17 Useful SEO Interview Questions & Answers: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO



1. What is SEO & why is it so important?

Ans. In simple words, SEO or Search Engine Optimization denotes to any activity performed for the improvement of Search Engine rankings of websites, products, services or other content. It shows unpaid results which is also referred to as “free”, “organic”, “natural” or “earned” results.
The importance of SEO starts with the desire of the companies to gain more traffic for their websites. The ranking over search engines matter because users pay more heed to the first 5 searches on Google. Moreover, the users tend to trust Google’s refined search results because they consider these searches to be more authentic and specific.

2. What is Crawling?

Ans. Crawling or web crawling refers to an automated process through which search engines filtrate web pages for proper indexing.
Web crawlers go through web pages, look for relevant keywords, hyperlinks and content, and bring information back to the web servers for indexing.
As crawlers like Google Bots also go through other linked pages on websites, companies build sitemaps for better accessibility and navigation.

3. What is Indexing?

Ans. Indexing starts when the crawling process gets over during a search. Google uses crawling to collect pages relevant to the search queries, and creates index that includes specific words, or search terms and their locations.
Search engines answer queries of the users by looking up to the index and showing the most appropriate pages.

4. What is Canonical URL?

Ans. Canonical URLs relate to the concept of selecting the best URL for the web pages that the visitors want to see. Also, known as canonical tags, these URLs help in content syndication when multiple versions of a same page become available over the Internet. Thus, it is used to resolve issues related to content duplication.
For example, most people would consider these the same urls:
www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp
But technically all of these urls are different.

5. What are meta descriptions?

Ans. Meta descriptions are also called HTML attributes which should provide an accurate description of any web page content. These descriptions act as preview snippets of the web pages over the SERP page.Meta descriptions, which should ideally be within 300 characters, enhance the promotional value of the web pages, and can gain greater user click-throughs, if performed correctly.

6. What are backlinks?

Ans. Backlinks are also called incoming links that help users to shift from one web page to the other web pages. These links play an important part in SEO.
When Google search engine views multiple quality backlinks to a page, it considers the page to be more relevant to the search query, which helps in its indexing process and improves its organic ranking on SERPs.

7. What is a Do-Follow link?

Ans. A Do-Follow Link, as the name suggests, allows Google link calculator called PageRank to count all the inbound links from other web pages and websites as link points.
The higher the link juice or link points are, the greater would be the search ranking of that web page, as these links make the web page appear very relevant and popular to the Google search engines.

8. What is a No-Follow link?

Ans. A No-Follow link is exactly the opposite of a Do-Follow link as such the link attributes do not allow the Google bots to follow them. These links cannot be followed by robots; only humans can do it.
No-follow link attributes are structured in the following manner:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link text</a>

9. What is robots.txt?

Ans. Robots.txt is one way of telling the Search Engine Bots about the web pages on your website which you do not want them to visit.
Robots.txt is useful for preventing the indexation of the parts of any online content that website owners do not want to display.
IF you  want to block all search engine robots from crawling your website, just put the follow code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
IF you  want to block Google from crawling your website, just put the follow code:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
It is important to decide the location of Robots.txt very carefully, or else errors might occur while displaying the website.

10. What are doorway pages?

Ans. Doorway Pages, also known as gateway pages, portal pages or entry pages, refer to web pages or websites that are developed for higher ranking when specific search queries are entered.
Such pages give way to multiple web pages on the SERP which lead users to the same web destination. These can also funnel the users to intermediate pages that does not hold as much importance as the final webpage. Two common forms of doorway pages are cloaking and redirecting pages.

11. What is 301 Redirect?

Ans. 301 redirect is considered as one of the most effective ways of performing redirects on any website. When a web address has been changed permanently, it is best to use 301 redirects which will redirect all the users to the new web address.
With this redirect, the search engine passes all the values associated with the old website to the new website. Moreover, 301 redirect also pushes all the link juice to the new web address that keeps the ranking of the website unaffected.

12. What is 301 Redirect?

Ans. 301 redirect is considered as one of the most effective ways of performing redirects on any website. When a web address has been changed permanently, it is best to use 301 redirects which will redirect all the users to the new web address.
With this redirect, the search engine passes all the values associated with the old website to the new website. Moreover, 301 redirect also pushes all the link juice to the new web address that keeps the ranking of the website unaffected.

13. What is Directory Submission?

Ans. Directory submission in SEO relates to the listing of any web address or site with the relevant details over various web directories under a specific category.
Directory submission performs the same function as phone directory and increases the popularity of websites with greater online exposure. Directory submission can be both free of cost and paid.
Note: Over the last few years, directories have changed – they are no longer good for getting thousands of links to your site so you can game Google. Today, directories are valuable when used carefully

14. What are Classified ads?

Ans. A classified ad is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge.
Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, although display advertising is more widespread.

15. What is Forum Posting?

Ans. Forum posting is the act of engaging, interacting, and writing on a forum thread by leaving a simple response to the thread or to a particular post by a user on the same thread. Posting on popular forums is a powerful method of engaging and interacting with new users, while driving prospective clients to your website or business.
Example: FileZilla Forums, WebmasterWorld…

16. What is a Business directory?

Ans. A business directory is a website or printed listing of information which lists all businesses within some category. Businesses can be categorized by business, location, activity, or size.
Business may be compiled either manually or through an automated online search software.

17. What is Social Bookmarking?

Ans. Social bookmarking is a way for people to store, organize, search, and manage “bookmarks” of the web pages. Users can save these links to the web pages that they like or want to share, using a social bookmarking site to store these links.
These bookmarks are usually public, and can be viewed by other members of the site where they are stored.

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