Search Engines
Whenever we come across any term, first we take our phone or laptop and open the browser and search it on a Search Engine, whether it is the Giant Google, Yahoo or Bing. We open the search engine and just type the Query. And the search engine guides us towards the Appropriate and Relevant answers.
From the early 1990s to 2023 Search Engines changed a lot. There was a time when YAHOO was the most popular Search Engine in 1998. And now Giant Google capturing more than 90% market share of searches.
Whether it is Google or Yahoo/Youtube, billions of Searches are carried out on Search Engines each day. According to studies, more than 8.5 billion searches are carried out in a day.
So, by this, for every business to be visible in Search Engine, they need to Optimize their website using Search Engine Optimization techniques. That’s Why the Market of SEO will grow only. So, businesses understand the importance of SEO and SEO professionals.
SEO Future
So businesses are investing in hiring SEO professionals. Whether you are an MBA or Digital Marketer, it is a good practice to master Search Engine Optimization. It is important for SEO professionals to master the skills by practising the learning.
Because without practising, learning does not make you perfect. And whenever you want to start your dream job, then the first and foremost thing for you is to pass that interview. For SEO freshers I have compiled a set of interview questions, that might help in getting the dream job.
Note: These are the questions to answer in an interview, these are the topics you might have come across many times and mastered but for the sake of an interview you have to answer them with confidence. These answers to the SEO questions are not for memorizing, but for getting ideas. You should answer them in your own best way.
SEO Interview Questions & Answers
Q1.What is SEO?
SEO is the process of increasing a site’s visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Search Engines.
Q2. What is a keyword? What is the role of a keyword in SEO?
Keywords are the terms added to content in order to improve the ranking for those terms.
Q3. What are the different categories of SEO techniques?
The different SEO techniques categories are
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- White Hat SEO
- Black Hat SEO
Q4. Differentiate between on-page and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO is the on-site optimization, whereas off-page SEO is the optimization done off the website.
Off-Page SEO consists of link building, guest posting, social media sharing, answering on forums etc.
On-Page SEO consists of Content creation, optimizing keywords, optimizing titles, content, images and meta description
Q5. Name different techniques used in off-page SEO.
The different techniques used in Off-Page SEO are
- Link building
- Guest blogging
- Backlinks
- Answering on Forums
- Social Media Sharing
Q6. What is an outbound link?
An outbound link is a link that points from your website to another website. It is also called an External link.
Q7. What is keyword density?
Keyword density is the percentage of a keyword used within the content. For example, If you use a focus keyword 10 times in your post of 1000 words then you have a Keyword Density of 1%.
Keyword Density = (Targeted Keyword used ➗No. Of Words) * 100
Q8. What is keyword frequency?
Keyword Frequency is the number of times a keyword appears on a web page or content. Keyword Frequency is also called keyword density.
Q9. What is keyword proximity?
Keyword Proximity refers to the distance between two words or phrases. A general rule is that the closer a keyword is to the content, the more relevant the page is to the Google bot.
For example,
We Do SEO for Businesses at a price you can afford
All of our affordable SEO is for businesses.
The phrase SEO for businesses have better keyword proximity in the first example than in the second, as the words are closer to each other. If all else were equal, the first example would rank higher than the second.
Q10. What is keyword difficulty?
Keyword Difficulty or KD evaluates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a given keyword on a 100-point scale. 0 is the easiest and 80+ is the toughest.
Q11. What is a landing page?
Landing Page is a standalone page, that is created for marketing and advertising campaign.
Q12. What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are snippets of code that tell search engines about your web page.
The most important Meta Tags are
- Title tag
- Meta Description
- Heading Tags
- Image Alt Attribute
- Robots Meta Tag
- rel=” canonical” Link Tag
- Schema Markup etc.
Q13. What is the importance of a Title Tag on a website?
Title tags help search engines understand what the page is about. The Page Title is the first thing for a searcher to see SERPs and decide whether the page is answering his query.
Q14. Name the important Meta tags in SEO and mention their character limits.
The most important Meta Tags are
- Title tag
- Meta Description
- Heading Tags
- Image Alt Attribute
- Robots Meta Tag
- rel=” canonical” Link Tag
- Schema Markup etc.
The title tag limit is 40 to 60 words. The meta Description limit is 140 to 160 characters
Q15. What is a SERP?
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page. It is the web page that displays after the user press enters for a query in the search Engine.
Q16. What are the major Google ranking factors?
The Major Google Ranking Factors are
- Backlinks
- Relevancy
- The freshness of content
- SSL Certificate/HTTPS
- Mobile-friendliness
- Page speed.
Q17. Explain Image Alt Text.
The image alt tag is the alternate text of the image. If the image is not loaded properly then the Alt text will be displayed. Search Engines don’t understand the images, so the alt tag explains to them what the image is about.
Q18. Which tools can you use to check the number of backlinks of a site other than your own?
The tools to check the number of backlinks of a competitor’s website are
Q19. What is 301 redirect?
301 redirect is a method to redirect the users to a new URL from an old URL. This is the permanent redirect. This redirect is used when you change the URL of the post or when you recreate a piece of content.
Q20. What are the common SEO mistakes?
The Common SEO mistakes are
- Slow Site Speed
- Duplicate Content
- Ranking for wrong keywords
- Not having the unique title and meta tags
- Not having SSL
Q21. What is Googlebot?
Googlebot is a generic name for Google web crawlers Googlebot Desktop and Googlebot Smartphone.
Q22. What methods would you apply for decreasing the loading time of a website?
The different methods we can apply for decreasing the loading time of a website are
- Compressing and optimizing images
- Reducing redirects
- Minify CSS, javascript, jquery
- Caching web pages…
Q23. What is robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a text file webmasters create to instruct web crawlers which URLs the crawler can access on your website.
Q24. What is Cross-linking? Why should you do Cross-linking?
Cross-linking is the process of creating links between two websites. The purpose of cross-linking is to increase inbound links to the website.
Q25. What is a URL?
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the web address of a unique resource on the internet. It consists of the domain name with detailed information to create a complete address.
Q26. What is an SEO-friendly URL?
SEO-Friendly URL is a URL which is easy to read and includes keywords that describe the content on a web page. And it should not contain words other than English or symbols and special characters.
Q27. What is a domain name?
A domain name is a unique, easy-to-remember name that is associated with the Physical IP address on the Internet. It is used to access websites.
Q28. Name some of the tools that you have used in SEO.
The SEO tools that I used are
- Ahrefs
- Ubersuggest
- Semrush
- Google Keyword Planner etc
Q29. Name some of the best SEO-friendly plugins for WordPress
The best SEO Friendly plugins for WordPress are
Q30. What are Black Hat and White Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is the technique used to increase Website rankings in ways which are not approved by Search Engines. Simply these techniques are unethical ways of ranking a website.
On the other hand, White Hat SEO is the legal technique used to increase Website rankings.
Q31. Why should black hat SEO practices be avoided?
Black Hat SEO practices are unethical. That’s why we should avoid them. Besides being unethical, if Search Engine found we are using Black Hat SEO, they will penalise our website.
Q32. What will you do if your website is banned by search engines for black hat practices?
Firstly, I won’t use Black Hat SEO Techniques. If Search engines ban my website for using black hat SEO Techniques, then I will check the content associated with it, and remove the Black hat technique used. And request Search engines to index my website again with assurance that I won’t use those techniques again.
Q33. What is keyword stemming? How does keyword stemming work?
Google’s ability to understand different word forms of a search query is called Keyword Stemming.
For example: If I use the word Sale on my website. Then the variations of the word Sale like Sell, Sold, Sells, Selling is recognized by the Google Stemming algorithm
Q34. What does it mean if nothing appears while searching a domain?
If nothing appears while searching a domain in a search engine then it can mean
- The website is not crawled by Search Engine
- Your site might be penalized by the Search Engine.
Q35. What are Spiders, Robots, and Crawlers
Spiders, Robots, and Crawlers are the automated software programs search engines use to stay updated with Web activities. They crawl the websites and index them.
Q36. What are Social Signals?
Social Signals are nothing but human interaction on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
Q37. What is a NAP?
NAP is the acronym for Name, Address, Phone Number
Q38. What is a Google Penalty?
Google Penalty is a punishment against a website whose content violates the Google Search Engine guidelines.
Q39. How will you avoid the Google Penalty?
I can avoid Google Penalty by not going against Google Guidelines. Like by saying
- No to buying links
- No, to keyword stuffing
- No to hiding content
Q40. How will you determine if a link is a bad link?
Some of the bad link characteristics are
- Links from a low-authority domain
- Links from a spammy website
- Links with suspiciously keyword-matched anchor text
Q41. How can a website with millions of pages be optimized?
For optimizing a website with millions of pages. First, I run a site audit of the website using any SEO Tool.
Then I will solve the critical SEO issues like No Title Tag, No Meta Description, broken links, and duplicate titles or meta Descriptions.
After solving critical and normal SEO issues. I will check the rank of my targeted keywords and Optimize the posts to rank for those keywords.
Q42. What is Google My Business?
Google my business is a free listing tool by Google. By using this tool, you can manage your business on Google. You can edit business details like location, phone number, website and photos.
You can even add products and discounts using this tool.
Q43. Explain Google Trends.
Google Trends is a Free and Popular tool that analyzes the popularity of Google Search terms over time.
Q44. Why should you use both SEO and PPC for driving more traffic?
We should use both SEO and PPC to drive more traffic because SEO is a long-term process. It takes time to reflect results whereas PPC will drive instant results i.e., traffic to our website. And if the content is great then this PPC also helps in generating backlinks.
It is said that SEO + PPC = H2O
Q45. Explain what CTR is.
CTR stands for Click through rate. It is used to analyze how well your keywords and ads are performing.
CTR is calculated as the number of clicks by the total number of impressions.
CTR = clicks divided by impressions
Q46. Why is SEO important to businesses?
SEO is Important because it optimizes the online visibility of the business.
The most important Google Ranking Factors are:
- High-quality content.
- Mobile-friendliness
- Relevancy.
- Page speed
- On-page optimization.
- Internal and External links
- Backlinks
Q47. What is an organic result?
The result for which you didn’t pay to Search Engines.
It is an unpaid listing on the search engine which is displayed because of the quality and relevancy of the content regarding the search query.
Q48. What is a paid result?
The paid result is the result displayed on Search Engine when you pay to search Engines. These results will be shown on the top with the prefix Ads or Sponsored.
Q49. What is Google Sandbox?
The Google Sandbox is a filter that prevents new websites from ranking in Google’s top SERP.
Q50. What is Google Autocomplete?
Autocomplete is a feature within Google that makes it faster to complete searches that you start to type.(support.google.com)
Q51. What is a TLD?
TLD stands for Top Level Domain.
For example: In the URL address https://farhanbajrai.com” “.com” is the TLD.
Q52. What is ccTLD?
ccTLD stands for Country Code Top Level Domain. Every ccTLD recognizes a specific country and it is 2 words long. For example, in the URL “https://allwp.in” “.in” is the ccTLD and it is the country code for India.
Q53. What is the definition of a long tail keyword?
Long tail keywords are longer and specific phrases that users are likely to use when they want to search for specific answers. Long tail keywords show the user intent. And these search terms are with relatively low search volume and competition levels.
Q54. What is the definition of bounce rate in SEO?
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who visited your website or landing page, and then leave the page without visiting other pages.
Q55. What are anchor texts? What role does anchor text have in SEO?
Anchor texts are the text used on links or it is clickable text on Hyperlinks.
In SEO, anchor texts play an important role, because when linking to a webpage, the anchor text should be relevant to the niche or topic of the web page. This, gives value to the linked page.
Q56. What is Robot’s Meta Tag?
Robot’s Meta tag is a snippet that informs Search Engine crawlers what they can do on a certain page and what they cannot do.
Q57. What is a Sitemap?
A Sitemap provides information about the structure of a website to search engine bots.
Q58. What is an HTML Sitemap?
HTML sitemap is similar to XML sitemap, and it is intended for the users of the website. This sitemap provides links to the pages and posts of the websites, and it may provide descriptions of those web pages.
Q59. What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is written for search engine crawlers/bots. It provides information about the structure of a website to search engine bots.
Q60. Explain LSI
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These are the keywords related to the main keyword and are relevant semantically. For example, The LSI keywords for digital marketing are Online Marketing and Internet Marketing
Q61. What makes a website search engine friendly?
A website will be search engine friendly when it is technically strong, easy to use, and solves the user problem.
Q62. How do you measure SEO success?
I measure SEO success using 3 KPIs. They are
- Keyword Ranking
- Quality Traffic and
- Conversions
Q63. How did you learn SEO?
I learnt it through Online Digital Marketing Course by Digital Deepak. And then by multiple Free courses by Neil Patel, Hubspot Academy, Ahrefs academy, Yoast Academy etc.
Mainly I practised what I learnt. I follow SEO experts on LinkedIn and Twitter, share my thoughts with their experiences and implement the new techniques with me, and check the results.
Q64. Which SEO tools do you regularly use?
I used multiple SEO tools. Mostly I use Google Search Console, and Ubersuggest regularly. Other than these, I use the ahrefs webmaster tool, Google Auto Suggest and Google Keyword Planner etc.
Q65. How do you approach keyword research?
First I select the topic for which I have to do keyword research. Then I brainstorm some Phrases related to it. Then I use SEO tools like ahrefs and ubersuggest for keyword research on the selected phrases.
After that, I take note of keywords with their keyword difficulty, search volume etc on my google Sheet. Then I write content using those keywords.
Q66. What is link building and why does it matter?
Link Building is an Off-Page SEO technique to increase the Search Engine rankings of the website.
Backlinks are a token of trust for any website, and it is Search Engine ranking Factor too. That’s why link-building matters a lot in SEO.
Q67. What are backlinks?
Backlinks are the Anchor text used when linking to other websites.
Q68. What is page speed and why does it matter?
Page speed is the amount of time a webpage takes to load completely. Websites with slow page speed load slowly which increases the bounce rate of the website. Nowadays no one wants to wait on Traffic Signals, then why does someone wait on my website, if it is slow and the data is available across millions of websites?
Q69. What method do you use to redirect a page?
I use the 301 redirect method mostly when I change the URL of my website. In WordPress, we get redirection plugins to help us out with most of the redirections.
Q70. How can you do SEO for a video?
Nowadays, Videos are booming. To do SEO for a video
- First I will Optimize the Video Titles
- Create an eye-catching thumbnail
- Add in the detailed description
- Use hashtags and tags
- Add cards during the videos
- Add end screens
Q71. Which meta tags matter?
What is the difference between a do-follow and a no-follow and how are they used?
The nofollow attribute in a backlink tells search engines not to follow the external or outbound link that is being tagged.
Whereas the do-follow backlink tells search engines to follow the outbound link that is being tagged.
Which SEO factors are not in your control?
Off-Page SEO factors are not in our control
What qualities are required in order to be effective in an SEO role, in your opinion?
I think to be effective as an SEO professional, one should have analytical skills, patience, hard work, and teamwork.
What is the most important thing to look for when doing keyword research?
Search Volume is the most important thing with Keyword difficulty to look for when doing keyword research.
Which Webmaster tool do you use and why?
I use mostly Google Search Console. Because it gives me an idea about the queries which result in clicks through google.
Why do internal links matter?
Internal links tell Google which pages are important on your site.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). (Moz.com)
Before the Interview: Master SEO on your Own Project
Having your SEO project in your pocket increases your chances of getting an SEO dream job. So, have your Project website and showcase your talent and expertise through that project website. Not only it increases job opportunities but also you can demand a salary.