Q 1: What is Search Engines?
Ans: Search Engines are very special key element useful to find out specific and relevant information to use with relevant key through huge extent of World Wide Web. Some major commonly used search engine:
like Google,Yahoo,Bing.
Q 2: Tell me something about Google Search Engine.
Ans: Google is the world’s largest search engine incorporating about of market share. It was introduced in 1998 by students of SU( Stanford University )students Sergey Brin and Larry Page. unique algorithmic ranking system Google search engine have some special tools like: Blogger, Feedburner, YouTube, Google Plus, Adsense, Webmaster Tools, Adword, Analytics and many more.
Q 3: Define SEO(Search Engine optimization)?
Ans: SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is the set of process in account of which a website or web page is being optimized that helps them to enhance their visibility at top search engine.
Q 4: Explain On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?
Ans:On page seo means optimizing your website and making changes on title, meta tags, site structure, site content, solving canonicalization problem, managing robots.txt etc.
Off page optimization means optimizing your web presence which involves backlink building and social media promotion.
Q 5.: What are the different techniques used in Offpage SEO?
Ans: There are lots of techniques used in Offpage SEO, some special techniques are like:
Directory Submission
Social Bookmarking
RSS(Really Simple Syndication) Submition
Classified Submition
Article Post
Blog Post
Press Release Submission
Regional Directory Submission and all that.
Deep link Directory Submission
Blog Comment
Yahoo Answer
Q 6.: Define blog?
Ans: A blog is an information or discussion published on website or World Wide Web,called as posts. Basically, the blog is referred as everything thing where you can include others too. It is more individual in contrast to article and press release.it just like you may talk to your readers. It is also called Web diary or Online Diary.
Q 7.: Define article?
Ans:The articles are specific topic or event and are highly oriented towards an opinion instead of information. An article is more oriented towards showing up opinions, views and idea. Generally, it is written by a third party or expert of any specific field.
Q 8.: Define press release?
Ans:Press Release is related with a specific action or event which can be republished by distinct medium of mass-media including other websites. It should be simple, short and professional. It conveys a clear message or information.
Q 9.: What are Meta Tags Explain it?
Ans: HTML meta tags are referred as tags of page data head tags of a document’s HTML code. Actually these are hidden keyword who set in the code. These are invisible to visitors but are visible and readable by Search Engines.
Example:
<head>
<title>Not considered as Meta Tag, even required anyway</title>
<meta name=”description ” content=”Write your description here” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Write your keyword here” />
</head>
Q 10.: Difference between keyword & keyword phrase?
Ans: The keyword term is basically concerned with a one-word term, on the other hand a keyword phrase considered as employment of two or more word-combinations. Therefore, it is very confounded to get high ranking in account of one-word keyword term until the one-word keyword has little online competition. Therefore, this practice is not encouraged to employ. In order to drive more traffic and top ranking in SERP it is recommended to employ keyword phrase.
Q 11.: What do you know about Black Hat SEO?
Ans: In order to attain High Ranking in search engine result page, websites go for various methods and techniques which are characterized by two categories.
The method which are implemented and acceptable according to search engine guidelines are White Hat SEO, on the other hand, the method which are less acceptable or instructed to avoid in search engine guidelines are “Black Hat SEO”.
Q 12.: Can you tell me some Black Hat SEO techniques?
Ans: Some Black Hat SEO techniques are:
• Keyword Stuffing
• Cloaking
• Doorway Pages or Gateway Pages
• Link Farming
• Hidden Text, etc.
Q 13.: What is spider?
Ans: Spider also called as bot, crawler or robot is a set of computer program that browses World Wide Web in methodical and orderly fashion as well automatically scan the web-page and website for updated content and download a copy to its data center to index.
Q 14.: Name the bots (spider) of major search engine?
Ans: The name of bots/spider of Google search engine is GoogleBot, Yahoo Slurp for Yahoo search and BingBot for Bing search engine.
Q 15.: Can you differentiate ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’?
Ans: Nofollow link is exactly vice-versa of dofollow link. These are non-crawling link which are not passed by search engines bot and hence can’t be cached or indexed. It is obvious when we wish to prevent a link from crawling and indexing.
Dofollow link is a kind of hyperlink which says all search engines crawlers to pass through which also put an impact over page rank. When we opt to employ or attempt to achieve a dofollow link then it is counted by search engines and sits in the eye of Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo etc. as a backlink for your website and enhances your site ranking.
Q 16.: Define Page Rank.
Ans: PageRank is a set of algorithm for link analysis named after Larry Page and employed by Google search engine towards defining a numerical value from 1 to 10 to each component of hyperlinked documents like world wide web. The value accepts only round figure that means decimal are not allowed. Page rank is calculated by their inbound links.
Q 17.: Establish a difference between PR & SERP.
Ans: PR is Page Rank which is defined by quality inbound links from other website or web-pages to a web page or website as well as say the importance of that site.
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page is the placement of the website or web-page which is returned by search engine after a search query or attribute.
Q 18.: What is Cache?
Ans: Cache is the process performed by search engine crawler at a regular interval of time. It used to scan and take snapshot of each page over world wide web as well as store as a backup copy. Almost every search engine result page incorporates a cached link for every site. However, clicking over cached link show you the last Google cached version of that specific page rather than of current version. Also, you can directly prefix “cache:http://www.webgranth.com” with desired URL to view it cached version.
Q 19.: Define Alt tag?
Ans: The alt attribute also called as alt tag are employed in XHTML and HTML documents in context of defining alternative text that is supposed to be rendered when the element can’t be rendered to which it is applied. One great feature of alt tag is that it is readable to ‘screen reader’ which is a software by means of which a blind person can hear this. In addition, it delivers alternative information for an image due to some specific reason a user can’t view it such as in case of slow connection and an error occurred in the src attribute.
For example, the HTML for this image will appear something like this:
<img alt=”you can define alt tag just below the input box of image title while uploading or editing a image.” src=”<http://www.webgranth.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Alt tag.jpg”>
Q 20.: What do you know about Adsense?
Ans: Adsense is a web program conducted by Google that enables publishers of content websites to cater text, rich media, image, video advertisements automatically which are relevant to content of website and audience. These advertisement are included, maintained and sorted by Google itself and earn money either by per-click or per-impression basis.
Q 21.: Can you define Adword?
Ans: Adword is referred as the main advertising product of Google which is useful to make appear your ads on Google and its partner websites including Google Search. This Google’s product offer PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising which is a primary module and incorporate a sub module CPC (Cost Per Click) where we bid that rate that will be charged only when the users click your advertisement. One another sub module is CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impression) advertising where advertiser pay for a thousand impression on flat rate to publisher. In addition it also includes website targeted advertising of banner, text and rich-media ads. Moreover, the ad will appear especially to those people who are already looking for such type of product you are offering as well as offer to choose particular sites with geographical area to show your ads.
Q 22.: What is PPC?
Ans: PPC is the abbreviated form of Pay Per Click and is a advertisement campaign conducted by Google. It is referred as a primary module with two sub module CPC (Cost-per-click) and CPM (Cost per thousand impression) through bidding and flat rate respectively. In CPC the advertiser would be only charged when the user click over their advert.
Q 23.: What are the aspects in SEO?
Ans: The main aspect in SEO are divided in two class: SEO On-Page and SEO Off-Page.
SEO On-Page includes Meta tag, description, keywords optimization, site structure and analysis, etc.
SEO Off-Page aspect are Keyword Research, unique and quality content, link building through Blog Comments, Blog Posting, Article submission, Press Release, Classified posting, Forum posting.
Q 24.: What do you know about RSS?
Ans: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication is useful to frequently publish all updated works including news headlines, blog entries etc. This RSS document also known as web feed, feed or channel that incorporate summarized text including metadata i.e. authorship and publishing dates etc.
However, RSS feeds make the publishers flexible by syndicating the content automatically. There is a standardized file format XML that lets the information to be published once which can be visible to several distinct programs. Also, this make readers more ease to get updates timely by allowing them to subscribe from their favorite sites.
Q 25.: How would you define Alexa?
Ans: Alexa is a California based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which is widely known for its website and toolbar. This Alexa toolbar congregate browsing behavior data and send it to website, where the data is analyzed and stored and create report for company’s web traffic. Also, Alexa provides data concerned to traffic, global ranking and other additional information for a websites.
Q 26.: How can you achieve Google Page Rank? Ans: Generally, Google Page Rank is based on inbound links, therefore, more backlinks you congregate more your page rank will be. Also, it is influenced by rank of page which is linked to you. One other thing to consider is that older your website will be, it will be more favorable and trusted to Google. Google reward those websites who incorporates lots of pages, tons of incoming link and also healthy quantity of internal links to another pages within the site. In respect of SEO projects, relatively it is not so significant but delivers a picture about work to perform towards earning inbound links.
Q 27.: Why the Title Tag in Website is valuable? Ans: In our SEO efforts Title Tags are very earnest. It is highly recommended to include a Unique Title that exactly says about the contents sits in that page. It is valuable because this is thing which appears in the search engine result section and tells the user & search engine, what is about this page.
Q 28.: What is Site Map and distinguish between HTML sitemap and XML sitemap? Ans: A sitemap incorporates list of web-pages which is accessible to users or crawlers. It might be a document in any form employed as a tool for planning either a web page or web design that enables them to appear on a website as well as typically placed in a hierarchical style. This helps search engine bots and users to find out the pages on a website. The site map renders our website more search engine friendly as well enhances the probability for frequent indexing.
HTML sitemap can be incorporated directly in a web page for user’s flexibility and can be implemented through proper design. On the other hand, XML sitemap is useful only for search engine crawlers or spiders and doesn’t visible to users. It sits in the root of website.
such as: http://www.webgranth.com/sitemap.xml
Which is better: an HTML site map or XML Sitemap? BY Matt Cutt
Q 29.: What’s the significance of Robots.txt file in a website?
Ans: Robots.txt file is considered as a convention useful to prevent cooperating web robots and web crawlers from accessing all or part of a website or its content for which we don’t want to be crawled and indexed but publicly viewable. It is also employed by search engines to archive and categorize website and to generate a rule of no follow regarding some particular areas of our websites.
Q 30.: How Keywords are implemented for optimization?
Ans: The best way to opt and implement keywords is to designate those keywords which are popular, relevant to our content, comprises high search volume and effective. Stuffing and over employment of keywords must be avoided. In order to get best result and effect, our pages shouldn’t contain keyword density more than 3-4%. Including keywords into title and description is highly recommended.
Q 31.: What is cloaking?
Ans: Cloaking is a technique which is used in Black Hat SEO that enables to create two distinct pages where the page content being presented to search engine spider is different from that which is being presented to user’s browser. These techniques does not come under the guidelines of search engines.
Q 32.: Do you know about Blog Flipping?
Ans: Blog Flipping is the practice to sale a blog when it becomes famous and popular as well as driving healthy amount of traffic.
Q 33.: What you opined about HTML either it is Case Sensitive or Case Insensitive?
Ans: HTML is case Insensitive. It doesn’t matter and deliver identical result either you write in Upper Case or Lower Case.
Q 34.:Under what circumstances you would intend to eliminate pages from search engines through robots.txt vs. Meta robots tag?
Ans: Generally, I would continue to employ robots.txt in order to make search engine indexing a directory on a website. This might be often a directory that is concerned with admin function or incorporate contents only in form of script or image gallery. Generally, robots.txt is employed to prevent a directory and its sub-folders and files to crawl by search engine bot as well as Meta robots tag for a specific web page.
Q 35.: What things are significant in organically ranking a website?
Ans: Basically there are various things that is being employed for organically ranking a website which can be classified in 3 distinct categories:
1. Website content: It must be quality and unique content as well as most be well optimized and well structured.
2. Website structure: This include TAGS, clear navigation, ensuring usability, validation of HTML errors and miscellaneous.
3. Back-links: You can create a link for any where but prior to this it is obvious to ensure for relevant site and healthy link.
Q 36.: What steps would you follow to optimize a website?
Ans: These are following steps to be followed while optimizing a website:
1. First of all we will interview webmaster or website owner to congregate relevant information, goals and website’s purpose.
2. Performing keyword analysis and find out the best search volume keywords that should be incorporated into the website as well as individual pages of the website.
3. Analyzing the content of website in order to ensure usage of content relevant keywords and phrases. This comprises titles, “alt” attributes and META tags (Meta Title, Meta description & Meta Keyword).
4. Target & implementing keywords as H1, H2 & so on relevant to the site and its content.
5. Analyzing website navigation.
6. Ensuring the robots.txt file and sitemap existence as well as check their efficiency.
7. If required, making recommendations for modifications in website as well as its each and every page and so on…..
Q 37.: What is considered as more significant – Creating great content or building backlinks?
Ans: Both are obvious. Creating quality content is considered as the first element responsible for ranking as well as building backlinks is useful to build authority to a site as well as coined as a metric for ranking well.
Q 38.: What will be your step when the company website you are working with wish to migrate its all content to a new domain?
Ans: First of all I would update the previous website with permanent redirect to new page for each and every page. Later eradicate previous content from search engines in context of avoiding duplicate content issues.
Q 39: What’s your opinion about link buying?
Ans: Generally I avoid this practice. Though other means of paid marketing are also available. The process of link buying is don’t liked by search engines. It doesn’t comes under the guidelines of search engine.
Q 40.: Can you establish a difference between SEM and SEO?
Ans: SEO is a set of processes to get our website or pages appear in search engine result page. On the other hand SEM is search engine marketing being used in practice to purchase advertising space in search engine page result.
Q 41.: What strategies would you implement for backlinks?
Ans: I would request for backlinks to competitors relevant website as well as provide reciprocal link if required. In addition, I would attempt to submit press release, article submission, blog submission and other aspects of off-page SEO to most relevant and quality sites.
Q 42.: What do you think about social media in SEO strategy?
Ans: Social networking websites are considered as social media which is very effective and robust for viral marketing. Viral marketing has been proved as very powerful resource, in the case if our content is unique, attractive and appealing. Some media Site:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Myspace
• Digg
• Youtube
• Myspace, etc.
Q 43.: In order to prevent penalty, what things you shouldn’t perform to increase ranking?
Ans: I would discard links from those websites which is supposed to act as link farm as well as poor quality sites which have low page rank. Ensure that our site must contain unique and quality content without keyword stuffing. Also, I used to avoid any practices of ‘spam’ which include certain affiliate advertising websites, unsolicited e-mail campaigns etc.
Q 44.: What mistakes you should avoid while optimizing the website?
Ans: The main mistakes that should be avoided are filling keywords in Web-Page, employing identical anchor text for link building, keyword stuffing, getting low quality backlinks etc.
Q 45: Define and Differentiate Webmaster Tool & Analytics Tool? Ans:Webmaster Tool is a free service catered by Google which provide us a complete report for indexed data, crawling errors, backlinks information, search queries, website malware errors, CTR and submitting XML sitemap. Basically, it acts as a mediator between website and server provide complete overview of data, issues and other queries.
Webmaster Tool Video By MATT CUTT
Google Analytics is a free web analysis tool first rolled out in late 2005 but generally it become available for users in August 2006. This tool acts between website & internet browser/users and offers complete overview of visitors statistics which exactly says about general website activities like page views, site visits, bounce rates, average time spent on site or pages, sources of traffic, location etc. It is also obvious for tracking Adword queries.
Beginners Guide to Google Analytics
Q 46.: How can you enhance the crawling frequency by search engines for your website?
Ans: Including new, original, unique and quality content on our website more frequently enables search engines to crawl more frequently.
Q 47.: What do you know about Keyword stemming?
Ans: It is the practice to find out root word from search query. For instance, a keyword like “playful” will be split to the word “play” by stemming algorithm that turns it possible. Thus, the search result appear on the screen will contain the word “play” in it.
Q 48.: What do you know about LSI?
Ans: LSI is the abbreviated form of Latent Semantic Indexing. It has been emerged as a technique of fetching data via establishing a communication among words as well as employing synonyms in the midst of retrieving the data from the index.
Q 49.: Can you tell me about Frames in HTML?
Ans: Frames in HTML are obvious as they used to discriminate the page content into distinct fragments. Search engines treat these frames as absolutely different pages as well as frames also put an negative impact over SEO. Therefore, we should avoid the practice of using Frames and implement basic HTML instead.
Q 50.: How can you know about your SEO campaign whether it is working or not?
Ans: First of all I would attempt to make a search on all search engines employing relevant keywords and keyphrases, I am optimizing for. The analysis of result will say whether the methods of optimization have gain results or lost. I would analyze the report regularly as search engine make update and index. I would attempt to another aspect of website statistics which says about origin of traffic.
Q 51.: What is the meaning of competitive analysis?
Ans: Competitive analysis, as its name suggested it is establishment of a comparison of data between the website I am optimizing and that website who rank highly in search results. It will be a great source of idea.
Q 52.: After implementing distinct SEO methods for a site, if you haven’t got any improvements. What would be your next step?
Ans: I would make troubleshooting for the issues. Firstly, I would designate whether it is a new project. Again I will analyze relevant keywords and phrase for the site I am optimizing for as well as took an insight study of competitive analysis. If the website and pages has been index and appears in the first 10 pages of search engine result page but not in the top three, I would go for some transformation to on page text, page titles and page descriptions. But in the case if website has not been indexed still or dropped from index, might be it comprises some big issues and total re-submission and re-work might be required.
However, I opined here that this post will be highly beneficial for who are stepping towards marshaling their career as SEO professional especially for those who are still freshers. Moreover, in this post I have also listed some useful SEO interview question for experienced professionals that will definitely help them to grab their dream job and offer a great opportunity to add sparkles in their career.
Advance Interview Questions and Answers
welcome in advance level interview questions and answers section it will increase your knowledge as a expert SEO level.
Q 1.: Tell me something about yourself?
Ans: You should brief your interviewer about your family, your educational background and your work experience.
Q 2.: What was the recent update which Google had and what changes would you suggest for it?
Ans:Google recently had the Penguin update which was a measure to control web spam. Penguin update had penalized websites which had a spammy backlinking profile and returned more semantic results. Semantic results were based on the relationship between words present on the search query. Penguin trusted sites that had original and good content, fresh content, good social media presence and quality organic links.
Q 3.:What all verticals have you handled in your SEO career so far?
Ans:Verticals means on what themes of websites have you worked so far- this may include education, real estate, IT, travel, Shopping, jobs etc.
Q 4.:What do you understand by the Panda update?
Ans: The Panda update was done to improve the quality of search results in Google. Panda update also known as the farmer update was done to eliminate content farms which provided less user friendly experience. It used machine language scalability as one of the important metrics for judging relevancy of a web page. All the focus was transformed on the user and now quality content , proper design, proper speed, proper use of images and videos, content to ad ratio all mattered more after the Panda update. You need to optimize your site for better clickthrough rate and a less bounce rate.
Q 5.:What is Google Sandbox in SEO?
Ans: Google Sandbox is an imaginary area where new and less authoritative sites are kept for a specified time period until they establish themselves of being displayed on the search results. It happens by building too many links within a short period of time.
Q 6.:What is the difference between on page seo and off page seo?
Ans:On page seo means optimizing your website and making changes on title, meta tags, site structure, site content, solving canonicalization problem, managing robots.txt etc.
Off page optimization means optimizing your web presence which involves backlink building and social media promotion.
Q 7.:How will you solve canonicalization issue or what is .htacess file?
Ans: .htacess file is used to solve the canonicalization issue of a website. It may happen that the home page of the site may take several urls like http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com/index.html or http://example.com . The search engines might treat these url as different and may divide the link juice gained by having various backlinks made with any of these 3 urls. The link juice gets divided between these three urls equally. .htacess file is created to have a single url of the home page so that the link juice is passed onto single url.
Q 8.: What is keyword stemming in SEO?
Ans:Keyword stemming is the process of finding out the root word from the search query. A query having the word “ playful” would be broken down to the word “play” with the help of stemming algorithm. The search results returned would be having the word ” play” in it.
Q 9.: What is LSI?
Ans: LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It is a data retrieval technique which finds connection between words and the use of synonyms while fetching data from the index.
Q 10.: What do you know about the Florida update?
Ans:Florida update happened on November 16th 2003. This update applied stemming, maintained local rank, penalized over optimized sites by applying filter etc. In short, it modified the search results before presenting it to the user by applying filters.
Q 11.: What are the limitations of title and description tags?
Ans:Title tag can be between 66-70 characters and meta description tag can be between 160-170 characters.
Q 12.: Does Google uses keyword tags?
Ans:No, Google does not make use of keyword tags.
Q 13.: What is 301 redirect?Ans:It is a method of redirecting user from the old page url to the new page url. 301 redirect is a permanent redirect and is helpful in passing the link juice from the old url to the new url.
Q 14.: What was your exact job profile in your previous company?
Ans:Provide a suitable explanation about your job profile which would include your job responsibilities and the amount of work you have handled so far.
Q 15.: What do you understand by Cloaking?
Ans:Cloaking involves using deceptive techniques which presents the user with a different version of the webpage than that presented to the search engines.
Q 16.: What tools do you use for doing seo?
Ans:I use Google webmaster tools, Google Analytics, Open site explorer, Alexa, Website grader etc.
Q 17.: What are your good qualities?
Ans:You will have to answer here about your good qualities like- I am hardworking, sincere, punctual, love to accept challenges etc.
Q 18.:What is the difference between Seo and Sem?
Ans: Seo stands for Search Engine Optimization while Sem stands for Search Engine Marketing. Seo provides organic traffic to a website with the help of search engines while Sem involves the use of Google adwords and other paid channels of advertising.
Q 19.:What is PPC?
Ans: PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is a form of advertising methodology in which the advertiser pays for every click on their ads. Google uses this form of advertising in its channel of advertising called Adwords.
Q 20.:Which is better Robots.txt or Meta Robots Tag?
Ans: Meta Robots tag is much better as it helps in forcing the search engine crawlers not to index and display the hidden pages in your server.
Q 21.: Do you use separate Seo strategies for Google,Yahoo and Bing?
Ans: Yes I use separate strategies for Google,Yahoo and other search engines.More backlinks are required for Google .It pays more attention to backlinks and site authority while Yahoo and Bing pays more attention to title and Meta tags. Hence, a site takes time to rank on Google as compared to Yahoo and Bing.
Q 22.:How will you increase the Pagerank of a page?
Ans: By building more backlinks from authority sites and high page rank webpages.
Q 23.: How will you check the number of backlinks of your competitors site?Ans: With the help of the link operator on Google and by using various external tools like Alexa, Backlink Watch , Open Site Explorer, Backlink finder etc.
Q 24.:Which is more important- Building backlinks to a website or building great content?
Ans: Both are important. Building great content is necessary as it is your first step towards ranking ;and building backlinks helps to build authority to your website and is an important metric for ranking well. Hence both should go parallel and both are equally important.
Q 25.: Who is Matt Cutts?
Ans: Matt Cutts is the head of Google's web spam team.
Q 26.:If a website has a search engine saturation of 40% , what does that mean?Ans: It means 40% of web pages from that particular website are indexed by the search engine.
Q 27.: What do you mean by anchor text?
Ans: Clickable text written on an hyperlink is known as anchor text. It is of great value to the search en ines and is used for evaluating the relevance of web pages with respect to search queries.
Q 28.:How will you treat Web standards while optimizing a website?Ans: Google loves web standards hence I will apply the web standards provided by W3C while optimizing a web site.
Q 29.:What methods would you apply for decreasing the loading time of a website?
Ans: I would use external style sheets, less images (unless necessary), optimize the images and decrease the file sizes of the image without reducing the quality of the image, use CSS sprites to reduce HTTP requests etc.
Q 30.: Which tools do you use for choosing keywords?Ans: I use Google Keyword tool, Wordtracker tool, Wordstream, Seo book keyword tool etc.
*Remember certain tools are paid but you may use the trial version for some days.
Q 31.: What blogs and sites do you regularly visit to update yourself?
Ans:I follow Matt Cutts blog. Seomoz blog, Seochat forums, Searchengineland.com,Seo book, Seosandwitch etc.
Q 32.:What are doorway pages?
Ans:These are pages that are specially created to rank high on search engines using deceptive techniques.Doorway pages do not provide useful content but instead redirect users to the main page.
Q 33.: What are the Social Media channels you have used for marketing?
Ans: I have used blogs like blogger,wordpress,typepad etc, social bookmarking sites like Digg,Jumptags,Delicious etc., social networking sites like Facebook,Linkedin etc., Video Sharing sites like Youtube,Vimeo etc.
Q 34.: What would you suggest to the client who has a website made on Flash? How would you do Seo for that site?
Ans: Search engines find it harder to parse the contents presented using Flash. I would suggest the client to use an alternative to flash like HTML 5.
Q 35.: What do you understand by Frames in HTML?
Ans: A frame is a HTML technique which divides the content of a page onto several parts. Search engines see Frames as completely different pages and as such Frames have a negative impact on Seo. We should avoid the usage of Frames and use basic HTML instead.
Q 36.: Which is the popular search engine in Russia?Ans: Yandex is popular in Russia.Q 37.:If the meta robots tag has a value of "no index, no follow" what does it mean?
Ans: It means the search engine crawlers would not index the contents and woulzd not follow the links present on the page.
Q 38.:Who is Rand Fishkin?
Ans:Rand Fishkin is the CEO and Co founder of Seomoz, the most popular seo software in the world. He started the informative "White Board Friday" series for explaining the concepts related to Seo and search engines.
Q 39.: How will you restrict the search engine crawlers from indexing a folder named "Secret" that is present in the root?
Ans:The following code when added on the robots.txt text file would restrict the crawlers from accessing the folder
User-agent:*
Disallow: /Secret/
Q 40.:What do you understand by Google Dance?
Ans:Google Dance happens when major updates happen on the database maintained by Google. Constant shuffling leads to unstable rankings of the Web Pages.This continues for some days and is known as Google dance. It was witnessed in the past before the real time searching happened. Now, Google updates its index almost everyday and changes are witnessed narrowly.
Q 41.:Which are the top 3 social media websites that you will suggest to your client for SMO work?
Ans:I would suggest Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
Q 42.: How does Google Plus helps in Seo?
Ans:Google Plus helps the promoted web pages to get plus ones which are considered as genuine votes by Google. More plus ones helps to enhance our search engine rankings. Moreover,it helps to get high rankings in personalized search results where our friends can see the web pages shared and promoted by us.Read more here:- Using Google Plus for Seo
Q 43.: What is a Pizza Box in terms of Google?
Ans:Google server comes in a standard case which is commonly known as "Pizza Box".
Q 44.: How important is to have a keyword in a domain name?
Ans:After the recent EMD update, the weightage on the presence of keyword on a domain has reduced. It is therefore important to go for a domain name that can focus on building a brand rather than using only keywords which could make a domain look spammy. Although having keywords in the domain helps but it would work only if the combination comes out as brandable. Some popular examples of website which succeded without having keywords in it are flipkart.com, myntra.com, ebay.com, digg.com, reddit.com and ofcoz google.com etc. But, there are some themes where the presence of keywords becomes necessary like the presence of the keyword "recipes" in allrecipes.com or the presence of the word "food" in the domain foodnetwork.com . Hence, its important to take decisions based on the theme you need to target.
Q 45.:What do you understand by "Engagement Metrics" with relation to social media?
Ans:Engagement metrics comprises of information which is used to measure the importance of user (customer) engagement with respect to a particular social data.Some example includes likes, retweets, plusones, clicks, favorites,repins,comments etc.
Q 46.: What are your favorite ways of attracting natural backlinks to your site?
Ans:Having user friendly content on the site is the best way to attract natural backlinks but one of my favorite ways of attracting natural backlinks is by offering free widgets and free infographics to my audience.
Q 47.: Have you heard about ASO?Ans:ASO stands for App Store Optimization which is a process of improving the visibility of mobile apps on app stores like iTunes and Google Play.
Q 48.:How can you search with the exact keywords you type on Google without using quotes?
Ans:We can use the Verbatim tool in order to search with the exact keywords entered on Google.
Q 49.:What do you understand by Google Authorship and how can you use it for Seo benefits?
Ans:Google Authorship allows you to link your Google Plus Profile to the content you create. This is a way to enhance the overall user experience and stop spamming. Results containing content from original and reputed authors are valued highly by Google and chances of spamming are also reduced. Hence, implementing Google Authorship is really useful for Seo as it helps a webpage to rank higher based on the author rank.Read more:- How to Make Full Use of Google Authorship Profile
Q 50.: How can you make a website mobile friendly?I will create a mobile friendly version of the website for Googlebot-Mobile, use meta.txt for specifying special instructions to mobile search engine crawlers, use mobile.xml sitemap and will have mobile optimized content on the site.Read more:- Mobile Seo
Q 51.: What is the difference between clicks and visits in Google Analytics?Clicks indicates the number of times any user clicks on an ad while visits indicates the number of unique sessions each visits create.Read more:- Difference between clicks and visitsQ 52.: How can you track Facebook likes using Google Analytics?
We can do this with the help of social interaction web tracking. I will add a custom script using FB.Event.subscribe function to start tracking clicks.SEO Interview Tips :
1- Remain honest throughout the interview and explain those topics which you know well. If you are asked about any topic which you don't know then say politely to the interviewer that you do not know the answer to the question.
2- Dress neatly and speak politely.
3- Make sure to learn about the company backgrounds before you go for the interview. Interviewers are impressed if they find the interviewee knowing about the company background, its policies and its services.
4- Be comfortable and patiently listen to the questions put up by the interviewer. You should not be in a hurry to answer questions.
SEO Tools:
Duplicate Content Checker Tools
Copyscape
Article Checker
Plagium
Duplicate Content Checker
Virante Duplicate Content Checker
Dupli Checker
Plagiarism Checker
Copygator
Similar Page Checker
Backlink Checker Tools:
Backlinkwatch
Iwebtools backlink checker
Dirgio BacklinkAnalysis
Bulk Backlink Checker
Open Site Explorer
Link Diagnosis
Link Checker from Blue Backlinks
Keyword Tools:
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Keyword Finder
Wordpot
Ontology related keyword finder
Wordstream
Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Ispionage
Broken Link Checkers:
Broken Link Check
W3C Link Checker
Submit Express Broken Link Checker
Bad Links Report
Check Broken Links
Xenu Link Sleuth (Free Download)
Webmaster Tools:
Google webmaster tools
Bing Webmaster Tools
Analytics and Tracking Tools:
Google Analytics
Yahoo Analytics
Fire Stats
Jaw Stats
W3 Counter
Woopra
Logfile Analyzer
Piwik
Traffic and Rank Checker Tools:
Alexa
Quantcast
Google Page Rank checker
Iwebtool Page rank checker
Check Site traffic
Stat Brain
Seo Analysis Tools:
Meta Tag Analyzer
WG Tools
DIY SEO
Spyder Mate
SiteTrail
Seoptimer
Website Grader
Woo Rank
Seo Workers
Lipperhay
Seo Rush
Validators:
HTML Validator
CSS validator
Site Speed Checker:
Slowcop
Speed Test
Pingdom
Gomez
Browser Extensions:
Seo Toolbar
Seomoz Toolbar
Seoquake
Sem Toolbar
Seojunkies Toolbar
Affilorama
Downloadable Seo Software
Traffic Travis
Serpattacks
Webceo
Other tools:
Seoeh (A collection of Seo optimizing,QR Code and Webmaster tools)
PPC Interview Questions
Q 1.: What is the difference between search engine marketing and Internet marketing?
Ans:Search Engine Marketing is specific to marketing your brand/service/products through search engines. It can be in the form of organic search results where landing pages are aimed for higher ranking, or in paid search results, where ads are aimed to display at maximum exposure for targeted keywords at minimal cost possible.
Internet marketing covers a broader range of channels. It includes search engine marketing, email marketing / EDM, social media, and so on.
Q 1.: What is Quality Score and how does it affect your work as paid search specialist?
Ans:State the definition of Quality Score without being too bookish. It’s important to understand what it is, rather than remembering what it literally means.
Quality Score’s a part of Google’s way of determining ranking of AdWords ads. This can be achieved by, among others, improving relevance between ad copies and keywords, improving quality of landing pages. By obtaining high quality score for my keywords, I can reduce expenses for my PPC campaigns.
Reducing operating costs is what clients have in mind, right?
Q 3.: If we rank high on our brand terms in organic results, do we need to rank well on paid search?
Ans:Yes, you may need to rank well on paid search even if you have high rankings within your organic search keywords. That’s because ranking high on organic search, even for your selected terms does not mean automatic success in achieving your business goals. If the ROI for paid search campaign is better than the organic search campaign, it makes more sense to do so. Also, paid search ads on top reinforce the presence of top organic search results. They make your brands/products/services look more credible.
Q 4.: How do you manage large set of keywords (hundred thousand to millions)?
Ans:It is prerequisite to mention automatic bid tools to manage this huge paid search campaign. But merely saying so does not mean you’re off the hook. It helps to explain classification of keywords, grouping them according to priorities, business objectives and target audience so that if business strategies change, campaigns can easily be modified.
Can also mention classification of keywords according to importance such as “high”, “medium” or “low” and those that are of secondary importance, low performance, and those keywords that are candidates for removal.
Explaining clearly how the number of keywords grew tremendously by stating methodologies for keyword research, usage of match types, negative keywords and describing timing phases helps, too.
Q 5.: How do I reduce costs of my paid search campaigns?
Ans:Don’t immediately answer open-ended questions that lead to answers based on multiple assumptions. Costs of acquisition? Cost per click? You can’t answer accurately a question that isn’t accurate itself. When in doubt, you should also have the freedom to ask question before you release your thoughts.
Some interviewers are fond of tricky questions.
Q 6.: How do you respond if your client’s competitor bought the same trademarked keyword?
Ans: Perhaps you did contact that offending party, stated the violation terms, but it still refuses to budge to your polite request.
Answers may vary according to where a campaign is going to take place. In certain markets such as the UK (update: now more), Google allows bidding for trademarked keywords. But if you’re sure that you’re not covered by this policy and feel that a violation has been committed, lodging a complaint to Google is the next logical option.
Q 7.: Describe the structure of a Google AdWords paid search campaign
Ans:Google AdWords PPC advertising structure is composed of one or multiple accounts (if necessary). An account can handle up to 25 campaigns. Each campaign can handle up to 100 ad groups. Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns can have up to 1,000 keywords and 20 ads within an ad group.
Of course, we don’t have to know these max keyword numbers as we don’t need to fill each ad groups to the max. We only need to fill our ad groups with the most targeted keywords available.
Q 8.: How do you differentiate paid search programs of Google, MSN and Yahoo?
Ans:One way to differentiate these three are through presentation of strengths and weaknesses of each.
Google AdWords
Advantage: Most robust and corners majority of all paid search traffic
Disadvantage: Due to its big number of advertisers, cost per click is generally more expensive
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Advantage: Lower pay per click cost compared to Google AdWords
Disadvantage: Way behind Google AdWords in terms of reporting features
MSN adCenter
Advantage: Studies show that users of adCenter are more likely result to conversions
Disadvantage: Weakest PPC interface compared to Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing
Q 9.: How do you describe building your keyword list?
Ans:Building a list of keywords used for any organic or paid search campaign should be systematic:
Identify your audience
Who are the target audience of this campaign? What would they probably be using to look for my products and services? Knowing your audience is the first sign of a successful paid search campaign.
Review your existing offerings
Based on what search terms people are using, do I have these terms? What are the possible landing pages? Does my website have content voids?
Look at your competitors
Look at competitors and analyze how they position themselves. Are they using the same terms as I do? Broader or more specific?
Check web analytics results
History will be recorded on web analytics tools: keywords used, their effectiveness in driving sales or leads and other useful information. Such data should give us idea on which keywords yielded better ROI.
Expand keywords using various tools
Based on keywords gathered so far, expansion is made possible through various tools available: Google AdWords keyword tool, WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, and so on. From this big list, we can sort, prioritize and group these keywords according to importance, timing or other segmentation methods.
Q 10.: What’s your methodology in creating ad copies?
Ans:This question wants to find out how you would come up with ad copies. Are they compelling and paint an accurate picture of the intended message? You may answer it based on the following guidelines:
Find out why your ad copy should be more effective than others
Your ad’s ability to answer basic questions
Testing the ad copy; we’ll never know how effective it is until we put it to the test
What’s your take on bidding for competitor’s trademark keywords?
This is a tricky question that should be addressed properly. PPC Hero has good guidance on this: citing the issue of legality and best-practice because it’s either you can or you can’t bid on a competitor’s trademark terms. Recent development in Google AdWords paid search has paved way for non-trademark owners to bid for previously exclusive trademark keywords. By being active on what’s going on in the industry, this means you’ll always be on top of things as they happen. And that’s a good thing for prospect employers.
Q 11.: What is your strategy on geo-targeting ads?
Ans:The question will seek answer on how you’d approach ads that are displayed for specific locations. Is it just based on IP filter or should you extend it? For example, if I want to advertise for “seo hong kong” keyword only to users who are located in Hong Kong, an IP targeting methodology will only display the ads if their location (IP address) is associated with Hong Kong.
But what if someone from UK wants to find a Hong Kong SEO agency to optimize its Traditional Chinese content? An extension of this IP targeting should also be based on the keyword itself so that if someone else outside of Hong Kong uses the exact match of the phrase, the ad should still be displayed.
I hope these PPC interview questions and answers list are fairly helpful and assists you in formulating
possible answers on questions that relate to the ones I highlighted in this post.
(Q) Based on which Google places ads in first place?
(A) Google decides to give rank 1 in ads depending upon CTR(quality score) x CPC bid.
(Q) What is CTR?
(A) CTR – Click through rate. It is number of times your ad is clicked.
(Q) How many campaigns can I run in one adwords account?
(A) 25 Campaigns
(Q) How many adgroups can I run under one campaign?
(A) 2000 adgroups
(Q) How many ads can I run per adgroup?
(A) 50 ads per adgroup
(Q) How much characters can I place in one ad?
(A) For one ad 4 rows are given
25 characters for headline
35 characyers per text row(including URL)
(Q) How can you Improve Conversion Rates?
(A) Creating and testing campaign with different keywords and choosing that perform well.
(Q) IS PPC effective advertisement for search engine rankings?
(A) Google or any other search engine don`t mix PPC ads with search rankings.
(Q) What is Quality Score?
(A) Quality Score is Score give to your ads that attain by keywords. The Higher the quality score the less you need to pay for a Top Position of your ads. It is given upon CTR.
(Q) Which companies are offering PPC advertisement?
(A) Yahoo, MSN and Google are among top most PPC advertisers.
(Q) What is Page rank? Explain it?
(A) Google page rank algorithm helps search engines to realize the value of a page. It ranks your website on basis of quality links it has. It is given by Google depending upon keyword, backlink sites, and content.
(Q) Why I need to go for adwords for PPC?
(A) Because Adwords assures that 80% of internet users sees your product or service.
(Q) How to achieve good CTR?
(A)Here are few things that need to be kept in mind for CTR
Target your ads to right audience
Select correct keyword matching
See that you target your ads by location and language
Create different Ad Groups for different search phrases/keywords
Calculate how much you can afford for the day
test your ads on daily basis, change if you don`t get any response from users
Give google users a good reason to
