The evolution in the digital marketing landscape has not only revolutionized the marketing aspect but is also provided great career prospects and employment opportunities.
As the internet has become the primary requirement today, most of the people use it to find solutions to their queries.
For this reason, Search Engine Optimization is an essential platform for a website to increase its visibility and popularity. To give the website an exceptional SEO experience, the demand for certain SEO experts rises.
If you are looking for career opportunities in the field of SEO and are aligning interviews for the same, you have to ensure that you outshine the interview process with your knowledge as well as skills.
So, to make it easy for you to crack your dream interview, we have created a list of top 46 common SEO interview questions that are asked.
SEO Interview Questions and Answers
Q1: What is SEO & Why is it so important?
Ans 1: SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process that is performed for the improvement of Search Engine rankings of websites, products, services or other content.
It shows unpaid results which are also referred to as “free”, “organic”, “natural” or “earned” results. SEO is important as it offers the websites organic traffic and is a crucial factor in determining the rank of a website in the SERP.
Q2: How SEO is better than other web rank improvement methods?
Ans 2: SEO provides real-time information, is supportive and has a vast support available. It is pretty much economical and effective as compared to other methods.
Q3: Name some SEO tools?
Ans 3: Some of the SEO tools are Google Analytics, Keyword Planner, Alexa open site explorer, Google Webmaster and many more.
Q4: Explain Search Engines and give a few examples.
Ans 4: A Search engine is a web-based software system that is developed to search and locate relevant information on the World Wide Web. They generally answer the queries entered by the users and give them a list of search results. The names of some search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Q5: How do you measure SEO success?
Ans 5: There are a variety of ways to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the success of an SEO project. For example, increasing traffic to a website or particular landing page, increasing conversions such as newsletter signups or sales, growing the number of inbound links, driving traffic for a particular keyword phrase, or increasing referral traffic.
Q6: Name the Types of SEO?
Ans 6: Search Engine Optimization is of 2 types:
On Page SEO: This is the process of optimizing a website that incorporates on-site work like writing title, content, Meta tags, ALT tag, and description. On Page SEO also ensures that the design of the website and the code are crawled and indexed by the search engines properly.
Off Page SEO: This is the process of earning backlinks from various websites to improve the ranking of the website. Various methods like article submission, blog posting, forum, Press release submission are used.
Q7: What steps would you follow to optimize a website?
Ans 7: For optimizing a website conduct a comprehensive keyword research, craft outstanding content with keywords, speed up the website and update page titles.
Q8: What do you understand by Web Optimization?
Ans 8: The process of making random changes such as adding new features, removing the old ones, posting new content, changing themes or appearances for improving the user experience of a certain webpage or website is web optimization.
Q9: What is the main purpose of using keywords in SEO?
Ans 9: A keyword is a fundamental part of the SEO strategy. A keyword is generally defined as a single word and combinations of various keywords form a phrase.
The search engines use these keywords to open particular subject matter over the internet and then these keywords are stored in the database. Hence, the keywords are used to get the best possible match available on the internet.
Q10: What is link building and why is it important?
Ans 10: Google constantly put forward the results which are most relevant to any given searcher and any given time. Apart from relevance, Google also favours credibility.
Hence, the search engine looks to see if other websites have linked to yours. If so, that means your content is worth linking to and is more relevant and accurate when compared to a website not linked to externally. Hence linking us a process used by SEO professional to get links to their websites in order to improve search results.
Q11: What are backlinks and outbound links?
Ans 11: Backlinks are the incoming links to your website or webpage. They are also called inbound links. While the outbound links are those links that are pointing to different websites from your website.
Q12: What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
Ans 12: SEO is the process of optimizing the ranking if the website in the search engine whereas SEM is usually used to promote a website through paid or unpaid ads.
Q13: What is a Pagespeed and why is it important?
Ans 13: Page speed is the speed of how fast your site loads for a use. This is one of the factors that Google takes into account while ranking websites since a faster loading page directly translate to the better user experience.
Q14: Explain Web Page SEO and Website Seo?
Ans 14: Web Page SEO is making efforts to improve the rank of a specific webpage on the search engine whereas Web SEO is the process of improving the rank of the entire website on a search engine.
Q15: What are the two main SEO Techniques?
Ans 15: There are two SEO techniques: White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO or Negative SEO.
Q16: How to make a website Search Engine Friendly?
Ans 16: There are several factors that make a website search engine friendly which is using Keyword in the title tag, keyword in meta description tag, keyword in the H1 tag, using keywords in the page’s copy, the length of the content, duplicate content, canonical tag, Image Optimization and many more.
Q17: Is it possible to optimize a website in one day?
Ans 17: SEO is a complex process and hence, needs a lot of factors to be paid attention to. Therefore, the optimization of a website is not possible in one day. It takes time depending on a lot of factors.
Q18: Which method will you use to redirect a page?
Ans 18: A 301 redirect is the best way to redirect a page so that you don’t lose any SEO value that has been collected so far.
Q19: What are the various ways of generating traffic on websites?
Ans 19: Traffic can be enhanced on any website through a number of approaches like:
- Updating the website content with respect to time
- Considering Google AdWords
- Adding new features to the website
- By diverting the traffic from other sites
- Posting Ads
Q 20: What do you understand by Googlebot?
Ans 20: Googlebot is the search bot software that is used by Google. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google Search engine.
Q21: List some common mistakes that are made by SEO professionals.
Ans 21: Some common mistakes that SEO professionals make are:
- Not optimizing images with a proper ALT tag
- Duplicate Title and description Tag
- Short content or Duplicate Content
- Having improper site structure
- No Anchor text variation
Q22: Can you adopt different strategies for SEO at the same time?
Ans 22: Yes, it is possible. The best results can be obtained only when the users consider multiple approaches simultaneously.
Q23: How to cross check if the SEO campaign is working or not?
Ans 23: Search all the search engines employing relevant key phrases and keywords that are to be optimized. After the results are generated, the methods of optimization can be employed.
Q24: What will be your next step if your SEO methods are not working?
Ans 24: There may be times when the SEO methods might not work as expected. In that case, the problem can be solved step by step:
- Check the total time duration of the project and re-check by entering the keywords.
- Using different keywords which are related can also be helpful.
- Make some changes in the text, title or the description of the webpage or website is not showing on the first ten pages of the SERP.
- Advanced corrections might also be required in case the website is not indexed properly.
Q 25: What is cross-linking & what are its functions?
Ans 25: Cross-linking is the process of linking one site to another site. Its features are as follows:
- It provides the users with reference sites that contain the content related to the search.
- The 2 websites that use the process of cross-linking cannot be owned by the same person.
- Cross-linking is somewhat like a barter system where A website is linked to B and vice versa.
- It could be a 2-way link or 3-way link. In a 2-way link site X links to site Y and site Y links to site X. In a 3-way link, site X links to site Y, site Y links to site Z and site Z links to site X.
Q26: What methods will you adopt for decreasing the loading time of the website?
Ans 26: Some methods to decrease the loading of the page are:
- Avoid Landing page redirects
- Minify CSS, Javascript and HTML
- Image optimization
- Reduce server response Time
Q27: Apart from improving the Search Engine Results, what are the other benefits of SEO?
Ans 27: With SEO the navigation of the website is made easy, the uploading speed is also boosted. Moreover, the overall usability of a website can be improved to a great extent.
Q28: What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links?
Ans 28: Nofollow links are the ones that tell search engine bots not to follow a certain link. The link is still clickable for a user, but not followed by a bot. On the other hand, all other links could be considered as dofollow links. They don’t generally have special attributes to tell the search engines bots to follow them, the bots will by default.
Q29: What is link auditing in SEO?
Ans 29: Link Auditing is the approach that simply let users to cross verify the links created are working effectively or not. It is done after a certain period. On the basis of the results can be removed, added or modified.
Q30: What are meta tags in SEO & mention their character limits?
Ans 30: Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content. There are mainly for types of Meta tags in SEO.
- Meta Description tag with 1200 pixels limits
- Meta Keyword tag
- Title Tag with 600 pixels limits
- Meta Robots
Q31: How does content play an important role in Search Engine Optimization?
Ans 31: Content is one of the major elements of any SEO approach. It enhances the rank of the website on the search engines.
Q32: Which SEO Factors are not under your control?
Ans 32: Google is the biggest SEO factor that is not controlled by anyone as it does not publically announce the search algorithm it uses.
Also, you cannot force other websites to link to your website, share your website content or spend some more time on your website. All you can do is make excellent user experience and quality content.
Q33: What are some black hat SEO practices to avoid?
Ans 33: Cloaking, keyword stuffing, copying content from another site, exchanging or trading links, buying links, hiding text, and using a link farm are all underhanded techniques and these practices are penalized by Google.
Q34: What is the difference between Page Rank & Search Engine Results Page?
Ans 34: Page rank is calculated on the basis of quality inbound links from other website or web pages to our web page or a website.
SERP (Search Engine Result page) is the placement of the website or web-pages which is delivered by the search engine after a search query.
Q35: How do you deal with Link Penalties?
Ans 35: Link Penalties can be combated and prevented with the help of certain steps like finding all the backlinks, identifying the bad backlinks and Request removal of the bad links or using some tools Ahrefs & Google Webmaster Tools.
Q36: According to you, what are some of the qualities that are required in order to play an effective SEO role?
Ans 36: An SEO professional must have good research skills and analytical skills. He/she should be able to spot trends and adapt to change. Proactive in the approach he/she should be laser focussed in deliver the much-desired results with his/her exceptional SEO skills.
Q37: What is the importance of Title Tag on the website?
Ans 37: The importance of Title Tags is as such that it tells about the contents on that particular web page. With the help of Title Tags, the search engine tells the user what all is there on the page.
Q38: What is Hummingbird?
Ans 38: Hummingbird was an overhaul of Google’s search algorithm that was released in 2013. It focusses to move beyond just keywords and understand a searcher’s intent.
Q39: What is domain authority?
Ans 39: Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank in search results.
Q40: What do you mean by competitive analysis?
Ans 40: Competitive Analysis is a well-researched comparison between your website and the websites that are highly ranked.
Q41: What are the Webmaster Tools?
Ans 41: Webmaster tools are the ones that are provided by Google. From these tools, you can get backlink information, crawl errors, search queries, Indexing data, CTR etc.
Q42: What is keyword density and what is the formula of calculating it?
Ans 42: 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. The formula of keyword density is:
(Total Number of Keyword÷Total Number of Words)×100
Q43: What are robots.txt?
Ans 43: Robots.txt is a text file that gives instructions to search engine crawlers about indexing of a webpage, file of a website or directory, domain.
Q44: Mention which is the most important area to include your keywords?
Ans 44: The most important areas to include your keywords are the Page title, Body text and Meta Description.
Q45: Why do internal links matter?
Ans 45: Internal links are those links which are present within your website and link to another page of your website. It helps all of the content on your website to get crawled and ranked.
Q46: What is a Canonical issue? How will you resolve them?
Ans 46: The Canonical issue relates to duplicate pages. For fixing a canonical issue, you have to do a canonical redirect the visitors to a correct version when they try to go to the wrong URL.
Closing Thoughts
Irrespective of whether you are a fresher or an experienced candidate, it is always better to be prepared beforehand and show interest in the job. While technical knowledge is mandatory, it is also important to showcase your passion and confidence to grab that job position. Hopefully, these questions will provide you with better support for your next interview.