A Beginner's Guide to SEO Interview Questions and Answers 2022

 

Interviewer frequently asked questions about digital marketing are SEO, SMO, PPC, Search engine optimization, on-page, off-page, Google algorithm, Analytics, etc …. However, it may differ from agency to agency.

Here I have curated most commonly asked questions about digital marketing and relation online marketing techniques such as search engine optimization. Hope this will help to pass SEO interview questions and answers for fresher trying to jump in the SEO industry.

What is SEO, explain briefly about SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is a process of improving the website organic ranks by providing unique content and implementing techniques as per guidelines of search engines. In past few years, SEO has been evolved and Google is using more than 200 factors to rank a page on SERP. So it’s very crucial to understand new changes and implement the changes in the site as per updates.

What are steps involved in implementing SEO?

SEO involves the following steps to follow as per guidelines.

• Keyword Research
• Competition Analysis
• Unique content creation
• Implementing on page changes in website
• Improving the social sharing on major networks
• Acquiring links in natural form to the page
• Analyzing the reports

 Which websites do you follow for the latest updates in SEO?

• searchenginewatch.com
• searchengineland.com
• moz.com/google-algorithm-change/
• searchenginejournal.com
• seroundtable.com
• googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

What is Search Console, Why do you use it? 

Google Search Console is used for managing our site properties and settings on the Google search engine. Some of the most important features are

• Geographic Targeting
• Search Queries – We can analyze the top queries for our website in 90 days period
• Backlinks Tool – To analyze the number of backlinks as seen by Google Bot
• Geographical Targeting
• Remove pages tool
• Fetch as Google Bot
• Snippet Testing Tool
• Sitemaps

If an advertiser does a PPC campaign, will it affect the organic SEO ranking?

No, the rank on Paid Results will not affect the organic results. So we can work on SEO irrespective spending amount on PPC.

How to generate site links in the SERP?

In organic SEO results, site links are auto generated based on the page and the internal linking structure.

What is the purpose of web crawling?

Web crawling is that search engine robots use to crawl websites to index them. These are also known as a spider. Crawlers make use of hyperlinks to access different pages, documents, and return information to web servers to index. When a crawler is able to visit the page, it creates an exact copy of the page and then adds the URLs to the indexing. The more fresh content you create More often your website is indexed by search engines.

What is bounce rate in SEO?

The bounce rate is the percentage of users leaving the site from the home page without visiting any other website or doing anything specific.

What is Canonical URL?

If there are many variants of a page canonical URL can be the method of telling search engines which URL is the primary one you would like to show in search engines.

What is robots.txt?

robots.txt is an text file that provides instructions to the web robots (search engine robots) on how to crawl the pages of their site. It’s used to monitor traffic from crawlers to the site.

what is XML Sitemap in SEO?

An XML sitemap is simply a list of your site’s URLs.It serves as a map to let search engines know what information is available and the best way to access it.

The XML sitemap is to aid crawlers to speed up indexation is crucial for websites that:

• You can have thousands of pages or a complex website architecture.
• Every so often, we create new pages frequently.
• Sometimes, content is changed on pages that are already in use.
• There is no solid outside link profile.

Google Algorithm Updates Questions

What is the Algorithm Update, What is the best source to know updates?

Google makes changes to the search algorithm to improve the quality of results. Sometimes Google implements some minor tweaks and sometimes some major updates like Penguin, Panda, Humming Bird and Payday loan update etc.

What is Mobile Friendly Update and when was it launched?

Mobile Friendly update was released on 21st April 2015. The major target of the update was to make the websites mobile friendly. The site which didn’t follow the guidelines of Mobile SEO were affected by the update.

How many times does Google release the algorithms and updates visible to users?

According to industry sources, Google updates their search algorithm 500 – 600 times yearly. These updates are classified as minor updates and major updates. Most of the time we get information about the major updates, which has a very significant impact on SERP’s.

What is Panda Update? 

Panda update was first released in Feb 2011 and a major purpose of this update is to penalize the website with low-quality content or duplicate or thin content which was created only for SEO purpose. In May 2014 Panda 4 was release which has hit many major brand sites like eBay, ask.com, biography.com and many other sites.

What is the Penguin Update? 

Penguin update was first released in April 2012. This update targeted the websites using black hat SEO techniques and using over optimization by violating the search guidelines. Later releases of Penguin update has targeted the websites generating links from low-quality sources with keyword reach anchor text

What is the Hummingbird update? 

This update was released in August 2013. The purpose of this update was to understand the intent of the user in the query and provide the results best suitable for a user. Instead of ranking a page because of keyword density, this update understands the semantics of query, relevancy of content and provide the suitable results.

For example, if you search for keyword: “which is the best business hotel in Hyderabad ?” then hummingbird will understand the intent of the user and provide the results for “best business hotel in Hyderabad” by ignoring the words [which is] and [?] to provide relevant results.

What is EMD update?

This update was released by Google in Sep 2012 to target low-quality websites which used exact match domain name sites. The major sites which hit with the update the long tail domains with keywords. Sites like www.buy-best-laptops-online.com were hit with the update. Even some good sites were hit with this update. Example http://www.pooltables.com has lost the 1st position after EMD Update.

If we use a keyword in domain, Will it hit with EMD filter?

If we use a keyword in the domain along with other words or brand name, we must ensure that we are providing quality of content on the site which is protected from EMD filter.

What is Pigeon Update?

Google have released this algorithm to provide more relevant results in Google Local Results. The algorithm considers other traditional web search signals as crucial factors for local ranking. This algorithm name was coined by “Search Engine Land”.

What is Pirate 2.0 Update?

This update was released to target the websites which distribute the pirated material like pirated movies, software and other copyright material. Most of the torrent sites, online movie distribution sites were hit with this update.

What is RainBrain Algorithm?

Rank Brain is an artificial intelligence (AI) software program used to help process search queries. Google announced about this update in October 2015. RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to process large amount to data and convert the data in a format which can be interpreted by Google Machine learning systems.

What is Penguin 4 Update? 

Google has made the Penguin algorithm integrated with their core algorithm and it works in real time. This announcement was made in Sep 2016 by Google. Also, this update was planned to released in Phases, So in September end and October beginning, Google launched 2 phases of this update.

What is Medic Update?

Medic update will specifically target websites related to health, fitness and medical topic. Many low quality websites has lost rankings and specific high quality websites have improved in ranking after this update.

What is BERT Update?

BERT is the abbreviation for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from  Transformers. This is nothing but a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. With all the nuances of context, in understanding what the words in a sentence mean, this will be helpful to machines.

What is Dec Core 2020 Update?

Google rolled out a Broad Core Algorithm Update, on Dec. 3 known as “Dec 2020 Core Update”. This is the third Core Update of the year after the First January Update and Second Update in May 2020. Read more about Dec 2020 Core Update.

What is Core Web Vitals? 

Core Web Vitals are the metrics which shows the performance of our site with real world data. Core Web Vitals is essential for good user experience. The primary elements of CWV are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

What is Link Spam Update? 

On July 26 2021,  Google has release the link spam update to understand the spam sites better and penalize the sites with low quality links.

On page Optimization Questions

What is the purpose of the keyword research?

Keyword research is useful for understanding the keyword search volumes and predict the user demand for a product or service.

How to types of queries are classifieds in SEO?

In general, keywords can be classified into 3 types. Information, Navigational & Transactional.

Can you briefly explain about each of these types? 

Informational: The intention of the user is to get knowledge about a specific topic/service. Ex: Who are founders of Apple

Navigational: Queries that seek an information about specific branded site or website. Ex: Apple Mac Support

Transactional: The user intention is to find a product/service and it has transactional nature. Ex: Buy iPhone Online

What are the keyword research tools available in the market?

We have many tools for keyword research, the most popular are Google Auto-suggestion, Google Keyword Planner, Uber Suggest, Bing Keyword Tool, Keyword.io and WordStream keyword tool.

Why is Google AdWords Keyword Planner not displaying actual no of searches?

From August 2016 Google starting restricting the keyword data to non-advertisers account. Only advertisers with active campaigns can able to now access the data related to monthly volume. Non-advertisers will see only data in the form of range.

Which tool do you use to analyze the present trending topics in Google?

I use Google Trends tool to analyze the trending topics in Google.  visit http://www.google.com/trends/

What is important on page techniques? 

• Unique title with relevant keyword
• Search engine friendly URLs
• Proper meta description tag
• Using heading in proper order
• High-quality content with keyword density
• Structured data in page
• Social Sharing
• Internal linking
• Latent semantic keywords
• Schema integration

What is the optimal length of the Title Tag? 

55-60 characters is the optimal length of the title.

What is Meta Description, Is meta description used for Ranking the page? 

The Meta description is the two line summary displayed in SERP. Generally, the description is 155 chars, but more characters the automatically truncated by Google.  The keywords in meta description are used in ranking purpose [Google updated this in Sep 2009 that it do not use meta description for ranking]  but proper meta description will improve the Click through rate (CTR) for the page.

Meta Description Code: 

<meta name=”description” content=”Write the brief summary of the page and explain precisely about the page” />

Is Meta keywords tag important for SEO?

No, this tag is not used by any search engines for ranking purpose. In 2008 Google announced this tag is used in their ranking factors. But as per analysis, we can see that most of the popular websites still use this tag. So it is better to use this tag with relevant keywords.

What is Schema? 

The schema is a markup code which provides more useful information to users on SERP’s. This project is supported by Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex. This is also called as Structured Data or Rich Snippets.

What are common types of Schema’s used in websites?

The most commonly used schema codes are as follows

1. Video Schema
2. Aggregate Reviews
3. Person information
4. Events
5. Single review

Link Building (Offpage) Optimization

What is the use of link building in SEO?

Links are one of the crucial elements of SEO. With high-quality links, we can improve the ranking of the site.

Can you explain certain rules which you follow in doing link building?

Yes, I use many specific rules to define the quality of links. I will look at following factors before submissions.

1. Quality of Backlink (PR, PA, DA must be good)
2. Relevancy of the content between 2 sites
3. Proper use of Anchor Text
4. Avoid site-wide links
5. Avoid links from low-quality sites

What is NoFollow Backlink?

Any link which has the attribute rel=”Nofollow” is called as No Follow backlink. NoFollow backlinks do not pass any PR value, but still helpful for link diversity.

Can you give examples of NoFollow Backlinks?

Generally all public websites like social media sites, business listing sites etc offer NoFollow backlink. Example: Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia etc site offer these links.

What is Disavow Tool?

Disavow Tool is an Google Search Console Tool to let publishers inform Google that certain hyperlinks from other domains are not to be taken into consideration and should be to be avoided. It aids websites in stay clear of any actions that are based on bad links.

Conclusion: As you have learned about various interview questions for seo freshers. Be prepared for your interview and achieve good results.