Prepare Like a Pro: Essential SEO Related Interview Questions Revealed

According to LinkedIn, there are 2,00,00 SEO jobs open in India at this point. Out of these jobs 7,000 jobs are for freshers and SEO Executives. 8,000 SEO jobs are for mid-senior level where any candidate has to have 3-6 years of experience. The Remaining 5,000 jobs are for experienced SEO folks. They have to design the SEO strategy from scratch and make sure the team executes it to achieve the goal.  

So, we learned that there are ample opportunities for someone looking for a career in SEO provided you have what it takes to be a good SEO.

To help you out, we have compiled a complete guide with SEO Related Interview Questions. We promise you are not going to need any other guide after going through this one. So, let’s get into the details straightaway.

SEO Jobs Hierarchy

Before we apply for any SEO Position. We have to see how experienced we are and what position we are applying for. This is because you have to have transferable skills to the next SEO role you are applying for. So, understanding that is important. Below given table is going to clear up the confusion around that.

SEO Interview Questions for The Freshers

We understand the pain of not having experience and applying for jobs. All you have to listen to is “ We are looking for freshers but with some experience”. We have got you covered. We are going to cover SEO Basic Interview Questions to help you grab that job SEO job.

What is SEO?

SEO is optimizing your website to make sure Search Engines find your website in the easiest way possible to make sure they show the content of your website to the relevant users.

What is Crawling?

Once Search Engines discover the pages of our website, they start skimming the content of the web pages of the website. The process of skimming the content is called Crawling in SEO.

What is a Backlink?

When we publish the content on any other website than our website, we use a phrase to link our website with that website. Users of that website click on that link to find our website. That link is called a backlink.

What is Anchor Text?

While building the backlinks, we used a phrase to link both of the websites. This phrase is called Anchor Text.

What is Off-Page SEO?

The process of building the relationship of our website with other websites is called Off Page SEO.

Which Tool Do You Use to Check the Health of the Website?

We use Google Search Console to check the health of the website.

What Is the Name of the Title That Users See On the Google Search Page?

When a user searches anything on Google, they see a clickable link on Google Search Result Page. That is called Meta Title.

What Is The Most Important Tag On A Page?

The H1 Tag is the most important tag on a page.

What does SERP Stand for?

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page

What is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a filter that lets the Search Engines know what pages search engines have to crawl and what they are not supposed to crawl.

What is a Sitemap?

Sitemap is a diary that has the URLs of a website or a specific category. Its purpose is to provide quick access to important pages of the website.

SEO Interview Questions for 3 Years Experience

As an SEO Executive is not a fresher anymore, he is expected to know some higher concepts of Search Engine Optimization. This is where this guide for someone with SEO interview questions for 3 years experience is going to be super helpful. Also, there is hardly any gap between a 3-year experience and a 4-year experienced guy.

So these SEO interview questions for 4 years experience are going to be the same as those for 3 years of professional experience.  Find the questions below for an SEO executive-

On-Page SEO Interview Questions

How to Optimize the H1 Tag?

i) Make sure you use the primary keyword for the H1 tag

ii) Make sure to keep the length of H1 under 65 characters.

iii) Make sure you have only one H1 for every page

iv) Make sure you have a unique H1 for each page

How to Optimize the URL?

i) Make sure you do not use any special characters in the URL

ii) Make sure you use your primary keyword in the URL

iii) Never use capital characters in the URL

iv) Never use numbers in the URL

v) Never use the dates/year in the URL

How to Optimize the Meta Title?

i) Make sure your Meta Title is relevant to your page

ii) Make sure your Meta Title has the Primary keyword in it

iii) Make sure your title shows the relevant offer for the money page, and generates curiosity for the blogs.

What Are the Different Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Keyword?

i) Relevance to the Page

ii) Intent of the keyword

iii) Keyword Difficulty

iv) Average monthly volume of the keyword

How Many Different Types of Keywords Are There?

Based on the Length

i) Short tail keyword

ii) Medium tail keyword

iii) Long tail keyword

Based on Intent

i) Commercial Keyword

ii) Transactional Keyword

iii) Informational Keyword

iv) Discovery keyword

Based on The Brand Name

i) Branded keyword

ii) Non-Branded Keyword

Based on Purpose

i) Primary keyword

ii) Secondary keyword

Why Do You Think Website Architecture Is Important?

Website Architecture is really important for the following things:

i) Flow of link juice throughout the website

ii) Make Search Engine crawlers find all the pages of the website

iii) For the best navigation possible for the users

iv) For the best user experience

How Many Interlinks Should Be There On Page?

5-6 interlinks are more than enough for a page. 

Technical SEO Interview Questions

How Many Different Types of Sitemaps Are There in SEO?

There are three types of sitemaps in SEO.

• i) XML Sitemap

• ii) HTML Sitemap

• iii) Txt Sitemap

What Are the Different Methods to Register the Property In Google Search Console?

There are two ways to register the property in Google Search Console.

i) Registering through Domain 

ii) Registering through URL

What is 301 Redirection?

301 redirection is a permanent relocation of a page which is not existing on the website to a more relevant page. 

What Is the Difference Between 301 and 302 Redirection?

When a page does not exist anymore in the system permanently, we relocate the page to the next relevant page to make sure users stay on our website. This is a 301 redirection. 

Now, when we know that a specific page is going to come back after a few weeks/months, then we implement 302 redirections.

What Does Disallow Directive Do in Robots.txt?

It tells the search engines that they are not supposed to access that file. 

What Is A Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is a tag that tells the search engine crawlers about the source of the content. It helps in reducing content duplication inside and outside the website.

What Happens When a Web Page Takes More Than 3 Seconds to Load?

Nowadays, no one waits for a website to load for more than 3 seconds. When any website does, users do not wait for that page to load, they bounce from that page. This is why we see that a few pages have more bounce rate than other pages.

What is LCP?

It is the time taken to load the largest Contentful paint of a specific page. It can be an image, and it can be a video as well.

What Is A Schema Markup?

Schema Markup is a JSON LD code that provides extra information about the page to the search engines. It is more like a nameplate outside a house that helps the postman to deliver the post at the right address. 

What Is the Significance of HTTPs?

It provides a secure user experience to the users of a website, especially an eCommerce website.

Off Page SEO Questions

What Is Parasite SEO?

There are a lot of websites such as medium.com, blogger.com, and several other such websites. Webmasters try to increase the traffic on these websites and then get the backlinks from there. The same technique is implemented on other websites that provide the same services to get the backlinks and channel the users from there.

This kind of SEO is called Parasite SEO.

Will Traditional Backlinks Such As Social Bookmarking Work in 2024?

Google released the March Google Core Algorithm Update 2024. Along with that Google released Link spam update. According to that, all of the links created through these techniques are considered spam.

What are Toxic Backlinks?

Toxic backlinks are links that are of low quality. These links are shown generally by third-party tools such as ahrefs and SEMrush. However according to Google, there is no such term as Toxic backlinks. According to Google, either the links are relevant to your niche or not relevant to your niche.

If you think you have built bad-quality links, you can ask Google to disavow those links.

SEO Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced SEO Professionals

Experienced professionals are supposed to know what SEOs with 2-3 experiences are not supposed to. This is because they have gone through a lot of career ups and downs, and have almost seen everything. The below questions are going to help you explore the high-paying senior SEO jobs 

On-Page SEO Questions

When You See That for a Specific Keyword Impressions Are Higher But Clicks Are Not Coming, What Do You Do?

In this case, when you see that you are getting impressions through a specific keyword, but not getting any clicks, it means your title is not appealing enough to the users to make them click. 

So, you try using that keyword in your meta title and H1 tag and tweak them a bit.

Should We Choose and Write the Content On Zero-volume Keywords?

Absolutely, we should be writing the content for Zero Volume Keywords. Because majorly third-party keyword research tools do not crawl all the keywords. They do not crawl, they do not find the volume of it. 

How to Do Keyword Research?

Before doing the keyword research, it is really important to understand the product in and out. Then go to ahrefs/SEMrush keyword research tools. Type the keyword you are looking for.

Ahref is going to show you the suggestions. Find the best keyword for the page you are doing the keyword research. Find all the keywords related to that theme and make a cluster of those keywords.

Once you are done with this, calculate the KGR for these keywords to decide the primary keyword out of the keywords in the cluster.

How Do You Handle the Negative Review on GMB Profile?

Once a review is live on the live website. Nothing can be done around that. Now the best way to rectify that is to contact the person who has reviewed the service. Provide them some alternative service, some discount of some sort in return for taking the review down. 

What Role Does Social Media Play in Increasing the Brand Authority?

When you share your content on social media across social channels, people start talking about that content. They start providing honest reviews about your product or services. You get User Generated Content in the form of ratings and reviews.

These reviews reflect the user’s trust and through this itself Google comes to know about what your audience thinks of your services and products. There is a Google Algorithm in place to take care of this i.e. EEAT. Google takes the help of this algorithm and ranks your website accordingly.

To Rank a Website Locally, What Are the Most Important Factors?

1. Optimization of GMB profile
2. Proper category of the service
3. UGC content
4. Social profiles link in the GMB profile
5. Frequency of activity on social media 
6. H1 tag of your website’s home
7. Local content of the website
8. Long keyword phrases in the review

Technical SEO Interview Questions

What Are the Different Techniques to Optimize the Sitemap?

1. Remove all the URLs that show 404 error from the sitemap
2. Make sure the size of the sitemap is not above 50MB
3. Make sure the number of URLs is not more than 50000
4. Remove all the URLs showing 5xx errors from the sitemap (Make sure the URLs are not important)
5. Block all the feed URLs in Robots.txt
6. Remove the URLs that have been redirected permanently 
7. Divide your sitemap into different sitemaps so that Google crawlers can find the important URLs easily

How does Site Speed Impact SEO?

When a website is slow:

1. It provides a bad user experience to users
2. Slow website causes an increase in bounce rates
3. Low engagement rate because of the slow website

How to Optimize the Website for Speed?

1. Check your hosting plan if it is providing you with good TTFB
2. Minimize the number of nodes on the page to optimize the DOM size
3. Minify your unused Javascript and CSS codes
4. Enable browser caching
5. Make sure the images are not of 100 kb in size
6. Use CDNs

What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge In SEO?

Discuss the challenges that you have faced in your career. Do not just focus  on the challenge, let the panel know about the solutions you implemented.

How Do You Know if JavaScript on a Page Are Crawled Properly?

To do that you have to follow the following steps:

a) Copy the URL that you want to check.

b) Go to the URL inspection tool and paste the URL there

c) Click on Live Test

d) Now on the right you will see a few options

e) Click on More Info. Click on More Info

f) You will find the javascript on that page

g) If any of the javascripts are blocks or any other issue is there, solve that

How Do You Fix Hreflang Tag Errors?

Before you start fixing the errors, let us understand what different errors can be there: 

1. No self-referencing hreflang detected
2. No bidirectional hreflang tag-detected
3. Non-canonicalized URL found in the hreflang tag
4. Country code and language codes do not matching
5. Hreflang tag has pages with 4xx errors
6. Hreflang tag has pages with 5xx errors
7. Hreflang tags have pages with 301 redirection

Now let’s discuss the solutions to these problems

1. Add a self-referencing tag in the code
2. Make sure each page has the hreflang tag for its variant and for itself
3. Make sure all the pages involved in the hreflang tags are canonicalized
4. Make sure the language code is according to the target country
5. Make sure the pages involved do not having any 4xx and 5xx issues
6. If redirections are implemented multiple times on a URL, make sure you add the final URL in the hreflang tags

Who We Are?

At Mohit’s SEO Training, we provide advanced SEO Training in Bangalore and all over India. We are expert in Search engine optimization.
Along with providing training, we are one of the Top SEO Consultant in Bangalore. We provide all kind of SEO services in Bangalore and across the globe.

Mohit Verma

I am an experienced professional with 9+ years of experience in Search Engine Optimization. I am on a mission to provide industry focused job oriented SEO so the students/mentees can get their dream SEO job and and start working from day 1.