60+ Common SEO Interview Questions And Answers
1. What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of
optimizing website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs),
increasing visibility and organic traffic with the help of on-page, off-page
& technical activities.
2. What are the types of Search
Engine?
Popular types of Search Engine are Google, Microsoft Bing,
Yahoo!, Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo & Ask.com.
3. What are the different types of
SEO?
On-page SEO: Optimizing content, keywords, meta tags, and
HTML structure.
Off-page SEO: Building backlinks and promoting external brands.
Technical SEO: Make sure the site can be crawled and indexed by search engines. Check robots.txt file and XML sitemap.
4. What are Meta Tags in SEO?
Meta tags are snippets of code that provide search engines
and web browsers with information about a web page. They are essential for
on-page SEO and include:
Meta Title:
Appears as the clickable headline in search results.
Meta Description:
Summarizes the page content and can influence click-through rates (CTR).
5. What is a backlink?
A backlink is a hyperlink from one website to another.
Search engines view backlinks as votes of confidence for a website’s content,
and they play a crucial role in ranking. Backlinks passes links juice to your
website.
6. What is the difference between
Do-Follow and No-Follow links?
Do-Follow links: A "dofollow" link is a regular
hyperlink that allows search engine bots to follow the link and pass link juice
from the referring page to your website that helps to increase authority of
your website.
No-Follow links: Do not pass link equity, but still drive
referral traffic.
7. What are the 5 main Criteria of a
quality backlink?
The main criteria of making backlinks on another website are
High DA & PA, Low spam score, good traffics on referring domain, Do-follow Links and relevant
with your website.
8. What is Domain Authority(DA) in
SEO?
Domain Authority is a metric developed by MOZ that predicts
how well a website will rank on search engines. It ranges from 1 to 100, higher
the score, the better is the DA.
9. What Is Spam Score in SEO?
Spam score is a metric that measures toxicity of your
backlinks. It also measures how likely a website is to be penalized by search
engines.
10. What Is a Referring Domain?
Referring domains are domains from where we take backlinks
to pass link juice to our website.
11. What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google, that
helps monitor website performance in Google search results. It provides
insights into search visibility, indexing status, Clicks, Impression &
detecting website errors like 404 (Page Not Found), server issues etc.
12. Explain the difference between
White Hat and Black Hat SEO
White Hat SEO:
Ethical practices that follow search engine guidelines (e.g., quality content,
ethical link-building).
Black Hat SEO:
Unethical practices (e.g., keyword stuffing, link farms) aimed at manipulating
search engine rankings.
13. What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages
of a website. It helps search engines crawl and index the site efficiently.
14. How many URLs in a XML sitemap
have?
A sitemap can contain up to 50,000 URLs and be no larger
than 50 MB in uncompressed size.
15. What is robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a file that tells search engine crawlers which
pages or sections of a website should crawl or which are not crawl. This is
used mainly to avoid overloading your site with requests.
16. What is HTTP status code?
An HTTP status code are three-digit responses code that
shows when a browser requests a service from a web server. There are five
classes defined by the standard:
1xx informational
response – the request was received, continuing process
2xx successful –
the request was successfully received and accepted
3xx redirection –
further action needs to be taken in order to complete the request
4xx client error
– the request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled
5xx server error
– the server failed to fulfil an apparently valid request
17. What is a 301 redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. It's important to maintain SEO value while changing your content. It is the HTTP status code sent by the web server to the browser.
18. What is a 302 redirect?
A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect from one URL to another. The program redirects visitors to a new URL containing the resource.
19. What is canonicalization in SEO?
Canonicalization is the process of selecting a preferred version of a website when there are multiple versions of the same content, to avoid duplicate content issues. Canonical issues usually arise when a website/website has multiple URLs that contain the same or similar information.
20. What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are highly specialized keywords that typically have lower search volume but higher intent. Basically long tail keywords are less competitive and help attract high quality traffic to our website.
21. What are Core Web Vitals?
Key sites are related to page speed, searchability, and visual stability, which Google uses as quality criteria. A key website basically determines how users experience your website.
22. What are main 3 types Core Web Vitals?
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long large visual content appears on the page. To maximize user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of page load.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures how quickly the page responds to user input. By March 2024, INP will make First Entry Delay (FID) critical to core networks.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS measures visual stability. It helps you understand how content changes as the page loads, which can be confusing to users. A good CLS score is below 0.1.
23. What is a SERP feature?
SERP features are elements on a search engine results page
beyond the traditional blue link, such as featured snippets, knowledge panels,
and rich results.
24. What is a featured snippet?
Featured snippets are designed to help people find
information more easily. Featured snippet provide quick answer to a user's
query typically in paragraph, list, or table format. It appears at position
ZERO.
25. What Are Rich Snippets?
Rich snippets are the additional information display in SERP
with your domain. It can help to increase click-through rates (CTR), which can
lead to more traffic and improved ranking.
26. What is link juice in SEO?
Link juice refers to the SEO value passed from one website
to another through backlinks. Quality links pass more link juice, which
improves rankings. This value is passed through hyperlinks.
27. What is CTR in SEO?
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of users who click on a search after seeing it. Improving your click-through rate can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings. CTR = (number of clicks / number of impressions) times 100.
28. What is the difference between impressions and clicks in SEO?
Impressions: how many times a webpage appears in search results.
Clicks: The number of users who clicked on a web page from a search engine.
29. What is HTML Sitemap?
An HTML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on a
website and provides links to them. HTML sitemaps are designed to help users
navigate a website and improve their user experience (UX).
30. Name a few important Google
ranking factors in SEO
The main Google ranking factors are: Good content, Robots.txt, Sitemap, Good user-friendly links, Page speed, content description fields. User experience, form code, social signals and domain permissions.
31. What Is an Hreflang Tag?
An hreflang tag is an HTML attribute that tells search
engines which language and regional targeting should be used for a specific
webpage. It is important for international SEO.
32. What is keyword density?
Keyword density refers to the percentage of times a keyword
appears on a webpage compared to the total word count. Overusing keywords
(keyword stuffing) can result in penalties.
33. What is a URL slug?
The URL is the part of the URL that comes after the domain name and describes the content of the page. A clear, descriptive URL improves search engine optimization and user experience.
34. What is the difference between an organic result and a paid result?
Organic results are obtained through SEO and appear in search results, while paid results appear above search results from Google Ads or other PPC advertising.
35. What is a landing page in SEO?
A landing page is a single web page designed to generate traffic by targeting specific content or providing a solution to a user's query. Landing pages are often used in search engine optimization to drive traffic and improve results.
35. What types of keywords in SEO?
Short Tail Keywords
Long-Tail Keywords
Short-Term Fresh Keywords.
Product Defining Keywords.
Customer-Defining Keywords.
Geo-Targeting Keywords.
LSI Keywords.
Types of Intent are:
Informational
Navigational
Commercial
Transactional
36. What is engagement rate in SEO?
Engagement rate is a metric that measures how much an
audience interacts with a website or with your content.
37. What is latent semantic indexing
(LSI Keywords)?
LSI keywords are related keywords that help search engines better understand your content and increase relevance in search results. It matches your target keywords.
38. What is referral traffic in SEO?
Referral traffic refers to visitors who come to your website from other websites. This traffic comes from backlinks and is an important signal for search engines to determine the authority of a page.
39. What is duplicate content in SEO?
Duplicate content refers to content that appears on more
than one webpage, either within the same domain or across different websites.
Duplicate content confuses search engines and can harm rankings.
40. What is an AMP page?
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is Google’s open-source platform that enables fast loading web pages. AMP pages improve the mobile experience and can improve rankings in mobile search results.
41. What is a 404 error in SEO?
A 404 error occurs when a webpage cannot be found on the
server. Too many 404 errors can negatively impact the user experience and SEO
performance. We can solve this problem by 301 redirections.
42. What is the limit of description
& title tag in Pixel?
Meta description: The recommended limit for meta description is between 150 - 160 characters and the maximum length of meta description on desktop is 920 pixels. On mobile, the maximum length is around 680 pixels.
Title Tag: Recommended limit is 50 to 60 characters. The maximum width of the title tag on desktop is 580 pixels. On mobile devices, the maximum width is approximately
43. What are orphan pages in SEO?
An orphaned page is a web page that has no internal links pointing to it, making it difficult for search engines to find and crawl it. This can have a negative impact on SEO.
44. What is voice search SEO?
Voice search SEO focuses on optimizing content for voice
queries, which are usually longer and more conversational than traditional text
searches. This involves targeting long-tail keywords and answering specific
questions directly.
45. What is schema.org in SEO?
Schema.org provides a collection of shared vocabularies that
webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search
engines, helping them better understand the content.
46. What is broken link building?
Broken link building is an SEO technique where you find broken links on other websites and recommend your valuable content as an alternative. This strategy helps build backlinks while improving the user experience.
47. What is keyword cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on a
website are optimized for the same keyword, causing them to compete against
each other in search rankings. This can dilute the site’s SEO efforts.
48. What is crawl budget?
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine
will crawl on a site within a given time frame. Optimizing crawl budget ensures
search engines efficiently crawl and index important pages.
49. What is Google Panda?
Google Panda is a major update from Google that reduces the amount of bad content, such as spam or duplicate content, and improves the value of good content.
50. What is Google Penguin?
Google Penguin is an algorithm update that Google released in April 2012 to penalize websites with bad affiliate practices such as buying products or using bad backlinks.
51. What is Google Hummingbird?
Google announced the Hummingbird algorithm in September 2013. Google Hummingbird is an updated algorithm designed to improve search and understand the meaning of users' queries rather than targeting a single word.
52. What is alt text in images?
Alternative text (alternative text) is used to describe an image on a web page. It helps search engines understand the content of the image, increasing its usability and ranking in search engines in image searches.
53. What is link building in SEO?
Link building is the process of getting links from other websites to yours. It is an important part of off-page SEO, helping to improve authority and search rankings.
54. What is the importance of internal linking in SEO?
Internal linking helps distribute link equity across a
website, improves user navigation, and assists search engines in crawling and
indexing a website effectively.
55. What are anchor texts?
Anchor texts are clickable keywords in a large network. Good anchor texts can improve a website's ranking for certain keywords.
56. What is bounce rate in SEO?
Bounce rate refers to the number of visitors who leave a site after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate can be a sign of bad content or a poor user experience, which can affect your rankings.
57. What is the Google Knowledge Panel?
The Google Knowledge Panel is a box that appears in search
results, showing information about entities like businesses, people, or places.
It pulls data from the Google Knowledge Graph.
58. What is Google’s RankBrain?
RankBrain is Google's machine learning algorithm that helps search engines understand user intent to provide better results.
59. What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a tool that allows marketers to manage and deploy tags online without changing the code. It is useful for setting up tracking for SEO, PPC and other advertising campaigns.
60. What is indexing and crawling in SEO?
Crawling:
Crawling is a process by which search engine discovered your web page. In
simple terms, a crawler studies websites, related web-pages, links, and content
to create entries for search engine indexing.
Indexing: A
webpage is considered to be indexed when it is added to the database of a
search engine. Once the indexing is done, the webpage will start appearing for
queries on the search engine. However, it is important to note that the webpage
will have to go through a process of search engine optimization to get
reflected on top positions.
61. What is SEO audit?
SEO audit is the method of analyzing your site performance
to ensure that your website is performing excellently. It helps identify areas
for improvement, such as on-page optimization, site architecture, and content
gaps.
62. What is schema markup?
Schema markup is a code used to help search engines
understand the content on a page. It enables the creation of rich snippets in
SERPs.
63. What are the types of Schema?
Here are the main types of schema markup commonly used in
Search Engine Optimization:
Article Schema
Product Schema
Local Business Schema
Breadcrumbs Schema
Review Schema
Recipe Schema
FAQ Schema
Event Schema
Video Schema
Organization Schema
Person Schema
Sitelinks Search Box Schema
64. What is Google
Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile listing helps businesses manage
their online presence on Google, including appearing on Google Maps and local
search results.
65. What is Google
Analytics 4 (GA4)?
Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics
that focuses on event-based data and provides deeper insights into user
behavior across multiple platforms. It gives data of organic traffics, paid
traffics, direct traffics & social traffics.
These top 60 SEO interview questions and answers cover a
wide range of topics to help you prepare thoroughly for any SEO job interview
in 2024 and 2025. To learn more about Search engine optimization, follow -
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