SEO Interview Questions and Answers for 2026

A must-know for anyone heading into SEO interview, this question is frequently asked in SEO technical interview questions.

There are several ways of improving Google rankings. To improve my company’s site, here are the key steps I would take:

Improve my on-site SEO

It is one of the speediest ways to improve your Google rankings. Here, I will:

• Make sure that the keyword is towards the beginning of the title tag.
• Make content at least 1800 words.
• Add relevant keywords 2-3x on the page.

Add LSI keywords

To confirm to Google that my content is actually about a particular topic, I will use Latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords which are related to main keywords and semantically relevant too. For example, if my primary keyword is website, some LSI keywords could be pages, domain, online, web pages etc.

Monitor the technical SEO

Since technical SEO problems can really hurt a site’s SEO like mobile optimization, site/page loading speed, therefore the technicalities need to be reviewed off and on to ensure that my site works well.

Match Content to Search Intent

If people generally get what they’re looking for from my page, I can expect the ranking to improve. Therefore I will not only make my content relevant but use relevant keywords as well that people usually use.

Reduce bounce rate

As bounce rate indicates the percentage of people visiting my site and leaving immediately without viewing other pages, I need to keep it at an optimal level. To ensure this I will ensure:

• Lining up the content with Search Intent is a great way to improve your bounce rate
• Pushing content to the top of the page so that it remains above the fold
• Structure the page so it’s easy for people to find what they’re looking for. For example adding a little table of contents at the top of the page so that readers know what to expect out of the content, adding visuals, videos, charts, screenshots etc.

Find more keywords to target

Since keywords are most integral factor of SEO ranking, I need to optimize my page around several different keywords so that more people using different but related keywords can find my page fast.

Publish high-quality and long form of content

High quality content will make people share the content on social media platforms and Google algorithm also finds them useful.

Publish more visual content

Since visual content have a better appeal and recall value, I will use different forms of visual content like:

• Infographics
• Maps
• Charts
• Flowcharts
• Videos

Build Backlinks to my site

A very effective way to improve ranking is securing backlinks which is nothing but people vouching for my page/site as worth visiting. Though link building is a painstaking, elaborate and time consuming process, it is the best way to establish a site’s authority.

Content promotion

A piece of content is of no value unless it is promoted and reaches more audience. I will do this via Broken Link Building, Guest posting, use keyword-rich anchor text in the backlinks.

Track and Monitor Results

A well ranking site also needs constant monitoring and I will ensure this using Google analytics to track organic traffic.

Boost CTR

Using title Tags that stand out, short, descriptive URLs, rich snippets will help in improving the click through rate or CTR.

Use Internal Linking

Link from one page on my site to another page on my site also helps in rank improvement of my site.

Long-tail keywords though with very low search volumes convert at a much higher rate than those keywords having high search volumes. The reason is, people using long-tail keywords are looking for something specific and are likely to move along in their buyer journey with a very strong possibility to convert.

For example, as per SEMrush, the keyword “Honda dealership in Chicago.” gets 320 searches per month which is comparatively low compared to the more general keywords like terms like “Honda dealership” which gets a lot of search volume but is much more difficult to rank for.

Therefore, the more general keyword “Honda dealership” is not only difficult to rank for but also less likely to convert when compared to more specific “Honda dealership in Chicago” which is a long-tail keyword targeting buyers from Chicago only.

It's no surprise that this one pops up often in interview questions on SEO.  

Featured snippets are expanded search results displayed that come in the form of lists, paragraphs, or charts, that answer the questions that users ask in the search bar. A featured snippet is not an ad and Google chooses the most relevant source that answers a search query to the closest as a featured snippet. 

Marketers like featured snippets because these allow them to outrank competitors, boost conversions, and drive tons of targeted traffic. Sometimes a featured snippet is called “Position 0” because it shows up before traditional search results. Therefore marketers optimize for them to get traffic.

A common question in Search Engine Optimization interview questions, don't miss this one.  

301 is one of many possible HTTP status codes like 404 - Not Found, 403 - Forbidden and, 500 - Server Error. 

301 redirect is like a mail forwarder. If I move a piece of content away from a specific URL to some other location, a visitor visiting the old location will get a 404 - page not found message. 

But to improve a user journey, I can ask the server to forward visits from the old URL to a new location where I have shifted the using a 301 redirect. If a visitor now visits the old URL, the server will send back the 301 - Permanently Moved status code, and then move the visitor on to the new location. 

But the entire thing happens so fast that the user will not be aware of it and will simply land up on the piece of content that the user was looking for though there will be a change in the URL which an observant user will notice. 

The other helpful use of a 301 redirect is with the search engines which understand correctly where content has moved to keep their index up-to-date. This is the reason why 301 redirect helps in SEO and should be used. 

Yes, it does. A company undeniably will want people to recognize its brand, business and what its website is all about which an SEO-optimized domain tells them and becomes more likely to be clicked. 

Spammers purchase domain names with their targeted keywords, for example, “get-rich-fast.info” or “buy-cheap-rolex.biz.” to get their desired results like increased click-through rates and higher rankings on search engines. 

Having the right domain name can help a business target its audience and accelerate its search engine placement. Branding and keywords are the two ways a domain can impact the SEO of a company. 

• Branding domains 

The domain name of a business should be based on its brand so that users can find, remember, share and identify the business online. It is better to choose a domain name at the time of choosing the business name. In other words, if a business already has a business name, it should use it as its domain name as well. 

• Keyword domains 

This is an alternative to the branding domain where a company can choose a domain name that contains keywords about its business, products, services, etc. For example, if a start-up specializes in pets photography it might get better search ranking results with a domain name like petportraitphotography.com. 

Top-level domain (TLD) signifies the last segment of a domain name that is to say, the part that follows immediately after the "." (dot) symbol. For example, in the address: https://www.google.com, the “.com” portion is the Top-level domain (TLD). 

TLDs have two categories: generic TLDs and country-specific TLDs. 

Some of the popular TLDs include: 

1. .com 
2. .org 
3. .net 
4. .gov 
5. .biz 
6. .edu

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the entity that coordinates domains and IP addresses for the internet. 

One of the most frequently posed SEO questions for interview, be ready for it.  

The most common SEO mistakes include: 

Broken Links or dead links 

 It means that is a web page that can't be found or accessed by a user, for various reasons. Web servers often return an error message when someone tries to access a broken link. 

Dead pages 

It indicates web pages with no outgoing links, or the ones that include no header or footer links and no main navigation sections, thus creating a dead end. Because such pages give users no further navigation opportunities and the only way is backtracking to where they landed from or manually typing a new address, such pages are called dead pages. 

Crafting Content around keywords 

Many writers begin developing their content marketing pieces with the SEO keywords they would like to include in the article and start from there. It could prove a blunder in the end.  

Poorly written, Keyword stuffed content 

Such kind of content does not give any value to the readers. Similarly, content that is overstuffed with keywords or uses very broad keywords is also undesirable since either they are bad to read or will not be found at all, defeating the purpose of its creation. 

Poor loading time 

Slow load time is a common issue affecting SEO results because often websites are managed by individuals with less formal training which can affect the site’s efficiency, especially when they upload images that are too large. 

Lacking unique title 

The title should invoke the interest of the readers, should contain keywords and readers should find them useful to click and read on. 

Ignoring technical SEO factors and User Experience 

Search engines are now extremely concerned with the end user’s experience on the website. Issues like poor loading speeds or a bad user experience, such technical SEOs will hinder ranking, and these factors could quickly become more critical for SEO success.  

Over-optimizing 

Over- optimization of keywords does not work these days. Instead of trying to hit a certain keyword density, focus should be on making relevancy.  

Poor internal links 

On a website, Google explores things like how the pages, blog posts and other content link to one another, to determine which pages are most important and also for which topics and keywords they are most relevant. If it doesn’t find, it affects ranking. 

Ignoring meta descriptions 

Poorly written (or entirely missing) meta descriptions are a common oversight though such descriptions provide a critical context for search engines and customers too. 

Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) are metrics which are often confused to mean the same thing. However, there are several differences. A DA indicates how well a domain will rank on search engine pages, whereas a PA shows how well a particular webpage will rank on the search engine pages. The detail differences are:

• Purpose

Domain Authority helps us know the status of a website property compared to its competition and predicts the chances of ranking in the SERPs.

On the other hand, Page Authority, predicts how a particular page will rank on the SERPs thus helping us to prioritize and define the actions we need to improve or develop based on the individual page with the scopes for improvement.

• Data

While, Domain Authority data is drawn from Moz’s web index tool and considers several factors, including links and linking root domains, Page Authority considers over 40 factors like link counts and others excluding keyword or content optimization.

• Calculation

Both Domain Authority and Page Authority are calculated by the Moz algorithm backed by machine learning on a scale of 1-100.

For Domain Authority, it evaluates the linking root domains and the number of links existing on a website, whereas for Page Authority it takes into account link counts and other factors but for an individual page.

• Scope

The scope of Domain Authority is to consider an entire website, while Page Authority relates to an individual web page or pages but not the entire website.

A staple in common SEO interview questions, be prepared to answer this one.  

Keywords also known as search queries, key phrases or SEO keywords are words or phrases that visitors or users type on search engines like Google, Bing etc. to find information on a chosen topic of their interest. 

In SEO, keywords are used in content in order to rank at the top of Google or any other search engine results for that same keyword. 

Keywords are the foundation of both SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing or the search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns where they are used in paid ads. For SEO, a target keyword can bring quality and targeted traffic to a website and for PPC right keywords can put a site positioned above the organic results. 

In PPC, the advertisers bid for specific keywords to appear at the top of search results for those specific keywords.

For example, digital marketing is doing paid marketing for a car dealership. Using the keyword say “Toyota for sale in San Jose” will bring a prospective buyer pretty close to buying.  

Compared to this, a search query like “best midsize sedans” is for someone looking for information about mid-size sedans and rather at an awareness stage in the buying funnel. 

Hence such keywords would be better if used in a blog post which is written around such a topic and it would be optimized for those keywords, thereby bringing the content early up on the SERP page for the visitor looking for the information. 

In 2015, Google released its newest mobile algorithm update with the aim to give users/visitors mobile-friendly websites a boost in smartphone search results. Media outlets and SEO experts gave the new update the nickname of “Mobilegeddon.” 

As for its impact on any website, Google’s new mobile friendly algorithm will only impact searches on mobile devices. The aim is to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages and bringing non mobile friendly pages down or in other words Mobilegeddon of the mobile friendly algorithm will only impact mobile rankings and it will not have any impact or effect on desktop and tablet rankings. 

The new mobile algorithm evaluates a website in a page-by-page way. While some of the pages could be deemed not mobile friendly, others could benefit from this algorithm which runs in real-time. Though as per Google, a page cannot be partially mobile friendly, it is either mobile friendly or not and there is no gray area in-between.

The ways to test if a site is already indexed by Google as mobile friendly website are:

• Using Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.
• Checking the mobile usability reports within Google Webmaster Tools.
• Checking if the site has a mobile friendly label in mobile searches.

Google Suggest or Autocomplete is a function Google offers to users to easily complete their query by suggesting possible extensions of what they are currently typing while making a search or giving a search a query. As someone starts typing in the search box, a box drops down giving options to finish the search without having to type further thus trying to save users’ time by finishing the search request on their behalf.

So far as its SEO value is concerned, it offers a resource of what Google sees as the most popular searches using a base word. A company can use this function while conducting keyword research. The reason is, if Google adds a search term to Google Suggest most definitely it is because it considers it as popular and therefore important.  

Event tracking means monitoring the interactions users have with a website. When visitors or users engage with a website effectively, it results in high conversion. So, to understand how engaging a website is, a company needs to track its website events and the data gained helps to optimize the conversion rate and thereby reach the business goals. 

Downloading eBooks, signing up, visiting a specific page, making a purchase etc. are some examples of event tracking. 

Events can be tracked with the help of Google Analytics which monitor user engagement on a website by way of: 

• Outbound links 
• Media downloads such as eBooks 
• Users’ drop-off points 
• The number of form submissions 
• Website elements 
• The time spent on a task, for example reading a blog 
• The page load time  

This question is a regular feature in interview questions on SEO, be ready to tackle it.  

Link building is a strategy that a company uses to get other websites to link back to it and in SEO it is called backlinks. Some of the most popular link-building strategies are: 

• Content marketing 
• Email outreach 
• Broken link building 
• Unlinked brand mentions 
• PR 

From the SEO point of view, it is very important because the more high-quality backlinks a page has, the higher it can rank in search engines and backlinks are one of Google’s most important ranking factors. Companies, therefore, use link-building strategies to rank high in Google search results and other search engines as well, where the quantity of backlinks matters for ranking. 

This is a frequently asked question in SEO questions for interview.  

Link building can be done by way of: 

Asking for Links

This is when we actively contact a website and ask them to link to ours. We can ask to link to: 

• Blog posts 
• In-depth guides 
• eBooks 
• Visual posts like infographics, SlideShares 
• Case studies 
• Original research and data 

There are tools available like SEMrush's Link Building Tool and others to quickly find prospects to reach out to.  

Add Links

Adding links means going to another website and manually adding my link there. For example, we can manually add links to social media profiles, business directories, forums, communities, and Q&A sites like Quora, blog comments and user profile pages. 

Though manually adding SEO links is one of the easiest ways, it is also the least effective as these types of links often come from low-quality sources and Google does not give too much weight to them. Because it is self-endorsement and not earned or editorially given without asking for. 

Earn Links

This is when other websites give links to ours without asking them to. Creating outstanding high-quality content that people want to link to is the best way to earn links. When someone wants to link to a resource or helpful reading then linking happens naturally. 

The few different types of content people prefer to link to are: 

• Visual assets like infographics, charts, diagrams, etc. 
• Original research and data like industry analysis, surveys, proprietary research, etc. 
• Online tools and calculators 
• In-depth guides and tutorials 

A good backlink is something which has attributes like: 

• Authority

In terms of SEO “Authority” refers to the overall quality of a website or a webpage. The higher the quality score of a website, the more weight its backlinks carry for Google and a link from a high-authority website is more valuable than one from any other site as it can help a page rank higher. 

For example, a link from Moz will likely have a much bigger impact than a link from a small website that is hardly known. A website’s authority can check using SEO tools like SEMrush's Backlink Analytics tool etc. 

• Relevance

Relevancy also matters for a backlink to be useful. Links need to come from websites that are relevant to mine. For example, if my company is into the business of SEO consulting, getting a backlink from an authoritative site about real estate may not help in my rankings. The more relevant the backlinking site, the better. 

• Placement

Placement of a backlink on a page is important for Google and a good backlink is one that appears within the main body of a webpage. Google considers different probabilities involving the possibility that a reader might click on a link depending on where it is located and the higher it appears up on the page, the more authority that link carries compared to links in sidebars or footers or low in a page’s content may not be worth as much as the one that is placed higher in the page’s body. 

• Anchor Text

The clickable text that appears in a hyperlink is anchor text and is important because both search engines and readers use it to understand what a linked page is about. Therefore, the more relevant and descriptive the anchor text, the better for SEO. For example, an anchor text, “how to store coffee,” tells Google that the linked page that follows is about how to store coffee. 

• Nofollow vs. Follow

The “Nofollow” link attribute tells search engines not to follow the outbound link which can be to a different company’s site or some other site or page of the same company. That way the link juice is not passed on. 

It is a type of link-building and content marketing strategy in SEO where a writer from a business/company contacts another website (usually via email) and offers to write for them. Once done the writer adds a contextual link back to the writer’s own website/blog. It happens via agreement and could be free or may be asked to pay a small admin fee. 

Guest posting can provide monumental opportunities for SEO and sales goals. The things that guest posting can do for a company are: 

• Audience introduction

Writing blog posts for other sites allows the author to get in front of their audience, thereby raising the writer’s brand awareness to potential prospects who may be unfamiliar with the writer’s brand. 

• Elevates the brand trust

If a company’s brand provides quality content, visitors will come back for more. Building authority in a sector or niche goes hand in hand with building customer trust in that sector. Guest posting on other related sites allows the company to establish its depth of knowledge in the field. 

• Helps in getting more site visits

When a writer’s article goes live on another site, it can bring months and years of traffic, depending on the popularity of the site where the article has been posted and how helpful and engaging the post is. 

• Helps to get backlinks

Because backlinks form the backbone of Google ranking, guest posting on a good and authoritative site in the sector could get a backlink. 

I improve the landing page quality by: 

• Reducing page load time 
• Using a strong headline 
• Including a supportive tagline 
• Optimizing user experience 
• Producing fresh, original, and quality copy 
• One idea one landing page 
• Using Good visual imagery 
• Clear CTAs 
• Using relevant keyword 
• Easy navigation 
• No excessive links 
• Using trust symbols 
• Maintaining brand connection 
• Creating a simple, quick to fill lead capture form 
• Following Google guidelines 

A link audit analyzes the current links, also called the link profile of a website and evaluates how good they are for the site. Link audit also shows if there are any risky links and shows a business can improve its link strategy. Furthermore, even if a company’s site does not have any risky links, a site still could be under performing which a link audit can fathom. Besides, link audits can also help a business to size up a competitor and enhance SEO. 

An SEO link audit also uncovers the existing “technical” issues, some of which might severely impact the SEO efforts of a business. Two of the most common ones that a company can accurately conduct an SEO link audit for, are 404 issues (page not found) and Canonical Issues.

Expect to come across this popular question in SEO questions asked in interview.  

Mobile-first indexing is Google's indexing of websites prioritizing their mobile formats over their desktop versions. Earlier the reverse used to be true but now with mobile users consisting of the bulk of search traffic, Google decided to bring mobile-first indexing.

NumPy provides several functions for concatenating and splitting arrays.

To concatenate two or more arrays, you can use the concatenate function:

import numpy as np 
arr1 = np.array([1, 2, 3]) 
arr2 = np.array([4, 5, 6]) 
concatenated = np.concatenate((arr1, arr2)) 
print(concatenated) # [1 2 3 4 5 6] 

The concatenate function takes a tuple of arrays as input and returns a single array that contains all the elements from the input arrays, in the order they were provided.

You can also specify the axis parameter to concatenate the arrays along a specific axis:

import numpy as np 
arr1 = np.array([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]) 
arr2 = np.array([[7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]]) 
concatenated = np.concatenate((arr1, arr2), axis=0) 
print(concatenated) # [[ 1 2 3] 
# [ 4 5 6] 
# [ 7 8 9] 
# [10 11 12]] 
concatenated = np.concatenate((arr1, arr2), axis=1) 
print(concatenated) # [[ 1 2 3 7 8 9] 
# [ 4 5 6 10 11 12]] 

In the first example, we concatenate the arrays along axis 0 (rows), resulting in a 4x3 array. In the second example, we concatenate the arrays along axis 1 (columns), resulting in a 2x6 array.

You can also use the vstack and hstack functions to stack arrays vertically or horizontally, respectively:

import numpy as np 
arr1 = np.array([1, 2, 3]) 
arr2 = np.array([4, 5, 6]) 
vertical_stack = np.vstack((arr1, arr2)) 
print(vertical_stack) # [[1 2 3] 
# [4 5 6]] 
horizontal_stack = np.hstack((arr1, arr2)) 
print(horizontal_stack) # [1 2 3 4 5 6] 

To split an array into multiple smaller arrays, you can use the split function from NumPy.

The split function takes the array to be split and the number of splits as input, and returns a list of arrays that have been split along the first axis.

For example, consider the following array:

import numpy as np 
arr = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) 

To split this array into 3 smaller arrays, you can use the split function as follows:

splitted = np.split(arr, 3) 
print(splitted) # [array([1, 2]), array([3, 4]), array([5, 6])] 

The split function returns a list of 3 arrays, each containing 2 elements from the original array.

You can also specify the axis parameter to split the array along a different axis. For example, to split a 2D array into smaller arrays along the rows:

import numpy as np 
arr = np.array([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]) 
splitted = np.split(arr, 3, axis=0) 
print(splitted) # [array([[1, 2, 3]]), array([[4, 5, 6]]), array([[7, 8, 9]])] 

In this example, the split function returns a list of 3 arrays, each containing a single row from the original array.

You can also use the vsplit and hsplit functions to split arrays vertically or horizontally, respectively:

import numpy as np 
arr = np.array([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]) 
vertical_split = np.vsplit(arr, 3) 
print(vertical_split) # [array([[1, 2, 3]]), array([[4, 5, 6]]), array([[7, 8, 9]])] 
horizontal_split = np.hsplit(arr, 3) 
print(horizontal_split) # [array([[1], [4], [7]]), array([[2], [5], [8]]), array([[3], [6], [9]])]

A common question in senior SEO interview questions, don't miss this one.  

Usually, I do it in these simple steps: 

Step 1: Benchmark our Backlink Profile Against Competitors 

Though this is not a must, I prefer it as it gives me a fair amount of insight into our competitors’ link-building strategies and helps in giving our own profile the most reasonable evaluation. 

In the backlink analytics, I type out three or four competitors’ domains, and I get everything I need to understand whether we are trending in the right direction with our link-building strategy. I get information like the number of backlinks/referring domains/referring IPs, authority score, backlink types, link attributes, and referring domains. 

Step 2: Find and Evaluate Each Backlink 

After understanding if our backlink portfolio is relevant to the competition, I find the main issues that are obstructing us from beating them. I look into finding the spammy links that harm our rankings, valuable links we might be losing or the gaps in our link-building strategy we are having. 

In the backlink audit tool I look at attributes like, overall toxic score due to too many harmful scores pointing to our site, too high or too low total number of analyzed backlinks, the small number of referring domains or if we are having too many links coming from just one domain that might cause Google suspicion, a high toxic score of referring domains, a high percentage of dofollow links, presence of money and compound anchors which are considered potentially toxic by Google, any spike in gained or lost backlinks in a certain time. 

Step 3: Clean Up Our Backlink Portfolio 

A backlink audit is more than finding and clearing toxic backlinks. It can also help to identify new opportunities for getting high-quality links and improve the link-building strategy overall. 

One of the most frequently posed SEO executive interview questions, be ready for it.  

Google treats links as one of the top three ranking factors and likes to see a well-rounded backlink profile, one that looks natural. Getting too many links of only one type, for example exclusively from affiliate blogs may look fishy to Google and if it suspects that we have paid for backlinks then we are gone for serious damage to our SEO efforts. 

Hence, I focus on creating a strong, natural backlink profile, which means a mix of no follow and follow links, with different variations of anchor text, and from websites with different tenure and authority, right from a respected industry publication to our start-up blogger. 

I keep all these goals in mind and follow some strategies: 

Develop Linkable and Shareable Quality Content

The best way to get natural links is to develop content that people would like to link to. So, my content strategy for my company is a mix of: 

• Industry research 
• In-depth how-to content 
• Statistics 
• Local guides 

Sometimes I also try the skyscraper technique of finding the top content ranking for a keyword, developing our own version that iterates and improves on it. Then with a better version I reach out to the websites linking to the original content and suggest updating their version by linking to our piece of content.  

Convert Mentions Into Links

I set up a free Google alert to scour the web for mentions of our company name or the names of our management board. Whenever a website mentions us, but does not include a link, that becomes our backlink target. Then I reach out and thank them for the coverage and ask if they wouldn’t mind linking to our website so that their readers can easily get additional or more information. 

Guest Blogging

I find relevant publications in our niche and research which blogs and outlets our customers follow. Then I reach out with our pitch to write for them for the mutual benefit of getting more viewers. I also have partnered with a few digital marketing agencies to upscale our link-building efforts since they work with ghostwriters and have connections with publications. They write on our behalf and help get our write-ups accepted. 

Community Connection

I already have a list ready of the industry partners we work with, vendors, and satisfied customers. I create case studies sometimes of our satisfied customers which they share (the links) on their own blogs. 

Anchor Text Optimization

The visible and clickable texts in a hyperlink are anchor texts and in browsers, they are often underlined and in blue color. SEO-friendly anchor texts are crisp and relevant and useful, that is they lead to pages that are related to the discussion of the original page and give more value-added information to the reader. I ensure this and also link to our website naturally within our articles and include a keyword where ever possible. 

A staple in SEO exceutive interview questions, be prepared to answer this one.

There are hundreds of metrics that can help us in tracking SEO activities and Google uses over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm. But to stay focused we use a few metrics only that we have already found are the most critical for our business and we keep tracking those metrics regularly.

Keyword Ranking

Our website’s keyword rankings offer a great snapshot of how our website is performing within the search engine result pages because these are the basics of our SEO strategy.

From Google Search Console I notice the queries users made that were responsible for our website showing in the results. I follow this practice on a monthly routine, so that I can use this extra information to our advantage. For example, if a search intent is related to content we created that is great, but if not then I see that we need to rework on maybe the on-page content or HTML tags to tell Google bots more clearly what the content is about.

I monitor the progress of certain keywords and phrases, and these insights tell me what content is working and showing up in the SERPs, and which content may need a little push. Because if we want our SEO metrics to improve we must focus on creating useful and relevant content that our users are looking for.

Organic Traffic

Typically, the more keyword rankings our content earns the more organic traffic we get. But this is not always the case. There are times I observe organic traffic stays the same despite additional keyword rankings, our landing pages not ranking high enough, or maybe our page titles or meta descriptions are not wooing users to click. I pay close attention to all such on-page elements and try to improve upon them to make our content useful to both our users and Google search engine.

Conversions

The ultimate goal of our website is to ensure good traffic and also the traffic that actually converts. For this I need to view our conversions through the lens of quality vs. quantity. We always look forward to new crowds on our site, but if I get only two or three people converting out of 100, then there is a bigger problem I must solve here.

When I get a low conversion rate, I take a step back and look at your website from the lens of a consumer. What is getting in the way of them converting? Could it be a lack of information, a slow website, problems checking out, or our contact information is hard to find? Just determining the cause of the problem can be the difference between a handful of conversions a quarter and hundreds of conversions a month.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

The higher CTR simply means that people are getting engaged with our content and ready to convert. I use Google Search Console for this. I have a simple formula. My CTR is 10% if our site appeared on a results page 100 times in a week, and 10 people clicked on it. Use this metric to see how effective our title tags and meta descriptions are in attracting users' attention.

If I see low numbers in this metric I optimize our meta descriptions, titles, URLs and try to acquire some featured snippets that are relevant to our business. Sometimes I run SEO split tests and apply changes and usually I get good results.

SERP Visibility

I use the position tracking tool of our SEO toolkit to check our website’s visibility which is a metric to get a bird’s eye view of our SEO progress. Also, I keep our business listing information updated to improve search visibility.

Backlinks

I keep monitoring our backlinks with backlink analytics to get valuable insight into the progress of our link-building strategies, pay attention to the list of links we didn’t build ourselves as potential link opportunities we can explore in the future. I remain attentive to identifying new backlinks and the backlinks that are deleted as the number of new backlinks to our site is valuable information to have as we review our link-building efforts.

It's not uncommon for this SEO technical interview question to arise frequently during SEO interviews.

Those snippets of text that describe a page’s content are meta tags, and they

don’t appear on the page itself, but only appear in the page’s source code.

Actually, those are essentially little content descriptors that tell search engines what a web page is about and are seen only in HTML, usually at the “head” of the page. The word “meta” denotes metadata which is the kind of data these tags provide that is data about the web page’s data.

The four types of meta tags are:

• Meta Keywords: no longer relevant now.
• Title Tag: is the text we see in the SERP and at the top of a browser and search engines view this as the “title” of the page.

• Meta Description: the brief description of the page.
• Meta Robots: a direction to search engine crawlers or robots or “bots” telling them what they should do with the page.

For example:

• Index/noindex: tells the engines whether to show our page in search results or not.
• Follow/nofollow: tells the engines what to do with links on our pages, that is, if they should trust and “follow” the links to the next page or not.

Meta tags can have a very real impact on search engine marketing in the ways like:

• The Title Tag can impact search engine rankings hugely.
• Descriptive tags may encourage users to visit our site.

Silo structure in SEO is a type of website architecture where content about a specific topic is grouped, isolated, and interlinked to create clean and distinct sections of related content on a website.

Each silo consists of a main silo page and related content, all of which are interlinked, but the content in one silo does not link to the content in another silo which is why it’s called silo structure, because the content is isolated in silos.

It is quite popular in SEO because:

It helps Google to find our pages

Because internal links are one of the ways Google finds new pages, we ensure that all of our pages are interlinked in some way or another. Because Siloing creates a logical hierarchical structure with consistent internal linking, it helps Google in locating the pages.

It boosts rankings

The two main reasons why siloing may help to boost rankings are:

• Better flow of PageRank(PR)

PageRank(PR) shows how Google gives value to a page based on the quantity and quality of pages linking to it.

Backlinks bring PR flows into a site, and internal links make PR flow around it. Siloing helps PR flow between them since all pages in a silo are interlinked. As a result, if one page in a silo starts attracting lots of high-quality PR-boosting backlinks, some of that PR is shared with other pages in the silo through internal links.

Siloing creates a good user experience

Because internal links are useful for SEO and users both helping them to navigate a website, siloing can improve user experience, as it brings similar topical pages together. For example, siloing places content about Steve Jobs, iPhone, and iPad together and just fewer clicks away and helps users to find relevant content more easily.

Also, the internal links between pages within them are contextually relevant as siloing creates internal links to and from pages about similar or related contextually relevant topics.

This question is a regular feature in interview questions on SEO, be ready to tackle it.

Bad backlinks can damage a website and Google’s “Disavow Links Tool” can help protect a site from link-related penalties due to bad backlinks lurking, unknown to the site owner. Google’s Disavow Links Tool allows us to tell Google to ignore specific backlinks for ranking purposes. 

How we do this is simple: submit a text file containing the linking pages or domains that you want to disavow via Google Search Console (GSC). 

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-disavow-links/ 

Disavowing runs a risk. A link that looks “bad” could still help a site. Even Google sends caution words to users that incorrect use of this can potentially harm a site's performance in Google SERP. Google suggests using this tool only if a site sees a significant number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links pointing to the site and they are causing issues for the site. 

Despite the warning however, the fear of a penalty leads SEOs to delete links aggressively. 

To be in a better situation, Manual Action is the best thing to follow when it comes to the use of the disavow tool. 

Apart from this, two situations could be there when disavowing links is probably (but not definitely) the right choice: 

• A dramatic rise in low-quality links correlating with a sharp drop in the site’s ranking. For example, if my stable site just disappears from search results after an influx of bad links it is a must situation to go for disavowal. Even otherwise, without waiting for a sharp drop, proactive situation analysis and disavowing can protect a site.) 
• If by chance it is known that a suspicious backlink profile was done by paying for those links in the past or still it happens, a disavow of those links is necessary. 

This is a frequently asked question in SEO questions for interview.  

A. Paid links

As per Google these are non-editorial, dofollow links designed to pass PageRank. 

• Dofollow site-wide links with exact-match anchor text 
• Dofollow links from unrelated sites/content 
• Dofollow links from pages with obvious footprints for example, “Sponsored Post.” 

B. Private Blogging Networks (PBNs)

Although Google started de-indexing PBNs, they still exist and links from them do not qualify for any white-hat link-building strategy. 

C. Links from low-quality directories

Low-quality directory submissions do not work and many businesses use nofollow links to them. But some unethical SEOs claim it to be not true while pitching their “services” to unsuspecting or non SEO-savvy website owners or businesses. Although links from a handful of high-quality or niche-specific directories might be worth the fee, this is not an effective way to grow site authority. 

D. Links from hacked sites

Links from hacked sites will guarantee a penalty from Google. 

E. Backlink spamming

Backlink spamming is intentionally linking back to a competitor from hundreds or thousands of low-quality websites. An unwarranted jump in the referring domains of a site in Site Explore is a definite indication that a site has been hacked. 

PBN is a private blog network of websites that are created with the purpose to link out to another website and improve its organic search visibility. Here the feeder sites pass the link equity back to the main or principal site to boost its authority and rank. 

PBNs camouflage it as though the main/principal website has “earned” links from other websites on merit as backlinks are a Google ranking factor in the first place. It is an attempt to show Google that people like and trust the content. 

It is just an attempt to manipulate Google algorithm and Google places action as a violation of its webmaster guidelines which includes such a practice in the category of black hat SEO. But PBNs still work for many websites. 

Many still use PBN because: 

link-building is a very tough game. 

Ideally, everyone should earn their backlinks organically but in the real world, it does not always work as desired. In the first place, creating great, linkable content is hard, not everyone’s cup of tea, and not always possible because a company needs to focus on its core business too and cannot devote time and resources to create stellar content all the time. Perhaps only marketing companies can do this but not others. Second, even if a business manages to do so, it still has to rely on other website owners linking back to it and the results are never guaranteed and extremely time-consuming. The business could spend days setting up outreach campaigns and sending hundreds of emails but may still fail to get new backlinks. 

Expect to come across this popular question in the latest SEO interview questions.  

When people conduct a search online, they have a purpose in mind. For example, they might be planning to buy a new car, and so they keep researching car models, or may be looking for a local service like a dentist, a pathological lab or a fast-food outlet. They type words and phrases related to what they wish to view on the internet, and this desire or wish to seek something is called search intent. Google’s changing algorithms have made content relevance more important than ever and due to this many SEO’s focus on search intent to get a better rank in Google SERP by matching their content to the search intent of the users. 

A proper understanding of search intent helps in doing improved SEO by: 

• Creating a more effective content strategy by targeting keywords that align with the needs of the target audience. 
• Creating relevant content by understanding the users' needs and creating content that satisfies their needs. 
• Ranking higher in search results by showing search engines that a particular business’s content is valuable and relevant to its users. 
• Giving better user experience by giving the users what they want they’re more likely to view a business as an authority and keep coming back.  

There are four types of search intent: 

Informational Intent 

When someone is looking for information on a certain topic that comes under informational intent. It is possible that they don’t know what exactly they’re looking for, nevertheless use keywords to guide their search, for example, by typing ‘How to fix a flat tire.’ 

Typically, such people are at the beginning stage of the buying journey 

 Knowing how to target this type of search intent helps a business’s website’s ranking and brings in more traffic by creating the right kind of content for such search intents. They ensure that: 

• The website is well-organized and easy to navigate as visitors who search for information want to find it fast and easily. 
• Using keywords that are relevant to the topic to help with visibility and ranking ensures that the site appears high on the search results pages. 
• Answering the questions people commonly ask online. 
• Providing valuable, informational, accurate, reliable content that meets the needs of your audience as they look for such kind of content.  

Transactional Intent 

Transactional intent refers to users who are looking to actively buy a product or service. 

Such users have a specific item in mind, and might also be searching for the best deal. Additionally, they may be looking for further information, so they might use terms such as ‘review’ or ‘product reviews’. They might also search for listicle-style ‘top ten’ articles or comparisons to help inform their decision. 

Navigational Intent 

When users search for something very specific and they already know the brand or website name, their searches come under navigational search intent.  

Such users typically enter relevant keywords into a search engine, like ‘Photoshop tutorial’ ‘Adobe tutorial’ etc. In other words, users use very relevant keywords that are sure to give them the most accurate and useful results for their query. 

Commercial Intent 

When users have already made up their minds to buy something but want to learn more about a company or product before making a purchasing decision such intent comes under commercial search intent. For example, if a user gives a query like ‘buy sports shoes near me’ it is clear that they are in a buying or commercial mood. ‘Buy ', ‘purchase ', ‘deal’ and ‘discount’ are some of the typical words they use. 

However, there are hybrid queries as well, for example, a combination of commercial and informational intentions. 

Different social media platforms have different social elements depending on how we use them or perceive them. For example Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are mostly treated as real social media platforms, but what about Medium or Quora which also attract a lot of users?  

Secondly, backlinks from social media platforms do not contribute to a company’s SEO activities. Of course, social signals like the great sharing of a link or a huge traffic help in increasing brand recognition and indirectly contribute to the company’s SEO.  

Thirdly, social platforms help in another way in the SEO activities of a company and that is via content. Many times Quora answers or Reddit discussions keep appearing in Google results and often rank high as well. It indicates that the high domain authority these platforms enjoy pulls them on SERP and a company can leverage such platforms to rank content.  

Considering everything, it looks like Pinterest is a social platform that is still underutilized. It may have a huge unexplored potential so far as visual content is concerned. To add another to the list in my point of view would be Taboola for content.  

Though no one has a clear idea how Google’s search algorithm actually works, still a set of factors could be more influential than the rest, like: 

• Page Title 
• Backlinks 
• Load Time of the Page 
• Mobile Responsiveness and Usability 
• Domain Age & Authority 
• Page Content 
• Keyword Prominence in Page Content 
• Core Web Vitals, etc. 

It will depend on the situation. For example, a visitor on my website page reads long-form content and after covering halfway, comes across a small form which he fills in and submits. But he is yet to finish the rest of the article and I want him to do it without further ado. Here I will use the AJAX form submission method because it allows sending data in the background, without the need to reload the site. In other words, he can keep reading the rest of the article without doing anything.

Whereas, if after the form filling my reader has nothing else to do on that page, then definitely I will redirect him somewhere else. For example, I am a SaaS service provider, so as soon as my visitor completes and submits the account creation form, I can send him to the homepage or dashboard etc.  

What finally I want to say is if a page offers scope for more action after the form submission for a visitor, then ajax submission is preferable. Otherwise, he should be redirected to a new destination. 

I will take these steps: 

• I will research xyz.com business, its business model, pricing strategy, industry, competitors, etc. 
• Do market research to understand the primary customer acquisition channels, brand authority, how vast their online presence, etc. 
• Do SEO research to understand organic presence, overall SEO strategy, best performing keywords, pages that rank at the top of SERP, content generation for SEO, etc. 
• Perform research based on industry keywords, product feature-related keywords, problems/solution-related keywords, etc. 
• Organize keywords using keyword search intent and what stage of the funnel the users are at. 
• Prioritize bottom of the funnel keywords that have commercial intent. 

Usually, the marketing channels that I use to boost our SEO activities are: 

• Content marketing: we generate content in various formats for a large number of search queries on Google and Youtube. 
• Email marketing: we have our subscriber list whom we email to drive traffic to a newly published piece of content. 
• Social Media marketing: We promote our content on LinkedIn and Facebook. Visual content like Infography we promote in Pinterest. 
• Paid marketing: if we notice certain keywords convert really well for you but we are getting only limited traffic we resort to paid marketing. 
• PR: to generate press mentions to start social conversations and share about our company/product. We also use the existing press mentions to generate new ones and continue the cycle. 

There could be many reasons behind a sudden drop in keyword ranking. I would try to figure out if:  

1. If some change has happened on our site. For example, I would explore the content header code, robots.txt, sitemap, and page URLs. Such things could have happened inadvertently by me or by someone else in the company who has access. 
2. I might have made some changes, like an important update but Google is yet to know about it which could be due to a crawl rate error or something else. As a result, our website has started having issues. 
3. Some Google search algorithm updates/ changes have happened that affected some of our website pages and the keyword rankings have dropped. 
4. Google Search Algorithm update – maybe Google has released a new update that has affected several pages on our website and thus the keyword ranking dropped.
5. There could be many external factors as well including our competitors releasing better content than ours which has received better results in SERP, or some new market trends that have impacted consumer behavior etc.

A must-know for anyone heading into SEO interview, this question is frequently asked in advanced SEO interview questions.  

There are many factors that influence the conversion rates of a website. For me, the important ones are: 

• Giving value proposition to our customers by telling them in what way we are better than others and how our product or service can help to eliminate their pain points and make their life better. Eliminating all jargon, we need to highlight our unique or differentiating elements or unique sales proposition.  
• We need to have a well-defined sales funnel that will help us to guide our prospects or leads in the right direction with the proper message/content specific to each stage of the funnel without mixing up everything. 
• Objection handling by way of addressing the crucial objections that website visitors might have in our sales copy. 
• Trust building by designing the website professionally, making it device-independent or mobile-friendly, bringing relevancy in our website content and message, personalization, testimonials and case studies, links to active social profiles, security message on the payment page, removing any spelling or grammatical mistakes, using proper language, words and sentences appropriate to the sector.  
• Avoiding distraction-causing elements like giving too many options as it leads to the paradox of choice, keeping things simple like reducing the number of fields from any kind of form, guiding users in every step, reducing the number of clicks visitors need to give etc.  
• Increasing credibility by way of including positive comments from social media, reviews, and video testimonials; that is doing everything that shows our prospects about the quality of our product or service and placing our happy customers in front of them. 
• Creating the emotion of urgency in our copies, call to action, emailers etc. so that visitors take note of them and take immediate action. It can be done in many ways like by way of giving a limited time offer, giving a discount for a period, promotional offer or even giving discount/offer to returning customers etc. 
• Painting a healthy and professional comparison picture where ever possible. For example, in video, banner, infographics, and content. It not only boosts confidence in the mind of prospects but is also a good way of enticing customers from our competitors. 
• Eliminating risk factors as much as possible and where ever possible by offering a replacement warranty, 24 hrs. customer support, money-back guarantee or some other unique proposition to build a sense of a risk-less deal.

• Let me reply to the second part first, why should I care about LinkedIn SEO. It is because:
  • I can expand our brand’s search footprint by enhancing the SEO impact of our LinkedIn page. 
  • Can bring traffic to LinkedIn Page by powering up its SEO and increasing the odds of being discovered not only just by members using LinkedIn but by relevant web searches also that we would have missed otherwise. 
  • Well-defined messaging-once we craft our content for LinkedIn Page around keywords and terms important to our business the outcome is, these themes get clearer to readers making more sense to them. 
  • Increased relevance- by aligning our content to our customers’ search intent will make the contents naturally more relevant and valuable to our target audience. 
• We optimize our company’s LinkedIn SEO by:
  • Adding keywords to the beginning of our tagline considering it like an “elevator pitch”. The keyword should be based on searched intent, that is, the terms that the LinkedIn members normally use while discussing things related to our business. At times this language could be slightly different than what we generally use, nevertheless we need to speak their language. We use relevant keywords at the very beginning of our organization’s introductory tagline so that it helps the search engine and the users to quickly understand what our business is about. 
  • To determine the keywords, I think about our offerings, industry, location and specialties which are important sources to get keywords from. Of course, I use tools like Ahrefs and SeMrush. There are other tools as well. Once I make a list of the keywords, I sprinkle them throughout our contents. 
• In our ‘About’ section I ensure to apply SEO best practices. Using relevant keywords we craft an engaging overview that answers questions our audience might have like:
  • What future do we want to help create? 
  • How do we create that future? 
  • Who are we? How do we work? 
  • What makes our brand different? 
  • Then we add a tagline that sums up our brand in one line. Lastly, we talk about our products/services.
• Mentioning our website URL.
• Mentioning further company details like size, industry, and specialties to paint a complete picture of our organization as a business that gives complete information and gets 30% more weekly views.
• Posting SEO-driven, high-quality, meaningful long-form content since articles published on LinkedIn are good for both visibility on LinkedIn itself and in organic search as well plus they are also crawled by search engines. Therefore, such content is more likely to show in searches outside LinkedIn as well.
• We ensure our LinkedIn Page is complete in all aspects making even the casual browsers stick around. We use our logo and banner image.
• Regular updation of the LinkedIn page is extremely important and we follow it to maintain visibility of our followers and Google ranking too. Posting consistent fresh content gets indexed and helps the search engine recognize our Page as an active and valuable source of information.

Cloaking is a kind of unfair use of SEO techniques or malpractices of SEO techniques done to get a SERP ranking fast. In cloaking, a website has an original version of a URL, page(s) or content which is presented to the search engines to get ranking, while the original version is completely different. 

Also, there could be lots of reasons why a site might decide to cloak. It could be that it is heavy in visual elements but light on text more heavily on Flash.  

However, cloaking faces serious consequences including a complete site ban. 

SEO cloaking can take a variety of different forms all coming under black hat SEO and all of them seriously violate the webmaster guidelines. Some of the most common forms are: 

Implementing Hidden Text 

Some website owners install invisible text on various pages to manipulate search engines. 

 Keeping the foreground color same as the background color is the simplest way of doing this, but some also use JavaScript or CSS to disguise text, 

User Agent Cloaking 

Here a dedicated program called a user agent is used in place of a traditional user to evaluate web visitors and determine which version of a cloaked site should be presented. It is done by sending a piece of code directly to the server and when a visitor is identified as a crawl bot, it is shown specially prepared cloaked content. 

IP Cloaking 

The most common form of cloaking in SEO where a user is redirected to the desired site through a second site that already has a high Google ranking. 

Google’s update on page title: 

The page titles that appeared in SERPs were dynamic and would change depending on what users searched for with Google generating 80% of titles based on content’s meta/HTML title tags and the rest from the content itself which included ALT tags or pieces of anchor text too. This affected the click through rates. Because, the website owners or companies had no control over how titles were displayed and needed to optimize content text more often. 

Google is now replacing this with a more static system and expects a 50/50 ratio between content and meta titles while selecting the title that will appear, which means, Google will pick one or the other irrespective of the search term being used. Though Google may still change it if it sees the availability of better text to match search intent, it won’t be as dynamic and changeable as it was before. Additionally, Google will choose an excerpt from the page if the meta title doesn’t reflect what the page is about. 

In other words, the search result title will still be generated based on the HTML title tag and content of the page but now more focus will be given to the visible content on the page, especially H1, H2 tags which means on-page content will be even more impactful in the generation of the search result titles. 

Content recycling is a good way of marketing as it gives the freedom to figure out how content pieces can be repurposed and adapted for different platforms or channels to attract more traffic. Sharing the repurposed content on different platforms will gain additional traffic which will positively impact the SEO.

Secondly, content repurposing can directly be used to rank for a group of related keywords by breaking the original content into smaller resources each targeting some keywords from the group. Another benefit of doing this is, each time we will not have to create a new content and invest time and energy.