SEO Interview Questions and Answers (140+ Updated Questions for 2020)

Are you preparing for your SEO interview and don’t know where to start? We bring you 140 SEO Interview questions with their Answers. In this guide, we have covered all the possible latest SEO questions that the interviewer might ask you (from beginner to advanced questions).

Apart from the questions, at the end of this guide, you will also find some of the best tips to clear your SEO Interview in the first round itself. This guide is applicable for both freshers and experienced SEO candidates.

This page will be updated regularly with all the latest SEO Interview questions along with their answers according to the latest SEO trends, so don’t forget to bookmark.

Now, let’s get started with the SEO Interview questions and their answers.

1. What does SEO stand for?

Answer: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process to optimize a web-page for search engines to receive organic search traffic.

2. How would you differentiate between a website and a webpage?

Answer: A web-page is an individual aspect of a website, while a website is the combination of multiple web-pages. In SEO, we rank the different web-pages of a particular site.

3. What do you understand by SERPs?

Answer: SERPs are Search Engine Result Pages. Every Search engine displays the results from the search queries on it’s SERPs. For example, if you type a keyword on Google, it would show you the results in its Search Engine Result Pages.

4. Difference Between organic traffic and paid traffic?

Answer: Organic traffic is the website traffic received from the Search Engine Result Pages from its organic results. On the other side, the paid traffic is the website traffic received by running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaign on the search engine. Below are the pictures to explain the same:

5. Difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO?

Answer: The main difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO is the ethical and unethical practices to rank a particular keyword higher in SERPs. In white hat SEO, the recommended guidelines are followed to rank a specific keyword, while in black hat SEO, unethical practices are used to get ranked.

6. What is the difference between on-page SEO and off Page SEO?

Answer: On-Page SEO is the procedure to optimize the technical aspects of a webpage for search engines to understand it’s context. However, the off-page SEO is the procedure to rank a webpage by promoting it on relevant platforms and gaining popularity on search engines. Off-page SEO is usually performed after commencing the On-Page SEO.

7. How do you determine the current position of a keyword in SERPs?

Answer: There are two procedures to determine the current position of a keyword in SERPs:

In the first procedure: you can look for the webpage position manually in the SERPs by displaying higher results on a single page. Press ctrl+F (find) program on the browser and type your keyword to look for the search result and its current position.

In the second procedure: use a SERP Tracker tool to check your current keyword position in the SERPs.

8. What is a backlink in SEO?

Answer: A backlink is a clickable link to our website from a different website. These are usually the incoming links to our web-pages from various sources. A Backlink from another website to our website is also known as an inbound link. (This is one of the most commonly asked SEO Interview Questions).

9. What is the difference between a do-follow and a no-follow link?

Answer: A do-follow link passes the link juice to your website from the website where it’s originated. Search engines have the permission to crawl a do-follow backlink and mark it as an essential link to your page.

A no-follow link does not pass any link juice to your page. However, it helps in increasing the authority of your website. A no-follow backlink required the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the Page’s HTML, while in a do-follow link, no attribute is required. A link without rel=”nofollow” attribute is automatically considered as a do-follow link.

10. What is an anchor text?

Answer: An anchor text is a clickable text in a web-page that is written under the <a href> tag of the HTML of a web-page. Anchor text is used to create inbound and outbound links.

11. How would you perform on-page SEO?

Answer: On-Page SEO is performed after selecting the right keywords for a page. There are numerous tools that crawl your entire page and give you an On-Page SEO Score and detect what on-page modifications are required on a page. For example, the right placement of the keywords within the structure of the web-page, the errors in XML-sitemaps, robots.txt, h1, h2 tags, and more.

All the on-page errors are then checked thoroughly and corrected before rerunning an on-page SEO Score check.

12. What is robots.txt?

Answer: Robots.txt is a permissions file set in the root directory of a website that helps search engine bots detect, which pages are they allowed to crawl.

13. How do search engines crawl a page?

Answer: Every search engine has a “bot” or a “robot” that crawls millions on web-pages regularly in several batches. When we create a website, the search bots detect the robots.txt file to go through the crawling permissions. If the permissions are given to the bots, to crawl a page, the bots recognize it as a green signal to crawl and index the page in SERPs.

14. What are some of the most important meta tags to be used on a page?

Answer: The three most important tags to be used in a page are:

Meta description: written as <meta name="description"> in HTML, this meta tag has the description of a webpage to be displayed in the Snippet of the Search Engine Results, right below the title of the webpage.

Meta robots: written as <meta name="robots">, this meta tag helps search engines understand the permission to crawl and index the page in the Search Results.

15. What is an XML sitemap?

Answer: An XML Sitemap is the link-structure of your entire website to be understood by the search engines. A sitemap is submitted under the Google Search Console after all the pages of a website are ready to be indexed.

16. Tell me about the latest Google Update?

Note: The answer to this SEO Interview question may change as per the latest Google Update.

Answer: The last official major update in Google was the BERT Update. BERT update helped Google understand the context of a particular keyword more precisely to give accurate results.

The recent update in Google was Google Core January 2020 Update. Many people saw fluctuation in their rankings after this latest update.

17. How would you start the SEO of a brand-new website in 2020?

Answer: Some recommended tips to start the SEO of a starter website would be:

• To perform profitable keyword research for the website
• Optimize the website for the ON-PAGE SEO Based on the researched keywords
• Set the basic permissions in robots.txt and Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console
• Build high-quality, relevant backlinks to the optimized pages.

18. What is keyword research in SEO?

Answer: In simple words, keyword research is a process to find the most searched keywords for a webpage to get the maximum search traffic. By performing keyword research, you will know the potential of the traffic for a particular webpage.

19. How would you perform SEO keyword research for a startup website?

Answer: I would use the Google Keyword Planner tool to find the best relevant keyword based on the search volume and keyword difficulty. For a starter website, I will select the keywords with low competition and a decent search volume. If the keyword is local, I will check the search volume of the keywords in that particular location based on the competition and search volume.

20. What are some of the major tools to perform keyword research for your website?

Another one of the most commonly asked SEO Interview Questions to check your keyword research skills.

Answer: Some of the best tools to perform keyword research are:

• Ahrefs
• Google keyword planner tool
• Moz keyword explorer tool
• Semrush
• Longtail Pro
• Ubersuggest

21. How is schema markup important in SEO?

Answer: Schema markup is an HTML Microdata that helps search engines understand and represent your page in a more specific way, based on the schema structure of the page.

22. What is the role of social media in SEO?

Answer: Social media plays a crucial role in SEO because search engines consider the popularity of a webpage after the on-page is done. Social media platforms help provide social signals to a webpage, which in terms helps it rank faster in SERPs because of the trust obtained by search engines.

23. What are some of the SEO Blogs that you regularly follow?

Answer: (Note – To answer this question, you must know what SEO Blogs are the best in the industry.) You can also name any social media channel that you follow, providing the latest SEO Updates or News. However, recommend some of the best SEO Blogs from the below list:

• Moz blog
• Google webmaster blog
• searchengineland
• Searchenginejournal
• Neil Patel blog

24. What is the role of meta keywords on a webpage?

Answer: Meta keyword tag used to play an important role in understanding what keywords are being targeted on a particular page. However, some search engines still consider meta keywords as an important ranking factor, but Google does not.

25. What do you mean by Domain Authority of a website?

Answer: The domain authority, also known as the DA of a website, is a metric used by the MOZ tool to determine the popularity score of a website. It is calculated by combining the average DA of the backlinks from other websites.

Out of all the SEO Interview Questions, this one will be asked to check your knowledge on the MOZ Tool.

26. What is Domain Rating of a website?

Answer: Domain Rating is a website authority metric from the famous SEO Tool – Ahrefs. It is denoted as DR and is between 0-100, where 0 is the lowest and 100 being the highest authority of the website.

27. Explain everything you know about Private Blog Networks (PBNs).

Answer: Private Blog Network is a network of websites on unique IPs developed specifically to build high authority backlinks. This is done by creating an original looking niche-relevant website on an expired domain having an existing authority.

28. Which one is better for SEO – WordPress site or HTML site?

Answer: Each one has it’s own benefits. An HTML site would need more manual SEO optimization, while a WordPress website has plugins to care of the on-page SEO of the website. A WordPress website might consume more loading speed because of the heavy plugins, while an HTML Website can load quickly, which is a major SEO ranking factor.

29. How would you perform SEO for a WordPress site?

Answer: WordPress offers many SEO Plugins to optimize the website for On-Page SEO. Two major plugins that WordPress offers are – Yoast SEO and All-in-one SEO. By installing and activating these plugins, we will get options to optimize the meta tags, edit the XML sitemap, and more optimization options.

To crack SEO Interview Questions related to WordPress it’s important to have practical exposure to the WordPress platform.

30. What is Google Search Console?

Answer: Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console helps you detect and optimize all the on-page SEO issues of a website to increase its search visibility on Google. This includes fetching the index status of the website, performance reports, and more.

31. How will you submit a sitemap in Google Search Console?

Answer: After setting up an ID on Google Search Console, on the left sidebar, click on sitemaps. Enter the URL of your sitemap in .xml format and submit the URL for the review. After the review, your sitemap will be published on Google Search Console.

32. In Google Analytics, how would you determine the organic traffic?

Answer: Website traffic from SEO is considered as organic traffic. You can find the organic traffic to your website in the “Acquisition” section of the google analytics sidebar. Navigate to Acquisition, select “channels,” and click on “organic search.” SEO Traffic will be displayed.

33. How would you determine the quality of a backlink?

Answer: The quality of a backlink can be determined by the domain authority and domain rating of the backlink. The Domain rating can be checked by ahrefs tool, while the Domain authority is a MOZ metric. Both the Domain authority (DA) and the Domain Rating (DR) should be above 50, and the spam score should be below 10% for a quality backlink. Not to mention, the link should be relevant to the niche.

This question could come up as a part of link-building SEO Interview Questions.

34. What do you understand by UGC Backlink?

Answer: UGC tag was recently introduced to determine the user-generated content on a website. In a UGC Backlink, the tag rel=”UGC” is inserted within the anchor text, so the search engines could know that the link is user-generated.

35. Tell me the procedure to obtain a guest post for a particular niche site.

Answer: To obtain a guest post, first make a list of high authority blogs that are accepting guest posts. You can do this by typing “your niche” + “write for us” on Google, and you will get the list of websites accepting guest posts. The next step would be to outreach the bloggers via the contact form on the website and pitching your guest post idea. If your idea is accepted, you can contribute your post with a backlink on the blog.

36. What is the difference between SEM and SEO?

Answer: SEM, Search Engine Marketing, is a process to increase the visibility of a website on search engines. SEO is a part of Search Engine Marketing that focuses on increasing your website’s organic rankings on search engines.

37. Differentiate between SEO and PPC.

Answer: SEO – Search Engine Marketing is a process to increase the organic rankings of a website on search engines, by optimizing for relevant keywords.

PPC – Pay-per-click is a process to increase the visibility of a website on search engines using paid methods (Example – Google AdWords).

38. How would you determine the organic Search Result on Google’s Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs)?

Answer: Search results that do not have the “Ad” tag before them, can be easily recognized as the organic search results. When you search for a particular keyword on Google, it displays both the paid and the non-paid results. The non-paid results are organic search results.

39. Is Google more concerned about the number of backlinks on a website?

Answer: No, the quality of the backlinks is more important than the number of backlinks. One high-quality backlink is considered more important than hundreds of low-quality backlinks. However, Google considers a good number of high-quality backlinks as a major ranking factor.

40. Tell me the role of page speed in SEO?

Answer: Pagespeed is the most important factor in SEO. It is an on-page ranking factor and a major ranking signal. The page speed of a website should be below 5 seconds, on website and mobile, both to receive good results.

This is one of the most crucial SEO Interview Questions to check your on-page SEO Skills.

41. How would you check the page speed of a webpage?

Answer: There are several tools to check the page-speed of a webpage:-

• Google PageSpeed insights (for desktop and mobile)
• GTMetrix

42. How would you perform reverse engineering in SEO?

Answer: Reverse engineering in SEO is a process to detect the backlinks of your competitor using backlink checker tools like MOZ, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and more. Reverse engineering is the most effective way of link-building by competitive analysis.

43. Which is the best type of backlink for SEO?

Answer: Any backlink that helps increase the authority of your website is the best. However, the most effective way is guest blogging on high-authority, niche relevant blogs.

44. What are the broken links?

Answer: Links on a webpage that redirects to a 404 error page is considered as a broken link. Broken links are harmful to SEO Rankings and shall be replaced with another relevant link when detected.

45. Differentiate between 301 and 302 redirects.

Answer: 301 redirects are permanent, while 302 are temporary. If a webpage is moved permanently to another URL, 301 redirects can help retain it’s ranking in SERPs.

46. What is a permalink?

Answer: The permanent URL Structure of a website is considered as a permalink. Permalinks are SEO Friendly URLs.

47. What happens to the SEO of a page when you change its permalink?

Answer: When the permalink of a webpage is changed, the previous URL throws a 404 not found error. All the ranking keywords on the previous URL are lost unless redirected permanently to a new URL.

48. How would you tell Google that your webpage is redirected to another page?

Answer: By applying a 301 redirect to the new page from the old page. Google bots will know that the URL is moved to the new page whenever the old URL is crawled.

49. What is an expired domain? And how would you use it for SEO?

Answer: The domains that are not renewed on time, are expired and are available to register for a new user. However, they are often used while creating a private blog network to increase rankings. An expired domain already has a domain authority and could be used to create a website on the previous niche.

50. What is a landing page, and how would you optimize it for search engines?

Answer: A landing page is a webpage where the end-users are redirected after clicking on an Ad creative. A landing page contains all the descriptions of a product or service along with a contact form to generate leads. To optimize a landing page for search engines, we must optimize the page according to the keywords based on the keyword research process, and follow the recommended on-page SEO guidelines.

51. What is the difference between a long-tail keyword and a short tail keyword?

Answer: A keyword with three or more than three words is considered as long-tail keywords. Keywords below three words are considered as short-tail keywords.

52. Which one is best for SEO – long-tail keyword or a short tail keyword?

Answer: A long-tail keyword is always the best choice to consider during the keyword research process. The majority of long-tail keywords are less competitive and are easier to rank. Also, there are higher chances of the LSI keywords to start getting ranking with the targeted long-tail keyword.

53. What is EMD in SEO? How useful is it in 2020?

Answer: EMD is an exact match domain. Previously, google considered EMDs important because of the primary keyword in the domain name. However, due to recent changes in Google Algorithms, EMDs are losing their importance in SERPs.

54. Name the two most popular algorithm updates in SEO.

To answer SEO Interview Questions like these, you must keep yourself updated with the latest updates in the Search Engine Algorithms.

Answer: The two most popular and oldest algorithm updates in SEO are PANDA and PENGUIN updates. The Panda algorithm is for the on-page SEO; on the other hand, the Penguin algorithm is for the off-page SEO.

55. Differentiate between Backlink vs. Referring Domains in ahrefs.

Answer: In ahrefs, backlinks contain the number of links from the same site, while referring domains are always unique. One should always consider referring domains while reverse engineering competitors.

56. How would you check the keywords your competitor is ranking for in SERPs?

Answer: In ahrefs, insert the URL of your competitor in the site explorer. Click on the keywords section and sort the keyword list from 1-10 to check the keywords your competitor is ranking for in SERPs.

57. What is the difference between PageRank and Page Authority?

Answer: PageRank used to be the metric to check the authority of a page, and was measured on a scale of 1-10. Now that the PageRank metric is dead, Page authority (PA) is used to check the authority of a page, which is a Moz tool’s metric and is measured on a scale of 0-100.

58. Tell me what Google Hummingbird update was all about?

Answer: Google hummingbird update was all about the relevancy of the page to the keyword targeted. After Google Hummingbird update, all the websites that used doorway pages, and non-relevant keywords, were penalized by Google.

59. When your keywords start dropping from SERPs, how would you determine the problem?

Answer: By checking the google webmaster tools, to see if there’s any problem in your on-page SEO. If no problems are detected, check the backlink profile and look for spammy backlinks.

60. What is Google Sandbox?

Answer: Google Sandbox is a hypothetical place that contains all the webpages penalized by the Google updates and are removed from the SERPs.

61. How does plagiarism (duplicate content) affect the SEO of a webpage?

Answer: Google always prioritizes the original content on the web to get higher rankings. Deliberate attempts to rank a page using plagiarized or duplicate content can lead to lower search rankings, or in the worst case; Google can penalize your website.

62. How would you write a perfectly optimized article for SEO?

Answer: Optimize the article for the users and not for the bots or crawlers. Select the keyword with higher searches and make the content as detailed and relevant as possible. Use proper subheadings and make sure the keyword density is proper.

63. What some of the readability guidelines to help in SEO?

Answer: Some of the best readability guidelines are:

• Usage of relevant subheadings after every 150 words.
• One sentence should not increase more than 20 words.
• One paragraph should not exceed more than four sentences.
• Using active voice instead of passive voice in the sentences.
• Using transition words wherever required.

64. What is the bounce rate of a website?

Answer: The average percentage of the time spent on your website by the user is known as the bounce rate. As the name suggests, the bounce rate determines how many users bounce back after visiting your website.

Such SEO Interview questions will be asked to check your analytics skills. It’s important to learn everything about Google Analytics to answer such questions.

65. How would you check the bounce rate of a website?

Answer: The bounce rate can be checked by logging in to the Google Analytics dashboard of the website and going through the audience overview report.

66. How would you reduce the bounce rate of a web page?

Answer: To reduce the bounce rate, make sure the content on your web page is attractive, and users stay on your website for more than 30 seconds. Some of the tips to reduce the bounce rate of the web page are:

• Creating the content in-depth as much as possible.
• Using relevant images and videos whenever necessary.
• Using infographics, along with the written content, is also a great way to engage the audience and reduce the bounce rate.

67. What is the most important factor to keep in mind while optimizing a webpage for Google?

Answer: The most important factor is to create a great user experience with relevant information. Always optimize the pages for the humans instead of bots, and make sure you follow all the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

68. What would be your SEO Strategy for a local business?

Answer: For a local business, the best steps to be followed are:

• Local keyword research (in that particular location)
• Optimizing the keywords on the website
• Submitting the website on local business listing websites
• Creating Google MyBusiness listing of the business

69. Difference between local, national, and global SEO.

Answer: Local SEO is done within a particular geographical region, mostly a town or a city.

National SEO is the countywide SEO, targeting a particular country.

Global SEO is done to obtain rankings in the search results of all the countries.

70. What is the best way to increase the domain authority of a website?

SEO Interview Questions like these can be cracked with your strong knowledge of tools like MOZ, alexa, and other tools.

Answer: To increase the domain authority (DA) of a website, we must acquire links from other websites having the domain authority higher than our website. The best way would be to obtain do-follow links from websites having DA above 50.

71. How would you perform SEO for YouTube videos?

Answer: Like search engines, YouTube also works on keyword searches. Hence, we would first perform the keyword research for the YouTube video based on our topic using tools like ahrefs and keyword suggestions from YouTube dropdown. After uploading the video on YouTube, Optimize the title and description of the video based on the keyword, and put relevant tags.

72. What are LSI Keywords?

Answer: LSI keywords are closely related to your target keywords are also given priority in rankings based on their relevancy to the page. These are the keywords that the Search Algorithm Chooses to be prioritized along with your primary keyword.

73. How would you disallow a particular page from getting indexed by search engines?

Some SEO Questions can not be orally performed and require written skills. This is one of those SEO Interview Questions. Below is what you can answer.

Answer: There are two ways to disallow a page from getting indexed:-

• Using the meta tag in the page header – <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
• Disallowing the page from robots.txt file by using the disallow command – disallow: /page-url

74. How would you disallow a WordPress website to be indexed by search engines?

Answer: To disallow a WordPress website to be indexed, below are the steps to be followed:-

• Visit the WordPress dashboard
• From the left sidebar, go to the settings options and click on “Reading.”
• Navigate to the option where it says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and click on the checkbox.
• Save the settings

Alternatively, create a robots.txt file at the root folder of the WordPress website having the below code:
user-agent:*
disallow: /

75. How would you hide taxonomies of a WordPress website to be indexed in search results?

Another example of SEO Interview Questions related to WordPress SEO. Candidates (fresher or experienced) must know about Yoast SEO or similar tools.

Answer: To hide the taxonomies from getting indexed, install a WordPress SEO Plugin like Yoast SEO. Navigate to the “Search Appearance” section of the plugin and click on “taxonomies.” Now, you will be able to select what taxonomies you want the search engines to not index.

76. What is a linkbait in SEO?

Answer: A link bait is a process where you create highly attractive content based on someone who is most likely to give you a backlink after going through the content.

77. Why is alt tag important in an image on a webpage?

Answer: The ALT tag is used to help search engines understand the context behind the image used. In the alt tag, we generally insert the keyword relevant to the image. Alt tags are used because the search engines cannot read the text written on the image.

78. What happens if you don’t provide any meta description of your page?

Answer: If the meta description of a page is not specified, the engines will use the content of the web-page as the description of the search snippet in the SERPS.

79. As an SEO Specialist, how would you create niche-based backlinks?

Answer: To create backlinks on a specific niche, the first step would be to find websites based on that particular niche. These websites could be niche-based blogs, directories, or forums. Finally, we will create an account on the website and get a user-generated link. In the case of niche blogs, we will outreach the webmaster to acquire the link.

Another example of SEO Interview Questions related to link building. Prepare for this one really well.

80. What are the black-hat SEO Strategies that you should avoid?

Answer: Black Hat SEO will penalize your website domain. These are the black hat practices that should be avoided at all costs:

• Stuffing keywords on a single page
• Creating Doorway Pages to achieve rankings
• Creating Spammy Backlinks to increase the domain authority
• Inserting invisible text in the pages to rank a keyword
• Using cloaking techniques
• Using duplicate or spun content to achieve rankings
• Paid-Link Building

81. How would you check the domain authority (DA) of unlimited websites?

Answer: Domain Authority (DA) is a metric used by the MOZ tool and can be checked in three ways:

• Creating a MOZ account and using the open site explorer tool to check the domain authority of a website.
• Installing the MOZ extension on the browser and visiting a website to check it’s Domain authority.
• Usage of third-party websites to check the DA of multiple websites in bulk.

82. How will you manage the SEO Team for a particular project as an SEO Team Leader?

Answer: As an SEO Team Leader, I would classify the team into three parts and track their progress:

On-Page SEO Team – I will assign the on-page SEO Team to audit and optimize all the technical SEO aspects of a website.

Off-Page SEO Team – The primary role of this team would be to acquire high-quality links for the website.

Content Team – This team will prepare content to be later optimized for the SEO by the On-Page Team.

83. How would you optimize the images on a web-page for faster loading speed?

Answer: For an HTML site or a website built on the core, compress and resize the images using an image compressor and resizer tool.

For a WordPress website, use an image compressor plugin like smush. This would help in improving the page speed drastically.

84. What would you suggest to decrease the loading speed of a WordPress website?

Answer: Loading speed is a major ranking signal for Google. To decrease the loading time of a website built on WordPress, numerous steps have to be followed:

• Using a fast hosting (WordPress hosting recommended)
• Auto Compressing images with an image compressor plugin
• Using a cache plugin to optimize the page speed of the WordPress website
• Minify the HTML, JS, and CSS of the website
• Enable GZIP Compression using a WordPress plugin

After following the mentioned steps, compare the loading speed with Google PageSpeed Insights.

85. What are spammy backlinks?

Answer: Spammy backlinks are the links made on low-quality pages to achieve higher rankings in SERPS. These links are made on the websites having a higher spam rate or very low authority. In most cases, the spammy backlinks have no relevance to the content of the webpage. This is a black hat SEO Process and must be avoided.

86. What is internal linking? And how important is it for SEO?

Answer: Internal linking is the linking within one page of a website to another page of the same website. Internal linking helps the search engine understand the relevancy of the content with other content on the same website.

87. What are some of the ways to maintain your SEO Rankings?

Answer: SEO Rankings are mostly unstable. Especially for a new website. But in order to maintain the SEO Rankings, some steps need to be regularly followed:

• Regularly update your content with fresh information
• Keep building high authority and niche relevant links
• Share the content on social media regularly
• Regularly check the Google Search Console panel of the website for any on-page errors.

88. What is the importance of voice search in SEO?

Answer: Voice search is the future of SEO. By optimizing the website for voice search, you are likely to generate traffic from the voice search queries. Voice search is most likely to take over the text-based searches in the coming years.

89. How long does it take for a keyword to be ranked on the first page of Google?

Answer: Usually, it takes at least six months for the results to appear on the first page of Google. But, that also depends on the difficulty of the keyword-based on competitiveness. For a keyword with little to no competition, the results can appear in a few days. However, for a medium to high competition keyword, it could take months to years to be ranked on the first page of Google.

90. What are the featured snippets in Google?

Answer: Featured snippets are search results from Google with a unique styling that stands out from all other search results and are prioritized by Google. They are generally on top of all the organic search results and received the maximum amount of search traffic.

91. How do you get featured in Google featured snippet results?

Answer: To get featured snippet results for your page, make sure you follow the mentioned steps:

• Make sure to answer all the questions related to the content of your website. This is because a majority of the featured snippet results are in the form of a question.
• Follow all the Featured Snippet Policies by Google.

92. What are the major changes in SEO for 2020?

Answer: Some of the drastic SEO Changes made in 2020 are:

• Voice Search is bringing the maximum search traffic
• Featured Snippets are getting the majority of clicks
• Images are now introduced in the Google Search Result Snippets

93. What are Bing webmaster tools?

Answer: Bing Webmaster Tools allows you to submit your website on Bing Search Engine to track its performance and a lot more.

94. How do you get listed on Google Local Business Results?

Answer: To get listed on Google Local Business Results, create an account on Google My Business, and add your business name and address. You will receive a code at your physical address from Google for verification. Once your business is verified, your listing will get activated, and your business will show on Google Local Business Results.

95. What are heading tags on a page? And how do they affect Search Results?

Answer: A heading tag is an extremely important on-page SEO factor. It helps the search engines understand the structure of the page and helps to improve the readability for the readers.

96. How will you acquire backlinks with guest posting?

Answer: Here is the step by step process to acquire a guest post backlink:

• Find the websites accepting guest posts on your niche by typing “your niche” + “write for us.”
• Read the guest post guidelines of the blog and start writing an article following the guidelines.
• Once you are done with the article, outreach the blogger using the contact form on the website or mail your article (with your backlink) separately.
• The webmaster will then review your article, and if it follows all the mentioned guidelines, your post will be published.

97. Name the most popular article submission websites.

Answer: Ezine Articles, Medium, Quora, isnare

98. Name the most popular ppt submission websites.

Answer: Slideshare, Slideserve, Issue, Authorstream, Scribd

99. What should be the length of the title tag?

Answer: The recommended length of the title should be 50-60 characters (including spaces) because, above this, Google truncates the text. However, there is no limit to the length of the title tag.

One more example of SEO Interview Questions to check your on-page SEO Skills.

100. How long should the meta description of a page be?

Answer: The recommended meta description of a page is 155-160 characters. Above which, Google truncates the snippet.

101. What is the Google Knowledge graph?

Answer: Google Knowledge Graph is a search feature that displays information in a separate box next to the search results by gathering the information about the domain from various other sources. The more popular your domain is, the more likely are your chances to be in the Google Knowledge Graph.

102. What is AMP?

Answer: AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages is an HTML Framework created specifically for mobile-optimized websites. AMP Pages helps load a mobile page faster, which is a major ranking signal for Google.

103. What data can you get for SEO using ahrefs tool?

Answer: Ahrefs can extract data such as referring domains of a website (unique inbound links), Keywords indexed in the SERPS in all the countries, Number of backlinks created, profitable keywords for SEO, and a lot more.

104. What is the latest major SEO update in 2020?

Answer: The latest SEO Update is the BERT Update that helps Google understand the natural language in the webpages. This update focuses more on the relevancy and the context of the content. It is also used for featured snippets.

Note: This SEO interview question is asked by a majority of companies. So, stay updated with the latest SEO updates.

105. What is an SEO-friendly URL?

Answer: The URL Structure which does not have any special character other than the hyphen, is an SEO Friendly URL.

Here is the example of an SEO friendly URL:

As the name suggests, SEO Friendly URLs are those permalinks that search engines understand.

106. What are some of the factors that Google considers as a ranking signal?

Answer: Below are some of the ranking signals for Google:

• The domain must be https secured with a valid SSL Certificate
• The page should load within 5 seconds
• The webpage must be mobile optimized and completely responsive
• Lower bounce rate is a major ranking signal for Google
• High Authority Backlinks from niche-relevant websites
• User Experience (RankBrain)
• Domain Age and Authority

107. What is directory submission, and how would you do it?

Answer: Directory submission in SEO is submitting your website to relevant directories. For example, if your niche is an automobile, you will find automobile directory websites and submit your website in order to get a backlink. Directory websites are similar to yellow pages but online.

108. How would you make press release submissions?

Answer: There are a lot of press release websites that are accepting news on various topics. There are two methods to acquire press release backlinks. The first method would be to look for a PR Distribution network and submit your news. The PR Distribution Network will then distribute your press release to hundreds of other press release websites, giving you a great online presence.

Alternatively, you can list some press release websites with high domain authority and submit your Press Release by yourself. However, each website has its own rules and regulations to submit a press release. Read them carefully before submitting them.

109. What do you know about the Rankbrain algorithm?

Answer: Google RankBrain Algorithm helps the search engine understand search queries more effectively. Majorly, focusing on the relevancy of the search query to the content of the webpage.

110. What is keyword difficulty in SEO?

Answer: Keyword Difficulty, also denoted as KD, is a number that is used to determine how difficult it is for a keyword to outrank its competitors in SERPs. Different tools have different metrics to understand keyword difficulty. The keyword difficulty ranges from 0-100, where 0 is the lowest keyword Difficulty (easier to rank) and 100 being the highest (hardest to rank).

SEO Interview questions like these must be answered by mentioning some of the best keyword research tools.

111. How would you determine if the keyword is easy or difficult to rank?

Answer: Several tools help determine the keyword difficulty in SEO. Some of them are:

Google Keyword Planner Tool: The metrics used to determine the keyword difficulty in Google Keyword Planner tool ranges from Low, Medium, and high competition.

Ahrefs: This tool allows you to check the difficulty of a keyword by analyzing the top 10 competitors ranking on the same keyword, and providing a number between 0-100, where 0 is the lowest keyword difficulty and 100 being the highest.

112. What are outbound links in SEO?

Answer: Links from your website redirecting to another website is called an outbound link. An outbound link is basically an inbound link for another website.

113. What is the difference between an inbound link and an outbound link?

Answer: An inbound link is a backlink obtained from an external domain to a webpage of our domain. However, an outbound link is a link from our domain to an external domain.

114. What is Social Bookmarking?

Answer: Social Bookmarking is a link-building technique where we create profiles on various social bookmarking sites and bookmark the URLs of our website to get a backlink. This helps in maintaining the online visibility of the social bookmarking profiles and indirectly helps in increasing our rankings.

115. What is blog commenting, and how useful is it in SEO?

Answer: Blog commenting is a link-building technique in SEO, where we find some posts related to our niche and leave relevant comments to get a backlink for our website. Blog commenting is useful in SEO if done moderately, and only on niche-relevant posts.

116. What do you understand by NAP in SEO?

Answer: NAP stands for Name, Address, and Place. NAP ensures the correct geotargeting of your business by the search engines by crawling all the websites having the same NAP for your business.

117. In a complete SEO Audit report, what factors would you include?

Answer: We can prepare an SEO Audit report by classifying it into two parts – On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

In the On-Page SEO Audit Report, we would include the following:-

• Keywords in Meta Tags
• Usage of subheadings
• Loading Speed of the webpage
• Mobile Responsiveness of the page
• XML Sitemap of the website
• Robots.txt
• Readability of the text
• Usage of alt tags in images
• GZIP Compression of the website
• Check for Minified JS and CSS
• Keyword density in the content
• Duplicate Content in the pages

In the off-page report, we will include the following:-

• Referring Domains from unique websites (Backlink Profile)
• Spam score of the referring domains
• Authority of the referring domains – DA, DR, Alexa Rank, Trust Flow, Citation flow
• Anchor Text Ratio of the backlinks
• Total Keywords Indexed in SERPs
• Keywords in Top 10

118. What is URL canonicalization?

Answer: URL canonicalization is a process to differentiate between the two duplicate versions of the same page to avoid the duplicate content penalty by Google. The duplicated page uses the rel=”canonical” tag to let the search engine know which page is primary.

119. What is GTMetrix?

Answer: GTMetrix is a tool to audit the complete loading speed of a webpage, which is a huge SEO Ranking Factor. The tool provides a report of the factors causing the low speed of the webpage and how to fix them.

120. Which SEO Tool would you use to check the Trust Flow and Citation Flow of a website?

Answer: Majestic Tool is used to checking the Trust flow and Citation flow.

121. Which SEO Tool would you use to detect the Domain Rating and URL Rating of a website?

Answer: Domain Rating and URL Rating are the metrics of ahrefs tool.

122. Other than the Domain and Page Authority, what other factors determine the popularity of a website?

Answer: Alexa Rank is widely used to check the popularity of a website. Other than that, there are factors like Domain Rating, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, etc.

123. How will you check the search volume and competition of a keyword?

Answer: There are multiple tools to check the search volume and keyword competition. Some of them are ahrefs, Moz, Google Keyword Planner, Longtail Pro, etc.

124. What are the benefits of SEO over Pay Per Click?

Answer: The benefits of SEO over Google ads are:

In SEO, Search Engines does not charge you any additional budget to show your results in SERPs.

SEO Rankings are for the long term while in Pay Per Click, your ad won’t be shown after the budget is consumed.

With SEO, the authority of your website keeps increasing, which helps in the long run.

125. What is a contextual backlink?

Answer: The anchor text placed on a keyword within a paragraph, which acts like an inbound or an outbound link, is called a contextual backlink.

126. What is more critical – Quantity or Quality of backlinks?

These type of SEO Interview Questions can be tricky to answer. To answer this you must know the Google Webmaster Guidelines and answer accordingly.

Answer: The quality of a backlink is more important than the quantity of the backlink. One high authority quality backlink will benefit more than thousands of low-quality backlinks.

127. How would you check all the outbound links of a website?

Answer: To check all the outbound links on a website:

• Go to ahrefs tool
• On the left sidebar, under the outgoing links section, click on “linked domains.”
• You will get the list of all the outbound links of a website.

128. What are the factors that make a website search engine friendly?

Answer: The factors responsible for making a website SEO Friendly are:

• The mobile responsiveness of the website
• Loading Speed of the website
• Quality and Readability of the content
• Relevancy of the content to the target keyword
• User-Friendly Interface of the website

129. What is the broken link building and how to perform it?

This is one of those SEO Interview Questions only a few can answer. Below is what you should answer.

Answer: Broken Link Building is finding the broken outbound links on a website (404 error links), and recommending the webmaster to replace it with our website’s link. To perform a broken link building, you need a tool to extract all the broken links on the site and find a broken link relevant to the content of your website. Then reaching out to the webmaster and helping them to fix their broken link by replacing it with ours’. This way, we get a backlink from the broken link of the website, and the webmaster gets their 404 error solved—a win-win situation for both.

130. What is the skyscraper technique in SEO?

One of the most difficult SEO Interview Questions to prepare. Make sure you read everything about skyscraper technique to answer this one.

Answer: Skyscraper technique in SEO is finding link-worthy content and creating your content better than that. This technique is then followed by outreaching to the right people in the industry to achieve higher rankings and more traffic than your competitors.

131. What is a podcast submission?

Answer: Podcast submission in SEO is submitting audio (in most cases, an interview) related to your industry on the websites accepting podcasts. Doing this will help increase the online presence of your brand, and you gain a backlink from the podcast submission site from the description of your podcast.

132. How will you obtain a backlink from a video submission website?

Answer: A backlink is acquired by the description section of the video on any video submission website.

133. How will you obtain a backlink by submitting infographics?

Answer: Outreach to the webmasters in your industry accepting infographics and submit your infographic with a detailed text description containing your backlink. You will obtain the backlink once the webmaster approves and publishes the infographic and the description with the backlink.

134. What is link acquisition in SEO?

Answer: Acquiring a backlink after reaching out to a webmaster via mail, is known as link acquisition in SEO. Some examples are guest post backlinks, infographic submissions, podcast backlinks, etc.

135. What are paid backlinks? Are they effective?

Answer: Backlinks acquired after paying money to a webmaster are paid backlinks. One of the best examples is paid directories. Getting a paid backlink is a black hat SEO Process and must be avoided.

136. Tell us about your recent SEO Project.

(Note: In this SEO Interview Question, the interviewer will check your practical SEO experience based on your past projects. Show the interviewer the baseline SEO report and the final results of your recent SEO project.)

Answer: Summary of the recent SEO Project (show the below reports):

• Number of backlinks created
• Keyword achieved in top 10 results
• Organic traffic received

137. What is PageRank in SEO?

Answer: Pagerank used to be a factor in SEO to determine the quality of a website, and it’s popularity. Google officially announced that the PageRank is dead and no more a metric to check a website’s authority.

138. What is keyword stemming?

Answer: Keyword stemming is a method to create different varieties of a single keyword by placing a prefix or postfix. In some cases, pluralization also helps in keyword stemming. One example of keyword stemming for the keyword – “SEO Interview Questions” would be – “Best SEO Interview Questions for 2020”.

139. Name some SEO Tools that allow auditing the on-page SEO factors of a website?

Answer: seositecheckup, ahrefs, Moz, WooRank, etc.

140. What is the future of SEO?

Answer: Voice search is the future of SEO. According to the recent reports, a majority of the searches on Google are going to be through voice commands. It’s high time that we optimize our websites for the voice search to rank well in the future.

141. What was the last SEO update from Google?

Answer: The last SEO update was Google May 2020 Core Update.

Tips to Crack the SEO Interview Questions in the first round

1. Before applying for an SEO Interview, work on a live SEO Project to get some practical experience.
2. Check the latest rankings of your recent SEO Project before going to the SEO Interview.
3. Go to the SEO Interview with the complete case study of your recent SEO project.
4. Make sure to Audit the on-page and off-page SEO of the company you are applying for and prepare a free SEO audit report.
5. Learn about the latest SEO Algorithms to keep yourself updated with the latest SEO Trends.
6. Perform free Keyword Research for the company and make a list of some profitable keywords.

Bonus tip: Show the link building report of your live SEO project and sort them with the highest domain authority to impress the interviewer.

We wish you all the best for your SEO interview. We hope these SEO Interview Questions and Answers will get you the job you deserve.

Last updated on 10th September 2020