60 Most Important SEO Interview Questions and Answer in 2024

Are you someone who is taking their first step towards making their career to the next level with SEO? For a person building up their career in SEO and preparing for some basic SEO interview questions you first need to know the basics of SEO and how it works. 

What is SEO 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is basically a set of strategies that are implemented to optimize the website’s traffic, performance, content and generate more leads, and revenue. These strategies are segregated into on-page, off-page and technical SEO which helps you have a clear understanding of the requirements of your website. 

These SEO strategies will help you rank your website higher on Google and other search engines. However, just SEO is not going to help hence, having a clear understanding of Google’s latest updates is also required. Such as the Core Updates of 2023 which were released in four segments throughout the year 2023, along with Spam Update 2023, Generative search engine update, SGE update, and others. 

These updates play an important role in your website ranking as these have significantly affected the rankings of the websites that were not aligned with the terms and conditions of Google and had to face lower rankings. Furthermore, here are some of the most common SEO interview questions that can help you through the process. 

Interview Questions for SEO

To prepare for the interview, have a look at some of the most commonly asked seo interview questions for freshers. These seo questions and answers will also help you have a basic understanding of how seo works and how you can leverage it for better results. 

1. Why is SEO an important factor for businesses? 

For any business who is trying to rank higher, generate more traffic, visibility and revenue from its website it is important to rank higher in the search results. This can be achieved by incorporating SEO strategies into your overall website development and marketing strategies. 

However, with SEO, the efforts are not just one time but it is a continuous process which requires constant work to maintain and improve your ranking significantly. The results from these SEO efforts might not be visible from the first day but will be visible in the long term.

2. List Google ranking factors 

Some of the most common Google ranking factors are: 

• Technical SEO

• Quality and informative content 

• Page load speed

• Domain strength 

• User experience 

• Schema 

• Mobile adaptability 

• HTTP

• Content type

• Domain authority 

3. What is an organic result in SEO? 

Organic results in SEO are the search results provided by the search engine based on the relevance of the search query, quality of content and other variable ranking factors as well. These organic search results are often also referred to as free results or natural outcomes since these are coming on top without any external paid initiatives. 

The major difference is that these are usually listed right below the sponsored or paid search results. Secondly, these organic search results cannot be influenced without improving and enhancing the content quality. 

4. What is meant by paid result? 

Paid results are the sponsored results that are available in the search results. The best differentiation factor for these is that you can spot a sponsored tag right next to the URL which helps you identify if this search result is sponsored or organic. 

These search results don't signify the position or rank of the website but it depends on the maximum CPC and quality score where your sponsored search result will be visible. 

5. Define Google Sandbox

Google Sandbox is a tool that shows the websites that are not launched yet and are in a box, hence they are not able to rank in the search results. Websites that are not performing well are segregated by Google to list in Sandbox to keep a clear segregation from the well ranking websites. 

6. What are backlinks and why are they important?

Backlinks are a form of hyperlinks that are created on the website to connect different pages. High quality backlinks are always beneficial for the website to add to the website’s credibility and help it rank higher in the search results. These backlinks are further seen as a promotional aspect for the website in the SEO strategies. 

7. How to analyze competitor’s backlinks?

The best way of analyzing your competitor’s website backlinks is by integrating different third-party tools available. These tools can further help you understand how backlinks are created and offer you deeper insights into the strategies being implemented by your competitors. 

Tools available to carry out such analysis consist of SEMrush and others which can help you have a better understanding of the backlinking strategies to make your strategies better and enhanced. 

8. What is Google Autocomplete? 

Google Autocomplete is one of the best features or updates being released by Google. It allows the search engine to autocomplete the search queries being entered by the user and offer them similar search queries and results. 

This adds to enhancing the user experience while also offering them similar options that are relevant to their search query.  

9. What are long tail keywords? 

One of the most frequently asked seo interview questions is about the keywords. Long tail keywords are the keywords that usually consist of more than four words and are defined with a specific search intent and purpose. 

Furthermore, long tail keywords are also being implemented to offer the user with better search results and help to rank the website and content on voice search SEO as per the recent trends. The most suitable way of adding these keywords is by leveraging them while writing a blog or an article which is relevant to the topic. These keywords have lower search volume but when used along with other long tail keywords, they offer higher conversion and traffic rates as compared to broad keywords. 

10. How to carry out keyword research? 

Raking your website and the content will require you to use certain relevant, trending keywords. To figure out these keywords, there are two approaches, one is to get a few trending seed keywords from the competitors website. Next approach is to use certain keyword research online tools which would help you offer a list of trending keywords relevant to your niche and business.  

Using keyword research tools allows you to get insights about the volume and search capabilities of those keywords further helping you to make a decision about which keywords are more suitable for your content and which can be achieved easily. 

11. What are rich snippets? 

While searching for a particular keyword or search query when you see a visual search result along with the search result description, this is regarded as a rich snippet. Furthermore, it can also include certain keywords, FAQs, reviews, price, and other elements that can offer a better understanding of the search result to the user and contribute to an enhanced user experience. 

12. Define meta tags

Meta tags are snippets of text or code that are placed at the beginning (

) of the webpage. These meta tags offer the search engine information about your website and help the search engine read your website better, this is further useful while offering information to the user or showing search results. Meta descriptions and meta titles are the two categories of meta tags incorporated in the webpages for higher ranking. 

13. What is the bounce rate? 

Another important seo interview question for freshers is about bounce rate. In SEO terminology bounce rate is defined as the proportion of the website that received visitors or traffic but no further action was taken. 

It is also defined as a single page visit divided by all sessions received on the website where people saw the webpages but didn’t engage or take any action. To reduce the bounce rate for your website and webpages it is recommended to use interactive and engaging CTAs (call to action) or offers that would urge the visitor to take further action on the webpages. 

14. Difference between XML sitemap and HTML sitemap? 

Two major aspects of SEO and website development are HTML sitemap and XML sitemap, and the basic difference between these two are: 

HTML sitemap is not required if you have a smaller website, but is required in case you have a large website. It allows people to view a list of accessible pages structured to transverse through the website. 

An XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap is required to offer the search engine information about the website and webpages and the most recent changes made in them. It also contains a list of websites and the frequency at which they are updated. An XML sitemap is the first thing observed when the search engine is discovering the website. 

15. What is link building? 

Whenever you see a search result after you typed in a search query, that result is shown to you based on different factors such as relevance, quality, credibility and other factors. To get a website enough credibility for its content, link building is done. The process of link building requires you to create some external links for your website to add credibility to your content. These links will help the search engines to focus more on your content and show your search results based on the quality of these links. 

16. What are the most commonly used SEO tools? 

Some of the most commonly used SEO tools are as follows: 

• Ahref

• Keyword finder 

• SEM Rush

• Quack SEO

• Moz

Furthermore, the use of SEO tools can also depend and vary as per the needs and requirements of the business. 

17. What is page speed and its importance?

Page speed is defined as the average time taken by a webpage to load properly after clicking on the link. It is an important factor of SEO as a web page with more page speed indicates that the webpage will take significantly less time to load whereas less or low page speed indicates more time taken to load the web page. 

This directly impacts the user experience and can affect the ranking of your website as well, as this can also increase the bounce rate of your website and can cause the users to leave in the middle. 

18. How to do SEO for a video?

These days all businesses, industries and platforms are leveraging videos for user engagement and communication, however one important aspect of this is to implement video SEO. For a video SEO, you are required to pay equal attention to the keywords, page titles, descriptions, and the transcript as text for the search engine to crawl since it cannot see the video. 

Incorporating these points into your video SEO strategies will further help you get a good result on the video that you are trying to get ranked in the search results. 

19. What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to the SEO strategies being added to your strategy that can help you optimize your website and includes factors such as keywords, content, page structure, internal linking, page speed, etc. All these factors are combined together as on-page SEO services. 

20. What is off-page SEO?

The other side of on-page SEO is off-page SEO which are the factors that are not directly in the control and cannot be regulated. These factors include points such as backlinks which can affect the credibility of your website but are not directly in your control. 

21. What is the relationship between SEM and SMO?

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a paid activity that is done to promote your website and webpages. It includes pay-per-click advertising and paid display ads as well. 

Whereas SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a free process for which you can leverage different tools (paid or free) to enhance your website and offer the users an enhanced overall experience. However, both SEM and SEO offer better results when combined together. 

22. What are black hat SEO practices to be avoided? 

Blackhat SEO practices or unethical practices that are to be avoided are as follows:

• Keyword stuffing 

• Cloaking 

• Duplicate content 

• Spam backlinking 

• Buying links 

• Hidden text 

• Link trading 

23. Define keyword stemming 

Keyword stemming is a form of blackhat SEO practice similar to keyword stuffing. Here instead of stuffing irrelevant keywords you take one keyword as a stem keyword and derive more keywords from the main stem keyword. 

24. How to analyze organic traffic for a website? 

To analyze the organic traffic generated by a website is by using Google Analytics and Google Search Console which can help you understand which traffic is coming from the organic channel.  

25. Define canonical tag 

A canonical tag is a snippet of a code that depicts the actual version of the webpage and the website. A canonical tag is further implemented to avoid incorporation of duplicate content being available under different URLs. 

26. Define URL slug

URL slug offers detailed information about the content of the web page to the search engine for understanding the webpage better. 

27. What is the concept of crawling? 

When the search engine discovers a new webpage or a piece of information, the process is defined as crawling. In this process the search engine bot will crawl through the content and different webpages to find new web pages and content to be indexed. 

28. What is the importance of local SEO?

Local SEO is of utmost importance in today’s time when a lot of local businesses are coming into the picture. Adding local SEO will allow you to 

29. Define anchor text

Anchor text is the link between two webpages, it is the clickable link or text added on one webpage that links the two web pages together. It further allows the user to understand and get a hint of what they can expect once they click on the link.  

30. What is a 404 error?

Another most important and frequently asked interview questions for SEO is 404 error. This indicates that the requested web page or resource is not available and cannot be found on the server. 

31. How to check the authority of a website?

Authority of a website can be checked leveraging different online tools such as Semrush which has an extension Semrush Authority Score (AS) which can help you get insights about the authority of the website. 

32. How to optimize title tag? 

Optimization of title tag requires you to add a primary keyword no longer than 60 characters which offers crisp and to-the-point information about the website. 

33. What is the importance of meta description?

Meta description is part of an off-page SEO and is not directly in control but can impact the ranking of the website, further helping you improve the CTR (click-through rate) of your website. 

34. What are the features of SERP?

SERP features are modern search results that are slightly different from the traditional search results and consist of points such as: people also ask, FAQs, top stories, knowledge panel, Google’s local pack, etc.  

35. What is image alt text?

Image alt text is another pointer of on-page SEO strategies, a small text added in the HTML code for an image on the webpage. This alt text helps the search engine to read and index the image. 

36. How is sitemap submitted on Google?

A sitemap is submitted on Google by leveraging the “Sitemaps” feature available in the Google console. For this you can copy the required URL and paste it into the given URL field. 

37. What is a canonical issue?

Canonical issue is a frequent occurrence when a website contains more than one URLs with duplicate or similar information. This is further caused by a lack of correct redirects, however, you can easily create these redirect links. 

38. What are AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages)? 

AMPs or Accelerated Mobile Pages are open source initiatives that allow to boost the performance of the mobile web pages and offer an enhanced overall experience. 

39. Why is link audit carried out? 

Link audit is carried out to understand the quality of the backlinks available on the website which will further help to build up the credibility of the website and ensure good quality backlinks are generated. 

40. How to leverage content marketing for SEO? 

Content marketing is a SEO strategy being leveraged to get higher rankings for your website as Google requires high quality content which is also relatable for the user and informative to engage with. 

For this approach you can publish your content on external websites and generate backlinks to add credibility to your website. 

41. What is the importance of internal links?

Internal links are to make the navigation through the website seamless and offer the user an enhanced experience which will further help to reduce the bounce rate. Additionally, it helps to get the website and web pages crawled and indexed for ranking in the search results. 

42. What is domain authority?

Domain authority of a website indicates the credibility and the position of the website or the business in the particular domain or niche. It was developed by a SEO tool Moz- which allows you to assess the value or position of the website. 

43. How to remove duplicate content from the web page?

Having duplicate content on the web page can cause chaos and confusion for the user and can also lead to lower ranking in the search results. To resolve the issue of having duplicate content on the website, the best way is to do a content audit and identify similar or duplicate content, and modify the content. Another approach is to use 301 redirect, and rel=canonical tag to identify and remove the duplicate content. 

44. How to analyze keyword’s search intent? 

Search intent of a keyword is identified to understand the user’s perspective of the search. One of the best ways is to analyze the top ranking websites to understand the search intent and perspective. Furthermore, there are certain tools available to help you understand the search intent of the keywords in a seamless manner. 

45. What are search engine bots?

Search engine bots also referred to as crawlers, or robots crawl the internet to find new information web pages and content to get indexed in the search results to later rank that in the search results.  

46. What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file which addresses the search engine crawler on how to crawl, index, and cache a website in the webpage’s directory file and the domain.   

47. What is a robot's meta tag?

Robot’s meta tags direct the search engine on how to handle the pages with directives such as FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW, INDEX & NOINDEX. 

48.  How to make a website search engine friendly? 

The best way to make a website search engine is to use relevant keywords, titles, quality content, meta descriptions, meta tags, and other factors that are required for a website to be ranked higher in the search results. 

49. What are the parameters to analyze SEO success?

For different businesses, their SEO goals are different hence, there is no particular parameters for analyzing the SEO success for any businesses. However, some of the most commonly used parameters are: traffic generated, conversion rate, keyword ranking, revenue generated, reduced bounce rate, search results ranking, etc. 

50. How to redirect a web page? 

To redirect a web page use the following: 

301, 302, and meta refresh are the most common approaches. These can refresh, remove permanently, or move temporarily the web page to a different link. 

51. Which meta tags are most important? 

Among all the available meta tags, page title and meta description are the most critical meta tags to be used. 

52. What is do-follow and no-follow? 

Both no-follow and do-follow attributes are used in HTML to control the indexing of the links. DO-FOLLOW hyperlink allows the search engine bots to follow the links and NO-FOLLOW stops the bots from following the links and indexing. 

53. What is RankBrain? 

Rankbrain is an integral part of Google’s algorithm that allows it to process the large number of webpages available and identify the most relevant as per the search query. 

54. How do you develop an SEO strategy? 

To develop a successful SEO strategy the first thing is to define the goals that you wish to achieve with your SEO and set certain goals for the process. Next is to identify the keywords and relevant content marketing websites for creating backlinks for adding credibility to your content and website. 

55. How can you combine SEO and PPC for better results? 

Both SEO and PPC can be combined together for better results and drive more traffic on your website while the website is under development as well. Furthermore, with PPC in place you can explore different keywords before actually using them for SEO and get an understanding of the results. 

56. What is structured data? 

Structured data is the standard format of data being leveraged by search engines to have a basic understanding of the web pages and helps to establish a relation between different elements of the web pages, its contents and other pieces of information for the search engines to make sense of the webpages. 

57. What is the correlation between social media and SEO? 

Social media and SEO are indirectly related to each other as with social media, the brand reputation, and image is being projected which can have an impact on the website traffic and lead conversion rate as well. Having a clear understanding and communication about the brand via the social media platform is an important aspect for SEO. 

58. How is social media content optimized for SEO? 

Using relevant and trending keywords, optimizing image alt text, ensuring indexing of social media platforms, and generating high-quality engaging content for the audience are some of the best ways to optimize the social media content for SEO. 

59. How to prevent a page from getting indexed on Google? 

The best and simplest way to prevent a page from getting indexed on Google is by adding ‘noindex’ robots meta tag in the HTML. 

60. How does keyword density affect SEO? 

Keyword density is not a direct affecting factor for SEO, however, it does not imply that you are not to use keywords strategically. You are still required to look for the right placement of the keywords and use a defined strategy to make the best out of the keywords. 

Final Piece of Advice For SEO Job Seekers 

While preparing seo interview questions it is important to remember the basics and the goals that you are trying to achieve with the seo strategies and understand the needs of the business above all. 

MadHakws being a digital marketing agency with transformative solutions ensures that all clients are given best seo services with different strategies that are aligned with their goals and objectives. 

For more information on how SEO services are integrated with a business's ideas and objectives, get in touch with our expert team today. 

 

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