Basic SEO Interview Questions
And Answers for Fresher’s
Here are the most frequently asked SEO interview question that would not only show your skills and knowledge but also helps to achieve the SEO jobs and make you the winner.
1) What is Search Engines?
Ans: Search Engines are very special key element useful to find out specific and relevant information to use with relevant key through huge extent of World Wide Web. Some major commonly used search engine: Like Google, Yahoo, Bing.
2) What is SEO and introduce its types?
Ans : 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
3) Explain On Page optimization and Off Page optimization?
Ans: On Page optimization means optimizing your website and making changes on title, meta tags, site structure, site content, solving canonicalization problem, managing robots.txt etc. Off Page optimization means optimizing your web presence which involves backlink building and social media promotion.
4) What do you mean by Backlink?
Ans: The incoming links to your website or webpage is referred as Backlink.
5) What are out bound Links?
Ans: The outbound links are our website links to other webpage or website.
6) What are the SEO tools do you use?
Ans: The SEO tools that I use are Google analytic, keyword search, Alexa, open site explorer, Google Webmaster.
7) Can you tell me something about Google bot?
Ans: To index a webpage Google uses the Google bot software.
Caching, Crawling and indexing of a webpage are done through Google bot by collecting details from that webpage.
8) Define blog?
Ans: A blog is an information or discussion published on website or World Wide Web, called as posts. Basically, the blog is referred as everything thing where you can include others too. It just like you may talk to your readers. It is also called Web diary or Online Diary.
9) Define article?
Ans: The articles are specific topic or event and are highly oriented towards an opinion instead of information. An article is more oriented towards showing up opinions, views and idea. Generally, it is written by expert of any specific field.
10) Define press release?
Ans: Press Release is related with a specific action or event which can be republished by distinct medium of mass-media including other websites. It should be simple, short and professional. It conveys a clear message or information.
11) What are Meta Tags explain it?
Ans: HTML Meta tags are referred as tags of page data head tags of a document’s HTML code. Actually these are hidden keyword that set in the code. These are invisible to visitors but are visible and readable by Search Engines.
Here is an Example:
<head>
<title>Not considered as Meta Tag, even required anyway</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Write your description here” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Write your keyword here”/>
</head>
12) What is the main purpose of using keyword in SEO?
Ans: 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.
13) Can you mention the functions of body content relevance?
Ans: 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.
14) What are Spiders, Robots and Crawlers and what are their functions?
Ans: 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.
15) What does it mean if nothing appears on doing search on the domain?
Ans: On doing search on your domain and if nothing appears then there are 3 possibilities.
1. May be the site is banned by search engines
2. May be no index by search engines
3. Some canonical issues
16) Difference between keyword & keyword phrase?
Ans: The keyword term is basically concerned with a one-word term, on the other hand a keyword phrase considered as employment of two or more word-combinations. Therefore, it is very confounded to get high ranking in account of one-word keyword term until the one-word keyword has little online competition. Therefore, this practice is not encouraged to employ. In order to drive more traffic and top ranking in SERP it is recommended to employ keyword phrase.
17) What do you know about Black Hat SEO?
Ans: In order to attain High Ranking in search engine result page, websites go for various methods and techniques which are characterized by two categories.
The method which are implemented and acceptable according to search engine guidelines are White Hat SEO, on the other hand, the method which are less acceptable or instructed to avoid in search engine guidelines are “Black Hat SEO”.
18) Can you tell me some Black Hat SEO techniques?
Ans: Some Black Hat SEO techniques are:
19) What is keyword stemming?
Ans: The process of finding out the root word from the search query is referred as keywords stemming.
20) What do you mean by Cloaking?
Ans: 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.
21) Name the bots (spider) of major search engine?
Ans: The name of bots/spider of Google search engine is Google Bot, Yahoo Slurp for Yahoo search and Bing Bot for Bing search engine.
22) Can you differentiate ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’?
Ans: Nofollow link is exactly vice-versa of dofollow link. These are non-crawling link which are not passed by search engines bot and hence can’t be cached or indexed. It is obvious when we wish to prevent a link from crawling and indexing.
Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink which says all search engines crawlers to pass through which also put an impact over page rank. When we opt to employ or attempt to achieve a dofollow link then it is counted by search engines and sits in the eye of Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo etc. as a backlink for your website and enhances your site ranking.
23) Define Page Rank.
Ans: PageRank is a set of algorithm for link analysis named after Larry Page and employed by Google search engine towards defining a numerical value from 1 to 10 to each component of hyperlinked documents like world wide web. The value accepts only round figure that means decimal are not allowed.
24) Establish a difference between PR & SERP.
Ans: PR is Page Rank which is defined by quality inbound links from other website or webpages to a web page or website as well as say the importance of that site.
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page is the placement of the website or webpage which is returned by search engine after a search query or attribute.
25) What is Cache?
Ans: Cache is the process performed by search engine crawler at a regular interval of time. It used to scan and take snapshot of each page over world wide web as well as store as a backup copy. Almost every search engine result page incorporates a cached link for every site. However, clicking over cached link show you the last Google cached version of that specific page rather than of current version.
Also, you can directly prefix “cache:http://www.socialbubble.in” with desired URL to view it cached version
26) Define Alt tag?
Ans: The alt attribute also called as alt tag are employed in XHTML and HTML documents in context of defining alternative text that is supposed to be rendered when the element can’t be rendered to which it is applied. One great feature of alt tag is that it is readable to ‘screen reader’ which is a software by means of which a blind person can hear this. In addition, it delivers alternative information for an image due to some specific reason a user can’t view it such as in case of slow connection and an error occurred in the src attribute.
27) How many types of Meta Tags are there in SEO and what are their characters limits?
Ans: There are two types Meta tags in SEO.
1. Description Meta tag with 150 characters limits
2. Keyword Meta tag with 200 characters limits
28) How many characters limits in Title tag?
Ans: We can add 70 characters in title tag.
29) What is Google Sandbox?
Ans: 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.
30) Why the Title Tag in website is valuable?
Ans: 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.
31) What is considered as more significant, creating content or building backlinks?
Ans: 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.
32) What are the aspects in SEO?
Ans: The main aspect in SEO is divided in two classes: SEO On-Page and SEO Off-Page.
SEO On-Page includes Meta tag, description, keywords optimization, site structure and analysis, etc.
SEO Off-Page aspect are Keyword Research, unique and quality content, link building through Blog Comments, Blog Posting, Article submission, Press Release, Classified posting, Forum posting.
33) What is a keyword?
Ans: Keyword is a word that is used for searching through Search Engines in order to get results related to your searched query.
34) What is Keyword Density?
Ans: Keyword density is the percentage density of a keyword or phrase available on a webpage compared to the total number of words on the page. It is one of the important ranking factors for search engines to display a webpage on the SERP. Providing junk keywords on a page would decrease the ranking of a webpage.
35) What is Anchor Text?
Ans: Anchor text is a clickable hyperlink that is also known as link text, link label and link title. The keyword contained in the anchor text would increase the ranking of a webpage that receives the incoming link.
36) How would you define Alexa?
Ans: Alexa is a California based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which is widely known for its website and toolbar.
This Alexa toolbar congregate browsing behaviour data and send it to website, where the data is analysed and stored and create report for company’s web traffic. Also, Alexa provides data concerned to traffic, global ranking and other additional information for a websites.
37) What’s the significance of Robots.txt file in a website?
Ans: Robots.txt file is considered as a convention useful to prevent cooperating web robots and web crawlers from accessing all or part of a website or its content for which we don’t want to be crawled and indexed but publicly viewable. It is also employed by search engines to archive and categorize website and to generate a rule of no follow regarding some particular areas of our websites.
38) How Keywords are implemented for optimization?
Ans: The best way to opt and implement keywords is to designate those keywords which are popular, relevant to our content, comprises high search volume and effective. Stuffing and over employment of keywords must be avoided. In order to get best result and effect, our pages shouldn’t contain keyword density more than 3-4%. Including keywords into title and description is highly recommended.
39) What things are significant in organically ranking a website?
Ans: Basically there are various things that is being employed for organically ranking a website which can be classified in 3 distinct categories:
1. Website content: It must be quality and unique content as well as most be well optimized and well structured.
2. Website structure: This include TAGS, clear navigation, ensuring usability, validation of HTML errors and miscellaneous.
3. Backlinks: You can create a link for any where but prior to this it is obvious to ensure for relevant site and healthy link.
40) What are top SEO ranking factors?
Ans: Quality of content on the webpage, quality and quantity of backlinks to the webpage, anchor text used in the backlinks, domain authority, social sharing metrics and some other traffic metrics like page CTR, bounce rate and average time on the webpage.
41) What is the latest update in SEO?
Ans: The latest updates in SEO are:
1. Panda
2. Penguin
42) What are the key aspects of Panda update?
Ans: 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.
43) What are the key aspects of Penguin update?
Ans: 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
44) What is robots.txt?
Ans: 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.
45) Can you establish a difference between SEM and SEO?
Ans: SEO is a set of processes to get our website or pages appear in search engine result page. On the other hand SEM is search engine marketing being used in practice to purchase advertising space in search engine page result.
46) What strategies would you implement for backlinks?
Ans: I would request for backlinks to competitors relevant website as well as provide reciprocal link if required. In addition, I would attempt to submit press release, article submission, blog submission and other aspects of off-page SEO to most relevant and quality sites.
47) What’s your opinion about link buying?
Ans: Generally I avoid this practice. Though other means of paid marketing are also available. The process of link buying is don’t liked by search engines. It doesn’t come under the guidelines of search engine.
