of backlinks isn’t always significant, but their quality and relevance are.
67. How important are backlinks?
Backlinks are seen by Google as a vote. A website’s popularity and importance are proportional to the number of backlinks it has. But, as we said before, the quantity isn’t the sole consideration. There are a slew of additional factors that go into determining how much value each backlink adds to your site. The website’s permission, relevancy, the value of the page from which we obtain backlinks, the position of the page from which we acquire backlinks, and so on.
Ten low-quality backlinks are worth less than one high-quality backlink. If you’re in the ERP business, the links you acquire from ERP-related websites/blogs are more valuable than links from non-ERP-related websites.
68. What is Search Engine Submission?
The practice of submitting your website to prominent search engines to ensure that it is crawled and indexed is known as search engine submission.
However, this method is no longer essential because search engines have advanced to the point where they can quickly locate and index your website without you having to submit it manually.
69. What is the definition of forum posting?
Forum posting is an off-page method that involves creating a profile on a relevant forum, creating a thread, engaging with other users, and participating in online discussions in order to obtain backlinks to your website. This might have been a fantastic method to connect with potential consumers, but some advertisers abused the system, causing it to lose its credibility. However, we may still employ this technique if we can connect with consumers and educate them, remove their concerns, and assist them in finding a solution.
70. What is an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. The process of submitting RSS feeds to an RSS submission directory is known as RSS feed submission. Users may stay up to current on numerous blogs, websites, and news sources from an one spot, which is convenient. RSS’s usefulness is now severely restricted, and people’s information consumption habits have evolved over time.
71. What is Blog Commenting and How Does It Work?
Blog commenting is the process of leaving a relevant hyperlink to your website in a comment on a blog article.
Blog comments may be divided into two categories. Both automated and manual processes are used. Automated blog commenting is typically a shady practice in which you don’t read a blog post and make a large number of comments. It is of no use to the reader or the publisher. Manual commenting entails finding relevant sites, reading the blog post, adding your opinion in the form of a remark, communicating with the author, and sharing your relevant blog post/page with other readers.
72. The SEO Benefits of Blog Commenting
It is apparent that the value and practice of blog comments have changed. Because the links are largely no-follow these days, they have little value. It will only be worthwhile if you select the appropriate blog, share the appropriate link, and have people visit your website as a result of that link. Although this question isn’t often included in many SEO interview questions and answers guides, you should be prepared nonetheless.
73. What is referral traffic and how does it work?
The visits you obtain from third-party domains are known as referral traffic. Building or earning links from viable and relevant websites might help you increase referral traffic.
74. Is it still possible to submit a directory?
Some organizations continue to use directory submission as an off-page SEO strategy. It only works if your company is included on prominent directory websites where people are looking for businesses. Backlinking to a website by listing it on dozens of other websites is an outdated notion that should be avoided.
If you have a local business, you may submit your website to a niche-relevant directory for reference.
75. What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?
PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising is a type of campaign in which marketers are compensated when consumers click on the advertisement. The cost per click is the price charged to the advertiser (CPC). Most PPC campaigns will also contain a CPM component. CPM stands for Cost Per Mille, meaning cost per thousand ad impressions in simple English. When the ad receives thousands of views, the advertiser will be charged a modest fee. This SEO Question is intended to assess your understanding of topics other than SEO. See the Google AdWords Interview Questions and Answers for additional information.
76. What exactly is CTR?
One of the most popular SEO interview questions is this one. The term “Click Through Rate” refers to how many times a user clicks on a link By dividing the number of impressions by the number of clicks, we can get the CTR. For instance, if you received 15 clicks out of 150 impressions, your CTR would be 10%. Although CTR is not a direct ranking factor, it does have the potential to boost SERP rankings in the long run.
77. What is EMD?
Exact Match Domain, or EMD, is a domain that contains the search keywords. Example:
BuyGroceriesOnline.com
78. What is the difference between page rank and the first page of a search engine?
An SEO interview question might be tough at times. The Google algorithm that determines page rank is called PageRank. This is a measure for evaluating the performance of a webpage submitted to search engines by webmasters. Google has stopped providing the page rank to the general public.
The SERPs list the pages that are relevant to the user’s query. Both organic and sponsored search results are included in these results. The SERPs results have some weight, and they aren’t just random numbers. Search engines use complex algorithms to determine ranking positions, and page rank is one of them.
Intermediate Level SEO Interview Questions & Answers
79. What is Canonical URL?
Canonical URL is a technique of notifying search engines which specific URL is the original and which one you want to be featured in search engines when there are numerous variants of a website. The use of a canonical URL allows websites to avoid duplicate content problems. Canonical problems can arise in a variety of situations, including various dynamic parameters on the same page, print versions, and so on.
Content syndication is feasible thanks to cross-domain canonical URLs.
You pick the original version and utilize the canonical property in this procedure so that the other versions are seen as variants rather than duplicate pages. In response to this SEO interview question, describe the various strategies for resolving canonical problems.
80. What is an HTML Sitemap?
One of the most crucial SEO interview questions. HTML sitemap is a web page that allows visitors to view a list of pages structured in such a manner that they can easily understand and navigate the site.
If your website just has a few user-accessible sites, an HTML sitemap isn’t essential. HTML sitemaps are very handy if you have a large website.
81. What is an XML Sitemap, exactly?
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an acronym for “Extensible Markup Language.” The purpose of an XML sitemap is to provide search engines with information about the most recent changes made to them. It contains a list of webpages as well as the frequency with which they are updated. Using an XML sitemap, we may request that search engines crawl and index all of our essential pages on a regular basis. When a search engine discovers a website, one of the first things it looks for is a sitemap.
82. Define LSI.
The abbreviation LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Keywords are semantically linked to the principal term used by visitors in search engines.
When we use LSI keywords to optimize a page, the keyword relevance will rise. LSI allows you to optimize keywords on a web page without having to worry about keyword stuffing. LSI keywords are used by Google’s algorithm to determine the relevance of a search phrase. It aids search engines in deciphering the semantic structure of keywords and extracting the meaning of the text in order to provide the best SERP results.
83. What is the Google Algorithm?
The Google algorithm is a set of rules, instructions, and codes that assist the search engine in returning appropriate search results for user queries. More than 200 ranking criteria are reported to be used by Google’s algorithm to rank a web page for certain keywords. The Google algorithm is known as Hummingbird, and hundreds of changes are released each year to improve it in various ways.
84. What is Google Penalty?
Wikipedia says this:
“A Google penalty is a penalty imposed on a website’s search rankings as a result of changes to Google’s search algorithms or a manual inspection by Google.
[doubtful – debate] The penalty might be an unintended consequence of an algorithm upgrade or a deliberate retaliation for using black-hat SEO tactics.”
When you break any Google rules, Google’s algorithms penalize your website automatically. If Google executives see a website that is violating the standards, they will manually punish it. When this happens, you’ll get a notification in your search console.
Once you’ve fixed the problems and submitted your website for review, it takes a lot of effort and time to get the penalty lifted.
85. What is Panda Update?
In 2011, Google released the Panda update, which penalizes or devalues low-quality websites with low-quality content while rewarding high-value websites.
Pages with a low amount of valuable material and pages with duplicate content are de-ranked or penalized by Google Panda.
86. What exactly is the Penguin update?
In 2012, Google released the Penguin update, which seeks for sites with spammy backlinks and devalues or penalizes them. Penguin was created to detect link farms, link purchasing, blog networks, and other black-hat link-building techniques. The Penguin update assisted Google in identifying websites that were breaking Google’s standards and generating backlinks only to enhance their SERP ranking.
87. What is Hummingbird Update?
The Google search algorithm upgrade known as Hummingbird took place in 2013. Hummingbird has aided in making search more on context rather than keywords, and it aids Google in better understanding the intent of the keywords rather than just the phrases themselves.
What makes the hummingbird unique is its ability to understand intent in new and improved ways.
88. What does the Mobilegeddon upgrade entail?
Google’s Mobilegeddon update is a means of informing webmasters that their websites must be mobile-friendly in order to be prioritized in search engine results. As the number of people using Google on mobile devices continues to rise, Google’s goal is to provide the best experience possible to all mobile users by enabling mobile friendly web pages in results. The mobile friendliness of a page has become an important element in ranking websites in the SERPs with the Mobilegeddon update.
89. Is There a Google Pigeon Update?
Pigeon is a Google update that aims to improve the relevance and quality of local searches.
90. What are the SEO tools you use?
List any tools you’ve used before or now, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush, Similar Web, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Alexa.
90. What is meant by conversions and how will you track conversions through GA?
Most Google analytics questions and answer guides advise that you ask one of these essential questions. Conversions occur when your Google Analytics goals are met, resulting in a return on investment for your website.
For instance, if the user completes a desired activity on the website, such as filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter, or just demonstrates a high degree of involvement, etc. Conversion monitoring may be set up in Google Analytics using goals.
Conversion refers to any completed user activity that is valuable to your business. In layman’s terms, a conversion is the achievement of a predetermined goal.
91. What are rich snippets?
Rich snippets are a type of structured data that allows websites to provide more information to their visitors while also increasing the number of clicks they receive. Rich snippets do not immediately enhance a web page’s ranking, but if displayed effectively, they can increase the page’s CTR, which in turn can improve the ranking in the long term.
93. What are Doorway Pages and How Do I Use Them?
Doorway pages are a black hat strategy that should be avoided at all costs. Users of search engines first browse doorway pages after clicking a search engine result before proceeding to the actual landing page. They are search engine optimized, and when a person hits one of the gateway sites, they are immediately routed to the main landing page.
94. What does EAT and YMYL stand for?
EAT: Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness.
YMYL: Your Money, Your Life.
95. How to decrease the loading time of the website?
We may minimize loading time by:
- Optimizing CSS delivery to reduce HTTP requests
- Using external style sheets
- Compressed images (without sacrificing quality)
- Minifying code
- Enabling browser caching
- Using CSS sprites to reduce HTTP requests
96. What is Google Analytics and mention some of it’s reports?
This is usually often the first thing you’ll be asked during a Google Analytics interview. Google Analytics is a free online analytics service from Google that allows you to track and evaluate your website’s performance.
With the aid of a tracking code, Google Analytics collects different actions of visitors when they visit your site, such as user engagement, visitor flow, number of conversions, and variables such as age, gender, and hobbies.
Google Analytics collects data in a variety of ways, including at the user, session, pageview, and event levels. The tool’s main goal is to assist you in making decisions that will increase the site’s performance and income.
Some of the reports are:
- Mobile performance report
- Content efficiency report
- Bounce rate vs Exit rate report
- Keyword analysis report
- New vs Returning visitors
- Landing pages report
- Traffic acquisition report
97. What you can learn from using Google Analytics?
This SEO interview question is designed to test your understanding of GA. The following are the most important things we can learn from Google analytics:
- Users are reporting in real time.
- Your users’ locations
- Channels with the best and poorest performance
- Popular pages are listed below.
- Your website’s loading speed
- Conversions and goals
- Funnel Flow
- Internal search and visitor behavior Audience Devices
98. Mention some crucial factors to improve ranking?
Some of the crucial factors that can help to improve your websites ranking are:
- The web page’s content quality
- How up-to-date and in-depth your content is
- Your domain’s authority on the subject
- Number of relevant and high-quality backlinks
99. What exactly is Rankbrain?
Google’s Hummingbird search algorithm includes Rankbrain. Rankbrain is used by Google to determine the intent of search queries. It’s an AI system that analyzes websites to determine the most relevant results for new searches. RankBrain has the ability to learn and grasp new patterns, which aids in the discovery of high-quality results. Because RankBrain isn’t about keywords, there’s no way to optimize a website for it. Instead, focus on excellent content.
100. What is the BERT algorithm?
Transformers’ Bidirectional Encoder Representations has been modified to assist Google develop a deep learning system for NLP. Google can use natural language processing to better understand what people are saying just like a human.
101. What exactly does an SEO Manager do?
Manager of Search Engine Optimization
If you’re interviewing for the role of SEO Manager, this is a crucial question to ask. For clients, an SEO Manager is in charge of coordinating and implementing SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns and programs. They handle offshore and onsite optimization initiatives while also overseeing and coordinating with the content, design, social media, and marketing teams. In India, SEO Managers earn the highest SEO pay. The SEO manager is in charge of coordinating on-page and off-page optimization activities. With the aid of his team of SEO professionals, the SEO manager creates and implements SEO strategy. He or she should also have a basic understanding of web design and development.
An SEO Manager’s main responsibilities include:
- Implement SEO programs and efforts in order to increase website leads and purchases.
- Analyze and report on the project and campaign performance.
- Oversee the work of other team members and assist them in becoming more productive.
- Optimize the landing page of the website, fill in the content gap, and measure KPIs.
- To cooperate with other team heads, he should have strong communication skills.
- Assisting the team with the difficulties they confront and making recommendations for solutions.
Conclusion
We hope our SEO Interview Questions and Answers compilation will be helpful to you. All the top questions and frequently asked questions are mentioned in this list. Since this list consists of all basic level questions on SEO along with some advanced level questions, it would be very useful to people starting out their career in the SEO field. They will be well versed with all the questions that could be possibly asked in an interview. This list is also useful to people who are already in this field and are looking to change jobs or get a promotion. It will be helpful in brushing up their SEO fundamental skills to ace the interview.
