Complete SEO Interview Questions with Answers 2019

SEO Interview Questions with answers are the list of all the possible interview questions related to Search Engine Optimization, an Interviewer might ask. Day by day with blooming digital marketing, digtal marketing agencies are hiring potential SEO experts for their company. Following question and answers might help you to get a job in the digital marketing (SEO) company.

SEO Interview Questions 2019

SEO Interview Questions

Following are the important SEO Interview Questions with Answer (2019).

What is SEO?

SEO is the short form for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is an optimization technique by which we make website search engine friendly. So that it will help a website to rank better in Search Results. 

What are the important phases of SEO?

SEO has two important phases and both are equally important. One is On Page SEO and another one is Off Page SEO. 

What is SEO Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing is the marketing strategy used to reach product or service of a company or individual near the potential customer. SEO is the important step and one of Digital marketing strategy. 

What is On Page Optimization?

On Page Optimization is an optimization technique in which all the webpages are optimized in such a way that it would help to rank better in search results. Following are the few important on page SEO steps:

- Keyword embedded title tag

-Keyword Embedded h1 and h2 tag

-Keyword embedded meta tags (Meta description tag, meta keyword tag)

- Setting alt attribute for image tags (One of alt attribute of first image should contain the keyword)

- setting canonical url for each webpage of the website.

What is Off Page Optimization?

Off Page Optimization is an optimization approach that is implemented external to the website. In this optimization, webpage links are shared at various other but related niche websites. 

What is the difference between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?

The main difference in between on page seo and off page seo is On page seo is the optimization done in the each webpage of the websites where as Off page seo is the optimization done in the other but related niche websites. 

What is the main goal of On Page SEO?

The main goal of on page seo is to make webpage content search engine friendly. It helps Search Engine algorithm to better understand each webpage of a website.

What are the optimisations done during On Page SEO?

Following are the optimisation done during On Page SEO:

- Keyword embedded title tag is set.

- Keyword Embedded h1 and h2 tag are set.

- Keyword embedded meta tags (Meta description tag, meta keyword tag) are set.

- Setting alt attribute for image tags (One of alt attribute of first image should contain the keyword)

- setting canonical url for each webpage of the website.

What is a Keyword?

The query which a user make in a search engine is known as Keyword. keyword can be a single word or multiple word. Multiple word keyword is known as long tail keyword. 

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

The difference between SEO and SEM is, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is followed to rank higher in Search engine results and gain organic traffic while SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the marketing strategy where paid campaigns are run to rank the webpage higher in the search results. The popular SEM is Google Ads (Formerly known as Google Adwords).

What is a long tail keyword?

The query which a user make in a search engine is known as keyword. Often user use single word keyword or multiple word keyword. Multiple word keyword is known as long tail keyword. 

For Example:

Biryani - Single World Keyword.

Hyderabadi chicken dum biryani - Long tail keyword.

What are the benefits of Long Tail Keyword?

Long tail keyword are less competitive and can easily be ranked higher in Search results if blog article is developed around long tail keyword. 

What is a search engine?

Search engine is an index database which contains webpage link and glimpse of its related data. 

What is indexing in terms of SEO?

Indexing is the listing of a webpage link and its related data in the search engine database. There are crawlers of search engine whose job is to explore new webpage link, collect relevant data from the link and store in the search engine database. This storing of new webpage link in the search engine database is known as indexing. 

How can we know which are the webpages of a website are indexed in Google?

We can know which are the webpages of a website are indexed in Google by visiting Google webpage and querying for "site: website home url". 

For example, if a seo expert wants to know which webpages of www.example.com are indexed, then he must have to query "site:www.example.com" and the search result will show all the indexed webpage links from www.example.com.

What is Ranking in terms of Search Engine results?

Ranking is the process of assigning rank to a webpage link depending upon a keyword by the search engine. Once a user query in search engine, search engine rank all the webpage link depending upon certain factors while keeping the query at the front. The highest rank received webpage link is going to appear in the first rank of first search result page and the lowest rank received webpage link is going to appear in the last rank of the last search result page. 

What is the difference between Indexing and ranking?

The difference between indexing and ranking is: Indexing is the listing of a webpage link in the search engine database where as ranking is the process of assigning rank to a webpage link depending upon a keyword by the search engine.

Why do Google do not index a webpage?

Google might not index a webpage if it contains spammy content(Porn, malware related or hatred related content or the content encourages piracy).

What is the importance of a webpage being mobile friendly?

The importance of a webpage being mobile friendly is very important in 2019. Recent study such as Google analytics say there are 70% user are accessing website in their mobile phone device. If a webpage is not mobile friendly, then either user is not going to spend much time or Search engines are not going to rank the webpage for mobile phone devices. Which means there would be constant downfall of traffic and eventually the website going to lose reputation in the search result world. 

How do you determine a webpage is mobile friendly?

We can determine whether a webpage is mobile friendly or not, by accessing the webpage direct in a mobile device. Apart from this simple approach there are plenty free tools available to check whether a webpage is mobile friendly or not! One of such powerful but free tool is Page Insights. Page insights is a tool from Google and the best part it shows the load time of webpage in mobile phone and desktop as well. It also suggests recommended corrections to make in a webpage to increase load time. 

What is a sitemap?

Sitemap is a list of all the relevant webpage link of a website. 

What is the benefit of a sitemap?

The benefit of a sitemap is it helps search engine crawlers to identify all the relevant webpage links present in a website and indexes fast in the search engine. 

Why should we use a sitemap in a website?

The job of crawlers of search engine is to discover new webpage links that exist in the Internet world. This process can be very time consuming. So webpage links will be indexed only if they are discovered by crawlers. Sometimes it may take more than six months or one year or more to index a webpage link. Thats why we use sitemap. By setting a sitemap in the website, we inform crawlers all the important webpage links present in the website. This fasts the process of the indexing of the webpage links. 

With sitemap, all the webpage links can be indexed less than a month. 

What are important Google Ranking Factors?

There are more than 200 factors which Google follow to rank webpage links for a particular keyword. However following are the important ranking factors:

- Webpage has descriptive but short title tag

- Webpage has meta description tag. (Meta description should contain descriptive information about the webpage. And total character length should not exceed 160 characters)

- Webpage has a canonical url. 

- Webpage has h1, h2 tags

- Well structured content in the webpage

- Image contains alt attribute (title attribute optional)

- Webpage has good backlinks (Backlinks from similar niche healthy website)

- Bounce rate of the website 

- Daily unique visitors count

- Returning visitors count

- source of traffic

What is a backlink?

Presence of a webpage link of a website in other external website webpage is known as backlink. Backlink plays major role in ranking a webpage for a particular keyword in search results. 

What are some link building techniques?

There are plenty link building techniques available. Following are the important link building techniques. 

- Guest Posting in similar niche website

- Blog commenting

- Social bookmarking

- Sharing content in social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram, tumblr etc. 

- Web 2.0 approach

What is SEO Marketing?

SEO Marketing also known as Search Engine marketing is the marketing strategy to rank a webpage link for a particular keyword or keywords in the search results. In this marketing strategy, paid campaign is run. The popular paid campaign for Google is Google Ads (Formerly known as Google Adwords).

What is blackhat SEO?

Blackhat SEO are the blacklisted techniques or approach or strategy by Search Engines. Through out the evolution of Search Engine Algorithm, Search algorithm makers identified the approaches which helped webpage to rank higher in search result despite having poor content or plagiarised content. Such approach or strategy are blacklisted and commonly known as blackhat seo. 

What is the main goal of Google Analytics?

The main goal of Google Analytics is to provide detailed traffic list to a website. For this google analytics tracking code should be implemented in the head section of the website. 

What is do follow link?

To provide option a user to navigate from one webpage to another webpage, we provide hypertext link. The job of crawlers from search engine is to discover new webpage link and they discover new links from these hypertext link. The default nature of crawler is to follow each link present in a webpage content. Therefore such link are known as do follow link because it does not restrict crawlers from search engine to crawl the webpage url present in the hypertext link. 

Do follow link example: <a href="https://www.newexample.com/url">Other Webpage</a>

By default hypertext links are do follow links. 

From do follow link, crawlers from search engine assume both the webpage (the webpage which contains hypertext link and the url of the linked webpage) are related. 

What is no follow links?

No follow links are the hypertext links in which there is instruction for Search Engine crawlers to crawl the webpage url present in the hypertext link. 

For this, we add rel attribute with nofollow value. 

No follow link example: <a href="https://www.newexample.com/url"  rel="nofollow">Other Webpage</a>

Rel attribute with nofollow value instructs crawlers from search engine not to crawl the external url. 

What is the benefit of No Follow Links?

When a user uses hypertext link in the webpage, crawler from search engine crawl the listed url present in the hypertext link. And crawler assume the webpage which has listed the other webpage link, both are related and pass the reputation of the website to the linked webpage-website. By this a website's hard earned reputation is passed to the external website. To stop this, we use no follow links. No follow links instructs crawler that the listed external webpage link is not related in any way with the current website. It stops passing reputation of the website to external websites.  

How can Google Analytics be helpful in SEO?

Google analytics is the only helpful tool to do better SEO. Because Google analytics contain detailed information about each and every visitor to the website. Google analytics contains detailed information about four types of traffic that a website receive daily and these are : Organic traffic, social traffic, referral traffic, and direct traffic. It also provides information about which keywords are driving traffic, which social platforms are driving traffic, which webpages are viewed, the average spending time by users, user accessed the website from which device (Mobile, tablet or desktop) etc. Studying these reports one can do better seo for a website. 

What is bounce rate in Google Analytics?

Bounce rate in Google Analytics is the average of total percentage of each user visited different webpages of a website after landing to a particular webpage. 100% bounce rate means user have not visited any other webpage of a website except the one where the user has landed. 0% bounce rate means, user has visited all the webpage link present in the website after landing to a webpage. 

Which is the top factor in 2019 that Google notices first to rank a website?

The top factor that Google notices first to rank a website is the bounce rate. 100% bounce rate means the website is not user friendly and is not beneficial to user in a broader sense. 0% bounce rate means the website is super beneficial for users. In reality there are no such 0% bounce rate sites but there are websites which has 10% to 20% bounce rate. 

What is Keyword Stuffing in SEO?

Keyword stuffing is a blackhat seo technique. Search engine rank an indexed webpage for a particular keyword. To rank better and misguide the search engine algorithm, the webpage content writer often knowingly or unknowingly use excess keyword in the content with an assumption it will rank higher. This excess use of keywords in webpage is known as keyword stuffing. Search engine penalises the webpage which follows this approach. 

What are some of popular Search Engines?

Popular search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Duckduckgo and Yandex.

Who are the founders of Google?

Founders of Google were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They founded Google while they were still Ph.D. Students at Standford Universtity in California, United States.

When was Google Founded?

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. 

What is WWW?

WWW is world wide web also known as Web. WWW is an information system identified by URL (Uniform Resource Locator). 

What is TLD in a domain name?

TLD or top level domain are the extension of a domain name. 

Example:

www.example.com

www.example.in

www.example.net

www.example.org

www.example.tk

www.example.mk

In the above domainame urls, .com, .in, .net, .org, .tk, .mk are top level domains. ICANN (the responsible body that provides and reserves reservation of a domain to particular entity) identifies the type of domain url. 

What is the importance of TLD in Search Results?

One of the ranking factor that determines ranking of a webpage for particular keyword is its TLD..

Following are the importance of TLD in search results

If a user wants to appear webpages of a website all around the world then .com tld is suitable. 

If a user wants to appear webpages of a website for the people querying from India then .in tld is suitable. 

If a user wants an official website for a government body in the United States, then .gov tld is suitable. 

If a user wants a website for its organisation then .org tld is suitable. 

What is domain Registration?

Domain registration is the process of registering a domain name with TLD for a particular entity for certain period of time. ICANN is responsible for maintaining these registrations. It means more than one company or individual can not have similar domain name. However ICANN conducts these registrations through third party domain registrars (Godaddy, Hostinger, Hostgator, Bigrock, Bluehost etc.)

What is hosting?

Hosting is the place in the Internet where all the files, resources are stored for a particular website to access the website from around the world through internet. 

What are the popular types of Hosting?

The popular types of hosting are shared hosting, virtual private server hosting, dedicated server hosting and cloud hosting. 

What are crawlers?

Crawlers are the computer programs for search engines. Crawlers are commonly known as spiders, spider bots, bots or computer bots. 

What do crawlers do mainly?

The main job of crawlers is to crawl indexed webpages in the search engine, collect various important data from the webpage and index newly discovered webpage links. 

What is SERP?

SERP is the short form for search engine result pages. When a user query in the search engine, the result appears in various pages. The webpage link that ranked first for a particular query is going to appear at the first result of first search result page and the webpage link that is ranked with lowest rank is going to appear at the last position of the last search engine result page. 

In general google shows ten search results in each search engine result page. 

However Google has provided option to list 100 search results per search engine result page. 

What are LSI Keywords?

LSI Keywords are the list of keywords which Search engine list at the bottom section of first search engine result page when a user queries in the search engine. These listed keywords are the related keywords to the queried keyword in the search engine which users also often look for. 

Including LSI keywords in the webpage content can help to rank the webpage better in the search results for a particular keyword. 

What are Google Suggest Keywords?

When a user types a particular in the box of search engine page, a list of other related keywords appear below the search query box. These keywords are known as google suggest keywords. These keywords are the keyword related to the querying keyword which users often use to query in the search engine. 

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are the tags that are used in head section of each webpage with a purpose to help Search Engine Crawlers identify the type of the content present in the webpage. 

The general meta tags which are mostly used in the head section of a webpage are 

- meta description tag

-meta keywords tag

-meta robots tag (If instructions to crawlers not to index or not to follow the webpage is needed to set)

What are structured data that Google recommends to implement?

Structured data is a new way to help Google and other search engines to understand the content of webpage in a fast manner. Structured data implements common set of schemas depending upon the type of content(News Article, Blog Post, Review, Recipe etc.) which are identified by crawlers from different search engines.Structured data is developed by Schema.org. Schema.org is a combined effort by Google, Bing and Yandex and was launched on 2nd June 2011.

Which meta tag would you use to instruct crawler not to crawl a particular webpage?

I will use meta robots tag in the head section of the webpage to instruct crawler not to crawl a particular webpage of a website. 

Example

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"/>

What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt file is a simple text file that is present in a website. It is used to instruct crawlers not to follow and index a directory or a file or files present in the website main directory. And we can also include paths to all the sitemap file in this robots.txt file. 

Example:

There is admin section in the website main directory and we should not allow any crawlers or bot access this section. So we can instruct using robots.txt file. 

robots.txt format

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow:/admin
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml