Top 122 SEO Interview Questions and Answers of 2024

Planning to ace the SEO interview round in 2024? Prepare from this list of 122 SEO interview questions. Whether you are a fresher or switching from another role, get access to the most asked questions across the evergreen and latest topics dominating the industry. 

For seeking a new career or career advancement in this field after suitable SEO courses, you must prepare yourself for an SEO interview. This write-up lists the frequently asked SEO interview questions and answers that will help freshers as well as experienced professionals to understand the SEO concepts in detail. 

For your convenience, we have categorised this SEO questions for interview article into: 

• Basic Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers
• Intermediate Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers
• Expert Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers

Basic Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers

Q1. What is a keyword? What is the role of a keyword in SEO?

Ans. Keywords, SEO keywords, or focus keywords are words and phrases that describe the content on your page. Keywords are the search term that you want to rank for with a certain page. They make it possible for people to find a site via search engines.

Keywords are important for Google and SEO professionals because they give a fair idea about who people are and what they want, allowing businesses to meet their needs. Keywords also offer a target towards which businesses can aim their content.

Q2. Name different types of keywords. 

Ans. To optimise a web page, there are two main types of keywords:

1. Primary Keywords – It is the main keyword that should exist on a webpage. For proper optimisation of content, this keyword should come in the first paragraph, headings and subheadings. It should not be overstuffed. 
2. Related Keywords – It is also known as Latent Semantic Keyword. It is a variation of the primary keyword that should naturally appear in the on-page content. 

Ideally, it is recommended to mention the other types of keywords used in the SEO vocabulary. They are short-tail keywords, long-tail keywords, and geo-targeting keywords among others. 

Do support this SEO interview answer with examples. 

Also read more on the types of keywords which are based on specific search intent

Q3. What are the different categories of SEO techniques?

Ans. There are three different types of SEO –

• On-page SEO – On-page or on-site SEO includes practice strategies to optimize an individual page on a website and improve the rankings of a website, and earn organic traffic. (You can also explore: How to improve your SEO ranking?)
• Off-page SEO – This process also refers to techniques for improving a website’s position on the search engine results page (SERPs).
• Technical SEO – Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for crawling and indexing, and helps search engines access, crawl, interpret, and index the website in a hassle-free manner.

Q4. Differentiate between on-page and off-page SEO.

Ans. On-page SEO:

On-page SEO involves optimizing different parts of your website that affect your search engine rankings and off-page optimization. You must continuously revise it if you want to maintain or improve the ranking. The main components of on-page optimization are:

• Title of the page
• High-quality content
• URL structure
• Meta description tag
• Optimized Image with alt tags
• Page Performance
• Internal linking

Off-page SEO:

Off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain by getting links from other websites. It depends on another web page to improve your site rankings. The most important off-page ranking factors include: 

• Backlinks
• Social bookmarking
• Guest blogging
• Social media engagement

With on-page SEO you have full control, but with off-page SEO you do not have full control because backlinks, reviews, and other off-page SEO factors rely on the behaviour of others. A website must be optimized for both on-page and off-page SEO to rank well. 

To get a solid understanding, read more our page on on-page vs off-page SEO.

Explore the best online courses related to SEO:

Popular Marketing Communications Courses	Top Marketing Research Courses
Popular Digital Marketing Courses	Top Social Media Marketing Courses

Q5. Name different techniques used in off-page SEO?

Ans. This is one of the basic off-page SEO interview questions. Following are the techniques used in off-page SEO work:

• Blog Post
• Article Post
• Forum Posting
• Yahoo Answer
• Blog Comment
• Directory Submission
• Social Bookmarking
• Press Release Submission
• Deep-link Directory Submission
• Regional Directory Submission

You can also explore: A Comprehensive Guide to Off-Page SEO

Q6. What is page speed and why is it important?

Ans. Page speed is the measure of how fast the content on your site loads for a user. It is important because the pages that load faster are more efficient and offer a better on-page user experience. Google also considers page speed while ranking websites. 

Many factors that affect or relate to page speed:

• Page size
• Images, video, and heavy files
• Excess code and Javascript
• Load time
• Time to First Byte (TTFB)
• Round Trip Time (RTT)
• Last Contentful Paint

Read on Technical SEO basics.

Q7. What is a backlink?

Ans. Any incoming links to a website or web page are known as backlinks. When one website links to another, it means the content is noteworthy. Thus, search engines like Google use backlink as a ranking signal. High-quality backlinks help the web pages to rank up and have better visibility on the search engines.

Refer to our blog on Backlinks.

Q8. Differentiate between a do-follow and a no-follow link.

Ans. Do-follow links: 

Do-follow links allow the search engines to follow them and reach a website. They act as backlinks that are counted by search engines and help in enhancing the ranking of a site. By default all the hyperlinks are dofollow.

No-follow links: 

A no-follow link tells search engines to ignore a link. It does not pass any value from one site to another. Usually, it does influence the ranking or visibility in the search engine index. A no-follow link contains a rel=”nofollow” attribute in its HTML code.

Q9. What is an outbound link?

Ans. Any link on a website that links to another web page or website is known as an outbound link. Outbound links help to extend the relevancy signal of the webpage and boost SEO rankings if they come from authority sites. It is also called an external link.

Q10. What is Page Rank?

Ans. PageRank is one of the algorithms used by Google, where it gives a page rank to determine a web page’s relevance or importance. This SEO interview question is pretty basic but the recruiter will want to know if you know when was Page Rank present on Google SERP and when it was removed. Do mention to the recruiter that it is still present as a ranking factor, but Google has hidden it.

Q11. What is keyword density?

Ans. Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword appears on a given webpage. It is the percentage density of a particular phrase or keyword available on a website compared to the total number of words on a particular page.

Q12.  What is keyword proximity? 

Ans. The distance between two keywords on a web page is known as keyword proximity. It refers to how close keywords are to each other within a body of text.

Q13. What is keyword difficulty?

Ans. Keyword difficulty or competition defines how difficult a keyword is to rank in Google’s organic search results. Keyword’s difficulty depends on multiple factors, like content quality, domain authority, and page authority.

Q14. What is a long-tail keyword?

Ans. Long-tail keywords are phrases containing over three words that make search results highly specific. They have relatively low search volume, but a higher conversion value because they are more specific.

Q15. What is a landing page?

Ans. A web page that serves as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website.

Q16. What are Meta Tags?

Ans. HTML Meta Tags are concise summaries that describe a page’s content. Meta tags do not appear on the web page. They are page data tags that lie between the open and closing head tags in the HTML code of a document. They tell search engines what a web page is about. This information is called metadata. While the information is not displayed on the web page, it can be read by search engines and web crawlers.

Q17. What is the importance of a Title Tag on a website?

Ans. Title tags play a crucial role in SEO as they show preview snippets for a page. They give a fair idea about the contents on a web page and are important for both SEO and social media sharing. A title tag shows a concise and accurate picture of a page. 

Q18. Name the important Meta tags in SEO and mention their character limits.

Ans. The important Meta tags in SEO are: 

• Title tag — Google shows 55-64 characters (better to keep it under 60 characters)
• Meta Description tag — 160 characters 
• Robots Meta tag – It has four main values (follow, index, nofollow, noindex)

Q19. What is a SERP?

Ans. SERP or search engine result page is the list of results obtained when a user searches for something online using a search engine, such as Google. SERPs may look different for each query, however, Google’s search results are made up of the following components:

• Sponsored Results and Ads
• Organic Search Results
• Related Searches
• Images
• Featured Snippets
• Knowledge Panel
• Video Carousel

Q20. What is an anchor text? Explain the usage of an anchor tag in SEO.

Ans. It is the clickable text in a hyperlink. It should be relevant to the page linked to, rather than generic text. Anchor text is usually blue and underlined, such as this link to the Shiksha Online Homepage. Anchor text tells search engines and users about the page you’re linking to. It is used to enhance the user experience as it directs the user to the desired area of a webpage. 

Q21. What are the organic results?

Ans. Organic results are those that are displayed on SERPs due to their relevancy. They cannot be influenced by paid advertising.

Q22. What are the major Google ranking factors?

Ans. Be prepared for such SEO interview questions. There are more than 2000 ranking factors, but to public knowledge, there are around 200. You can mention the known Google Ranking factors. 

• Quality and Structure of content
• Quality and Relevant Backlinks
• Page Speed
• Image alt-text 
• Mobile Friendliness
• User experience
• Content Freshness
• Domain Age, URL, and Authority

You can also explore: How to Rank Your Website on Google – SEO Guidelines For Beginners

Q23. Explain Image Alt Text. 

Ans. An image alt tag, also known as alt attribute and alt description, describes an image on a web page. It is an HTML attribute applied to image tags and visible on the page itself. Search engines cannot interpret images, however, an image alt text provides a text alternative that can be read by search engines. Images with properly optimized alt text can positively impact a page ranking. 

Q24. Which of the following is the least important area to include your keyword(s)?

• Meta Keywords
• Internal Anchor Text
• Title
• Meta Description
• Body Text

Ans. Meta Keywords

Q25. Which tools can you use to check the number of backlinks of a site other than your own?

Ans. Some of the popular backlink checker tools are: 

• LinkMiner
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• BuzzSumo
• Moz Link Explorer

Q26. What is 301 redirect?

Ans. 301 redirect is a method by which a user is redirected to a new URL from an old URL. Following are some specific cases where a 301 redirect is used:

• Changing a URL
• Recreating a piece of content
• Migrating content from one domain to another
• Consolidating several pieces of content

Q27. What are the common SEO mistakes?

Ans. Some of the most common SEO mistakes are –

• Not optimizing for the right keywords
• Not having unique title tags and meta descriptions
• Using the same anchor text for every link
• Focusing on link quantity over link quality
• Using poorly-written content

Q28. What is Googlebot?

Ans. Googlebot is the web crawler software used by Google as a search bot to index a webpage. There are two types of Googlebot crawlers: 

• a desktop crawler 
• a mobile crawler 

Q29. What methods would you apply for decreasing the loading time of a website?

Ans. Methods that can be applied to decrease the loading time of a website are

• Optimize images without losing quality
• Enable browser caching
• Optimize CSS delivery to reduce HTTP request
• Avoid self-hosted videos

Q30. What is robots.txt?

Ans. robots.txt is a text file that instructs web robots (search engine robots) about how to crawl pages on their website. It is used to manage crawler traffic to the website. 

Q31. Which is better — Meta Robot tags or robots.txt?

Ans. A meta tag is used to disallow single files and pages. Robots.txt is used to disallow a whole section of a site, such as a category. You can use both a meta robots tag and a robots.txt file as neither has authority over the other. However, meta Robot tags are better as they help in forcing the search engine crawlers not to index and display hidden pages. It also ensures that the link equity is not being lost, with the use of the ‘follow’ command.

Q32. What is Cross-linking? Why should you do Cross-linking?

Ans. Cross-linking is the process of linking one site to another site. It may or may not belong to the same business or person. Cross-linking provides reference sites to the user. These reference sites contain search-related content.

Q33. What is a URL?

Ans. Short for Uniform Resource Locator, a URL is the address of a given unique resource (document or web page) on the web (www). A URL has several components: 

• Scheme: It identifies the protocol to be used to access the resource on the Internet (HTTP and HTTPS are two of the most common protocols).
• Host or Domain Name: It identifies the host that holds the resource. For example, www.naukri.com
• Path: it is the exact location of a resource on the webserver 
• Query string: It consists of data to be passed to server-side scripts, running on the webserver

Here is an example of a URL: https://www.shiksha.com/online-courses/articles/seo-interview-questions-answers/

Q34. Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and users)?

• blog.naukrilearning.com/144
• blog.naukrilearning/category/seoquiz
• blog.naukrilearning/quiz/seoquiz
• blog.naukrilearning/quiz-seoquiz
• blog.naukrilearning.com/category/article/563
• blog.naukrilearning.com/06O7?id=567121

Ans. blog.naukrilearning.com/category/article/563

Q35.  What is an SEO-friendly URL?

Ans. SEO-friendly URLs are short and keyword-rich URLs that are optimized for SEO. The URL structure should be descriptive yet simple and can be understood by both users and search engines. 

You can also explore: A Step-by-Step SEO Guide for Beginners to Kick Start a Career in SEO

Q36. What is a domain name?

Ans. A domain name or hostname is the address of a website that you type in the URL bar of the web browser. Each computer is assigned an IP address (a series of numbers) to identify them on the internet. 

Typically, an IP address looks like a long string of numbers: 192.158.1.38. 

With a domain name, you don’t need to remember the long strings of numbers. The domain name is the human-readable name of the specific location where a resource is located.

Q37. What is a TLD?

Ans. TLD or the top-level domain is the last part of an Internet address or the part of a domain that comes after the dot, like com, org, or net.

For example, in naukri.com, the TLD is .com.

Q38. What is ccTLD?

Ans. ccTLD or country code top-level domain extension assigned to a country. It is maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

Q39. Which is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?

1. Frequently add new content
2. Search for your website more frequently in the major engines
3. Increase your “crawl frequency” in Google Webmaster Central
4. Submit your website through the Search Engine’s Submission form
5. Add a short “crawl delay” parameter to your robots.txt file

Ans. Frequently add new content

Q40. Name some of the tools that you have used in SEO.

Ans. Name all the tools that you have used related to SEO. Common ones are Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, DeepCrawl, Woorank, Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer, etc. Explore some free SEO tools in detail.

Q41. What are the latest updates in the Google search algorithm?

Ans. Google often updates its algorithm, so keep yourself up-to-date and be prepared to answer this question.

Q42. Name some of the best SEO-friendly plugins for WordPress. 

Ans. When you are tasked to improve a WordPress site, too many plugins can slow the page. This directly affects a site’s ranking on Google. This is a very important aspect to consider for any enterprise, be it, small or big. 

Ideally, your answer should cover the above point, before you start mentioning SEO-friendly plugins. 

The top-rated SEO plugins for WordPress are:

1. Yoast SEO
2. Broken Link Checker
3. Rank Math
4. SEO Squirrly
5. All in One Schema Rich Snippets

Intermediate Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers

Q43. What is the Panda update?

Ans. Panda Update is a search filter introduced by Google in 2011 to lower the rank of the low-quality sites or thin sites from finding their way into Google’s top search results and reward high-quality content by assigning a quality classification to the pages.

Q44. What is the Penguin update?

Ans. First released in 2012, the Penguin update was launched to catch sites deemed to be spamming their search results, in particular, those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings.

Q45. What is the Sandbox Effect?

Ans. The Sandbox Effect is the theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (or holding area) in the indexes of Google until such time is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.

Q46. What are the doorway pages?

Ans. Doorway pages are web pages that are created for spamdexing. This is for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases to send visitors to a different page.

Q47. What is the limit of a robot.txt file?

Ans. Googlebot reads only the first 500 kibibytes (KiB) present in the robots.txt file.

Q48 How to remove toxic links to a site?

Ans. First, use a link checker tool to find out the toxic links to the site, and then use the ‘Google Disavow’ tool to remove the link.

Q49. What are Black Hat and White Hat SEO?

Ans. Black Hat SEO refers to the unethical methods and techniques that are used by people to get a high ranking on the SEO search engine result page for their website. These methods and techniques are not acceptable by search engine guidelines. The other method, known as White Hat SEO refers to the practices that are acceptable by search engine guidelines. 

Q50. Why should black hat SEO practices be avoided?

Ans. Black hat SEO is widely considered an unethical practice, as there are higher chances of penalty. Apart from lowering the site’s rankings, a Google penalty sometimes involves a complete delisting of a site from the search engine. Black hat SEO can only deliver results for the short term. It also does not improve the user’s experience. 

Q51. What will you do if your website is banned by the search engines for black hat practices?

Ans. If a website is banned by the search engines for black hat practices, then one can apply for re-inclusion after rectifying the wrongdoings.

Q52. What is XML Sitemap? How is it important?

Ans. XML (Extensible Markup Language) Sitemap is a list of your website’s URLs. It is created to facilitate the functionality of search engines. A good XML sitemap informs the search engines about the number of pages present on a specific website, the frequency of their updates, and the time of the last modifications performed on them, which helps in proper indexing of the website by the search engines.

Q53. What is the DA?

Ans. Domain Authority (DA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERP).

Q54. What is Google Pigeon Update?

Ans. Released in 2014, the Pigeon update is Google’s local search algorithm update. It is aimed at increasing the ranking of local listing in a search. It is known to provide more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results.

Q55. Explain rich snippets.

Ans. Rich snippets refer to the featured text that appears at the top of the organic search results. These snippets have a higher click-through rate. They are not part of SEO but provide better results on the SERPs. If the click-through rate of a snippet rises, it will get more traffic from the search result.

Q56. What is Google’s Rich Answer Box?

Ans. Google’s Rich Answer Box is the result displayed for a searcher’s query. The user can see the result at the top of SERP directly without having to click on the link. When the search engine will find an answer to the question, it will feature a snippet of the website’s page at the top of the search results page.

Q57. What is Bounce Rate?

Ans. It is the percentage of visitors who navigate away or leave a web page without taking an action, such as clicking on a link or filling a form.

This is one of the most important SEO interview questions and answers that you should prepare properly, because bounce rate is an important SEO metric, and a low rate is not always beneficial.

However, with the new GA4, bounce rate is not much of an important than engagement rate. You can read that in slightly more detail on our page on the change GA4 has brought to digital marketing strategy.

Q58. What are the criteria for the uniqueness of a page?

Ans. Some of the criteria for the uniqueness of a page are code similarity, text similarity, page names, titles, headings, page titles, and metatags.

Q59. Name some of the few black hat techniques that one should avoid.

Ans. Link farming, doorway pages, cloaking, keyword stuffing, and hidden text are some of the black hat techniques that should be avoided.

Q60. What are the LSI keywords?

Ans. LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing keywords are the keywords semantically associated with the keyword entered by the users in any search engine.

Example:

If a search engine discovers a page with the word ‘Apple’, then how will it identify if Apple is a brand or fruit? The search engine will now use LSI keywords. If it will find words fruit, flavour, or taste in the article then it would be easy for the search engine to determine that the article is all about the ‘Apple fruit’. Thus, fruit, flavor, or taste are the keywords for the keyword ‘Apple’.

Q61. What is keyword stemming?

Ans. Keyword stemming is the process of finding out new keywords from the main keyword from the search query. This is achieved by adding a prefix, suffix, or pluralization.

Q62. How does keyword stemming work?

Ans. Keyword stemming is sometimes important for making a page more searchable. The keyword’s context, however, is important to consider. Otherwise, it will affect rankings negatively. 

Q63. What is body content relevance?

Ans. Body content relevance or non-image text refers to a text that does not have any images on the web page. It helps to achieve a higher ranking in search engines and ensures good page optimization.

Q64. What does it mean if nothing appears while searching a domain?

Ans. If your domain does not appear on the search, the reasons could be:

• Search engines have banned the website
• The page has not been indexed
• Some canonical issues

Q65. What is Google Suggest?

Ans. As the name suggests, ‘Google Suggest’ (or Autocomplete) is a function of Google, which shows related terms to the users whenever s/he enter any query in the search bar. It is a collection of the most frequently search terms on Google.

Q66. What are Spiders, Robots, and Crawlers?

Ans. Spiders, robots, and crawlers are the software programs used by search engines to explore the internet and automatically download the available web content.

Q67. Which of the following pieces of information is NOT available from current keyword research sources?

• Estimated volume of searches per month
• Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers
• Demographic data on searchers who use a particular term/phrase
• Popular terms/phrases related to a given keyword

Ans. Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers

Q68. For search engine rankings and traffic in Google & Yahoo!, it is generally better to have many, small, single topic-focused sites with links spread out between them than one, a large, inclusive site with all the links pointing to that single domain.

TRUE

FALSE

Ans. False

Q69. If a web page serves as a “sitemap,” linking to other pages on a particular domain in an organized, list format is important because?

Ans. Because it might help search engine crawlers to access multiple pages on that site easily.

Q70. Which search engine patented the concept of “TrustRank” as a methodology to rank websites and webpages?

Ans. Yahoo! patented the concept of “TrustRank” to rank websites and webpages.

Q71. What can be an acceptable way to show HTML text to search engines while creating a graphical image for display to users?

Ans. CSS image replacement can be used to create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class.

Q72. What is Search Engine Submission?

Ans. Search Engine Submission is the task of getting your website listed with search engines and making the search engine aware that a particular site or page exists. 

It is done through two methods: 

1. Submitting one page at a time by using a webmaster tool, like Google Webmaster Central. 
2. Submission of the entire site by submitting the home page to as many search engines as possible. It is a mass submission process. 

Q73. What are Social Signals?

Ans. Social Signals are interactions of people with any web page on social media platforms. This includes likes, dislikes, shares, upvotes, pins, views, etc.

Q74. What is a NAP?

Ans. NAP is the acronym for Name, Address, Phone Number. It is a crucial component for businesses that want to rank well in the local organic search results because Google and other search engines consider this data when determining which companies to show for geo-targeted searches. 

Q75. What is a Google Penalty?

Ans. Google Penalty is similar to any type of penalty in any field. Google penalties are designed to punish websites that have done something wrong or have done things that are not as per Google’s regulations. As per Wikipedia – “A Google Penalty is the negative impact on a website’s search rankings based on updates to Google’s search algorithms or manual review. The penalty can be a by-product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.”

Q76. How will you avoid the Google Penalty? 

Ans. Google penalty can be avoided by ensuring that:

• The website is simple, clean and well-performing
• The website is mobile-friendly and user-friendly
• Links are not broken
• Content is not duplicate
• Smart keywords and tags are used

You can also mention about the Google March Core Update of 2024 this year 

Q77. How will you determine if a link is a bad link?

Ans. Bad links are usually –

• Links from a low-authority or questionable domain
• Pointing to irrelevant context and/or source
• Links embedded in the suspiciously keyword-matched anchor text
• Links pointing to a link exchanges
• Repetitive links
• Link from same anchor texts from different websites
• Links from sites not indexed by Google
• Spam links
• Paid links

Do prepare examples for such types of SEO interview questions and answers.

Q78. How can a website with millions of pages be optimized?

Ans. To optimize a website with millions of pages, you should ensure the following:

• Update your content at least once per week. 
• Add Image and video to pages 
• Good Internal link structure
• Add related rich media content 
• Generate dynamic title and description
• Ensure dynamic XML sitemap generation

Q79. What are Google Ads?

Ans. Google Ads are ads on Google’s advertising system, where the companies/advertisers bid on a set of keywords and get their ads to appear on search results. This is the most commonly used PPC advertising system.

Q80. How do Google Ads work?

Ans. Google AdWords works on an auction system, which occurs every time a user carries out a keyword search. To get the most out of Google AdWords, your Quality Score and bid amount should be optimized. The better the Quality Score and bid amount, the better would be your ad positioning.

Q81. What types of keywords would you use for a Google Ads campaign?

Ans. Google Ads has four different types of keywords:

1. Broad Match Keywords – These are the variations of a search term.
2. Phrase Match Keywords – These are variations of keyword phrases that users type on the Google search engine. 
3. Exact Match Keywords – These are keyword phrases that are closest to the key phrase the user types on Google. 
4. Negative Keywords – These are keywords to exclude in an ad campaign. Generally, they are broad match or phrase match keywords, but they don’t align with the ad’s objective. 

Q82. Name some Google AdWords ad extensions.

Ans. The most popular Google AdWords ad extensions are –

• Affiliate location extension
• Call extensions
• Promote extension
• Structured snippet extension
• App extension
• Site link extension
• Callout Extension

Q83. How can you improve conversion rates?

Ans. Conversion rates can be improved by testing different elements on site, especially on the landing page. One can also experiment with functionality, layout, and style on landing pages.

Q84. What is Google My Business?

Ans. Google My Business is a service offered by Google, where a business can be listed on the Google search engine to have improved visibility. It requires –

• Adding and updating business information
• Adding photos of the business
• Interacting with consumers
• Responding to Google reviews, on time
• Managing business information

Read up on its importance on our blog on Local SEO. 

Q85. Explain Google Trends.

Ans. It is another very useful service by Google, which monitors the popularity of a keyword in a particular region for a particular period. Google Trends makes use of real-time search data to understand user behaviour.

Q86. What is cloaking?

Ans. Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique, where the user receives different content or information as compared to that presented to search engine crawlers. The aim of cloaking is better indexing. Cloaking is against Google guidelines, as it provides users with different information than they expected.

Q87. Explain link popularity. 

Ans. Link popularity is defined as an off-the-page criterion to manage quality content and the value of a website. It refers to the number of backlinks that point towards a website.

Q88. Why should you use both SEO and PPC for driving more traffic?

Ans. Your recruiter will ask this SEO interview question to measure your understanding of both concepts in your previous role. You can talk about how an online campaign requires the need for both. SEO and PPC rely on one another, as they are both keyword-based strategies. You can mention two use cases for how they can work together:

1. If a business uses SEO for web pages, the same keyword data can be used for driving PPC campaigns. This tactic will result in better online visibility. 
2. A business can also rely on PPC for finding out if a keyword works. If it does, the keyword can then be used for optimising web pages. 

Q89. Name the social media channels used for marketing?

Ans. Social media channels that are used for marketing are:

• Video-Sharing sites: YouTube, Vimeo, etc. 
• Blogging Platforms: Medium, Ghost, WordPress, Tumblr
• Social networking sites: Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest
• Social bookmarking sites: Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, StumbleUpon

Also look into the top social media platforms of 2024 that businesses mostly use.  

Q90. Explain canonical issues. How can it be fixed?

Ans. A canonical issue occurs when there is duplicate content. If a website has more than one URL that displays similar or identical content, then it is considered a canonical issue and Google penalizes for such duplicate content. 

A canonical issue can be fixed by the following two methods:

1. Implement 301 redirect
2. Add canonical tags to your website

Q91. Explain what is CTR?

Ans. In search engine optimization, CTR (Click-through Rate) is calculated by dividing the number of times a link emerges on a search engine result page by the number of times it is clicked by users. The higher number of clicks, the higher will be the CTR. It is one of the important metrics in PPC Ads that help the users to measure the results and finds how adequate the campaigns are.

Q92. What is Alexa Rank in SEO?

Ans. Alexa Rank is a measure of the popularity of a website. It is a metric that ranks websites in a particular order based on their popularity and website traffic in the last three months.

Q93. Name some of the biggest SEO trends since last five years but have continued on to 2024. 

Ans. The recruiter wants to know how updated you are with SEO tactics in 2022. To answer this SEO interview question for 2023, you have to elaborate on the trends based on your previous experience. Some of the major trends you can talk about are:

1. Google’s Core Web Vitals
2. Voice Search 
3. Video SEO
4. Google’s SMITH (Siamese Multi-depth Transformer-based Hierarchical) algorithm
5. Creating high-quality backlinks
6. Featured Snippets
7. Semantic search of keywords
8. Image Optimization
9. Google Helpful Content Update
10. AI
11. Semantic search
12. Matching search intent
13. EEAT 

Q94. Explain what is hidden text.

Ans. Hidden text is a technique used to enhance the ranking of a site. It is the text which is invisible or hidden from visitors, but the SEO engine can read it. Hidden text is used to manipulate Google’s search rankings and is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Q95. Does Google use the keyword meta tags? Why?

Ans. No, Google does not use the keyword meta tags in web search rankings. Google ignores the meta tags keyword because it is an area where someone could stuff often irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Keywords meta tags were often misused. Hence, Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

Q96. What are the reasons for HTTP 404 errors?

Ans. HTTP 404 errors indicate that a requested page cannot be found. An Error 404 is a client-side error, which could occur, either because you typed the URL incorrectly or the page has been moved or removed from the website. Another reason could be if a website has moved a did not redirect the old URL to the new one. 

Q97. What is error 503?

Ans. Error 503 is known as 503 Service Unavailable. It is an HTTP status that indicates the server is not accessible to handle the request. It happens because when the server faces heavy traffic or when maintenance is executed on it. 

Q98. Explain Mobile-First Indexing?

Ans. Mobile-first indexing means that Google uses the mobile version of the content for indexing. If there are two separate mobile and desktop URLs of your websites, Google will show the mobile URL to mobile users and the desktop URL to desktop users. However, Google will use the mobile version of the content for indexing. 

Q99. Explain the method to check whether the SEO campaign is working or not. 

Ans. To find out whether the SEO campaign is working or not, one can: 

• Check the website statistics. It will show the origin of the traffic. 
• Search results can also tell if the campaign is working or not. You can check the search results after making a search based on the relevant keywords and key phrases.
• use web.dev – the official tool from google on basic website diagnostics – it’ll give you a score on your SEO implementations.

Q100. What is Google Search Console?

Ans. Google Search Console (GSC) is a free service that enables you to maintain and evaluate your website’s performance in search results. It helps to identify issues with your webpage that need to be fixed and updates you if your website has been infected with malware.

Q101.What do you understand by SEO hygiene?

Ans. Practising SEO hygiene is important for any company website to grow. Once this is done on a regular basis, a site will enjoy better rankings, increased credibility, and improved brand awareness. 

Do try explaining the downsides of not practising SEO hygiene. You can mention how a company’s site can face penalties that eventually lead to lesser site visibility. 

Also, furnish this answer by speaking about basic website architecture that you can inspect and improve upon. Meta tags, page titles, headers, internal links, navigation, and internal links, are some. 

Apart from the above, it is important that a site has a mobile-friendly design as well. This means that any feature added to a site should work the same way on mobile devices. 

Expert Level SEO Interview Questions and Answers

Q102. What is AMP?

Ans. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source project that is used by publishers to manage the readability and speed of their pages on mobile devices. It provides easy readability to mobile pages and makes the loading process speedy for a better user experience. This venture was started by Google, WordPress, Adobe, and some other companies in 2015.

Q103. Explain article spinning.

Ans. Article spinning is a black hat SEO technique to enhance the SEO of a website. In this strategy, one article is written in a few different copies and in such a way that each copy is considered as a new article. These are uploaded as fresh articles to create the illusion with low quality and repetitive content as the first article.

SEO experts know how to avoid them. Answering this SEO interview question will help the recruiter measure your expertise.      

Q104. Explain the Disavow tool.

Ans. The Disavow tool is a part of the Google Search Console. It helps us to minimize the value of a backlink to restrict link-based penalties. It also works for the site to shield it from unwanted links that may cripple the website’s reputation.

Q105. What is a PBN?

Ans. PBN stands for Private Blog Network. It is a network of websites for building links to a single website to manipulate search engine rankings. Many black hat SEOs build them to pass authority. 

In simple terms, a PBN exists only to link to a central website to influence that website’s authority in search. It offers negligible long-term value to the websites they are linking to.

Q106. Mention some of the reports in Google Analytics.

Ans. Following are the reports in Google Analytics:

• Mobile performance report
• Content efficiency report
• Traffic acquisition report
• New vs Returning visitors
• Keyword analysis report
• Landing pages report
• Bounce rate vs Exit rate report

Q107. What is HTTPS/SSL Update?

Ans. In HTTP protocol, the data is transferred between the site server and the browser as plain text. So, it is easy for anyone to read your data. 

By installing an SSL Certificate on a website server, one can migrate from a non-secure ‘HTTP’ protocol to the secure ‘HTTPS’ protocol.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a protocol used for secure communication on the World Wide Web. With the help of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), we can add a layer of security to the standard HTTP connection. It encrypts all the available data or communication between the server and the browser.

Websites that consist of sensitive data like credit card details and personal information use HTTPS instead of HTTP.  An HTTPS connection offers the following benefits:

• Data Integrity
• Website Authentication
• Data Encryption

Q108. What is a link audit? How frequently should it be done?

Ans. This SEO interview question is for the experienced ones. A link audit is a process of analyzing your current links/link profile to evaluate and identify the potential issues or opportunities in your backlink profile. If your link audit gets completed within 45 minutes, then it should be done every six months. It is a complex task. If a website has not been engaged in low-quality link building in the past, then a link audit can be done every 6-12 months. 

Q109. What are Frames in HTML?

Ans. HTML frames are used to divide the content of a page into multiple parts. It divides your browser window into several sections where each section can load a separate HTML document. search engines consider frames as different pages and can adversely impact the SEO of your website. 

Q110. Explain Forum Posting. 

Ans. Forum posting is an off-page SEO technique. It consists of websites that participate in online discussion forums to reply to different questions to divert traffic to your site. You can create a profile on a forum, create a thread, engage with other users, and participate in online discussions to get backlinks to your site. By using Forum Posting, you can reach out to potential users and engage them. 

Q111. Explain Blog Commenting. What are its types?

Ans. Blog commenting refers to the relationship between blogs, bloggers, and blog readers. It is the practice of adding comments on blog posts with a relevant backlink to your website. You can exchange ideas and thoughts and attract traffic to your website. This helps in higher search engine rankings and link popularity. 

Two types of Blog Commenting are: 

• Automated blog commenting: In this method, you don’t read a blog post and comment on a mass scale. This does not add any value to the reader or publisher. 
• Manual blog commenting: In this method, you pick some sites, read the blog post, and add your opinion in the form of a comment. In this manner, you will interact with the author and share your relevant blog link which can be helpful to others.

Q112. Tell us some ways on how you can improve a site’s Core Web Vitals. 

Ans. Here the interviewer wants to figure out how updated you are with technical SEO. Core Web Vitals is a part of Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool that determines whether the user’s experience on a website is good or bad. For instance, a site’s long loading time can be detrimental to its ranking. 

To optimise the Core Web Vitals, you can mention the following:

1. Load time problems can be solved by optimising image size. A Lighthouse report can show the ideal size of an image. You can also mention that image formats such as WebP are better than PNG. 
2. Server response time should also be improved. 
3. Google recommends preloading CSS and Javascript files improves page load speed. This can be done by 

<head>

  <link rel=”preload” as=”script” href=”critical.js”>

</head>

Q113. What is E-E-A-T? Name some of the reasons why it is important?

Ans. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It was introduced in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines by Google. Do note that this SEO interview question is for experts as well as intermediates in the digital marketing field. 

Also, briefly explain these terms in the following manner:

1. Experience in E-E-A-T refers to the first hand experience of the author when they are explaining a concept, which again should ideally be based on real-life experiences.   
2. Expertise refers to knowledgeable content in a particular domain/industry written by subject matter experts. 
3. Authority is gained when more users visit content pieces from a particular website or blog. Users only do that when the content is insightful and fulfils their concerns.
4. Trustworthiness is another factor that is evaluated by Google. A reliable piece of information with accurate details is essential for any kind of content to rank. 

To mention its importance, you can say that Google does not give any E-E-A-T score to a website. However, following E-A-T makes it much easier for Google engineers to adjust rankings on the search engine. 

Q114. Why is video SEO different from text-based SEO? How would you approach it?

Ans. This SEO interview question tests your knowledge of the video medium. For gaining traffic through video SEO, it is first important to understand how YouTube works. Videos are suggested within YouTube and not mainly on the Google search engine. 

To highlight the techniques you use with video SEO, mention that you

1. Use YouTube suggestions just as Google suggest when you type in a keyword.
2. Use tag extensions such as TubeBuddy, it becomes easier to know what tags the competitors are using. 
3. Use YouTube Studio or freemium tools such as VidIQ for keyword research. 
4. Use transcripts of videos so that the video ranks on search engines as well. 

Q115. Why is Dwell Time important for SEO?

Ans. This is one of the top SEO questions this year that you should master. Dwell time is how long a user stays on the page of a website after s/he finds it on the Google SERP and goes back to the search results. If the dwell time is less, it means the user did not find the page useful. It is also relative to the SEO content you create.

For instance, a user looking for a quick short answer will not take much time on the page, provided s/he gets the answer without having to leap through distracting video ads that roll automatically as you scroll down content. But if the content is long with an embedded video, the user will obviously spend a considerable amount of satisfactory time and Google will deem it as useful.

Although this is not a direct ranking factor in Google, it is part of the search engine’s machine learning algorithm. It is also different from the bounce rate metric which calculates a single session against all the pages of a website.

Q116. What do you have to say about the Google Caffeine Update?

Ans. Google Caffeine is a contributing ranking factor just like Hummingbird, Panda and others. It indexes pages based on the recency of publication.

Q117. Why is on-page SEO still important in 2024?

Ans. Google always ranks pages based on the search query and user experience. When the focus keyword is present on the title tag, the URL, the first 100 words in the introduction and in the content body, it is easier to rank. On-page SEO best practices improve user experience.

Q118. Can AI-generated content rank better on Google?

Ans. This SEO interview question looks into how updated you are with recent challenges and trends. Also, this question will let the recruiter know that you are aware of the changes and guidelines in the Google universe. 

You can mention that John Mueller from Google has said that AI-generated content is considered to be spam but of late, the search engine will not. So AI-generated content will not exactly be a problem as long as the content meets the user intent and not just rephrasing or plagiarising other content. You can mention that there is still a huge ongoing debate about this issue. 

Q119. What do Google search algorithms analyse so that a page ranks higher in the SERP?

Ans. This SEO interview question is again about your familiarity with Google guidelines. You can start by explaining about five factors. 

• Meaning of your query – Google has language models that can identify the search intent
• Relevance of webpages – When a page contains the same keyword the user types on the Google SERP and it contains relevant keywords related to the focus keyword 
• Quality of content – Google gives importance to the reliability of the web page. That’s why simply stuffing relevant keywords does not work.
• Usability of webpages – This includes page loading speed, the appearance of the webpage on different browsers, etc
• Context and settings – Google algorithms look into the location, search settings and search history of users to show the most appropriate results

Q120. What is your understanding of YMYL pages?

Ans. YMYL stands for ‘Your Money or Your Life’. Such pages, according to Google, have the potential to directly impact a person’s safety, happiness, finances and health. Google lists the following types of YMYL topics. 

1. News and current events excluding sports, lifestyle and entertainment
2. Finance
3. Shopping
4. Health & safety
5. Civics, government and law

Some other YMYL topics, as per Google, are information about ‘Groups of people’, topics on finding jobs, colleges, etc.

Q121. Describe Pagination.

Ans. Pagination is a web design tactic of breaking down a huge page into multiple ones. They should be numbered sequentially.

Pagination is important for reducing page load times and improving the user experience, where the user does not have to keep scrolling down. One of the key reasons why it is important from an SEO perspective is that Googlebot cannot effectively crawl and index infinitely. Instead the Google crawler will index a paginated page differently and it can understand a paginated page based on the code, which is a win-win as there is no duplication.

Q122. How do you think ChatGPT will change SEO today?

Ans. Now the benefits of using ChatGPT for an SEO professional lie in automating technical tasks. You can impress your interviewer by mentioning about creating Match Regex in seconds without knowing much of Excel, creating Schema markups without knowing HTML, and even create SEO plugins without coding know-how.

There are many other ways of using ChatGPT for SEO that you can read and answer this interview question.    

Parting note

These SEO interview questions and answers will certainly help you prepare for your dream job. Try being honest about your answers and give as many examples to highlight your understanding of technical SEO concepts.

Good luck!