SEO Interview Questions Answers to Understand Better Search Engine Technology

There are many basic and necessary search engine optimization(SEO) fundamentals, which you might know or not.

Start answering these questions yourself and score yourself honestly, and share your score out of 10 here in comments.

It will also help you to refresh yourself.

These questions are also helpful for those who are looking for a job. Most of the interviewers ask these basic questions to know you how debt you are.

So here I am going to start to tell you some basic SEO questions and answers for your SEO knowledge.

Let’s start;

Basic SEO Interview Questions with appropriate Answers

# What is SEO, SEM, SMM, and SMO?

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting traffic from the “free, organic, natural” search results on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and another major search engines.

It is categories into two parts on page SEO, and other is off page SEO. Both have their own values regarding SEO.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing worked under Paid Ad’s which placed under Google, Bing, MSN as ads with specific keywords and also known as Non-Organic Search.

SMO: Social Media Optimization, promoting your Services or Products on Social Media Sites for being more popular about yourself marked as Social Media Optimization.

SMM:  Social Media Marketing, The paid advertisements which placed under Social Media Sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Youtube and more.

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

In on page SEO, we do on page optimization like title, meta description, heading tags, permalink structure, internal/external links, loading speed of web page etc.

While in off page SEO, we do optimation other than on page like link buildings, social media promotions, forums, video submission, etc.

# What are the limitations of title and description tags?

Title tag can be between 66-70 characters, and Meta description tag can be between 160-170 characters.

# What is anchor text?

The clickable text is written on a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.

# What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file, it gives instruction to search engine crawlers about indexing and caching of a web page, file of a website or directory, domain.

Examples:

1. Allow full access:

User-agent:*
Disallow:

2. Block all access:

User-agent:*
Disallow: /

3. Block one folder

User-agent:*
Disallow: /folder/

4. Block one file

User-agent:*
Disallow: /file.html

# How will you restrict the search engine crawlers from indexing a folder named “Sudhir” that is present in the root?

The following code, when added to the robots.txt text file, would restrict the crawlers from accessing the folder

User-agent:*
Disallow: /Sudhir/

# What is sitemap?

A sitemap is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. in another way we can say that a sitemap informs search engine robots that individual pages on your site are new or updated and are available for crawling.

Note: Sitemap files should not exceed 50,000 URL entries or 50 MB in size (uncompressed). If you need to have more than 50,000 entries in your Sitemap, use a Sitemap index file.

# What are doorway pages? 

These are pages that are specially created to rank high on search engines using deceptive techniques. Doorway pages do not provide useful content but instead, redirect users to the main page.

# What is the SEO strategies for Google,Yahoo and Bing?

Google pays more attention to backlinks, Domain authority, quality content while Yahoo and Bing pay more attention to the title and meta tags.

# Which is better Robots.txt or Meta Robots Tag?

Meta Robots tag is much better as it helps in forcing the search engine crawlers not to index and display the hidden pages on your server.

# What do you understand by Frames in HTML?

A frame is an HTML technique which divides the content of a page into several parts. Search engines see Frames as completely different pages and as such Frames have a negative impact on Seo. We should avoid the usage of Frames and use basic HTML instead.

# What do you understand 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.

# What is 301 Vs 302 redirect?

301 redirect is a permanent redirect, and it passes the link juice from old to new URL. While a 302 redirect is a temporary redirect.

# Can you differentiate between ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’ link?

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

# What is Google Sandbox?

Google sandbox is an imaginary area where new and less authoritative websites and their search rating are put on hold until they prove worthy of ranking. In other words, it checks the standard of the site.

Sometimes, it happens by building too many links in a short period.

# What is keyword stemming?

The process of finding out the root word from the search query is referred as keywords stemming. A query having the word “beautiful” would be broken down to the word “beauty” with the help of stemming algorithm.

# What do you know about LSI?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It is a data retrieval technique which finds the connection between words and the use of synonyms while fetching data from the index.

For example, if you are searching something with a keyword “BIKE” it will show all the related things like classic bikes, bike auctions, top bike, bike race, etc.

# Can search engines see password protected pages?

Search engines are similar to users. If a user can not enter without login, then search engines also can not see it.

# What is Cross-Linking?

Cross linking is used to refer the process of linking one site to another site and provide a way to allow the accessing of it. Search engines value these links, as they are from relevant sites, with related content- and you stand a chance of getting a better rank.

# Exit rate Vs bounce rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave a particular website just after visiting a single page on this and the exit rate refers to the percentage of people who leave from a particular page.

To avoid this, relevant internal links are necessary.

# What is Canonicalization?

According to Matt Cutts, canonicalization is the process of selecting the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same URLs:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these URLs are different. The link juice gets divided between these URLs equally.

# How will you solve canonicalization issue using the .htacess file?

.htacess file is created to have a single URL of the home page so that the link juice is passed onto single URL.

# What are the recent updates in Google algorithm?

Please check below link to get all info about Google algorithm changes.
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

# What you do first after installing WordPress?

Check this – primary things to do after installing WordPress 

# Keyword proximity vs keyword prominence?

Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page. The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag.

Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. The closer the two keywords are to each other, the higher the weight for that phrase

Additional: Questions for PPC specialists

# What is PPC?

Pay per click(PPC), Pay per Click measures how many online advertisers must pay each time their advertisement is clicked on. It has two types-

1. CPC ( Cost per click)
2. CPM ( Cost per thousand impressions)

# How to calculate PPC ROI (return of investment)

(Profit – Cost) / Cost

For example, if your sales from PPC are $1,000, and you paid $500 for PPC click costs, your ROAS(Return on Ad Spend) would be 100 percent:

($1000 profit – $500 cost = $500) / $500 cost = 1.0 = 100%

To calculate profit per impression, divide profit by impressions, for profit per click, divide profit by clicks.

#What is Quality score(QS)?

Quality Score is inversely proportional to CPC and Directly proportional to Ad Position. That means higher QS means lower cost and higher position.

#What is Actual CPC ?

The actual cost of a click for an advertiser in an auction. The actual CPC is calculated in realtime and we cannot know the Actual CPC, but we can see Avg. CPC.

Your Price(Actual CPC ) = The ad rank of the person below you/ your quality score + $0.01

CTR= Number of click / Number of impressions * 100

If you want to know more SEO basics and advance, you may go through below links:

https://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/

http://backlinko.com/blog/

http://d2eeipcrcdle6.cloudfront.net/guides/Moz-The-Beginners-Guide-To-SEO.pdf

Especially do read this book, if you are a newbie:

http://goo.gl/DTXhR5

Wrapping it Up

Okay, these were the basic SEO Questions Answers to Understand search engine technology. I know, these are still not enough. Let me know your thought about these basics and drop your suggestions to add to this list.

These basics are very helpful if you are starting your digital marketing career. Nowadays, it’s become a very charming field to choose your career. But you need always to touch in with updates. So, here was the small contribution from my side. Share your tips here.