Top 40+ SEO Interview Questions and Answers in 2020

SEO is important part of Digital Marketing.So its very important that we should know every things about SEO. Below article will give you every information about SEO interview Questions and Answers.

Advantages of Search Engine Optimization

• SEO increases traffic on your website
• SEO increases brand awareness
• SEO generates more leads and sales
• SEO decreases advertising cost
• SEO help to make your PPC Campaign Successful
• SEO improves digital marketing ROI
• SEO Promote your Company
• SEO help to reach your audience

SEO Interview Questions and Answers in 2020

1) What is Search Engine ?
A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the world wide web .

2) What is SEO ?
SEO is a Process of optimizing a website to get higher ranking in Search engine result pages. Search engine optimization is broken down into two category:-
A) On Page Optimization B) Off Page Optimization

3) What is On Page SEO ?
On Page SEO refer to all the activities are performed within the website so to improve the ranking of website on search engine result page (SERP) and more relevant traffic from search engines.

4) What is Off Page SEO ?
Off page SEO refers to all the activities and are undertaken outside the boundaries of the website so to improve the ranking of the website on search engine result page (SERP).

5) What should be the Meta tags length in SEO?
The title tag should be 60 to 70 characters including space and  Meta description should be 200 to 250 characters including space.


6) What is SERP ?
Search Engine Result Page ( SERP) refers to the page that is displayed when a Particular search query is entered over the search engine. Search Engine Result Page( SERP) is displayed on search engine connected to the query searched by the users.

7) What is Google Snippet ?
Google make clear that term snippet applies solely to the description.A snippet is auto generated text displayed on SERP by the google.
Snippet include the Headline,URL and Description

8) What is Rich Snippet ?
Rich Snippet are the HTML code which we insert in our website.Rich Snippet gives detail information to the user on SERP for the specific query searched on search engine it include the Headline,URL,Description,Rating,Review,Votes and Small profile picture.

9) What is Sitemap in SEO ?
A Site Map is a list of all Pages that are available on website .Its help to know the structure of all the pages.

10) Whai is Robot.txt file ?

Robot.txt is a text file that tells search engine robots which pages on your website to crawl and which pages not to crawl.

11) What is No Follow Link ?

No follow links don't enable computer program bots to follow link., it doesn't pass away link juice. solely Humans are ready to follow the links. Google made it clear that they don’t think about no follow link attributes .But importance of such links are extremely less. No follow links does not impact the Domain authority nor help you out to Improve SEO ranking or visibility of your website.

Below are the example of No follow Link:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Google</a>

12) What is Do follow Link ?

Do follow Links allow both search engine and human to follow them.Its gives link juice and a back link. DO Follow link help to improve domain authority and help to improve SEO ranking of your website.Link that doesn't contain Rel=”Nofollow” Attribute is do follow link. Do follow link are considered to be the most powerful links for any websites.

Below are the example of Dofollow Link:

<a href=”http://www.google.com/”>Google</a>

13) What is Page Authority ?

Page Authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on Search Engines Result Page (SERP ). Page Authority score range from 1 to 100.The Higher page authority score the higher ability to rank on (SERP).

Steps to increase Page Authority

• Use good image which is relevant to your content
• Build link to the pages from high domain authority sites 
• Remove broken link from your page
• Spread link juice from pages which having high PA to those with those having less PA.

14) What is Domain Authority ?

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that forecast how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

Steps to Increase Domain Authority ( DA ) of Website

• Pick a Domain name that is related to your niche   
• Optimize On page SEO including the Page title tags,Meta description,Image alt tags and the content
• Work on off page SEO 
• Always use the content which has high quality and use Unique Content that people will Link to it.
• Website should be mobile friendly
• Broken Links effect the ranking of website that why remove broken links from website by running audit
• Always include internal link in your page
• Create Linkable content
• Always Check your Domain Authority score by using domain authority checker tool.
• Make sure your website loading speed is good to reduce bounce rate
• Improve your social signal by doing content promotion via Social Media like Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn and Instagram.
• Try to improve page authority also.

15) What are the Backlinks?

Back links is a link from another website to your website. Back links can also
be called as hyperlinks,incoming links or inbound links.Incoming links to the website is called back linking and that can be done via Article Submission, Classified Submission,Q & A Forum Submission,Forum Submission,PDF Submission,PPT Submission,Social Sharing.

16) What is Crawling Errors ?

Crawl errors occur when a search engine tries to reach a web page but not able to reach. There are two types of crawl errors:
Site errors (which mean your whole site can’t be crawled)
URL errors (which mean one particular URL per error)

17) What is 404 error ?
Error 404  occur when you trying to visit web page which does not exist or else it can even occur when someone type the wrong URL.

18) What is AMP? Is it a ranking factor?
AMP Stand for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is a caching technology developed by google to increase the Web page speed in mobile gadgets.At this time, AMP is not a ranking factor. AMP pages are not officially a Google ranking factor, But we should pay attention to it. Because it still has the capability to get your business on the top of the SERP. And again,it has the capability to make your customers have a better user experience.

19) Explain the importance of meta keywords tag in SEO?
It is not required to use meta keywords on the blog posts.The meta keywords tag is not considered a ranking factor anymore .

20) What is the name of the tool used to remove negative or low-quality backlinks?
The disavow tool is used to remove the low-quality backlinks to Google. Once the link is submitted to Google its will not consider the backlink data.


21) What is a Broken link?
Any link that does not reach the destination page is called a broken link. There may be several reasons a link may be broken like server error, database error, internal error, and page not available.

22) What is Organic Search result?
Organic search results are the listings on a search engine results page (SERP) that appear because of  certain factors such as relevance to the search term and Proper search engine optimization (SEO) efforts rather than because of search engine marketing (SEM).

23) What are Paid result ?
Paid results are the listings on a search engine results page (SERP) that appear because the website owner have paid to display there webpages for certian keyword, so these listings will appear when someone enter a search query on search engine containing those keywords 

Paid results are basically advertisements.

24) What is the definition of keyword?
Keyword in SEO refers to the key phrases and words included in the web content which help the user to find the website by entering related search queries over the search engines.

25) What is Long Tail Keyword ?
Long Tail Keywords are the Phrases containing over 4 words that make the search result highly specific.

26) What is LSI Keywords ?
LSI stand for Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI keywords are associated with the main keywords that users enter over the search engines. The easiest way to find LSI keyword by using a Google search. Whenever you search for any keyword in Google, it shows more searches relevant to similar keywords. You will find LSI keyword below on SERP.For example if you enter main keyword is What is SEO Marketing in Search engine then you will find below all the searched related to what is SEO Marketing that are all LSI keywords.

27) What is Canonical URL ?
A canonical URL should be used if you have two pages of similar content on your website or if you have content on your site that is also used on another website. You can use a canonical tag to point Google to the original content.The canonical tag is vital because search engines regularly crawl websites to look for information to help them decide how to rank pages and posts. If the search crawler finds two pages with the similar content, it doesn’t know how to rank them.Its find difficult to decide which page should rank.That why Canonical tag should be used. A canonical tag, is found in the HTML header of a web page .The canonical tag appears as: rel=”canonical”. 
For example, the HTML code tells search engines that the URL “https://seobility.net” is the original page. 
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://seobility.net” />

28) What is outbound link ?
The Outbound links are a links which are going from your website to another website.

29) What is Googlebot?
To index and update a web page google uses the Google bot (web spider).Caching,crawling and Indexing of a webpage are done through google bot by collecting details from that web page.

30) What is Keyword Stemming ?
The Process of finding out new keywords from the root keyword is known as keyword stemming. Adding a prefix,Suffix or Pluralization can be used to create the new keyword.

31) What is Meta Tags?
Meta tags are those tags which tells search engine about your web page descriptions its  appears in search engine result page. Meta tags include Title tag,Meta description and Meta keywords tags.

32) What is Google Analytics?
Google analytics is used to track the website statistic or traffic through SEO. Google Analytics is very simple tool which help to see every thing happening on your site.With the help of google analytics tool you can see how well your website is performing so you can take steps to improve it .

Benefits of Google Analytics

• How Many People Visiting Your Website
• You can know from Were the visitor are Coming from are they coming from google,face book or twitter.
• How much time they are spending on your Website
• Most visited pages of your website
• When do your users visit?
• Users are coming from which country
• What are your top devices
• When do your users Visit
• How are you Performing Against Goal
• How well do you retain your users
• It also help to know the user who are active on your Website
• It also help to know Bounce rate on your Website

33) What is Google Search Console or Webmasters Tools?

Google webmaster tool now known has google search console tool.Webmaster Tools is a free service offered by Google.Its used to control your website errors,Its give information about your website pages index,detail information about most popular keywords and links that are pointing towards your website measure the performance of the website and even also control your website presence in search result. 

Benefits of Google Webmaster Tool

• You can track the performance of your site in Google's search results.
• Submit new content so that it can be crawled.
• It help to index our web pages quickly on google search result
• Remove content that you do not want to appear in the search results
• Check if your site is effected with malware and spams and remove them
• Check if there is broken link in website
• You can see which queries and keyword are used to search your website in the search result.
• Total number of clicks and impression on your website
• Clicks and impressions are coming from which location 
• Total Clicks and impressions are coming from which devices for ex mobile,desktop and tablet.
• Clicks and Impression coming on which date
• Which Pages of your website received more clicks and impressions.
• You can submit sitemap of  your website which will help for indexing
• Remove broken links of your website by using disavow tool.
• Check External Links and Internal Links on your website
• Top Linking Sites on your website
• Does your mobile site performing well for users searching on mobile devices
• We can also target Particular country for traffic Purpose
• If you want certain pages of your website not to crawl then you can use robot.txt.

34)  What are the most important Google ranking factors ?

• The Quality of Content should be good and unique.
• The Content Length should be over 2000 words.
• Website Page speed should be good
• Website should be mobile friendly
• Website should have back links from High DA sites.
• Schema markup code must be added on website
• Website should be promoted on all social media sites
• Images should be optimized
• Domain Age also taken in consideration for ranking of website
• Keyword should be properly use in Title and in Meta description and in content. 
• User Experience

35) What is Link building in SEO ?

Link building is the process of acquiring Hyperlinks from another website to your own website.

36) What is Social Media Marketing ?

Social Media Marketing is the use of social media websites .It is the process of promoting your content on social media sites like Facebook,twitter and LinkedIn social media first we create our business page. for ex Facebook business page and LinkedIn company page.

37) What is Keyword Proximity ?
Keyword Proximity mean distance between the two words or phrases or closeness of keywords.Your Keywords should be close to each other in content of web page.

38) What is Keyword Placement ?
Keyword placement mean were to Place Keyword. (Keyword  in Page title,Keyword in Meta Tags).

39) What is Google Sandbox ?
Google Sandbox is a Place where new  and less authority websites are kept on hold until they prove worthy for ranking.When website prove that it is worthy for ranking on SERP  google release those website from the sandbox.

40) What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is the percentage of the number of times particular keyword in a web page compared to total number of words in a web page.

41) What is a Black Hat SEO ?
The technique in which unethical practices are used while performing SEO for your website  or web page is known as Black Hat SEO. 

Some of the Black Hat SEO Technique are : 

• Keyword Stuffing
• Unrelated Keywords
• Cloaking
• Tiny Text or Hidden Text 
• Doorway pages or Gateway Pages
• Bait-and-Switch or Page Swapping
• Duplicate Content or Mirror Site
• Social Networking Spam

42 ) What is White Hat SEO ?

The technique in which term and conditions of the search engines (Google ,Yahoo) are followed while performing SEO of the website or web page is known as White Hat SEO. In White Hat SEO ethical Practices are used while Performing SEO of the website or web page White Hat SEO is just opposite of Black Hat SEO .White Hat SEO help to rank website on search engine result Page (SERP).

Some of the White Hat SEO Techniques are :

• Using Unique and Quality Content in Website
• Website Loading speed should be good
• Your Website should be mobile friendly
• Using Main Keyword in Meta Tags
• Website should be easy to Navigate
• URL should be SEO friendly
• Obtaining backlinks from High DA sites
• Using Internal And Eternal Links in Website
• Image should be Properly Optimized
• Using Schema Markup on our Website

43) What is Gray Hat SEO ?

Grey hat SEO techniques are a combination of  using both Black Hat SEO techniques (Non Ethical SEO) and white hat SEO techniques (Ethical SEO). Gray Hat SEO is risky for website google will track us after some time if we are using gray Hat SEO techniques for any Website.

For Example : Having good number of keywords is good for SEO but using too many keywords is bad for SEO and its will be penalized because its mean like using keyword stuffing techniques.Gray Hat SEO is just finding the right amount of balance between the two.

Some of the Gray Hat SEO Techniques are :

• Cloaking ( Cloaking mean showing two different result one for User and one for Search engines )
• Purchasing or using old domains
• Using Duplicate Content
• Buying Link
• Social media automation and purchasing followers
• Spin Content (Content Spinning mean  re-writing the copy content)
• Fake Reviews
• Keyword Stuffing
• Personal Backlink Network(PNB)

44) What is Google Penalty ?

Google Penalty is a Negative Effect on your website ranking on SERPs based on updates that are made within Google’s Search Algorithms.This Penalty effect those sites who are using Black Hat SEO Techniques.
You can avoid google penalty by ignoring Black Hat SEO techniques :

• Keyword Stuffing
• Cloaking
• Hidden Text
• Doorway pages
• Article Spinning
• Link Exchanging
• Duplicate Content
• Link Buying
• Comment Spamming

45) What is Spam Score ?
Spam score is developed by Moz to measure the website quality.Its tell the spammy score of any website.Spam score range from 0-17.The website which has spam score between 1- 4 then it is less harmful.If website has spam score is 17 then its his considered bad spam score and that website is blacklisted in google and it will not appear in Search results.

46) How to reduce the Spam Score of website?
The spam score increases if we take back links from low quality websites.So to reduce the spam score of website :

• We need avoid to take backlink from bad quality website.
• We need to find low quality and spammy links that are linked to our sites and it should be disavowed by creating the list of such links.

47) What is SEO Audit ?

An SEO Audit give Proper idea about web site traffic and error on a Particular website.Its a good way to improve ranking of the website.

48) What is a Guest Posting?

Guest Posing mean creating a article and publishing on someone else website.

49) What is a Disavow Links and how to Disavow links from your website?
There are many harmful and irrelevant website which can have bad impact on our website seo if we had backlink from such sites.So to get rid of such sites this links are Disavowed.
Steps to Disavow Links from your website
Create a list of bad backlinks and save in .txt format
Go to google search console and login
Click on Disavow Links
Click on Choose file
Upload the list of file or domain you need to Disavow in .txt format

50) What is Dwell Time ?

Dwell Time is the amount of time that a Google Searcher on page from the Search results before returning to back to SERPS .Many SEO Professional Consider that Dwell time is an important google ranking signal. 

For Example If u search for " Book Store" in Google. And the first result look good and you click on it. But when you get there you are happy with site and you spent there 5 second. So after 5 Seconds you click back to SERPS .So your Dwell Time is 5 Seconds. Dwell time give green signal to google about that Page. If other people also spent a long time on that page then google will give it  a ranking boost.