SEO Interview Questions
& Answers For Freshers
SEO Interview Questions
& Answers For Freshers
SEO Interview Questions And Answers
What is meant by SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a collective activity or practices implemented on a website and outside the website to list the website or page in search engines results for relevant keywords.
What is meant by the Search Engine Algorithm?
Search engine algorithms are arithmetic values used to control functions for search engines. The Arithmetic metric values used in search engine algorithms are frequently modified for purposes such as maintaining the quality of results, protecting and safeguarding the search results, balancing the new data according to relevance, etc.
What is meant by On-Page Optimization in SEO?
On-page optimization in SEO means a number of modifications made within a website to achieve identity when search engine bots crawl the website pages. On-Page optimization includes modifications made within a website like URL structuring, changes made both in the head section and body section of a website page.
What is meant by SEO Title optimization?
Title optimization means creating an SEO friendly title in a descriptive and meaningful way with the inclusion of the most important keywords. It is better to construct an SEO title with 55 to 60 characters. Limiting the pixel width of the title with 512 pixels.
What is meant by Meta Description?
A meta description is a description provided as the content value provided in a meta description tag which is to be added to the head section of a website. The description provided in the content value of the meta description tag is validated by Google and used in their search engine snippets. The meta description content must contains the focusing keyword along with a short brief note about the page.
What were Meta Keyword Tags used for?
Meta keyword tags were used to describe the focusing keywords and get search engine listing connected to the keywords. But Google has publicly informed that their search engines do not validate the keyword meta tags. Google avoided keyword meta tags since a huge number of webmasters tried to misuse the keyword meta tag option by stuffing a huge number of keywords.
What is meant by robots meta tag?
A robots meta tag is used to give direction for bots (robots/spiders) regarding crawling and indexing of the particular page. By using a robots meta tag, a page can be avoided from crawling by search engine bots or robots and avoid indexing in search results. A request name follow or no follow is used in robots meta tags provided in the head section of a webpage to consider or not consider the counting of links provided on the page. Not adding a robots meta tag will be considered as the default direction such as index, follow.
What is the purpose of a canonical tag?
The canonical tag is an important tag used in SEO optimization to avoid possible content duplication between two pages published with content similarity. If the same content portion is published with more than 1 URL it may cause content duplication. To avoid the problems of content duplication canonical tags are used
Define On-Page SEO.
The basic SEO practise includes a number of modifications within a website. All changes made within a website to improve its crawling, and to get easily identified by search engine programs are commonly called as On-page SEO optimization. In search engine optimization, on-page changes or modification made within a website is very important to provide a better experience for the website users and also for search engine bots.
What is meant by Off-Page Optimization?
Off-page SEO optimization includes a number of activities practised for improving the ranking of the listed page in the search engine by conducting several promotional activities, social media shares, reputation building, popularity improvements etc. The classical form of SEO off-page optimization refers to the link building activities including directory submission, article submission, press release submission, forum posting, comment link building, guest blogging etc
What is the number of characters allowed in SEO Title?
The number of characters allowed in an SEO title tag is 55 to 60. Google has the capacity to show only 70 characters in the title portion of its search bar. But the pixel width capacity for search index is 512 px. Many alphabets like M, W, E etc have a higher pixel width than characters like i, l, r etc. So if the pixel width exceeds 512, Google can not show full title portion in their search results. So limiting the total pixel width of an SEO title within 512 pixels is very important in SEO title optimization.
What is the maximum number of characters Google can display in the title of their search bar?
Google can show a maximum of 70 characters in the title of its search bar. Google only show those title which does not exceed 512-pixel width. Google will also try to modify the SEO title in a meaningful way if it exceeds the character limitation or pixel width limitation.
What is the default value of robots meta tag?
In default robots meta tag gives value as the index, follow. So a page without a robots meta tag gives a provision to index and follow the direction to robots
Why are canonical tags used in SEO?
In SEO, canonical tags are used to avoid possible content duplication problems caused due to publishing a similar content copy in different URLs.
What is the usage of Google Webmasters Tools (Google Search Console ) in SEO
Google webmasters tools or Google Search Console is the main tool used in SEO. Google search console is a tool provided by Google for conducting a controlled search engine optimization process. Google defines the search console as their Mock point to communicate with Google about the website and its pages. It is the main tool used in SEO to set country settings, submitting sitemaps, monitoring the search analytics, finding the crawl errors, HTML suggestions, keywords, impressions, Clicks, CTR, listing position etc.
What is the use of Google Analytics in SEO?
Google Analytics is a free website monitoring tool provided by Google. Using Google Analytics, we can monitor our website traffic, nature of traffic, page spending time, nature of visitor, the location of the visitor, bounce rate etc.
What is mean by XML sitemap and what is its importance in SEO
The XML sitemap is a document created to help search engine crawlers to find our pages, URLs easily from a single place. Generally, there are 2 types of sitemaps, XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. HTML sitemaps are created and published to help the user to find appropriate pages within a website. XML sitemaps are an important document connected with SEO. XML sitemaps provide information such as URL of pages, posts, category etc. XML sitemaps also provide information about last modified time/ date, priority, etc. of web pages included in a website. Only 50,000 URLs can be included in a single sitemap. Creation and submission of XML sitemaps come under on-page SEO optimization.
What is meant by the robots.txt file in SEO?
Robots.txt file is a text file for restricting bots (robots, search engine crawlers ) from a website or certain pages on the website. Using a robots.txt file and with a disallow direction, we can restrict bots or search engine crawling program from websites and or from certain folders and files.
What is meant by Directory Submission in SEO
Directory submission is an off-page search engine optimization practice for purpose of link building which comes in old school SEO tactics.
What is meant by Cloaking in SEO?
Cloaking is a black hat SEO practice in which a website page is optimized differently for search engine robots and for visitors.
What is meant by Anchor text optimization?
Anchor text optimization belongs to content optimization practice. Anchor Text are clickable terms (important or relevant terms and keywords) in a page or a post that links one page to another. Search engine bots give more importance to keywords anchored with hyperlinks. For website users, the anchor text works as a reference. But for search engine bots the anchor texts works like a recommendation for hyperlinked pages or website URLs on anchors keywords.
SEO Questions & Answers Connected To Google Algorithm Updates
What is meant by Google updates?
Google’s quality team and webspam team brings changes to its search engine algorithms regularly to improve the quality of their search engine results. Mainly the changes are for avoiding possible low-quality web pages & websites listed using spam, tricky and crafty methods
Google Panda Update is connected with?
Google Panda update is connected with content spamming. Web pages published with copied contents, low-quality contents, contents with grammatical errors, spelling mistakes will be primarily affected by Panda update.
Google Penguin update is connected with?
Google Penguin update was brought to penalize Link spamming. The websites using or practising spam link building tactics would be affected by the Google Penguin update. The website participating in link spamming activities like manipulative or low-quality link building, link exchange programs, artificial link building, automated link building, link farming, wiki spamming, comment spamming, low-quality directory submission, low-quality forum posting will be affected by Google Penguin update.
What is meant by DMCA Penalty?
DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google started penalizing websites using plagiarized contents or published properties such as images, videos of other websites. Google updated its first DMCA penalty changes in their search engine algorithm on 10th August 2012 which can be called as Pirate Update. Thus a large number of websites that repeatedly violated copyright rules were penalized by Google.
What is meant by Google Pigeon Algorithm Update?
Google Pigeon Algorithm Update is a modification made in the Search Engine algorithm of Google connected with local search results. By this update, Google search engine will try to provide an accurate listing on local search results based on category relevance. All type of categories will not be affected by Google Pigeon Algorithm Update, but for queries relevant for local listing will be completed affected with Pigeon update. Queries added with location/places/regions will also be indexing. User gets controlled and filtered results with Pigeon update.
What is the Google Sandbox?
Google Sandbox is a temporary filter or database that Google maintains, especially for new sites that it has a hunch about regarding whether they use spammy link building techniques or if Google bots can’t spot which keyword the website is supposed to rank for. The websites in Google Sandbox remain there until Google feels they are worthy of competing with other sites in search results for the keywords.
What are the SEO blogs you read and follow?
- Google Webmaster Central Blog
- Moz Blog- Whiteboard Fridays
- SearchEngineLand.com
- SearchEngineJournal.com
- Kissmetrics Blog
- HubSpot Blog
What are the SEO Tools you are familiar with?
- SEOBook Toolbar
- Rank Checker from SEOBook
- Copyscape Plagiarism Checker
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Google Analytics
- GTMetrix Website Testing Tool
- WooRank Website Analysis Tool
- SEMRush Tool
- Ahrefs Backlink Analysis
What are Google bots, Spiders, and Crawlers in SEO?
Googlebot is the software used by Google to fetch and render web documents collectively. They crawl each web page and its contents and store them in the Google index under the relevant keywords of the website. Google bots are also known as Spiders and Crawlers.
Which do you think is more important- creating quality content or more and more backlinks?
Both are equally necessary. Backlinks increase the authority of a website and when it is backed by quality anchor texts containing the keywords, it can help your website get listed on top in Google. The quality of content is the main ingredient that helps in ranking in SEO.
What is keyword density?
Keyword density is defined as the number of times the keyword repeats throughout the article. It is expressed as a percentage of the total number of words in the article.
The formula for Keyword Density = (Number of times the keyword repeats in the article / Total number of words in the article)*100
Describe the latest update in Google Algorithm
The latest update in Google Algorithm took place on September 23rd, 2016. It was the fourth and the last update for Google Penguin. The Google Penguin Update became part of the core algorithm that Google uses to process its search results. Besides, the data refresh for Google Penguin is now live and page-specific.Only those pages or section of the website which practice unnatural link building will be punished.
What is a 301 Redirect?
It is a permanent redirect method by which a person visiting an old page (URL) is automatically redirected to a new page (URL). 301 Redirects transfer the domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) and all the inbound links that the URL had to the new URL. It is used when you change your domain because you want Google to index the new domain while also sending the traffic visiting the old URL to the new one
What is a 302 Redirect?
302 Redirect is a temporary redirect method. In this type of redirect method, the DA, PA and link juice don’t pass from the old URL to the new one.