Top SEO Interview Questions & Answers

1) What is SEO and introduce its types?

Search engine optimization or SEO is a process of keep changing the position of a web page or website in a search engine results by using keywords or phrases.

Two Types of SEO are:

1.   On Page Optimization

2.   Off Page Optimization

2) What are the SEO tools do you use?

The SEO tools that I use are Google analytic, Keyword Planner, Alexa, open site explorer, Google Webmaster.

3) What do you mean by Backlink?

 The incoming links to your website or webpage are referred as Backlink. It is also called as an inbound link.

4) What are outbound Links?

The outbound links are a Links, from your website to another webpage or website.

5) Can you tell me something about Googlebot?

To index and update a webpage Google uses the Googlebot (Web Spider). Caching, Crawling and indexing of a webpage are done through Googlebot by collecting details from that webpage.

6) What is Cross linking and what are the function of Cross linking?

1.   Cross-linking is used to refer the process of linking one site to another site.

2.   It provides the users with reference sites that contain the content related to the search.

3.   The 2 websites cross-linking do not be owned by the same person.

4.   In other words, cross-linking is a barter wherein I link to you and you link to me.

5.   It could be a 2-way link oe 3-way link. In a 2 way link site A links to site B and site B links to site A. In a 3 way link, site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links to site A.

7) What is the main purpose of using keyword in SEO?

Keyword is a single word, and while a combination of those keywords makes phrases. These keywords or phrases are used by the search engines to populate the subjects over the internet. Search engine stores keywords in the database, and when search is done, it will come up with the best possible match.

8) Can you mention the functions of body content relevance?

Whenever there is a text that does not have images on the web page is referred as body content relevance or non-image text. It helps in good optimization of the sites and also to improve your ranking in the search engine.

9) What are Spiders, Robots and Crawlers and what are their functions?

Spiders, robot and crawler, they are all same and referred by different names. It is a software program that follows, or “Crawls” different links throughout the internet, and then grabs the content from the sites and adds to the search engine indexes.

10) What does it mean if nothing appears on doing search on the domain?

On doing search on your domain and if nothing appears then there are three possibilities.

1.   May be the site is banned by search engines

2.   May be no index by search engines

3.   Some canonical issues

11)What is keyword stemming?

The process of finding out new keywords from the root keyword from the search query is referred as keywords stemming. Adding a prefix, suffix, or pluralization can be used to create the new keyword.

12) Name some SEO blogs that you frequently read?

1.   Google Webmaster Central

2.   Search Engine Land

3.   SEOSmarty

4.   MOZ

5.   Search Engine Journal

6.   BacklinkO

13) What do you mean by Cloaking?

Cloaking is a deceptive way of optimizing your website for search. In this technique, a different content will be show to the search engine crwaler than what is presented to the end users.

14) How many types of Meta Tags are there in SEO and what are their characters limits?

There are mainly for types of Meta tags in SEO.

1.   Meta Description tag with 1200 pixels limits

2.   Meta Keyword tag

3.   Title Tag with 600 pixels limits

4.   Meta Robots

15) How many characters limits in & Meta Description tag?

We can add 70 characters in title tag and 222 characters in Meta Description tag. Though google now places a pizel limit.

16) What is Google Sandbox?

Google sandbox is an imaginary area where new websites and their search rating are put on hold until they prove worthy for ranking. In other words, it checks the standard of the website.

17) Tell me something about Black Hat SEO?

In order to get a high ranking in search engine result page, websites go for various methods and techniques which are characterized by two categories. One method that is acceptable by search engine guidelines is known as White Hat SEO, while the other method which is not acceptable by search engine guidelines is known as Black Hat SEO.

18) Name few Black Hat SEO techniques?

1.   Link Farming

2.   Hidden text, etc.

3.   Gateway or Doorway pages

4.   Cloaking

5.   Keyword Stuffing

19) Can you differentiate between ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’ link?

Nofollow links do not pass Link juice and have no impact on Google Ranking Algorithm. Dofollow link passes link juice and has an impact on Google Ranking Algorithm.

20) What is the difference between PR (page rank) and SERP (Search engine result page)?

Page rank is calculated on the basis of quality inbound links from other website or webpages to our webpage or a website.

SERP (Search Engine Result page) is the placement of the website or web-pages which is returned by the search engine after a search query or attribute.

21) Why the Title Tag in website is valuable?

Title tags are very essential in SEO, as it tells about the contents on that web page. Through title tags only the search engine will tell the user, what is there in the page.

22) What is considered as more significant, creating content or building backlinks?

Both are necessary, creating quality content is equally important to building backlinks. Although, building backlinks are useful in building authority to a site and for ranking as well, quality content is the first element that is considered to be more responsible for ranking.

23) Can you mention the difference between SEO and SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing), it is used for the promotion of website through paid advertising by increasing their visibility in Search Engine Result Page (SERP) in the Ads section.  While SEO is optimizing the site to increase the organic ranking of a site.

24) What do you know about LSI?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. This technique is established to obtain the data by relating the word to its closest counterparts or to its similar context. For example, if you are searching something with a keyword “CAR” it will show all the related things like classic cars, car auctions, Bentley car, car race etc.

25) How will you cross-check whether your SEO campaign is working or not?

To check whether your SEO campaign is working or not, the first approach is to check the websites statistics, which tells you about the origin of traffic.  The other way of checking is to make a search based on the relevant keywords and key phrases and look for the search result. The number of search result will tell you whether your SEO campaign is working or not.

26) What is the meaning of competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis does the comparison, between the website I am optimizing, and the website that is ranked highly in search results.

27) What will be your next steps if your SEO methods or technique does not work?

My first attempt would to try analysis the problem and resolve them step by step

1.   Firstly I would try to see whether it is a new project, and then like to re-check the key words.

2.   Also, I would look for relevant key-words that can be helpful.

3.   Even though the webpage and website has been indexed well and still not appearing on the first 10 pages of search engine result page, then I would make some changes in page text, titles and description.

4.   If website is not indexed well or dropped from the index, than it might comprises     serious issues and re-work might be required.

28) What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is an advertisement campaign hosted by Google.  It is segmented into two modules CPC ( Cost per click) and CPM ( Cost per thousand impressions) through flat rate and bidding respectively. In CPC, if the user clicks on the advert, only then the advertiser will be charged.

29) What is 301 redirect?

It is a method by which the user is redirected to new page url to old page url . It is a permanent redirect and it is also useful in directing link juice to new url from old url .

30) What are Webmaster tools?

Webmaster tool is a service provided by Google from where you can get backlink information, crawl errors, search queries, Indexing data, CTR etc.

31) What is keyword density and what is the formula for knowing keyword density?

From SEO point of view, keyword density will definitely help to stand out your content from others. The formula to know the keyword density is ( Total number of keyword/ total number of words in your article) multiply by 100.

32) What is robots.txt? 

Robots.txt is a text file. It is through this file, it gives instruction to search engine crawlers about indexing and caching of a webpage, file of a website or directory, domain.

33) What will you do, for the company website you are working for, decides to move all the contents to new domain?

The first step would be to update the previous site with a permanent redirect to new page for all the pages. After that, I will remove the previous content from search engine in order to avoid duplicate content issues.

34) Can you optimize the website which has pages in millions?

From SEO point of view, for dynamic website, special additional SEO stuffs have to be    implemented.

1.   Good Internal link structure

2.   Generation of dynamic title and description

3.   Dynamic XML sitemap generation

35) What is the latest update in SEO?

The latest updates in SEO are:

1.   Panda

2.   Penguin

36) What are the key aspects of Panda update?

Panda is to improve the search in Google. The latest version has focused on quality content, proper design, proper speed, proper use of images and many more.

37) What are the key aspects of Penguin update?

Penguin is the code name for Google algorithm. Its main target is to decrease the ranking of that website that are violating the Google Webmaster guidelines. These guidelines are violated by using black hat techniques like cloaking and stuffing.

38) How will you neutralize a toxic link to your site?
Through Backlink Quality Checker you can know who links to your website. Now, you have to go to ‘ Toxic link’ report, where you will find all the links, that are harmful to your websites. If there is any link in ‘ Toxic link report’ that matches with the link on your website, then you can remove it by using ‘Google Disavov tool’.

39) Mention how can you check if someone is not building or re-directing a low-quality backlink to your site?

To prevent someone from building or re-directing a low-quality links to your site, you can use tools like,

·          Ahrefs

·          Open Site Explorer

On regular intervals. You can either request the webmaster to remove the bad link or disavow them.

40) How backlink tools work?

Backlink tools runs a series of tests to tell you how many backlinks are pointing to the weblink you entered.  Additional information is also being collected like anchor text used, Domain Authority & Trust  of the backlink source, and any potential flags or warnings for each individual link.

41) Mention how often should you perform a link audit?

A link audit may be tedious and complicated process.  If you have just started on building links you can do audit quite often.  But a complete link audit should be done approximately once a year.

42) Mention what do you understand by Frames in HTML?

A Frame in HTML is a technique that divides the content of a page onto several parts.  Search engines consider Frames as completely different pages and may have a negative impact on SEO. We should avoid the usage of Frames and use basic HTML instead.

43) Mention which is the most important area to include your keywords?

The most important area to include your keywords are,

·          Page title

·          Body text

·          Meta Description

44) What if your website is banned by the search engines for black hat practices?

If your website is banned by the search engines for black hat practices, you can apply for re-inclusion after correcting your wrong doings.

45) Mention what will be your approach if your SEO method don’t work?

·          First see whether it is a new project then re-check the keywords

·          Then look for relevant keywords that can be helpful

·          Make changes in page text, title and description

·          If still not ranked then there may be some other serious issues like bad links, penguin/panda or other Google penalty, crawlability issues, UI issue etc.