SEO improves a website’s overall searchability, visibility and user experience. The goal of search engine optimization is to have the search engine bots not only find your site and pages but also increase the rank of page so that it appears at the top of the search engine results.
Nowadays SEO experts are required for All types of businesses, whether it’s a small organization or a large scale industry. To boost your business and establish a brand name, you need SEO. If SEO is done right, your business is going to get on that Google front page and get seen by consumers around the globe. SEO professionals are in huge demand everywhere, therefore competition is also very high. To be successful in an SEO job interview, you need to prepare and practice well. Here, we have compiled some important SEO interview questions and answers that are frequently asked in SEO interview:
- What do you mean by SEO?
- Name some of the important tools used by SEO experts?
- What are the steps you take to optimize a website?
- How does search engine works?
- What are the important google search Engine Ranking Factors?
- Explain the role of social media in SEO strategy?
- What is backlink? How backlink is important for SEO?
- What are the two types of SEO?
- Explain On-Page SEO and OFF-Page SEO?
- What is Black Hat SEO and white hat SEO?
- What do you mean by page rank?
- What is an Alexa Rank in SEO?
- What is keyword? Why keywords are important?
- What is long-tail keyword in SEO?
- How do you do keyword research?
- Can you explain keyword density?
- What is “Google Suggest” or “Autocomplete”?
- What do you mean by meta tags?
- What is an anchor text?
- What are the common types of anchor text?
- What are the limitations of the Title and Meta Tags?
- What are Meta Descriptions?
- What is web crawling?
- What is Googlebot?
- What is robots.txt?
- What is XML Sitemap?
- Explain Google rankbrain?
- What is dwell time?
- What is bounce rate?
- What are the criteria for the uniqueness of a page?
- What do you mean by Cloaking?
- What is Google Sandbox?
- What is Google search console?
- What are Google Analytics?
- What is toxic linking?
- What is do follow link and no follow link?
- What are internal links?
- What is google mobile update?
- Explain pigeon update?
- What is google SEO hummingbird update?
- What is penguin update?
- Explain panda update?
- What is a 301 Redirect?
- What are 404 errors?
- What is pogo sticking?
- What are the common SEO mistakes?
Q1. What do you mean by SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is the technique of driving the traffic to your website through organic search results. All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo rank the organic search results based on hundreds of different ranking factors. Proper SEO makes your website rank higher up in the search results.
Q2. Name some of the important tools used by SEO experts?
Google webmaster, Google analytics, Bing Webmaster, SEO Moz, SEOCrawler, Copyscape, Browseo, etc.
Q3. What are the steps you take to optimize a website?
SEO is the technical and creative processes that improve the visibility of your website to search engines. It requires dedicated attention to keywords, content, backlinks, and web design. Some important steps for optimizing a website are:
- Conduct market analysis
- Competitive analysis.
- Keyword Research and Development
- Content Optimization and Submission
- Increase Your Visibility with Off-Page SEO
- Test, Measure, Adjust for SEO Success
Q4. How does search engine works?
Search engines build an index based on crawling, which is the process through which engines like Google, Bing and others find new pages to index. When a person performs an online search, the search engine searches its entity of billions of documents and does two things: first, it returns only those results that are relevant or useful to the searcher’s query; second, it ranks those results according to the popularity of the websites serving the information.
Q5. What are the important google search Engine Ranking Factors?
Here are the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm
- Content Quality
- Content Uniqueness
- Fully Crawlable Page
- Mobile Optimized Site
- Backlink
- Anchor text
- Site loading speed
- Keyword usage
- Domain authority
- Search Intent Match
Although, Google uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.
Q6. Explain the role of social media in SEO strategy?
Social media is part of ‘off-site SEO’ and it doesn’t directly contribute to SEO.As nowadays social media has become search engine too, so it helps to Build Authority. Most obvious benefit of social media SEO is that you can promote your content to your followers directly.It also helps to Get More Quality Links, if used properly.
The links that you share on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest may help your brand get more exposure, but they aren’t seen by Google as a ranking signal.
Keep in mind that almost all the links you get from social media sites are “no follow” but this does not mean that they do not have any value.
Q7. What is backlink? How backlink is important for SEO?
Backlinks, also called “inbound links” or “incoming links,” are created when one website links to another. The link to an external website is called a backlink. Backlinks are especially valuable for SEO because they are considered as a vote of confidence from one site to another.
Q8. What are the two types of SEO?
Q9. Explain On-Page SEO and OFF-Page SEO?
On-page SEO refers all the measures that can be taken directly within your website to improve its search rankings position. It involves optimizing the HTML code, content quality, and content structure.
Off-page SEO refers to activities you can perform outside the boundaries of your website. The most important are: Link building and social media marketing, etc.
Q10. What is Black Hat SEO and white hat SEO?
Black hat SEO refers to techniques and strategies used to get higher search rankings, and breaking search engine rules. Black hat SEO focuses on only search engines and not so much a human audience. Black hat SEO is typically used by those who are looking for a quick return on their site
White hat SEO refers to the use of techniques and strategies that are in line with the terms and conditions of the major search engines, including Google. Techniques that are typically used in white hat SEO include using keywords, and keyword analysis, doing research, quality content, rewriting meta tags for them to be more relevant, backlinking, link building, fast loading speed and mobile friendliness.
Q11. What do you mean by page rank?
PageRank computes the quality and quantity of links to a web page based on an algorithm. Google uses algorithm called as spiders to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is a way of measuring the importance of website pages.
Q12. What is an Alexa Rank in SEO?
Alexa is a global traffic rank given to a website based on how well it is performing relative to all other sites over a period of last 3 months. The lower your Alexa rank, the more popular your website is. Alexa rank doesn’t affect google search result ranking.
Q13. What is keyword? Why keywords are important?
Keywords are important words that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter search engines, also called “search queries.”
These are important because they are the linchpin between what people are searching for and the content you are providing to fill that need.
keywords you choose to target will determine what kind of traffic you get.
Q14. What is long-tail keyword in SEO?
A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that contains at least three-four words. These keywords are used to target specific group rather than mass audiences. they are more specific and often less competitive than generic keyword.
Q15. How do you do keyword research?
- Make a list of important, relevant topics based on Niche.
- Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner or other tools to analyse search volume and traffic rate of keywords.
- Check for long tail keywords
- Research related search terms.
- See how competitors are ranking for these keywords.
Some of the popular keyword research tools are: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, SECockpit, Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer and many more.
Q16. Can you explain keyword density?
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. For example: if a keyword appears 5 times in a 100-word text the keyword density would be 5%.
Q17. What is “Google Suggest” or “Autocomplete”?
Google Suggest or autocomplete is a Google search engine function that provides suggestions to users as they enter their search query into the search box.It was introduced in the US in 2008 and in Germany in 2009.
Q18. What do you mean by meta tags?
Meta tags are short excerpt that appear in the HTML code of a website page and tells the search engine what the page is about, and they are the first impression and point of contact for all search engines. This tag is added in thesection of an HTML web page, and they are only visible to search engines.
Q19. What is an anchor text?
Anchor text is the visible characters and words that hyperlinks display when linking to another document or location on the web. It
can provide both search engines and users relevant contextual information about the content of the link’s destination.
Q20. What are the common types of anchor text?
Exact-match – Your focus keyword/key phrase as anchor text
Partial-match – Using variants of your focus keyword to make a readable link.
Branded – A link with your brand name as an anchor.
Naked link – These are the anchors that link back to a site by simply using the URL.
Generic – generic anchors are normal anchor texts like “click here” or “go here.”
Images – In an image, Google reads the “alt” tag as an anchor text. Leaving this blank will result in a “no Text” anchor.
Q21. What are the limitations of the Title and Meta Tags?
The Title tag should be between 66-70 characters, and Meta Description tag should be between 230-320 characters.
Q22. What are Meta Descriptions?
The meta description is a short description of up to about 155 characters – a tag in HTML – which summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched phrase is within the description, so optimizing the meta description is crucial for on-page SEO.
Q23. What is web crawling?
To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a search engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites. When a spider is building its lists, the process is called Web crawling.
Q24. What is Googlebot?
Googlebot is Google’s search program that crawls the web and creates an index. It’s also known as a spider.
Q25. What is robots.txt?
A robots.txt is a text file that resides in the root directory of your website and gives search engines crawlers instructions as to which pages, they can crawl and index and which pages you would like them not to visit during the crawling and indexing process.
Q26. What is XML Sitemap?
XML sitemap is a list of your website’s URLs which helps Google and other main search engines to easily understand your website structure while crawling it.
A good XML sitemap acts as a roadmap of your website which leads Google to all your important pages.
Q27. Explain Google rankbrain?
RankBrain is a machine learning system that helps Google sort their search results.
RankBrain focuses on two things:
- How long someone spends on your page (Dwell Time)
- The percentage of people that click on your result (Click Through Rate).
Q28. What is dwell time?
Dwell Time is how long a Google searcher spends on your page. If lots of people spends a long time on particular page, Google will give it a rankings boost.
Q29. What is bounce rate?
A bounce is when someone visits a page, and hits back button without clicking anything on the page.
Q30. What are the criteria for the uniqueness of a page?
- Quality content
- Unique Images, Logo and videos.
- unique Meta Description and Title
- Use of High-Density Long Tail Keyword.
Q31. What do you mean by Cloaking?
Cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content or information presented to the user is different from that presented to search engine crawlers for better indexing. Cloaking is an illegal practice and is considered a Black hat SEO.
Q32. What is Google Sandbox?
The Google Sandbox refers to an alleged filter that prevents new websites from ranking in Google’s top results. The idea behind the Google sandbox is that newer websites are not as relevant as older sites.
Q33. What is Google search console?
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by google to help website owners, webmasters, web marketers and SEO professionals monitor website performance in the Google search result. It offers tools and reports for information about search appearance, search traffic, technical status updates, crawl data, indexing problem, linking etc.
Q34. What are Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring developer Urchin.
Q35. What is toxic linking?
Toxic backlinks are the unnatural links that harm the search rankings of a website. Toxic links in SEO are links to your website from spam sites or link networks created only for link building purpose and from websites containing viruses and malware.
Q36. What is do follow link and no follow link?
Do follow links are an HTML attribute that is used to allow search bots to follow the links. If a webmaster is link to your site with do follow link, search engine bots and people can follow you. They pass on link juice and really benefit your website to get a high Page Rank.
No follow links don’t allow search engine bots to follow your links. These links don’t pass on link juice. Only people can follow these links. They don’t help you to boost Page Rank, website rankings and have no SEO value.
Q37. What are internal links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to pages on the same domain. Internal links help Google find, index and understand all the pages on your site.
Q38. What is google mobile update?
Launch date: April 21, 2015
Google’s Mobile Update also known as Mobilegeddon ensures that mobile-friendly pages rank at the top of mobile search, while pages not optimized for mobile are filtered out from the SERPs or down-ranked.
Q39. Explain pigeon update?
Launch date: July 24, 2014 (US); December 22, 2014 (UK, Canada, Australia)
Pigeon affects those searches in which the user’s location plays an important part. Pigeon was designed to tie Google’s local search algorithm closer to their web algorithm and to improve ranking parameters based on distance and location.
Q40. What is google SEO hummingbird update?
Launch date: August 22, 2013
Hummingbird helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher intent. while keywords continue to be important, Hummingbird makes it possible for a page to rank for a query even if it doesn’t contain the exact words the searcher entered. This is achieved with the help of natural language processing that relies on latent semantic indexing, co-occurring terms and synonyms.
Q41. What is penguin update?
Launch date: April 24, 2012
Google Penguin’s objective is to down-rank sites whose links it deems manipulative. Since late 2016, Penguin has been part of Google’s core algorithm; unlike Panda, it works in real time. This algorithm rewarded the sites that used white-hat SEO and that were of high quality in a generic sense.
Q42. Explain panda update?
Launch date: February 24, 2011
Panda assigns a so-called “quality score” to web pages; this score is then used as a ranking factor. Initially, Panda was a filter rather than part of Google’s ranking algorithm, but in January 2016, it was officially incorporated into the core algorithm. Panda rollouts have become more frequent, so both penalties and recoveries now happen faster.
Q43. What is a 301 Redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link equity (ranking power) to the redirected page. The 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.
Q44. What is 404 error?
404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the page you were looking for was not found. Google does not penalize any website for 404 errors. However, if the search engines consistently fail to crawl the internal links of any website, the search ranking of that website is very likely to drop with low traffic.
Q45. What is pogo sticking?
Pogo sticking is when a search engine user visits several different search results in order to find a result that satisfies their search query. Its give a VERY strong sign that users aren’t happy with the results.
Q46. What are the common SEO mistakes?
- Poor site structure.
- Duplicate content.
- Choosing the Wrong Keywords.
- Using Keyword Stuffing.
- Missing Quality Links.
- Slow and non-mobile friendly webpages.