This post is about SEO interview questions which have compiled SEO interview questions & answers. These are very helpful for SEO job interview that will definitely bring a successful and bright career.
Question: What is Search Engines?
Ans: Search Engines are very critical key element useful to find out specific and relevant information through huge extent of World Wide Web. Some major commonly used search engine:
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Question: Tell me something about Google?
Ans: Google is the world’s largest and renowned search engine incorporating about 66.8% of market share. It was introduced in 1998 by students of Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The unique algorithmic ranking system is considered as its key of success. Apart of Google Mail services there are various worthy and useful tools are being offered absolutely free which include Blogger, Feedburner, YouTube, Google Plus, Adsense, Webmaster Tools, Adword, Analytics and many more.
Question: Define SEO?
Ans: SEO is the abbreviated form of “Search Engine Optimization”. It is the set of process in account of which a website or web page is being constructed or optimized that helps them to enhance their appearance or visibility at top in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Question: Explain distinct types of SEO practice?
Ans: Primarily two types of SEO are being sporting in practice – Off-Page SEO and On-Page SEO.
Off-Page SEO is the method of earning backlinks from other websites in order to enhance the ranking of the site. This method include various method of SEO including Blog posting, forum, article submission, Press release submission, classified and miscellaneous.
On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing a website which includes on-site work such as writing content, title, description, Alt tag, Meta tags as well as ensuring web-page’s code and design which can be indexed and crawled by search engines properly.
Question: What are the different techniques used in Offpage SEO?
Ans: There are lots of techniques used in Offpage SEO work. Major Techniques are:
Directory Submission
Social Bookmarking
Blog Post
Article Post
Press Release Submission
Forum Posting
Yahoo Answer
Blog Comment
Deep link Directory Submission
Regional Directory Submission and all that.
Question: Define blog, article & press release?
Ans: A blog is referred as an information or discussion published on website or World Wide Web incorporating distinct entries called as posts. Basically, the blog is referred as everything thing where you can include others too. It is more individual in contrast to article and press release. It is also considered as very personal in subject to both style and comprised ideas and information and can be written in the way just like you may talk to your readers. It is also called Web diary or Online Diary.
The articles are concerned with specific topic or event and are highly oriented towards an opinion instead of information. An article is supposed to be more oriented towards showing up opinions, views and idea. Generally, it is written by a third party or expert of any specific field.
Press Release is related with a specific action or event which can be republished by distinct medium of mass-media including other websites. It should be simple, short and professional. It conveys a clear message or information.
Question: What are Meta Tags?
Ans: HTML meta tags are usually referred as tags of page data which sits between opening and closing head tags of a document’s HTML code. Actually these are hidden keywords who sits in the code. These are invisible to visitors but are visible and readable by Search Engines.
Example:
<head>
<title>Not considered as Meta Tag, even required anyway</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Write your description here” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Write your keyword here” />
</head>
Question: Difference between keyword & keyword phrase?
Ans: The keyword term is basically concerned with a one-word term, on the other hand a keyword phrase considered as employment of two or more word-combinations. Therefore, it is very confounded to get high ranking in account of one-word keyword term until the one-word keyword has little online competition. Therefore, this practice is not encouraged to employ. In order to drive more traffic and top ranking in SERP it is recommended to employ keyword phrase.
Question: What do you know about Black Hat SEO?
Ans: In order to attain High Ranking in search engine result page, websites go for various methods and techniques which are characterized by two categories.
The method which are implemented and acceptable according to search engine guidelines are White Hat SEO, on the other hand, the method which are less acceptable or instructed to avoid in search engine guidelines are “Black Hat SEO”.
Question: Can you tell me some Black Hat SEO techniques?
Ans: Some Black Hat SEO techniques are:
Keyword Stuffing
Cloaking
Doorway Pages or Gateway Pages
Link Farming
Hidden Text, etc.
Question: What is spider?
Ans: Spider also called as bot, crawler or robot is a set of computer program that browses World Wide Web in methodical and orderly fashion as well automatically scan the web-page and website for updated content and download a copy to its data center to index.
Question: Name the bots (spider) of major search engine?
Ans: The name of bots/spider of Google search engine is GoogleBot, Yahoo Slurp for Yahoo search and BingBot for Bing search engine.
Question: Can you differentiate ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’?
Ans: Nofollow link is exactly vice-versa of dofollow link. These are non-crawling link which are not passed by search engines bot and hence can’t be cached or indexed. It is obvious when we wish to prevent a link from crawling and indexing.
Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink which says all search engines crawlers to pass through which also put an impact over page rank. When we opt to employ or attempt to achieve a dofollow link then it is counted by search engines and sits in the eye of Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo etc. as a backlink for your website and enhances your site ranking.
Question: Define Page Rank.
Ans: PageRank is a set of algorithm for link analysis named after Larry Page and employed by Google search engine towards defining a numerical value from 1 to 10 to each component of hyperlinked documents like world wide web. The value accepts only round figure that means decimal are not allowed. Page rank is calculated by their inbound links.
Question: Establish a difference between PR & SERP?
Ans: PR is Page Rank which is defined by quality inbound links from other website or web-pages to a web page or website as well as say the importance of that site.
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page is the placement of the website or web-page which is returned by search engine after a search query or attribute.
Question: What is Cache?
Ans: Cache is the process performed by search engine crawler at a regular interval of time. It used to scan and take snapshot of each page over world wide web as well as store as a backup copy. Almost every search engine result page incorporates a cached link for every site. However, clicking over cached link show you the last Google cached version of that specific page rather than of current version. Also, you can directly prefix “cache:http://www.webgranth.com” with desired URL to view it cached version.
Question: Define Alt tag?
Ans: The alt attribute also called as alt tag are employed in XHTML and HTML documents in context of defining alternative text that is supposed to be rendered when the element can’t be rendered to which it is applied. One great feature of alt tag is that it is readable to ‘screen reader’ which is a software by means of which a blind person can hear this. In addition, it delivers alternative information for an image due to some specific reason a user can’t view it such as in case of slow connection and an error occurred in the src attribute.
For example, the HTML for this image will appear something like this:
<img alt=”you can define alt tag just below the input box of image title while uploading or editing a image.” src=”<http://www.example/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Alt tag.jpg”>
Question: What do you know about Adsense?
Ans: Adsense is a web program conducted by Google that enables publishers of content websites to cater text, rich media, image, video advertisements automatically which are relevant to content of website and audience. These advertisement are included, maintained and sorted by Google itself and earn money either by per-click or per-impression basis.
Question: Can you define Adword?
Ans: Adword is referred as the main advertising product of Google which is useful to make appear your ads on Google and its partner websites including Google Search. This Google’s product offer PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising which is a primary module and incorporate a sub module CPC (Cost Per Click) where we bid that rate that will be charged only when the users click your advertisement. One another sub module is CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impression) advertising where advertiser pay for a thousand impression on flat rate to publisher. In addition it also includes website targeted advertising of banner, text and rich-media ads. Moreover, the ad will appear especially to those people who are already looking for such type of product you are offering as well as offer to choose particular sites with geographical area to show your ads.
Question: What is PPC?
Ans: PPC is the abbreviated form of Pay Per Click and is a advertisement campaign conducted by Google. It is referred as a primary module with two sub module CPC (Cost-per-click) and CPM (Cost per thousand impression) through bidding and flat rate respectively. In CPC the advertiser would be only charged when the user click over their advert.
Question: What are the aspects in SEO?
Ans: The main aspect in SEO are divided in two class: SEO On-Page and SEO Off-Page.
SEO On-Page includes Meta tag, description, keywords optimization, site structure and analysis, etc.
SEO Off-Page aspect are Keyword Research, unique and quality content, link building through Blog Comments, Blog Posting, Article submission, Press Release, Classified posting, Forum posting.
Question: What do you know about RSS?
Ans: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication is useful to frequently publish all updated works including news headlines, blog entries etc. This RSS document also known as web feed, feed or channel that incorporate summarized text including metadata i.e. authorship and publishing dates etc.
However, RSS feeds make the publishers flexible by syndicating the content automatically. There is a standardized file format XML that lets the information to be published once which can be visible to several distinct programs. Also, this make readers more ease to get updates timely by allowing them to subscribe from their favorite sites.
Question: How would you define Alexa?
Ans: Alexa is a California based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which is widely known for its website and toolbar. This Alexa toolbar congregate browsing behavior data and send it to website, where the data is analyzed and stored and create report for company’s web traffic. Also, Alexa provides data concerned to traffic, global ranking and other additional information for a websites.
Question: How can you achieve Google Page Rank?
Ans: Generally, Google Page Rank is based on inbound links, therefore, more backlinks you congregate more your page rank will be. Also, it is influenced by rank of page which is linked to you. One other thing to consider is that older your website will be, it will be more favorable and trusted to Google. Google reward those websites who incorporates lots of pages, tons of incoming link and also healthy quantity of internal links to another pages within the site. In respect of SEO projects, relatively it is not so significant but delivers a picture about work to perform towards earning inbound links.
Question: Why the Title Tag in Website is valuable?
Ans: In our SEO efforts Title Tags are very earnest. It is highly recommended to include a Unique Title that exactly says about the contents sits in that page. It is valuable because this is thing which appears in the search engine result section and tells the user & search engine, what is about this page.
Question: What is Site Map and distinguish between HTML sitemap and XML sitemap?
Ans: A sitemap incorporates list of web-pages which is accessible to users or crawlers. It might be a document in any form employed as a tool for planning either a web page or web design that enables them to appear on a website as well as typically placed in a hierarchical style. This helps search engine bots and users to find out the pages on a website. The site map renders our website more search engine friendly as well enhances the probability for frequent indexing.
HTML sitemap can be incorporated directly in a web page for user’s flexibility and can be implemented through proper design. On the other hand, XML sitemap is useful only for search engine crawlers or spiders and doesn’t visible to users. It sits in the root of website.
such as: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Question: On Home Page, I have 10 images, from which I want the Google Spider to crawl only 5 and remaining 5 should be hidden from the Spider? What will I do?
Answer: I will make a separate folder in the root file and put all those five 5 images which I don’t want the spider to crawl and then add the folder in the Robots.txt
Question: What is the difference between Indexing and Crawling?
Answer:
1) When the Search Engines come on your website and read the data or find the data, this process is called crawling.
2) Whenever Search Engines come on your website, which ever page they crawl, they take a copy of that page with them and save it on their server. This process done by the search engine is called Indexing
Question: Which four search engines comprise 90%+ of all general web search traffic?
Answer: Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask
Question: Three most important elements in the head section of an HTML document that are employed by search engines.
Answer: Title, Meta Description and Meta Robots are the big 3.Meta keywords is another common answer, but it would rank as a distant 4th.
Question: Briefly explain the PageRank Algorithm?
Answer: In simple terms, Google uses the gross number of inbound links to a page to determine how important the page is. This “pagerank” has little to do with actual search results but can make a difference on user behavior.
Question: What are XML sitemaps?
Answer: They are an additional tool to help the search engines when they crawl a site. There is no requirement for any sitemap and your pages will get indexed without them if you pay close attention to navigation within your site.
Question: Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
Answer:
1) Interview website owner or webmaster to get a good grasp of the site’s purpose and goals.
2) Perform a keyword analysis to find best performing keywords that should be used for that site and for individual pages of the site.
3) Analyze site content to determine usage of relevant keywords and phrases.
This includes visible text as well at titles, META tags, and “alt” attributes.
4) Examine site navigation.
5) Determine the existence of robots.txt and sitemap and examine those for effectiveness.
6) Make recommendations for changes needed for the site and each individual page.
Question: If the company whose site you’ve been working for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
Answer: I would update the old site with permanent redirects to to new page for every page. Then I would attempt to remove old content from the major search engines to avoid duplicate content issues.
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