SEO Interview Questions and Answers

In the realm of digital marketing, it is very easy to lose track of what you know and what you do not know as there is so much more to learn at all times. It is a field that keeps updating itself constantly and its dynamic structure aids in rapid evolution. That is precisely why there might be gaps in your knowledge about SEO. In this article, we will try to get you ready for your next digital marketing interview with the most frequently asked SEO interview questions along with the answers.

SEO can imply different strata of digital marketing depending on the level of your expertise and knowledge. To make it easier for you to navigate through these questions, we have divided the questions into a beginner level and an advanced level. This article will help you ace even the most nerve-wracking interviews. So, let us get right to it.

SEO Interview Questions for Freshers:

Define Link Juice:

• Link juice is the credibility quotient or equity passed from one website to another.

What is the importance of backlinks in SEO?

• Creating backlinks (external links) to a website aids in increasing the amount of traffic you can get from referrals, increase the domain’s authority, helps in gaining organic search ranking, and significantly improves the credibility of the website.

What are some of the most crucial local SEO ranking parameters?

• Some of the most crucial parameters for SEO ranking are as follows:

• Embedding Google Maps to your website
• Opting in for ratings and reviews
• Consistently managing and updating your NAP citations
• Optimizing meta tags and keywords within your content
• Adding one’s business to local directories
• Signing in for business listings on the Google My Business website
• Creating a separate webpage for every product or service

Name some important elements that should be considered while creating your website:

• While developing your website you must pay special attention to the architectural structure and design of your website so that it is easy to use and navigate by the end-user. Prioritizing a responsive and engaging design is paramount. Your URL structure must be simple. Creating a sitemap will also help as it will contain all the visual elements of your website. If you upload your sitemap, Google Search Console will have a direct passage to acquire all of the visual assets on your website. 

What do you mean by Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

•  The Click-Through Rate (CTR) refers to the percentage of people who search for specific searches visiting your website. The higher the percentage of CTR, the more successful your campaign ought to be.

Define Bounce Rate:

• The Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who navigate away from our website after viewing only one single page. Keeping the bounce rate low is key to an effective SEO campaign.

Define SEO:

• SEO simply refers to Search Engine Optimization. It is the method by which we can rank websites on search engines organically without paid alternatives. It also involves optimizing different aspects of your web page so that it can rank higher within Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) This will improve website traffic and increase conversion rates.

Why is SEO important?

• SEO is highly important as it aids in lead generation. As it does not rely on paid alternatives to rank higher within the SERPs, it is one of the most cost-effective ways of getting quality leads. With a proper SEO plan, one can rank their website higher on the SERP so that it draws more attention, which then leads to a significant increase in traffic and conversion.

Name and explain the two kinds of SEO:

• On-page SEO refers to changes and tasks done within the visible website to improve search engine rankings. This includes the creation of engaging content, optimization of images, videos, and other visual elements, and using relevant keywords. On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to any work done off-site to achieve the same results. This includes social media promotion, backlinks, etc.

What do you mean by Backlinks?

• Backlinks are essentially incoming links to your web page from another web page. Simply put, if another website links to your web page, a backlink has been created. Backlinks improve credibility and if the source of the backlink is valid and reputable, it will drastically improve your website’s page ranking and domain authority.

What are the two types of backlinks?

• The two types of backlinks are a) DoFollow backlinks and b) NoFollow backlinks. These backlinks indicate to the search engine crawlers about which links to attribute credible link juice to and which links to exempt from the search engine crawlers’ scrutiny.

Define a keyword:

• A keyword within SEO is a word or phrase that is included within your content, that helps users find specific websites by entering those terms or phrases on their search engines. These keywords function as the basis of SEO as it is the primary way in which the end-user communicates with the search engine to locate the information, goods, or service that they are looking for.

Define and differentiate between a short tail and long-tail keyword:

• Short tail keywords typically consist of one or two words and are much more general in terms of search queries. Targeting short tail keywords increases website traffic and impressions. For example: “black dress” 
• Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, consist of more than three words that are much more specific in nature. Targeting long-tail keywords help to increase conversion. For example: “Long black dress with short sleeves”

Define Anchor Text:

• An anchor text refers to the visible, clickable link that you can see on a hyperlink that connects to another web page or web site. In most cases, these anchor texts will be underlined and blue in color.

What is the maximum length of the Meta Description?

• We can only include up to 158 characters within our Meta Description.

What is the maximum length of the Title tag?

• The maximum length of the Title tag is up to 60 characters within the headline. If it crosses that limit, Google will automatically only display the first 50- 60 characters on its search engine result page.

What do you mean by Google Sandbox?

• The Google website is a programmed filter that prevents newer websites from ranking in the top spots on the Google Search Result Page.

Define LSI Keywords:

• LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI refers to the system that search engines utilize to observe and analyze other words that people use regarding a specific topic. One can see these LSI keywords at the bottom of the Search Engine Result Page

How does competitive analysis work in SEO?

• In SEO, competitive analysis is typically done between the web page that has been ranked by the search engine and the web page that is under construction. Competitive analysis helps the web page developer to know what to do and what not to do in order to get a favorable search page ranking. It also helps to understand the competition in the industry and drive one’s campaign one step ahead of the competition.

What do you understand by Keyword Density?

• In order to ensure maxim functionality of keywords, you can place it multiple times within your content. Keyword density refers to the percentage of how many times a particular keyword is used with respect to the total number of words within the body content. For instance, if a particular keyword were to be mentioned 10 times within a 1000 words article, the keyword density would be 0.10%

What is the Google Search Console?

• Google Search Console refers to the suite of reports and tools offered to us by Google to aid in measuring a website’s performance and search traffic, fix problems, and more.

What is the Google Bot?

• The Google Bot is a programmed algorithm that helps the programmer in caching and indexing a particular web page within Google.

What do you mean by SEO Audit?

• An SEO Audit is a tool that gives better insights about the web pages, traffic, as well as errors of any website. The SEO Audit can be used to improve search engine rankings.

Define web crawling:

•  Web crawling refers to the automated process by which search engine crawlers or search engine spiders filtrate web pages on the search engine for the purpose of indexing.

What is meant by Canonical URL?

• A canonical URL simply refers to the practice of selecting the best URL for the web pages that the potential viewers may wish to see. It also refers to the source of a particular piece of content.

Define Keyword Stemming:

• Keyword stemming refers to the process of finding the base word from which a search query has been derived.

Which other popular search engines can you name, apart from Google?

• Some of the other popular search engines include DuckDuckGo, AOL.com, Baidu, Yahoo, and Bing. In a sense, YouTube and Amazon may also fall under the category of search engines. 

Advanced SEO Interview Questions:

What is the difference between Dofollow and Nofollow?

• Dofollow links allow search engine crawlers to follow the link for a good boost over SERP and pass the link juice to the destination domain, whereas, Nofollow links do not allow search engine crawlers to follow the link. Additionally, it does not pass on the link juice. 

What is 301 redirect? Differentiate between 301 redirect and 302 redirect:

• 301 redirect tells users and search engine bots that an original webpage has been removed permanently from one location to another. Contrary to the 301 redirect, the 302 redirect is temporary. 302 redirect does not carry on the link juice to the new website or webpage. 301 redirect, being permanent is considered to be stable by the search engine crawlers, as compared to 302 redirect, which is considered unstable.

Name some of the best methods to rank videos on YouTube:

• First and foremost, the most basic component of ranking your videos well is to make informative, interactive, and engaging content. After that, the other methods you can adopt is to use relevant hashtags (#) in your videos, to upload an eye-catching thumbnail, to not exceed 100 characters with your title, and use relevant and correct video tags. 
• Additionally, you can also optimize your description so that is corresponds to the content of the video as well as your title. Make sure that the chosen title has a high search volume and low difficulty, which can be checked using Google tools.
• Do not forget to promote your videos adequately on various social media platforms.

Define mobile-first indexing:

• When Google applies mobile-friendly content for ranking websites and indexing, it is referred to as ‘mobile-first indexing’. Google will go through your website and rank it on the basis of how accessible, engaging and interactive your website is. Mobile-first indexing also prioritizes ease of usability.

How to avoid penalties for duplicate content?

• A duplicate content penalty is a direct result of a situation in which you have two different versions of a single webpage. To avoid getting penalized by Google, we can opt for the preferred domain within the Google Search Console. Additionally, we can also use 301 redirects as these will permanently redirect your page to the new page or even apply ‘rel=canonical’ to cite and attribute the source of the original content.

What are some methods to increase the speed of your web page?

• One can speed up the web page by initially, optimizing their code. They must also reduce the number of redirects to other web pages and websites and optimize their images to a ‘.webmp’ format so that they load quicker. Using a simpler web design will also help with this as will improving the response time of your servers. You can opt-in for Content Delivery Network (CDN) and also enable the option for browser caching to significantly increase the speed of your web page.

When is it right to target long tail and short tail keywords?

• Long-tail keywords result in higher conversion rates as compared to their counterpart. However, long-tail keywords also have a lower search volume as they are not searched for as often as short-tail keywords. So, if your goal is to maximize conversion, you can target long-tail keywords.
• Conversely, short tail keywords have a much higher search volume and a much lower conversion rate. Thus, if your objective is to increase traffic and impressions, then you should target short-tail keywords.
• Finding the right balance between long tail and short tail keywords will result in optimized conversion as well as website traffic.

Name the different components of an effective SEO strategy:

• The first step of an SEO strategy is to ensure an onsite optimization audit has taken place. This consists of page load speed, content, layout, and structure of the website for mobile, as well as desktop. Since we need to ensure the website is found by search engines, we need to optimize it correctly to meet the need of the end-user.
• The second step is to create and publish engaging, interactive, and high-quality content that is easy to read and understand. The end-user must find the information useful and informative.
• The third step includes the building of offsite authority. We must use an approach wherein the content we create drives other people to link to us naturally and organically. This helps build authority and trustworthiness in the eyes of the search engine crawlers.

Name the ways in which you could measure the success of your SEO campaign:

The different metrics through which we could measure the success of our SEO campaign are as follows:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Bounce Rate
• Domain Authority
• Quality of Backlinks
• Traffic on Mobile vs. traffic on Desktop
• Visitor retention rate
• Traffic through organic search keywords
• Metric for returning visitors
• Keyword rankings

Where should the main keywords be placed for maximum functionality?

• To ensure maximum functionality, the main keywords must be placed in the following positions:

• Title of the page
• Meta description
• The headline of the page
• Body of the content

What do you mean by Robots.txt?

• Robots.txt is a formatted text file that provides instruction to search engine crawlers with respect to indexing and caching of the domain, web page or file of a website or directory. Robots.txt is very important within on-page SEO.

Define White Hat SEO:

• White Hat SEO refers to methods and techniques used to improve the page ranking of a web page that are in accordance with the search engine guidelines. For instance, optimizing images, videos and visual content is a form of White Hat SEO.

Define Black Hat SEO and elaborate with examples:

• Black Hat SEO refers to methods and techniques used to improve the page ranking of a web page that are not in accordance to the search engine guidelines. For instance, keyword stuffing, creating PBN links, redirecting expired domains, and more.

Explain structured data in SEO:

• Structured data within SEO can be defined as any information that has a high level of organization, by which inclusion is seamless in a relational database, and readily searchable by straightforward search engine programs or algorithms. It is considered to be crucial to SEO in order to improve page ranking.

Define Domain Authority:

• Domain Authority refers to the performance metric developed by Moz (built by Rand Fishkin), which automatically rates a given website on a scale of 1 to 100.

Explain Guest Posting in brief:

• Guest Posting refers to the act by which an individual creates content for someone else’s website. The act of guest posting increases the credibility of the web page, especially is the guest is credible in their own standing.

Define Typosquatting:

• Typosquatting is a method of Black Hat SEO. It is also called ‘URL Hijacking’ In this method, hijackers try to leverage the mistakes that people may make while typing out the domain name of a website. They usually target popular domain names that people are most likely to misspell. The will make the website look similar to the original one in order to steal your information or even download malicious software onto your system.

Define a Disavow tool in the context of SEO:

• Many times, you may receive backlinks that you do not approve of, from unsolicited websites that may hamper your web page’s page rank. In such cases, you can use a Disavow tool to disown and nullify inappropriate backlinks. One should use this tool only when necessary as it can do more harm than good if used incorrectly.

What are ALT tags used for?

• Alt tags are nothing but descriptive tags within the HTML code of your web page. These tags are extremely important as this ALT description tells Google what the image contains. This helps the search engine crawlers ascertain what your entire web page is about and helps it rank your web page more favorably.

Define Google Penalty:

• A Google Penalty is the decrease or negative impact on the search engine ranking of a web page on the basis of the updates that Google makes to its search algorithms. These penalties can also be a result of Black Hat SEO practices that may have been adopted.

Define AMP:

• AMP simply stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is an open-sourced programming standard that optimizes sites for mobile loading speeds. Since the entire world is consuming content off of their phone screens, AMP becomes more relevant and important in this context.

Hopefully, these questions give you a quick gist of what your SEO interview may look like and what your SEO interview questions may be. Now, you can ace your interview with confidence and get one step closer to your digital marketing career goals. Good luck!