40 SEO Interview Questions

Here some of the best interview questions for SEO that are generally asked by interviewers.

1. If a website's search engine saturation with respect to a particular search engine is 20%, what does it mean?
a. 20% of the webpages of the website have been indexed by the search engine
b. Only 20% of the pages of the website will be indexed by the search engine
c. 20% of the websites pages will never be indexed
d. The website ranks in the first 20% of all websites indexed by the search engine for its most important search terms

2. 10 people do a web search. In response, they see links to a variety of web pages. Three of the 10 people choose one particular link. That link then has a __________ clickthrough rate.
a. less than 30%
b. 30 percent
c. more than 30%

3. Which of the following factors have an impact on the Google PageRank?
a. The total number of inbound links to a page of a web site
b. The subject matter of the site providing the inbound link to a page of a web site
c. The text used to describe the inbound link to a page of a web site
d. The number of outbound links on the page that contains the inbound link to a page of a web site

4. What does the 301 server response code signify?
a. Not Modified
b. Moved Permanently
c. syntax error in the request
d. Payment is required
e. The request must be authorized before it can take place

5. If you enter 'Help site:www.go4expert.com' in the Google search box, what will Google search for?
a. It will open up the Google help pages applicable to www.go4expert.com
b. It will find pages about help within www.go4expert.com
c. It will only find page titles about help within www.go4expert.com
d. It will direct you to the request page for re-indexing of www.go4expert.com

6. What is Anchor Text?
a. It is the main body of text on a particular web page
b. It is the text within the left or top panel of a web page
c. It is the visible text that is hyper linked to another page
d. It is the most prominent text on the page that the search engines use to assign a title to the page

7. Which of the following free tools/websites could help you identify which city in the world has the largest search for the keyword - "six sigma"?
a. Yahoo Search Term Suggestion Tool
b. Alexa
c. Google Traffic Estimator
d. Google Trends
e. WordTracker

8. What term is commonly used to describe the shuffling of positions in search engine results in between major updates?
a. Waves
b. Flux
c. Shuffling
d. Swaying

9. Are RSS/Atom feeds returned in Google's search results?
a. Yes
b. No

10. Which of the following statements regarding website content are correct?
a. If you have two versions of a document on your website, Google recommends that you only allow the indexing of the better version
b. Linking to a page inconsistently does not affect the way Google views the page/s. Examples of inconsistent linking could be http://www.your-website.com/page/ and http://www.your-website.com/page and http://www.your-website.com/page/index.htm.
c. Syndicating your content could lead to Google viewing the material as duplicate
d. Placeholders for pages which do not have content are never viewed as duplicate content by Google

11. What does the term Keyword Prominence refer to?
a. It refers to the fact that the importance of choosing high traffic keywords leads to the best return on investment
b. It refers to the importance attached to getting the right keyword density
c. It refers to the fact that the keywords placed in important parts of a webpage are given priority by the search engines
d. It refers to the fact that the keywords in bold font are given priority by the search engines

12. What is the term for Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity?
a. Red hat techniques
b. Silver hat techniques
c. Grey hat techniques
d. Shady hat techniques

13. Which of the following statements is correct with regard to natural links?
a. They are two way links (reciprocal links)
b. They are from authority websites
c. They are voluntary in nature
d. They are from .edu or .gov extension websites

14. Which of the following can be termed as good keyword selection and placement strategies?
a. Targeting synonyms of the main keyword
b. Targeting the highest searched keywords only
c. Copying competitor keywords
d. Optimizing five or more keywords per page

15. What does the 302 server response code signify?
a. It signifies conflict, too many people wanted the same file at the same time
b. The page has been permanently removed
c. The method you are using to access the file is not allowed
d. The page has temporarily moved
e. What you requested is just too big to process

16. Which of the following statements about FFA pages are true?
a. They are greatly beneficial to SEO
b. They are also called link farms
c. They are paid listings
d. They contain numerous inbound links

17. What is the name of the search engine technology due to which a query for the word 'actor' will also show search results for related words such as actress, acting or act?
a. Spreading
b. Dilating
c. RSD (realtime synonym detection)
d. Stemming
e. Branching

18. What will the following robots.txt file do?
User-agent:Googlebot
Disallow:/*?
User-agent:Scooter
Disallow:
a. It will allow Google to crawl any of the dynamically generated pages. It will also allow the altavista scooter bot to access every page
b. It will disallow Google from crawling any of the dynamically generated pages. It will also disallow the altavista scooter bot from accessing any page
c. It will disallow Google from crawling any of the dynamically generated pages. It will allow the altavista scooter bot to access every page
d. None of the above

19. Which of the following statements about RSS are correct?
a. It is a form of XML
b. It stands for Realtime streamlined syndication
c. It is a good way of displaying static information
d. It is a microsoft technology

20. Which of the following statements are correct with regard to using javascript within the web pages?
a. It uses up the valuable space within the webpage, which should be used for placing meaningful text for the search engines
b. Search engines cannot read Javascript
c. It is a good idea to shift the Javascript into a separate file
d. Most of the search engines are unable to read links within Javascript code

21. Which of the following options are correct regarding the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) of a particular keyword?
a. It is directly proportional to the popularity of the keyword
b. It is inversely proportional to the competiton for the keyword
c. It is directly proportional to the chances of the keyword ranking on the first page of the Google search results

22. What is the illegal act of copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site called?
a. Trafficjacking
b. Visitorjacking
c. Viewjacking
d. Pagejacking

23. Which of the following search engines offers a popular list of the top 50 most searched keywords?
a. Google
b. Yahoo
c. AOL
d. Lycos

24. Which of the following search engines or directories provides the main search results for AOL?
a. Lycos
b. DMOZ
c. Google
d. Yahoo
e. Windows Live

25. Which of the following can be termed as appropriate Keyword Density?
a. 0.01-0.1%
b. 0.1-1%
c. 3-4%
d. 7-10%
e. More than 10%

26. The following robots meta tag directs the search engine bots:
a. Not to index the homepage and not to follow the links in the page
b. Not to index the page and not to follow the links in the page
c. To index the page and not to follow the links in the page
d. Not to index the page but to follow the links in the page

27. What is Keyword Density?
a. The number of times the keyword is used / (DIVIDED BY) the total word count on page - (MINUS)the total words in HTML on the page
b. The number of times the keyword is used X (MULTIPLIED BY) the total word count on page
c. The number of times the keyword is used in the page description
d. The number of times the keyword is used in the page title
e. The number of times the keyword is used / (DIVIDED BY) the total word count on the page

28. Which of the following are examples of agents?
a. Internet Explorer
b. Search engine spiders
c. Opera
d. SQL Server database attached to a website

29. If you search for the term "iq test" in the Word Tracker keyword suggestion tool, will it return the number of independent searches for the term "iq"?
a. Yes
b. No

30. Cloaking is a controversial SEO technique. What does it involve?
a. Increasing the keyword density on the web pages
b. Offering a different set of web pages to the search engines
c. Hiding the keywords within the webpage
d. Creating multiple pages and hiding them from the website visitors

31. Which of the following facts about Alexa are correct?
a. Alexa provides free data on relative website visitor traffic
b. Alexa and Quantcast provide information on visitor household incomes
c. Alexa is biased towards US based traffic
d. Quantcast only tracks people who have installed the Quantcast toolbar
This is the last question of your test.

32. Google gives priority to themed in-bound links.
a. True
b. False

33. Which of the following methods can help you get around the Google Sandbox?
a. Buying an old Website and getting it ranked
b. Buying a Google Adwords PPC campaign
c. Placing the website on a sub domain of a ranked website and then 301 re-directing the site after it has been indexed
d. Getting a DMOZ listing

34. A Hallway Page is used to:
a. Attract visitors from the search engines straight onto the Hallway Page
b. Organizes the Doorway Pages
c. Helps people navigate to different Doorway Pages
d. Enables search engine bots to index the Doorway Pages

35. Which of the following options describes the correct meaning of MouseTrapping?
a. The technique of monitoring the movement of the mouse on the webpage
b. The technique of monitoring the area on which an advertisement was clicked
c. The web browser trick, which attempts to redirect visitors away from major websites through a spyware program
d. The web browser trick, which attempts to keep a visitor captive at on a website

36. What is the most likely time period required for getting a Google page rank?
a. 1 week
b. 3 weeks
c. 2 months
d. More than 3 months

37. All major search engines are case sensitive.
a. True
b. False

38. Which of the following website design guidelines have been recommended by Google?
a. Having a clear hierarchy and text links
b. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link
c. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you should break the site map into separate pages
d. Keeping the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
e. Use less than 30 images or graphics per page

39. How are site maps important for the search engine optimization process?
a. Site maps help the search engine editorial staff to quickly go through a website, hence ensuring quicker placement
b. Google gives credit to the websites having site maps. The GoogleBot looks for the keyword or title "Site Map" on the home page of a website.
c. Site maps help the search engine spider pick up more pages from the website
d. None of the above

40. Google looks down upon paid links for enhancing page rank. If a website sells links, what action/s does Google recommend to avoid being penalized?
a. The text of the paid links should state the words "paid text link" for Google to identify it as a paid link
b. Only Paid text links to non profit websites should be accepted
c. Paid links should be disclosed through the "rel=nofollow" attribute in the hyperlink
d. Paid links should be disclosed through the "index=nofollow" attribute in the hyperlink