Basic and Advanced SEO Interview Questions

You have come across an SEO job role and you think it is absolutely perfect for you? But the companies cannot just hire you because you think that a particular position is perfect for you. The company is going to invest effort and capital on you and hence it is their right to test you before you join the team. That is why; being aware of some of the most important SEO Interview Questions would be beneficial for you.

Frankly speaking, SEO has become a world on itself with its own vocabulary and language with a highly evolving history.

It is one of the most buzzing topics among digital media since quite a long time. Ranging from content marketing to attracting customers to your website, SEO has become the key to success.

A search for trends in Google shows the high demand for SEO experts in the market.

Be that as it may, it has also been noticed that there are a number of candidates who may have theoretical knowledge about SEO but may fail when they are supposed to put those points into practice.

Such candidates can be a waste of time and hence companies wish to have a check of the candidates in a number of ways in order to find out the right one. In all such scenarios, the knowledge of SEO interview questions that we are going to mention here will supercharge your ability to present yourself as a competent SEO expert.

So let us have a look at some of the important basic level Short SEO Interview Questions-

Table of Contents

Basic Level SEO Interview Questions

1) Explain the term SEO

SEO or Search engine optimization is the process through which a website gets a good ranking in the search engines and also becomes highly visible among the audience.

2) How can you get a search engine friendly website?

Some of the ways through which a website can be made search engine friendly are word count, backlinks, keywords, anchor text, outbound links, and many more.

3) What are the different types of SEO?

The two most different types of SEO are on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is all about optimizing the website through different ways such as Meta tags, content, the designing of the website, and so on.

On the other hand, off-page SEO is all about optimizing the website through different elements such as blog posting, classified, and so on.

4) How much do you know about the SEO techniques?

The two types of SEO techniques are white hat and black hat.  White hat techniques are all about the organic or ethical ways while the black hat denotes the negative techniques.

5) How can you get a natural backlink for your site?

There are a number of ways to get a natural backlink and some of them are article marketing, link exchange, social media marketing, etc.

6) If the company you are working for wishes to get a new domain, what should you do?

In this case, the best way is to update the last site with a 301-redirection to the new pages.

7) What are the possible external important factors affecting the ranking?

Well, some such factors can be page views, returning visitors, and the bounce rate.

8) How do you know that the SEO campaign you are running is actually working?

The best method is to search the search engine with the keywords that you have used for the optimization purpose. Upon this, you can also make use of the website statistics analysis to check the progress.

9) What are the SEO blogs that you go through?

There are many such SEO blogs such as search engine journal, SEOsmarty, Jimboykins, MOZ, Search Engine Land, and many more.

10) How much do you know about the Meta tags?

Description Meta tag and Keyword Meta tag are the two types of options where the description tag is of 150 characters and the keyword tag is of 200 characters.

11) How to start keyword research and which tools to use for it?

It is important first to choose the right topics and this can be done by making use of options such as Google Trends. Similarly, for keyword research, there are a number of tools that can be used such as Google Keyword Planner.

12) What is the difference between Nofollow and Dofollow?

Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink that acts as a backlink and helps in enhancing the ranking of the website in the search engine.

A no follow link is mainly an HTML attribute value that instructs the bots of search engine that it should affect the link ranking on the index.

13) What is keyword streaming?

Keyword streaming is all about the right keyword selection for the website. Here, variations can be used for keywords such as ‘investigating’, and ‘investigation’ for ’investigate’. In this way, in whatever variation the keyword is searched, the search experience is great.

14) How to resolve the canonical issue?

The canonical issue can be stated as the same as the duplicate pages. To solve such an issue, the canonical redirect is used so that the visitors are redirected to the correct page whenever they land up on the wrong page.

15) How to check the backlink numbers to the competitor’s site?

A number of tools such as Backlink finder, Backlink watch, and many others can be used to check out the various backlinks to the competitor’s site.

In addition to aforestated questions, let us have a look at some of the questions that will test your detailed knowledge of SEO-

Comprehensive SEO Interview Questions

1) What is SEO and what importance does SEO play in the marketing of a website by a company?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO denotes activities performed for the improvement of rankings in search engine results.

SEO shows unpaid results in search engines which can be referred to as ‘free’, ‘organic’, ‘natural’ or ‘earned’ results. SEO targets searches of images, videos, academic or news articles.

The importance of SEO begins with the company’s desire for gaining more traffic and customer to their websites. To have a high rank, SEO plays an important role. The ranking of a website in the search engines matters because the users pay more importance and preference to those search results which are top listed.

SEO marketing is not only about search engines buy good SEO practices to improve the experience we provide to the user. It is good for the social promo of the website and for the smooth running of a website.

2) What are the different roles an SEO Expert play?

SEO is operated by SEO executives, webmasters, web optimizers and experts.

The SEO analyst is responsible for the planning and implementation of SEO for the client and webmasters maintain one or more than one website and at the same times ensure that web servers, software, and hardware work smoothly.

An SEO executive has the responsibility of attracting more and more visitors to the webpage by the use of various SEO tools, strategies, and techniques.

An SEO analyst also has the role of supporting initiatives and to provide help in the operation of the initiative.

3) What are the basic tools that are required for SEO?

Some of the most commonly used tools for SEO are Google webmaster tools, Google analytics, open site explorer etc.

Let us have a look on some of the other very useful SEO tools for you-

• Ahrefs: SEO Keyword Tool
• SEMRush: Marketing SEO Tools
• Google Search Console
• KWFinder: SEO Keyword Tool
• Moz: SEO Software
• Ubersuggest: Keyword Tracking Tool
• Answer The Public: Free SEO Tools
• SpyFu: Free SEO Tools
• Woorank: SEO Ranking Tool
• Majestic: Marketing SEO Tools, etc.

4) What is ON page and OFF page SEO?

On page SEO-  On the page, SEO is meant to optimize the website and make changes in various things such as title, meta tags, structure etc. The main aspects include-

• Page title
• Meta description
• Meta tags
• URL structure
• Body tags (H1, H2, H3, H4 and so on)
• Keyword density

Off page SEO- Optimising website through backlinks and blog submissions etc including off page SEO. The main aspects of Off-page SEO are-

• Social networking sites
• Blogging
• Forum marketing
• Social bookmarking
• Link building

5) What is a search engine result page in SEO?

Search engine results page or SERP is a list of results when a user enters a search query and this is displayed by the search engine.

The list of results have links to the web pages and the results are ranked from most popular to least popular.

These links also contain the title and a very summarised description of the web page. SERP also includes advertisement sometimes.

6) What is the use of anchor tag in SEO?

Anchor tags can be used to create links which can be clicked. This use of anchor tags to create hyperlinks enhances the experience of the user and allows to user to go to the area he wants directly without having to scroll down, thus improving navigation.

It also enables the webmaster to have things in order. Google can also send the user to a specific area of the webpage with the help of this tag. The anchor tag can be attached to a word or phrase, which takes the resets down to another section on the same page instead of a totally new page. By using this tag z a unique URL is created on the same page.

7) Which type of website is good for SEO- A website created on flash or a website created on HTML?

The contents that are presented in flash websites is difficult to Parse through search engines. Thus creating a website in HTML is preferred for a better SEO service.

8) What is a webmaster tool?

A free service tool providing free indexing data, backlinks information, crawl errors, queries on searches, CTR, website malware errors and so on.

This is essentially a collection of SEO tools which allow the control on the website and also allows Google to communicate with webmasters to provide information about bay malware or crawling mistakes.

9) What are Meta tags?

Meta tags are those HTML tags which are being used to provide information about the webpage content. They form the basis of SEO. There are three types of Meta tags each of which provides specific information about the contents.

Title tag

It is the most important among all three Meta tags, which tells search engines about the title of your webpage and is displayed in search engine listings.

Description of Meta tags

It contains the summary of the website or webpage and enables the search engine to display a description of the page in SERP. By this tag, the user finds out what your website is all about.

Keywords Meta tag

Keywords Meta tags place all the main keywords and phrases which explains the content of your page.

10) Why is the title tag available?

A title tag is used to specify the title of a page. In SEO, the title tag plays an important role and is highly recommended. It includes a unique and relevant title that can correctly describe the contents which are present in a web page or a website.

This title tag tells the user about the nature of the information that they can find in the webpage. An ideal title should have about 50-60 characters. The primary keywords can also be placed at the beginning of the title. This is usually the first thing that is analyzed by a search engine to provide results based on the ranking of your website.

Now, we will be going through some of the SEO questions that are asked to test your personality and how you are going to be beneficial for your company-

SEO Interview Questions to test your Personality

1) Why are you in the SEO industry?

For such questions, it is always great, to be honest.

The honest reason why you got attracted to the industry can help the interviewer understand your commitment to the job.

You need to showcase how intrigued you are with the world around SEO and search marketing.

2) What do you enjoy most in SEO?

Again, here you can be honest to tell about the SEO tasks that you enjoy the most doing.

But make sure that you do not talk about all the easy tasks, or all of the complicated ones, rather provide a combination of both.

3) How can your digital marketing experience benefit the company?

Here, your actual personal experience will be tested. Talk about your achievements and also about the skills that were helpful for your past firms or clients.

Where do you think you will be in the digital marketing industry after about five years?

When this question is asked, the interview is not interested in your dreams or aims. They are much more interested in the contribution that you can provide to the company. Thus, to such a question, you should talk about your interested in the profile, how you can benefit the company with your strengths, and your professional goals.

In Conclusion…

While facing an interview, there are also many personalized questions that are asked depending upon the position of the candidate. For example, if you are an SEO fresher, you can expect questions regarding your educational background and how you got to know about this industry.

Similarly, there are different questions asked to different candidates for their respective positions such as SEO executive, SEO specialist, SEO manager, and so on.

Though having proper basic and theoretical knowledge supported by a good practical experience can be highly helpful in confronting with such questions.

But apart from this, it is highly beneficial to have a few things surely in mind such as researching about the company well, knowing about your strengths, not sounding money-minded, and lastly always keeping a confident look on your face.

Surely, with such preparations, you can be sure to get your dream job in the SEO profile in the best organization.