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In the ever-changing world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) it is very essential to stay updated with the latest trends in the field of SEO. If you’re looking for an updated Interview Guide for SEO then you have landed at the right place. This guide will be updated as and when required.
Ideally, SEO is divided into 3 major categories such as Technical SEO, On-Page SEO and OFF Page SEO
On-Page SEO Interview Questions
What is ON Page SEO?
On-Page SEO as the name suggests it is about implementing changes on the website on the website to gain better rankings in the google search engine result pages popularly known as SERPS
What is Keyword Research?
It is a process to identify keywords which are relevant for your business. This research can help in building the website content and also help in keyword mapping with different pages on your website. This research can also give you a broader idea of what content should be built around your business which can lead to getting organic traffic to your website.
How do you perform Keyword Research?
Keyword research can be carried out in various ways. Here are some ways that are most popular and followed in the SEO industry
- Punch in your business keyword in the google search bar and gather the autocomplete suggestions
- Once you punch in the business keyword and hit the search button google pull the top 10 serps and at the end you will have related searches to your business keywords
- Another step would be to use the most popular Google Ads keyword planner and get all the keywords related to your business. One more advanced step would be to group them as follows
- Short Tail Keywords
- Long-Tail Keywords
What is Keyword Mapping and its importance in On-Page SEO?
Keyword mapping is defined as assigning keywords to your website pages based on the keyword research done. Relevancy plays a very important role in executing keyword mapping. Keyword mapping is very important to avoid keyword cannibalization. It is always suggested to have a 1 to 1 relation between keywords and pages which mean 1 unique keyword for 1 page.
How does User Experience impact ON Page SEO?
On-Page SEO ideally is all about User Experience. It is the main crux of perception of a visitor, along with the visitor stays and engages with the website it increases your chances of rankings in SERPS
OFF Page SEO Interview Questions
Give me 5 effective ways of link building
- Guest Posting
- Approach to similar business niche blogging websites and request them to publish the blog with citation back to you
- Broken Link Building
- Use premium tools such as SEMRUSH, Ahrefs, SEO PowerSuite and find broken links of competitors. Then approach the website and notify them that they have a broken link and offer them a link which points to your website which is of some context
- Getting links from mentions
- Turn on google alerts for your business keyword and as well as your company name. Once you’ve done this you will get emails from google alerts when someone mentions your company or your business keyword on the web.
- Copying the competitor
- Using premium tools such as SEMRUSH, Ahrefs, SEO PowerSuite will help you to spy on competitors backlink. Using this you can try to get backlinks from the same sources as your competitors have done
- HARO Use
- HARO is Help A Reporter Out portal which is run by an online service for journalists to obtain feedback from the public. They send you 3 emails daily about different business categories. Once you get a question about your business you can send them to pitch with your post and also add a citation to your website.
Do you think Social Bookmarking works?
Not, with the latest link building updates, it makes no sense of doing social bookmarking.
Does Pinterest help in building domain authority via link building?
Pinterest is also a social media network where users pin images and it is mostly known for pinning infographics and content similar to it. Though you can get a backlink from Pinterest as other social media it is no-follow which means Pinterest will not pass its domain credibility. To further state it can become a good source of traffic if you keep on posting quality pins regularly. As it is always said visual post gets more attention than mere text.
How many backlinks should you make daily?
It’s very difficult to make backlinks daily. Ideally, we should have a monthly plan and try to execute it to perfection. In a month if we can get even 30 – 45 backlinks from a high domain authority website, it’s believed to be good.
What to do if you see a drastic dip in your website’s domain authority?
Ideally, it does not happen and if it does then one should following steps before proceeding with any actions
- See if there is any google update that has impacted it
- Check if you have lost considerable backlinks
- See if your competitors have also seen a drop or it’s your website domain authority declined
- Try building more backlinks from high Domain Authority website
- Negate any backlink coming from toxic domains (Eg. PBN, low authority forums and any adult website)
Technical SEO Interview Question
How do you optimise the website for better speed?
Site speed is one of the most important factors for ranking a website in google serps. To optimise the site speed these are the essential steps you should take
- Optimise your HTML by minifying js, CSS and HTML code
- Use vectors instead of high-resolution images. Some would disagree on this but I have always preferred vector images and nowadays they can give you the same visual impact
- Use a good hosting which can help you provide better speed. I would recommend a hosting which also provides a free CDN
- Follow a perfect caching mechanism with expiration mentioned for static resources
- Reduce redirects, redirects add up to 0.5 to 1 second of delay
How do you manage url changes with its minimum impact on SEO Loss?
The best way to manage url changes is to apply redirects. There are 2 types of redirects 301 and 302. 301 is permanent redirect sending a signal to google notifying that the old url is permanently moved or changed to new url whereas 302 is termed as temporary redirect which sends a signal to Google that this is a temporary redirection and the old url would be established again.
What are the new rel tags w.r.t links announced by google?
The new tags announced by google are UGC and Sponsored.
- rel=ugc signifies that the link built is by a user e.g. comments, forums posts
- rel=sponsored signifies that the link created was a part of an advertisement, sponsorship agreements etc.
Is it worth having different sitemaps for different kinds of content such as different for video, text and images and why?
Well, if possible then definitely yes. This will help the bot to better understand the architecture and content so it can rank well.
Which is better pagination or lazy loading?
Pagination is better w.r.t technical SEO. Lazy loading gives a better user experience and the bots are getting smarter to crawl and index javascript, but still showing the archive to the user and using pagination is better to increase the count of index pages and thereby more content.
6 Basic SEO Interview Questions to check if the candidate is up to date with current trends.
What tools have you used before?
A candidate basically should at least know big names such
What do you think about GTMetrix as an audit tool?
GT Metrix is quite an exhaustive tool which gives us a detailed report. Although all the suggestions provided by GTMetrix are not critical and some can be ignored on case to case basis.
Define keyword stemming
Keyword stemming is to derive keyword variations from the seed keyword. Plurals, prefixes and suffixes can be used for keyword stemming
What is google sandboxing?
Sandboxing is the time frame or you can say an area where google keeps your website under observation and does not showcase the website in serps. There is no fixed time for a sandboxing to complete.
Is code to text ratio still considered as a ranking factor?
Ideally, in today’s modern-day situation, it is of less importance. With a significant increase in internet speed, textual HTML loads quickly and it would be better to pay much more attention to User Experience.
What are PBN’s?
PBN’s is a private blogging network. As of the current situation, they are no more valuable and are classified under black hat techniques.
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