Top 35 SEO Interview Questions - Basic and Advanced

Top 35 SEO Interview Questions

Prepared by Ramit Solutions - Best Digital Marketing Services

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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 search, Alexa, open site explorer, Google Webmaster.

3) What do you mean by Backlink?

 The incoming links to your website or webpage is referred as Backlink.

4) What are out bound Links?

The outbound links are our website links to other webpage or website.

5) Can you tell me something about Googlebot?

To index a webpage Google uses the Googlebot software. Caching, Crawling and indexing of a webpage are done through Googlebot by collecting details from that webpage.

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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 and provide a way to allow the accessing to it.
2. It provides the users with reference sites that consists the content related to the search.
3. It doesn’t need to be owned by the same person as it provides the methods that have been built on the Internet.
4. It serves the purpose to display the page on the search engines using search engine optimization techniques and methods.
5. The site ranking is calculated on the basis of the relevance of the sites and then it is reflected on the search engine.
6. It uses SEO tools that provide reciprocal links and inbound links that can be used as our SEO.

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

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11)What is keyword stemming?

The process of finding out the root word from the search query is referred as keywords stemming.

Keyword Stemming in SEO

Keyword stemming is a word that should be highlighted in the minds of everyone who plan to build a website on their own and look forward to succeed in the highly competitive area. Before we start talking about keyword stemming, we should gather a clear idea on what a keyword is. It is nothing else other than the word that we search for, and keyword stemming is bringing up the variants for the keyword by adding prefixes or suffixes to it. It is also done by stripping the suffixes or prefixes. It is a technique used by the search engines. Algorithms for keyword stemming have been studied in the field of computer science since 1968, says Wikipedia. The first ever published stemmer was written by Julie Beth. That was also in 1968.

Keyword Stemming | Top 35 SEO Interview Questions

Definition

Keyword stemming is the process of generating new words from the same root word.

The Process of Generating New Words

The new word is generated with the help of the following options:-

Adding a prefix to the word

Example:- Adding "en" to the word "large" makes it "enlarge".

Adding a suffix to the word

Example:- Adding "ful" to the word "sorrow" makes it "sorrowful".

Pluralizing the word

Example:- Adding "ies" to the word "baby" makes it "babies".

12) Name some SEO blogs that you frequently read?

1. Jimboykins
2. Search Engine Land
3. SEOSmarty
4. MOZ
5. Search Engine Journal

13) What do you mean by Cloaking?

Cloaking is a deceptive way of optimizing search. In this technique a different content will be searched by the search engine than what is presented or searched by the users.

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

There are two types Meta tags in SEO.

1. Description Meta tag with 156 characters limits
2. Keyword Meta tag with 256 characters limits

15) How many characters limits in Title tag?

We can add 70 characters in title tag.

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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 are not passed by search engines bot and therefore cannot be cached or indexed. Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink and it passes through all search engines and it puts an impact over page rank.

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.

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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 Search Engine Result Page (SERP) , while to optimize the search result of your webpage or website SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is used.

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.

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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.

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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

Bonus! 3 More!

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’.

 

7 Quality Metrics For Evaluating Publishers For Guest Blogging

Guest blogging may not be an incredible third party referencing procedure any longer, however reporter Jayson Demers reminds us that its still an important strategy.

In spite of prevalent thinking, nonetheless, Guest blogging is not dead — Cutts was simply pointing out that guest blogging strictly for links is a spammy tactic that SEO practitioners should not rely on as a link building strategy.

1. Google Pagerank

Google Pagerank (PR) has long been a metric fixated over by the SEO business. While numerous case Pagerank is futile, it is the least demanding and most conclusive indication of a punished space. (On the off chance that the Pagerank is zero, the site is prone to have been punished by Google.)

Pagerank is a number that is relegated by Google to destinations that it records, extending from zero to ten. The higher the number, the more reliable, definitive, and trustworthy the site. Matt Cutts has shown that Pagerank fundamentally considers the amount (and quality) of approaching connections to a site.

The fundamental test with measuring quality by Pagerank is that Google overhauls Pagerank occasionally (and its conceivable that we'll never see an alternate Pagerank upgrade again). Despite the fact that I wouldn't concentrate independently on Pagerank as a marker of a decent site, I generally utilize PR as a component of my general distributer appraisal endeavors.

Essentially, PR is useful for getting a speedy, initially perspective of the power and believability of a site, while additionally permitting you to instantly figure out whether a site has a manual punishment connected to it. Consequently, its the first metric I consider, yet absolutely not alone.

The most straightforward approaches to focus a site's PR are:

• Visit one of the various destinations that permit you to module a URL and check a site's PR, for example, Prchecker.
• 
  
• Introduce a Pagerank add-on to your program, which naturally checks the PR of any site you're going to.

2. Space Authority

Space Authority (DA) is an alternate composite score of a site's quality. DA is an exclusive metric made by Moz, and its positioned on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100. It's a logarithmic scale, and the higher the score, the better.

It's dictated by joining the greater part of Moz's measurements into a solitary score, including aggregate connections, aggregate alluding spaces, and the sky is the limit from there. DA alludes to the quality of a whole space, while Page Authority (PA) gives a comparable appraisal for a solitary page inside a site.

You can gauge Domain Authority utilizing Open Site Explorer or the Mozbar. It's likewise piece of various paid SEO stages, made accessible through API.

I suggest that you target locales with a DA of at least 40. Higher is better, contingent upon the connection of your endeavors, however 40 guarantees a base limit of believability and sufficient return for your endeavors.

3. One of a kind Referring Domains

"One of a kind alluding areas" is an alternate metric that is given by Moz through the Open Site Explorer and the Mozbar. It lets you know, initially, how different the connection profile of a specific site looks by noting one straightforward inquiry: what number interesting, singular areas right now connection to this site? The higher the number, the more various and solid the connection profile of the site is.

In any case, the amount of alluding spaces doesn't provide for you a decent thought of the nature of those areas. The estimation of an inbound connection unequivocally relies on upon the power of the distributer on which it dwells. At the end of the day, 10 connections from great distributers, for example, Forbes, Huffington Post and Inc.com would be quite liked to 100 connections from little, no-name distributers.

Is the webpage being connected to by trustworthy bloggers, standard distributions, the press, and locales in its specialty? Provided that this is true, that is a decent marker that its a strong site.

4. Alexa Score

Alexa.com is an examination site that helps you gauge activity to any given space. While its not complete regarding activity and it doesn't give movement figures to more current or littler locales, it can provide for you a supportive thought of the amount of activity a particular site gets.

Strangely, the bring down the number, the better. For instance, a site that positions in Alexa's main 1000 is a to a great degree prominent site with extremely solid activity. A site that positions in the main 5 million locales on Alexa is a site that is getting a consistent stream of movement.

Anything with a higher number than that is prone to send you negligible movement, unless you're in a to a great degree corner zone. Since one of the essential objectives of visitor blogging is to reach new gatherings of people, utilization Alexa to guarantee your visitor web journal will be presented to a sufficient Audience.

5. Relevance

One of the significant regions of center from Google's Penguin Update is connection quality. One element in deciding connection quality is pertinence to your specialty.

Importance is critical to consider because of the amount of time you're liable to put resources into visitor posting. Ask yourself, Is this point going to reverberate with the Audience I'm focusing on?

When you're assessing a site, its critical to ask the right inquiries. Before we get into a short scoring apparatus you can utilize, its useful to see how the web indexes score significance.

Since its algorithmic, we should do a speedy breakdown of how a web index decides significance. Pertinence is a parallel examination – is this particular site applicable to a searcher's question or not? Figures that help associate significance include:

• Keywords
• Meta tags
• Titles
• Localization
• User intent (transactional vs. informational, for example)
• Content type classifications

You can apply a comparative point of view when you're doing a manual assessment of a particular site to focus its pertinence. At a certain level, its self-evident. A connection from an exceedingly positioned, yet totally unimportant site may be significant on the off chance that its natural and you've discovered a common association.

A connection from a more general site may be profitable, given that they have a class that is a sensible fit. In any case as a rule, you ought to be investing your time focusing on distributers that are very pertinent to your specialty.

To rapidly evaluate this point, ask yourself:

• What’s the topic of this site? How does that relate back to the topic of my site?
• Do we share the same or similar types of audience?
• Is their core content complementary to your own?
• Can you provide a unique angle on the site’s topic that stands out?

6. Audience

Prior, I talked about how to gauge the movement of a specific site utilizing Alexa. It's additionally critical, be that as it may, to assess the nature of the Audience.

Is it true that they are your optimal client? How captivated would they say they are? Is it true that they are prone to impart your substance and get to be consistent perusers of your substance?

The following are some fast inquiries you can ask to help you assess these focuses.

• Take a gander at the few latest bits of distributed substance. Did they get remarks? What were the way of the remarks – insightful dialogs, identified with the substance, surface level, contentious, or other?
• Take a gander at the social offer means a couple of late bits of substance. Are articles and different bits of substance being imparted on the system at satisfactory levels for your work?
• Look at the site's vicinity on online networking. How dynamic and expert are their records? What do their adherent numbers, substance, and engagement look like?
• What amount of do they advance the visitor posts that show up on their site, either to the group everywhere or through different mediums like pamphlets, and so forth.?

The best sites are ones that have a solid and captivated Audience, are prone to impart your substance, and fabricate your connections as well as your taking after.

7. Quality

The last part of evaluating a website or blog as a potential venue to distribute your substance is the webpage's general quality. Expressed gruffly, is this a site that you're keen on having your image connected with? There are various angles that you can consider concerning this inquiry:

• Is the site decently marked? Is it accurate to say that it is situated as a power site that is making esteem in its space or would it say it is a here now gone again later advertising site?
• Is the brand itself entrenched and decently perceived? Do it have positive affiliations and great notion?
• Who are alternate brands or masterminds that are joined in light of the site you have?
• What's the general nature of the substance on the site?
• What sort of notice does the site get in general media, dialogs, substance offering locales, and so on.
• Is the outline a top notch, high-transformation look and feel?

For a more complete take a gander at how Google characterizes quality, see my article, "The 12 Essential Elements of High Quality Content."

Conclusion
Visitor blogging stands to remain a vital methodology for associating your website to others in your field in the year ahead. To evade any potential web index punishments, its vital that you have a key approach as you assess each one webpage you connect with.

Progressively, the objective of visitor blogging isn't to construct joins. Rather, its to reach new clients, expand change rates, construct your notoriety, and build brand mindfulness, believability, and unwaveringnes

14 SEO botches or Mistakes that are easy to make and how to revise them

Since SEO can be very perplexing in its continually adjusting nature, its simple for sites, brands and destinations to commit errors based off basic confusions. We highlight these issues beneath, alongside basic arrangements and on the most proficient method to rectify them.

1. Confounding PPC (Pay Per Click) with SEO 

Google have made the "commercial" sign less conspicuous nowadays so its simple for clients to surmise that the PPC promotion that they are clicking on is the first natural output that surfaces. It is in this way suggested that a brand offers on their image term so as to maintain a strategic distance from contenders leveraging the client's wrong suspicion.

On the off chance that both you and your rival offers on your image term, your promotion will more probable get showed over theirs as you have more significance.

2. Anticipating that SEO results will produce quick results for new locales 

At the point when dispatching a shiny new site, it is truly a typical misguided judgment that one's SEO endeavors will produce results instantly. On the other hand, a site's history is additionally considered, for which the new site will have none.

In this way, you ought to participate in some PPC action to support the perceivability of your new site for the initial couple of months until your SEO movement begin to show results. You can screen the status of your SEO exercises with apparatuses like SEO Powersuite's Domain Analysis.

3. Succumbing to shoddy SEO administrations who utilization dark cap methods 

Shabby and speedy SEO arrangements are quite often the ones who participate in dark cap methods. These are forceful SEO strategies which normally doesn't obey internet searchers rules.

Prominent strategies are essential word stuffing (where a certain catchphrase is counter-intuitively rehashed in the substance however many times as could reasonably be expected), utilizing concealed content (concealing all the pivotal words that you stuffed so it is not seen by the human eye e.g. making it the same color as the foundation) and connection (purchasing connections instead of taking part in genuine third party referencing exercises).

Before captivating a SEO administration or organization, be mindful of the methods and procedure that they prompt. In the event that it appears to be excessively speedy and simple, it might possibly be fake.

4. Considering SEO toward the end of another site fabricate 

SEO ought to be a key thought to any new site venture. Gone are the days where SEO is only about third party referencing and having legitimate pivotal words in your substance. Consider having magic words in your page Urls, show a HTML and XML sitemap and actualize essential HTML labels like the title labels, meta depiction labels and header labels.

Verify that at any rate an essential SEO agenda is considered and planned for in your site assemble.

5. Not planning for SEO movement 

Participating in SEO is free practically speaking as there is no media spend included and appearing on web search tool results is complimentary. Nonetheless, there is a reasonable bit of exertion included in verifying that your site is taking part in the same number of SEO systems for it to rank exceedingly on the indexed lists page.

You may need to set aside plan for a SEO instrument and consultancy or org to help you accomplish a higher positioning over the long haul. On the off chance that you have to legitimize your SEO spending, you can use SEO Powersuite's Rank Tracker apparatus to contrast present rankings and any date before, e.g. when you began another battle, made critical advancements or changed the procedure.

Fast and shabby SEO benefits that offer dark cap arrangements may be simple for a fleeting task, yet will cost you over the long haul.

6. Avoiding the decisive word conceptualizing stage 

At the point when covered in a task, it is regularly very simple to spotlight on getting the substance out and along these lines including catchphrases heedlessly the moment before distributed. The issue with this is that some activity producing decisive words may be overlooked in the surge of getting substance out the entryway.

Decisive word conceptualizing ought to consequently be given satisfactory time, and there different catchphrase era instruments that will help accelerate the methodology. Once more, Rank Tracker is a decent apparatus that associate with your Google Analytics account, which can help to gather a respectable set of decisive words that are now bring movement to your site and pertinent to your pages' substance.

7. Neglecting to address copy content on the site 

Numerous brands don't understand that their site may contain copy content. Illustrations may incorporate the 'About Us' area in the event that you have local adaptations of your site, utilizing printer-accommodating forms of a URL and using different URL parameters.

Choices for tending to this is to utilize the rel=canonical tag for pages that are basically the same. A sample of this is the Professional Investors segment versus the Individual Investors area on the Investec Asset Management site.

There are a great deal of covering substance on both locales, yet a sidetrack is unrealistic in light of the fact that Individual Investors may not get to a few parts of the Professional Investor site because of agreeability necessities.

On the off chance that you have provincial destinations, you would likewise need to utilize the href lang tag (rel="alternate" hreflang="x") to demonstrate that you have substance focused on towards variations of a solitary dialect. This is valuable on the off chance that you have two local destinations in English, one focusing on the UK and the other focusing on the US.

8. Fusing an excess of Pdfs on your site and neglecting to streamline them 

In the event that given the decision, dependably decide to show a HTML page as opposed to a PDF as there are more optimizable components in a HTML page. Individuals are likewise more inclined to impart a HTML page as opposed to a PDF.

Then again, on the off chance that you do need to show Pdfs on your site and also make beyond any doubt to utilize plain content instead of words as pictures. Set your title in the record properties, utilize a SEO cordial URL (with '-'s dividing each one statement) and make the document estimate as little as could be allowed for ideal download rate and ease of use.

9. Intemperate utilization of Flash substance 

Internet searchers think that it more hard to peruse any substance that is not in HTML position. In the event that you utilize Flash substance it will results harder to rank in the SERP results page.
Continuously verify that substance you need to rank has a comparable HTML design. You might likewise need to supplant Flash usefulness on your site utilizing Html5 systems.

10. Overlooking social components 

Social components are variables that can expand your positioning and so that verify that you have a social vicinity, impart your articles by using your social channels and addition references from social records that have great notorieties.

11. Continuously Blogging, Commenting and Directory submission may bring your results to back

By doing continuous work on Blog posting, Blog Commenting and Directory submissions from low page rank sites will definitely bring your results to spam or cheap quality website. So make sure you wont do that type of mistakes or spamming. Instead of that only few back links from best high niche pr sites will get the good rankings for your website.

12. Having flimsy substance 

In 2011, Google revealed a redesign called "Panda" which downsized "thin" or "shallow" content, so verify content on your site is elegantly composed and easy to use. In the event that your site is picture overwhelming, make beyond any doubt you apply unmistakable alt labels.

13. Not utilizing legitimate sidetracks 

A sidetrack is the procedure of sending one URL to an alternate URL. Some utilization instances of sidetracks incorporate moving from an old website to another webpage or diverting from example.com to www.example.com so clients might effortlessly find your site.

A 301 redirect or sidetrack is the correct approach to do this as it shows to both programs and web search tool bots that the page has moved forever and then convey any connection weighting from the first original page to the new URL.

14. Concentrating on the subtle element rather than the greater picture 

SEO is a mix of a few components and no single component can promise a build or diminishing in pursuit positioning. Thusly, it is constantly best to execute the nuts and bolts of SEO first and attempt to get your site upgraded in general, as opposed to concentrating on ultra particular points of interest, for example, attempting to survey what amount more weight a H1 header tag has versus a H2 tag.

Continuously attempt to execute best practice SEO when conceivable and don't lose the greater picture when diving into the point of interest.

By redressing these avoidable errors, you can better streamline your image's SEO system to guarantee you are seen and listened.