100 Updated SEO Team Lead Interview Questions Part – 1
Q – 1 Tell me when do you apply for re inclusion in a search engine’s index?
Ans- If our website is banned by the search engines for black hat practices and if we have corrected our wrong doings we apply for reinclusion.
Q – 2 Explain what is a Google “Penalty”?
Ans- Manual actions can be taken within Google webmaster tools if you’ve been penalized.
Q – 3 Suppose if the meta robots tag has a value of “no index, no follow” what does it mean? Does Google uses keyword tags?
Ans- It means the search engine crawlers would not index the contents and would not follow the links present on the page.
No, Google does not make use of keyword tags.
Q – 4 Tell me from SEO point of view, which is better – one big site or several smaller site?
Ans- If you have enough content in the same niche it is better to have it in one big site because first, this way the site is easier to maintain and the great number of pages is good for ranking high in search results. Many small sites allow focusing on specific niches, therefore competing for different keywords.
Q – 5 Tell me what do you know about Google’s algorithm updates?
Ans- Google is always trying to work on their algorithm so that “more deserving” websites with better content rank higher than others. The three main algorithm updates of the last two years are Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.
Q – 6 Can you please explain the difference between ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’ link?
Ans- Nofollow links are not passed by search engines bot and therefore cannot be cached or indexed. Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink and it passes through all search engines and it puts an impact over page rank.
Q – 7 Tell me what all verticals have you handled in your SEO career so far?
Ans- Verticals means on what themes of websites have you worked so far- this may include education, real estate, IT, travel, Shopping, jobs etc.
Q – 8 Tell me is there a limit to robots.txt file?
Ans- Yes, googlebot reads the first 500 KB present in the robots.txt file.
Q – 9 Do you know what are webmaster tools?
Ans- Webmaster tools is a free service by Google from where we can get free Indexing data, backlinks information, crawl errors, search queries, CTR, website malware errors and submit the XML sitemap.
Q – 10 Tell me will you use an ordinary html sitemap with Google?
Ans- Google has a special format for sitemaps rather than ordinary html format. So it is good to use special XML format that Google uses for sitemaps.
Q – 11 Tell me what do you understand by Frames in HTML?
Ans- A frame is a HTML technique which divides the content of a page onto several parts. Search engines see Frames as completely different pages and as such Frames have a negative impact on Seo. We should avoid the usage of Frames and use basic HTML instead.
Q – 12 Do you know some online brand management tools?
Ans- Google Alerts, Technorati, Backtype, Yacktrack
Q – 13 Explain what is keyword stemming in SEO?
Ans- Keyword stemming is the process of finding out the root word from the search query. A query having the word ” playful” would be broken down to the word “play” with the help of stemming algorithm. The search results returned would be having the word ” play” in it.
Q – 14 Explain what is Keyword proximity?
Ans- It measures the distance between two keywords in the text. Keyword proximity is used by some search engines to measure relevancy of a given page to the search request. The idea is that the closer two keywords to each other are, the more relevant the page , keyword density measures how many times (not how far) a given keyword appears on a page.
Q – 15 Do you know who Do SEO?
Ans- They are the Webmaster, SEO Engineer and Website optimizer etc.
Q – 16 Tell me what is the latest update in SEO?
Ans- The latest updates in SEO are:
☛ Panda
☛ Penguin
Q – 17 Tell us what is Google Sandbox in SEO?
Ans- Google Sandbox is an imaginary area where new and less authoritative sites are kept for a specified time period until they establish themselves of being displayed on the search results. It happens by building too many links within a short period of time.
Q – 18 Do you know who is Matt Cutts?
Ans- He is the head of web spam team at Google.
Q – 19 Tell me what SEO tools do you use?
Ans- A carpenter can’t build without a hammer. Every SEO needs their set of tools to get the job done. Popular SEO tools I use are BrightEdge, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics.
Q – 20 Tell me what are Webmaster tools?
Ans- Webmaster tool is a service provided by Google from where you can get backlink information, crawl errors, search queries, Indexing data, CTR etc.
Q – 21 Do you know what is a Pizza Box in terms of Google?
Ans- Google server comes in a standard case which is commonly known as “Pizza Box”.
Q – 22 Explain what SEO tools do you use and why?
Ans- If someone says they don’t use SEO tools, it’s an automatic fail. Why? It means you’re an incredibly inefficient person or that you have never done a significant amount of SEO work in your life. There’s no way to do serious SEO without introducing some automation.
For this question, I’m wondering what tools they use for keyword research, blogging, link analysis, social media, etc. The more obscure the better. And I’m not just looking for a list of tools, either – I want to know why you use them, what you love and what you find annoying. Sometimes I even learn about cool new tools this way! (Bonus for me whether I hire them or not, bwahaha.)
Q – 23 Do you know what is the main purpose of search engine spiders?
Ans- Index sites, because even though spiders visit sites, their main function is not only to visit them but to index their contents spiders do not monitor sites for unethical activities.
Q – 24 Tell me how do you optimize with social media?
Ans- See if they incorporate social media tools and tricks in their SEO endeavours, you want to get your name out there as much as possible and social media is the way to do it. Social signals to your pages are almost as good as back links. “Social shares – retweets, +1s and likes – are the SEO currency of the common internet user,”
Q – 25 Tell us what is 301 redirect?
Ans- It is a method by which the user is redirected to new page url to old page url . It is a permanent redirect and it is also useful in directing link juice to new url from old url .
Q – 26 Do you know who is Rand Fishkin?
Ans- Rand Fishkin is the CEO and Co founder of Seomoz, the most popular seo software in the world. He started the informative “White Board Friday” series for explaining the concepts related to Seo and search engines.
Q – 27 Do you know what is Page Rank?
Ans- This is the Google technology for measuring popularity among users. Yahoo has a similar technology, called Web Rank, and Alexa Rank is the Alexa technology. The way Google measures how popular a given page is based on the number and quality of sites that link to it.
Q – 28 Explain what is the technical part of SEO?
Ans- If they don’t understand simple HTML then they aren’t the person you want to be working with, it’s as simple as that. SEO experts also need to understand server side lingo like 301, 404, robots.txt, etc.
Q – 29 Tell me what do you mean by Cloaking?
Ans- Cloaking is a deceptive way of optimizing search. In this technique a different content will be searched by the search engine than what is presented or searched by the users.
Q – 30 Tell me what do you understand by Google Dance?
Ans- Google Dance happens when major updates happen on the database maintained by Google. Constant shuffling leads to unstable rankings of the Web Pages.This continues for some days and is known as Google dance. It was witnessed in the past before the real time searching happened. Now, Google updates its index almost everyday and changes are witnessed narrowly.
Q – 31 Explain what is LSI?
Ans- LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It is a data retrieval technique which finds connection between words and the use of synonyms while fetching data from the index.
Q – 32 Tell me what do you understand by Cloaking?
Ans- Cloaking involves using deceptive techniques which presents the user with a different version of the webpage than that presented to the search engines.
Q – 33 Do you know what is keyword stemming?
Ans- The process of finding out the root word from the search query is referred as keywords stemming.
Q – 34 Tell me how will you cross-check whether your SEO campaign is working or not?
Ans- To check whether your SEO campaign is working or not, the first approach is to check the websites statistics, which tells you about the origin of traffic. The other way of checking is to make a search based on the relevant keywords and key phrases and look for the search result. The number of search result will tell you whether your SEO campaign is working or not.
Q – 35 Explain what are the key aspects of Penguin update?
Ans- Penguin is the code name for Google algorithm. Its main target is to decrease the ranking of that website that are violating the Google Webmaster guidelines. These guidelines are violated by using black hat techniques like cloaking and stuffing.
Q – 36 Tell me how will you increase the Pagerank of a page?
Ans- By building more backlinks from authority sites and high page rank webpages.
Q – 37 Tell me which is better Robots.txt or Meta Robots Tag?
Ans- Meta Robots tag is much better as it helps in forcing the search engine crawlers not to index and display the hidden pages in your server.
Q – 38 Tell me can search engines see password protected pages?
Ans- In most of the cases Search engines are not different from regular users. Search engines cannot go anywhere that a regular user cannot go. If we have a password protected area on our website that cannot be accessed without a login and password then the search engines also cannot see it.
Q – 39 Tell me how can you make a website mobile friendly?
Ans- I will create a mobile friendly version of the website for Googlebot-Mobile, use meta.txt for specifying special instructions to mobile search engine crawlers, use mobile.xml sitemap and will have mobile optimized content on the site.
Q – 40 Explain difference between exit rate and bounce rate?
Ans- Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leaves a particular website just after visiting a single page on this and exit rate refers to the percentage of people who leaves from a particular page.
Q – 41 Tell me how will you treat Web standards while optimizing a website?
Ans- Google loves web standards hence I will apply the web standards provided by W3C while optimizing a web site.
Q – 42 Explain how will you neutralize a toxic link to your site?
Ans- Through Backlink Quality Checker you can know who links to your website. Now, you have to go to ‘ Toxic link’ report, where you will find all the links, that are harmful to your websites. If there is any link in ‘ Toxic link report’ that matches with the link on your website, then you can remove it by using ‘Google Disavov tool’.
Q – 43 Explain what does it mean if nothing appears on doing search on the domain?
Ans- On doing search on your domain and if nothing appears then there are three possibilities.
☛ May be the site is banned by search engines
☛ May be no index by search engines
☛ Some canonical issues
Q – 44 Tell us how can you search with the exact keywords you type on Google without using quotes?
Ans- We can use the Verbatim tool in order to search with the exact keywords entered on Google.
Q – 45 Explain me distinct types of SEO practice?
Ans- Primarily two types of SEO are being sporting in practice – Off-Page SEO and On-Page SEO.
Off-Page SEO is the method of earning backlinks from other websites in order to enhance the ranking of the
site. This method include various method of SEO including Blog posting, forum, article submission, Press
release submission, classified and miscellaneous.
On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing a website which includes on-site work such as writing content, title, description, Alt tag, Meta tags as well as ensuring web-page’s code and design which can be indexed and crawled by search engines properly.
Q – 46 Explain which technique is unethical and can be a reason for banning?
Ans- Creating a doorway page instead a home page is considered as unethical because doorway pages are aimed at misleading search engines.
Q – 47 Tell me what methods would you apply for decreasing the loading time of a website?
Ans- I would use external style sheets, less images (unless necessary), optimize the images and decrease the file sizes of the image without reducing the quality of the image, use CSS sprites to reduce HTTP requests etc.
Q – 48 Tell me who provides you with your content?
Ans- SEO processes usually require a large amount of content to be written, so if they don’t have a team (or at least one) high quality writer to deal with they aren’t ideal. If you’re fortunate enough to have an in-house content writer they should work closely together.
Q – 49 Do you know what is keyword density and what is the formula for knowing keyword density?
Ans- From SEO point of view, keyword density will definitely help to stand out your content from others. The formula to know the keyword density is ( Total number of keyword/ total number of words in your article) multiply by 100.
Q – 50 Do you know what is Google Sandbox?
Ans- Google sandbox is an imaginary area where new websites and their search rating are put on hold until they prove worthy for ranking. In other words, it checks the standard of the website.
Q – 51 Explain the functions of body content relevance?
Ans- Whenever there is a text that does not have images on the web page is referred as body content relevance or non-image text. It helps in good optimization of the sites and also to improve your ranking in the search engine.
Q – 52 Suppose the meta robots tag has a value of “no index, no follow” what does it mean?
Ans- It means the search engine crawlers would not index the contents and would not follow the links present on the page.
Q – 53 Explain how many keywords do you think are enough to target on a web page?
Ans- There are virtually no limits on the number of keywords that we can target on a web page. Best approach is to focus on our main keyword and all the secondary keywords would find way for itself in the search engines. The old method of targeting 3 keywords per web page does not works any more. You can have 10-15 keywords or even more to target on a single web page.
Q – 54 Do you know what is Cross Linking?
Ans- Cross Linking- a strategy that can come in handy to get high search engine rankings, by leveraging multiple domains owned by you. Search engines value these links, as they are from relevant sites, with related content- and you stand a chance of getting a better rank
Q – 55 Tell me how do you know how much to pay for a text link from another site to yours?
Ans- The price of a text link from another site to yours depends on many factors, The price is often different because it depends on the current rating of the site that will back link to us.
The most important of which is the Web Site the back link originates from, because there can’t be universal prices for text links. when you don’t know the real price of a link, negotiating to drop the price is pointless and generally, reputable sites are not going to negotiate the price of their links.
Q – 56 Explain what is Google Sandbox?
Ans- Google Sandbox is an imaginary area where new and less authoritative sites are kept for a specified time period until they establish themselves of being displayed on the search results. It happens by building too many links within a short period of time.
Q – 57 Tell me what is PAD? How you can use it for SEO purposes?
Ans- PAD (Portable Application Description) is xml based file. For SEO, I can use it for my software related website and can submit PAD file to various software related websites like download.com, brothersoft.com, cnet.com etc.
Q – 58 Do you know what is the meaning of competitive analysis?
Ans- Competitive analysis does the comparison, between the website I am optimizing, and the website that is ranked highly in search results.
Q – 59 Tell me what are out bound Links?
Ans- The outbound links are our website links to other webpage or website.
Q – 60 Explain how does Google Plus helps in Seo?
Ans- Google Plus helps the promoted web pages to get plus ones which are considered as genuine votes by Google. More plus ones helps to enhance our search engine rankings. Moreover,it helps to get high rankings in personalized search results where our friends can see the web pages shared and promoted by us.
Q – 61 Tell me does Google uses keyword tags?
Ans- No, Google does not make use of keyword tags.
Q – 62 Do you know what is Google EMD updates?
Ans- The EMD Update – for “Exact Match Domain” – is a filter Google launched in September 2012 to prevent poor quality sites from ranking well simply because they had words that match search terms in their domain names.
When a fresh EMD Update happens, sites that have improved their content may regain good rankings. New sites with poor content – or those previously missed by EMD – may get caught. In addition, “false positives” may get released
Q – 63 Tell me what does the abbreviation PPC stand for?
Ans- Pay per click, Pay per Click measures how much online advertisers must pay each time their advertisement is clicked on.
Q – 64 Explain what is a landing page?
Ans- A landing page is a page in the website which is designed to attract the visitors to contact/subscribe/buy a service or the product by reading few lines of important information about that particular service or the product on that page.
Q – 65 Explain what is the difference between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?
Ans- On Page Optimization means optimizing your website and making changes on title, meta tags, site structure, site content, solving canonicalization problem, managingrobots.txt etc.
Off Page Optimization means optimizing your web presence which involves backlink building and social media promotion.
Q – 66 Tell me how you can search a particular keyword from a website?
Ans- With this operator keyword site:www.globalguideline.com
Q – 67 Tell me what do you know about LSI?
Ans- LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. This technique is established to obtain the data by relating the word to its closest counterparts or to its similar context. For example, if you are searching something with a keyword “CAR” it will show all the related things like classic cars, car auctions, Bentley car, car race etc.
Q – 68 Explain what do you mean by Backlink?
Ans- The incoming links to your website or webpage is referred as Backlink.
Q – 69 Tell me what are doorway pages?
Ans- These are pages that are specially created to rank high on search engines using deceptive techniques.Doorway pages do not provide useful content but instead redirect users to the main page.
Q – 70 Tell me how can you track Facebook likes using Google Analytics?
Ans- We can do this with the help of social interaction web tracking. I will add a custom script using FB.Event.subscribe function to start tracking clicks.
Q – 71 Explain blog, article & press release?
Ans- A blog is referred as an information or discussion published on website or World Wide Web incorporating distinct entries called as posts. Basically, the blog is referred as everything thing where you can include others too. It is more individual in contrast to article and press release. It is also considered as very
personal in subject to both style and comprised ideas and information and can be written in the way just like you may talk to your readers. It is also called Web diary or Online Diary.
The articles are concerned with specific topic or event and are highly oriented towards an opinion instead of information. An article is supposed to be more oriented towards showing up opinions, views and idea. Generally, it is written by a third party or expert of any specific field.
Press Release is related with a specific action or event which can be republished by distinct medium of mass-media including other websites. It should be simple, short and professional. It conveys a clear message or information.
Q – 72 Tell me for seo which is better text links or graphical links?
Ans- Text links are better for SEO. Text links can contain the anchor text that our web page wishes to rank well for and that is an important factor in many search engines, especially Google. Image links are still valuable but do have less benefits compared to text links.