SEO Interview Questions and Answers (2021)

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Congratulations!! It’s wonderful to know that your profile has been shortlisted for SEO profile. Whether you are fresher, experienced or management professional it is always good to prepare yourself before going for an interview. Rank Kite guides your list of 300+ SEO Interview Questions and Answers from fundamental to advanced level SEO Questions. Our purpose to help you prepare for your SEO job interviews. We wish you to go fully prepared and come with the right offer letter.

Interview Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

The following list of SEO Interview Questions and Answers will help you enhance your knowledge and get technically sound. Before that we also advise you to read and follow our Interview Tips, Tricks, and Secrets to impress your interviewers like:

1. Company – Research about the company profiles thoroughly
2. Interviewer – Research and know about your interviewer (search on Google, LinkedIn or social network)
3. JD- Must have a clear understanding of Job descriptions and start preparing stories.

We always working hard to keep adding more and more possible interview questions and answers so that everybody gets value from it.

Good Luck!!

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”15px”][tek_button button_text=”Get started” button_icon_bool=”yes” button_link=”url:%23|||” button_position=”button-center” icons=”fa fa-chevron-down”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1515752309734{padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_row_inner gap=”30″ css=”.vc_custom_1516645033108{padding-bottom: 100px !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1519744772531{padding-right: 10px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}” offset=”vc_col-lg-8 vc_col-md-12″][vc_toggle title=”SEO Interview Questions Answers Introduction” color=”sky” css_animation=”none”]Hi,

Based on my 15 years of work experience, I have created the top SEO Interview Questions, and answers guide for someone like you. I have included all basic level, intermediate level, and expert level SEO interview questions and answers on this page.

Still, I would say, technology has no end, and every moment some new algorithm adding and removing to the current trend of SEO. So it is always necessary to update yourself while preparing for an SEO interview.

I have covered the following three-level of SEO Interview Questions and Answers:

Basic Level SEO Interview Questions & Answers
Intermediate Level SEO Interview Questions & Answers
Expert or Managerial Level SEO Interview Questions & Answers

I will keep updating this page for you whenever I found any related SEO interview questions and answers.

You can also help me with any new interview questions asked by your hiring manager in your previous SEO Interview.

Together we can help others and do better. You can email me or comment on the comment box below.

Thank You![/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#1 What is SEO?”]Answer –

SEO stands for Search engine optimization.

“SEO is one of the digital marketing methods of increasing the brand visibility and volume of organic website traffic through a web search engine results.” – Santosh Sarangi.

_______________

“Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.” – Wikipedia

“SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.” – Moz

Even though different SEO professionals define differently, What is SEO? Otherwise.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#2 What is Organic Traffic?”]Answer –

Organic Traffic is considered as the volume of traffic comes to any website or webpage directly from the search engine result page without paying money.

In other words, When a searcher searches for any search term or search phrase related to your product or services in a web search engine. If, your website or webpage ranks on the search engine results organically due to search engine optimization. And searcher clicks on your website link and comes to your website this is counted as Organic Traffic.

Organic Traffic is one of the inbound traffic methodologies.

Example: When I searched “flight ticket” on Google search bar. I found the following list of websites. When I click on MakeMyTrip or Yatra website listing, it will redirect me to MakeMyTrip or Yatra company website respectively. Here I’m an Organic user or Organic traffic to the respective company.

Organic Traffic Example dth=”839″ height=”640″ />[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#3 Why you did you choose SEO as career?”]Answer – Well!, there are many reasons why i choose SEO as a careers.

The transformation technology and immense competition in the market and percentage of internet uses in India and the globe spreading very fast. And to give better and favorable customer experience every think going digitally and available on internet.

Every business want to grow their traffic, user experience and brand visibility in the market. Businesss need SEO as a marketing channel, simplay because it can provide substantial traffic growth and brand visibility in a cost-effective way.

It is a never ending process and SEO has a high industry demand and has tremendous personal and professional career growth.

Afterall I have many college seniors who made a successful career in SEO. It is a combination of techanical and non techanical element. These things inspired me.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#4 What is a Search Engine?”]Answer –

According to Google, a Search engine is “ a program that searches for and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user, used especially for finding particular sites on the World Wide Web”.

Search Engine is a software system designed and developed to answer searchers’ queries on the internet or the web. When Searcher searches anything using any search term, the search engine answers the queries with a list of relevant results based on various factors or algorithms.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#5 Name a few search engines? or Name a few search engines are very popular in internet?”]Answer –

There are list number of top search engines in the world like Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Baidu (Also, called The Chinese Google), AOL, Ask.com, Excite, DuckDuckGo, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex (Popular in Russia), Lycos, Chacha.com

Know more about the Best Search Engines in the World.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#6 Who are the founders of Google?”]Answer –

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google. They meet at Stanford University in California. At the same time, they were pursuing a Ph.D. at Stanford University, California.

Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#7 When Google was founded and What does Google stand for?”]Answer –

The first version of Google was released in August 1996 on the Stanford website.

Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University in California. They started the company named it Backrub.

The name “Google” actually came from a graduate student at Stanford named Sean Anderson, Koller writes. Anderson suggested the word “googolplex” during a brainstorming session, and Page countered with the shorter “googol.” Googol is the digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes, while googolplex is 1 followed by googol zeros.

Eventually, they changed the name to Google; the name of the search engine originated from a misspelling of the word “googol“, rest if history.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#8 Why is SEO important for business?”]Answer –

SEO is essential simply because, The higher your website or webpage rank in search engine results pages, the more clicks and traffic possibility to your site will generate.

Acceptable practices improve the user experience and usability of a website. It is also good for social promotion to build the trust and credibility of the brand.

For more details, please read our blog: Why SEO Important for Business?[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#9 What Are the Most Important SEO Ranking Factors?”]Answer –

There are many important SEO ranking factors and sometimes ranking factors change from search engines to search engines. But, In general, SEO ranking factors are like;

A Secure and Accessible Website
Page Speed (Including Desktop and Mobile Page Speed)
Mobile Friendliness
SSL Certification (HTTPS), Domain Age, URL, and Authority
Fresh and Optimized Content
Technical SEO
User Experience (RankBrain)
Backlinks
Social Media Presence
Real Business Information

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#10 What happens if you stop doing SEO?”]Answer –

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activity is a continuous process and we should not stop doing SEO.

It’s like if you want to fit yourself in life, need regular exercise, and proper healthy diets.

If you skip doing SEO for a few days that won’t affect much on an immediate basis in your website ranking or traffic performance. But if you stop doing SEO entirely and for a long period like 15 days, 30 days, and more gradually you will realizing the difference.

Even if will be difficult to come back to that level of your website performances.

When you stop doing SEO, you’ll notice the following website ranking and traffic factors drop like:

Your backlink profile can get out of control
Keyword rankings in SERP will go down and not get new traffic
People push your website content and stop following your site links.
The audience engagement ratio will gradually decrease to return to your website for new posts.
This also reduces your online brand reputation in searches, which is an indicator of quality to Google, yahoo, and any social platform.

Hence, SEO is an amazing asset to improve search ranking and help your business grow. For more details please follow our blog.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#11 How search engine work?”]Answer –

The search term you search on Google or any search engine there might be possible thousand and millions of searchers search for the same search term at the same time from the same or different geo-location.

Even though, every time you search on Google or any search engine, you find a list number of webpages with the helpful information in a fraction of seconds. Even search engines provide the best information.

All this is because of three core smart and advanced technology transformation:

Organizing Information System
Search Algorithms defined by different search engine
Best User Experience Intent

Above all three technology forms work with three primary functions on ranking any website or webpage like; Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking.

How Search Engine Work – Crawl – Index – Rank

Simply if I say search engine first start crawling webpages and collect information. According to the type of content or web information, it starts indexing the page in search engine organizing information systems. Then according to the search query or search term if starts giving ranking to webpages in SERP based on different ranking factors.

Search engines have three primary functions:

Finding Information by Crawling: Crawlers look at webpages and follow links on those pages, much like you would if you were browsing content on the web.

Organizing Information by Indexing: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. The index contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size. When indexing a webpage, the search engine adds it to the entries for all of the words it contains.

Search Engine Results Page Ranking: Provide the pieces of useful and updated content information that will best answer a searcher’s query. It results based on different SERP ranking factors for a better user experience.

For further details on Search engine ranking factors and how Google search works, please stay tuned and subscribe to our blog.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#12 What is crawling or website crawling?”]Answer –

Website crawling or crawling in SEO means search engines finding information from your webpage before indexing.

A web crawler is sometimes called a web spider or web robot. It is a type of internet bot that is typically operated by search engines like Google and Bing. The primary purpose of a spider that crawls your webpage to index the content information of websites all across the internet so that those websites can rank or appear in search engine result pages (SERP).[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#13 How do I know if Google has indexed?”]Answer –

To check if your site indexed by search engines (Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc.) is simple and easy.

Enter the URL of your domain with “site:” before it, i.e., “site:yourwebsite.com.” The results show all of your site’s pages indexed or not and the current Meta Tags saved in the search engine’s index.
[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#14 What do you mean by Backlink?”]Answer –

The incoming links to your website or webpage are referred to as Backlink.

A backlink is a link created when one website links to another.

Backlinks are also called “inbound links” or “incoming links”.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#15 What is outbound link? Do outbound links matter for SEO?”]Answer –

An outbound link also called an “external link“, i.e., a link from your website to a different website. An outbound link for you is an inbound link for someone else.

Yes, Outbound links most definitely matter for SEO. Though the outbound link is not of the top-ranking factor alike inbound link building. But for SEO in general it is matters.

Outbound link builds trust in your content in front of the reader and search engine.
The external links from your content can strengthen the topic signal to Google
Outbound links build relationships with other businesses. The goodwill that results can help you in many ways. For example, you may find that providing thoughtful external links in your content encourages experts to participate in your content when asked.
Outbound links bring balance and authenticity to the overall SEO health of a page
Outbound links help achieve authority when you reference the sources used in the creation of your content.

Note: If a link on your website takes readers to another page on your same website, it’s called an “internal link“.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#16 What is SERP in SEO?”]Answer –

SERP’s full form in SEO is “Search Engine Results Pages.”

When searchers enter any search query or search term online using a search engine (Google, Yahoo, or Bing) number of web pages presented to the searcher called Search Engine Results Pages.

SERP is unique for each different search query based upon the keywords and phrases.

SERP is essential because the higher a company’s website ranks, the more searchers will click on the website or webpage.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#17 What is Google Sandbox?”]Answer –

Google Sandbox is a fanciful term to explain why most new websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages.

For a new website, the Google Sandbox effect lasts somewhere between 1 and 6 months. Think of it as a probation period even if you do everything right, your site won’t get decent rankings until it comes to an end.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#18 What is Google Autocomplete?”]Answer –

Google autocomplete is a feature within the Google Search box designed to make it faster to complete searches that you’re beginning to type.

When you start typing your search term in Google’s search box, the algorithm performs a prediction of possible search queries and shows a drop-down list of related words and phrases.

The search predictions are based on factors like popularity and freshness and will show: The terms you are typing.

Google Autocomplete Feature in Search Box

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#19 What is People also ask in Google?”]Answer –

When searcher searches for a search query or searches for any answer to his/her question? Google started displaying in the SERP some related items and solutions may helpful.

For Example, I search for “winner of IPL 2019”. You can below screen short where the list of related questions and answers shown in Google SERP.

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#20 What do you mean by Related searches in Google?”]Answer –

Google Related searches are “automatically generated based on an algorithm to determine terms related to your search.” These related searches show at the end of Google’s SERP list.

For Digital markers (SEOs and SEMs), related searches in Google is a great way to expand your keyword research techniques to find more recent topics you might want to write about and target.

For Example – Check the below screenshot for your reference. I searched for a “local business ideas” on Google search box. Once I scrolled down the page till the end and found a list of related search phrases.

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#21 How To Appear In The People Also Ask Box?”]Answer –

Google has its own set of algorithms to generates. People also ask in SERP.

There is no dedicated markup to appear in the People Also Ask Box. But there are few content activities we have to consider being suggested by leading digital marketing professionals.

Focus on your product or services on board terms and segment your prospective customers.
Provide short, but complete questions and answers your prospective customers might ask.
Present correct information in simple language that easy to understand
Free from sales pitches and appropriate information relevant to your company
Once you have created your questions and answers, you can use them on your website or blog post.

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#22 What is domain authority (DA) and why is it important?”]Answer –

Domain Authority (DA) is one of the critical website ranking factors on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The domain authority of a website describes its relevance for a specific subject area or industry. A domain authority score ranges from 1 to 100. The higher the domain authority score, the higher and better the website ranking position in SERPs.

Note: Website traffic volume is directly propositional to domain raking in SERP. Domain ranking is directly proportional to domain authority.

Like Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA) explains the authority of a specific page based on the backlink, social sharing, etc.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#23 What is Cross-linking in SEO? What is the benefit of Crosslinking?”]Answer –

Cross-linking is the strategic method of linking one site to another site and vice versa to get high search engine ranking.

Benefits of Cross-Linking:

For better ranking – Search engines value these cross-links, as they are from relevant sites, with related content.
In other words, cross-linking is a barter wherein I link to you, and you link to me.

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#24 What does it mean if nothing appears while searching for the domain?”]Answer –

It means searching for your website or domain on Google or another search engine, and if nothing appears, then there could be any of the following reasons. You need to fix this issue as soon as possible for indexing.

May be search engine has banned the site or domain.
Maybe it has not yet been found and indexed by the search engine.
It means the domain may not have robots.txt and sitemap.xml generated and or was not submitted to search engines and or might be something wrong in the robots.txt script.
It could be any canonical issues on your website.

Note: You need to check and submit your website or domain property in the search engine. You also need to create robots.txt and sitemap.xml file and upload in the domain root folder and search engine.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#25 What is keyword stemming?”]Answer –

Google has used keyword stemming in its algorithms for finding a new keyword from the primary or root keyword.

Keyword steaming is nothing but the formation of a new key phrase from the root keyword by using some prefix, suffix, or pluralization. These types of steaming keywords are essential assets in content building, helpful in terms of ranking quickly and building traffic.

For example: if you use the word ‘gift’ in a sentence, a stemming algorithm will recognize the words ‘gifts,’ ‘gifting,’ and ‘gifters’ as variations of the name ‘gift’ as well. It could be a synonym like give, present, donate, and more.

Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.

Note: In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry, cloaking is one of the black hat SEO techniques to drive traffic. Doing this your site may be blacklisted or banned by the search engine.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#27 Name the best SEO Blogs that help you become a better market.”]Answer –

To become a better marketer I follow the following SEO blogs:

The Moz Blog
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Neil Patel
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Journal
SEMRush Blog
SEO Book
Backlinko
Yoast
Content Marketing Institute

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#28 What is keyword stuffing in SEO?”]Answer –

Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose).

Note: Keyword stuffing is another black hat SEO technique and the activity could lead to a search engine penalty. It won’t improve your search engine keyword ranking.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#29 What is a domain name?”]Answer –

A domain name is called your Website name. The domain name is the foundation of your online business where Internet users can access your website and get your business pieces of information.

“A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control within the Internet. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes.” – Wikipedia[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#30 What is the difference between TLD and ccTLD?”]Answer –

TLD stands for Top-Level-Domain. The top-level domain (highest level) names are installed in the root zone of the namespace.

Example – .com, .net, .org, .co.in etc.

ccTLD stands for Country Code Top-Level-Domain. Each country has its own domain extension based on ISO codes. Generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code.

Example – .in for India, .us for USA and .au for Australia and so on.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#31 Why might using a subdirectory in place of a subdomain be beneficial?”]Answer –

Subdomains can provide organization and structure to your site for complicated site hierarchies. If you don’t have the need, then using a subdirectory can help bring all the “link juice” to your primary domain.

The subdirectory strategy concentrates your keywords onto a single domain, while the subdomain strategy spreads your keywords across multiple distinct parts. In a word, the subdirectory strategy results in better root domain authority.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#32 Absolute or Relative, Which Form of URL is Good For SEO?”]Answer –

For the most part, absolute URLs recommended as it has more pros than cons and will help improve your site’s SEO.

However, there are times relative URLs will be the better option depending on the need of your site.

Note:

Relative URLs greatly simplify the work of web developers, while absolute links provide greater security, resolve duplication issues, and help you make the most of your crawl budget.

Although many experts find absolute URLs to be among the best SEO practices, do not rush to rewrite all your relative links.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#33 Which Is The Most Common Way Search Engine Discovers Webpage?”] Answer –

The Crawling the most important and common way search engine discover your webpage.

Search engine first Crawl then index then rank based on the search query.

Crawl: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find.

Index: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is in the index, it’s in the running to display due to relevant queries.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#34 How Does Google Quickly Find Websites That Contain A Search Term?”] Answer –

Googlebot uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site.

Google’s crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, augmented by Sitemap data provided by webmasters.

Google gets information from many different sources, including:

Web pages,
User-submitted content such as Google My Business and Maps user submissions,
Book scanning,
Public databases on the Internet,
and many other sources.

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#35 Key Factors To Improve Your Serving and Ranking in Google Search Result?”] Answer –

According to Google Webmaster, marketers need to focus on the following areas for better ranking.

Make your page fast to load and mobile-friendly.
Put useful content on your page and keep it up to date.
Follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines, which help ensure good user experience.
Read more tips and best practices in our SEO starter guide.
You can find more information here, including the guidelines that we provide to our quality raters to ensure that we’re giving good results

[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#36 Differentiate between on-page and off-page optimization?”] Answer –

On-page optimization is mostly technical optimization we do within our website or webpages through HTML page coding, whereas off-page optimization we do outside our website or third-party websites.

On-page SEO optimization refers to the factors you can control on your own website, off-page SEO refers to the page ranking factors that occur off your website, and we can not control. Off-page optimization is basically building backlinks from another site.

Please read our blog for a detailed list of activities that comes under On-page and Off-Page SEO Optimization[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#37 What is Page Rank?”] Answer –

PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Search Engines to rank web pages in their search engine results page. Like in Google, when you search something, it lists out several websites in different positions on different pages.

One of the founders of Google, Mr. Larry Page, has named this phrase PageRank (PR)

Note:-

The better the page rank position of your website or webpage for a particular keyword or keyphrase more the traffic on your website. The more traffic on your website, there are more business opportunities.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#38 Name some of the tools that you have used in SEO.”] Answer –

Some of the important SEO tools I have used or know about like;

Google Search Console,

Neil Patel SEO Analyzer and Uber Suggest

Small SEO Tool

Google Keyword Planner

SEMrush

Longtail PRO

Screaming Frog

DeepCrawl

Woorank

Ahrefs

Open Site Explorer

Alexa etc.[/vc_toggle][vc_toggle title=”#39 What is keyword density?”] Answer –

Keyword density is the percentage of the number of times a particular keyword or phrase used on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

This is a kind of algorithm defined by the different search engines to analyze the content quality and relevancy of a webpage to a specified keyword or keyphrase.

The ideal keyword density percentage of a particular web page on a specific keyword or keyphrase should only be between 1 to 3%.

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