As the demand for digital marketing careers has increased recently, SEO jobs have also become quite popular. If you are planning to start your career in this field, you must practice SEO interview questions.
Lucky for you, today we have listed the beginner level SEO interview questions with answers that will help you book a successful career in the highly rewarding digital marketing field.
List of SEO Interview Questions for Freshers
Q.1 What is SEO?
Q.2 What are the different types of SEO?
Q3 What is On-Page SEO?
Q.4 What is Off-Page SEO?
Q.5 What is Technical-SEO?
Q.6 What is a Backlink?
Q.7 What is a Keyword?
Q.8 Difference between DoFollow and NoFollow backlinks?
Q.9 What are Meta Tags?
Q.10 What is a Sitemap?
Q.11 What is Robots.txt?
Q.12 What is the importance of Mobile-Friendly websites in SEO?
Q.13 What is the difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO?
Q.14 What is Keyword Stuffing?
Q.15 What are Core Web Vitals?
Q.16 How does page speed affect SEO?
Q.17 What is Bounce Rate?
Q.18 What are some popular SEO tools you know?
Q.19 What is a Canonical Tag?
Q.20 What is the difference between 301 and 302 redirects?
Q.21 What is the role of Alt Text in SEO?
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Q.1 What is SEO?
Ans. Being a beginner-level test, you will be asked this SEO interview question. “SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a process in which an individual optimizes a website to rank higher on search engines like Google. The person who performs this task is called an SEO executive.”
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Q.2 What are the different types of SEO?
Ans. Simple yet an important follow-up SEO interview question. “There are mainly three types of SEO: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO.”
Q.3 What is On-Page SEO?
Ans. Although being a fresher, you won’t necessarily be asked to define these topics. But you never know, the interviewer might ask you this SEO interview question to check your preparation. “On-Page SEO is a practice of optimizing website content along with HTML source code, including titles, meta descriptions, headers, URL structure, and other technical elements to enhance the site rankings on search engines.”
Q.4 What is Off-Page SEO?
Ans. “Off-page SEO improves the website’s reputation and authority via external factors like getting other websites to link to your site, giving social media mentions, or getting online reviews. Some of the well-known off-page activities are backlinks, social sharing, image submissions, and guest posting.”
Read more – Off-Page SEO: 7 Powerful Strategies to Build Backlinks & Rank #1 on Google
Q.5 What is Technical-SEO?
Ans. “This SEO type is used in optimizing the website’s backend structure and performance, which includes site speed, mobile friendliness, URL structure, and crawlability to help search engines find, understand, and index the page.”
Q.6 What is a Backlink?
Ans. Being the first technical SEO interview question, you should answer this in a well-structured and concise way, something like this: “A backlink is when another website links to your website. This gives confidence to the search engine that your website is trustworthy and valuable.”
Q.7 What is a Keyword?
Ans. Keep the answer crisp and short for this SEO interview question: “Keywords are the phrases that a user searches on Google to find the answer to their desired query.”
Q.8. Difference between DoFollow and NoFollow backlinks?
Ans. Being a not-so-beginner-friendly SEO interview question, you must prepare an answer for these important concepts:
DoFollow: Passes link juice, authority, and SEO value through the linking website, boosting the search rankings on search engines.
NoFollow: Does not pass SEO value or authority to your website, but can still drive traffic and brand awareness.
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Q.9. What are Meta Tags?
Ans. “Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that provide information about your webpage to search engines and browsers, but aren’t visible to visitors on the actual page. The most important ones are the title tag (the page headline in search results) and meta description (the summary that appears below your title in search results).”
Read more – Meta Tags in SEO: The Ultimate Guide to On-Page Optimization
Q.10. What is a Sitemap?
Ans. “A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, acting like a roadmap that helps search engines find and crawl your content more efficiently. It’s a directory that tells Google and other search engines, “here are all the pages I want you to know about.”
Q.11. What is Robots.txt?
Ans. “Robots.txt is a simple text file you place on your website that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections they should or shouldn’t visit. It’s like a “Do Not Enter” sign for certain parts of your website that you don’t want indexed by Google.”
Q.12 What is the importance of Mobile-Friendly websites in SEO?
Ans. Today, mobile phones can perform almost every task that a PC or laptop can. Most people today use their mobile phones to check a website and its content, making it essential to keep the website mobile-friendly. To this end, Google also started giving preferences to mobile-friendly websites through its mobile-first indexing feature.
Q.13 What is the difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO?
Ans. Both White and Black Hat SEO are poles apart from each other:
White Hat: The term ‘white’ gives the subtle hint that white hat SEO is associated with ethical SEO techniques based on Google’s guidelines as they come.
Black Hat: Black isn’t seen as a positive color, so black hat SEO involves using unethical tactics to boost rankings, such as keyword stuffing, hidden links or texts, and redirections to manipulate search results.
Q.14 What is Keyword Stuffing?
Ans. Not using the keywords in a natural form and instead putting them in a haphazard form throughout your content will create a keyword stuffing situation and will be considered a black hat SEO practice.
Q.15 What are Core Web Vitals?
Ans. They are Google’s key metrics that measure user experience and directly impact the search rankings. Google’s page experience signals include:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures the loading speed, which means how quickly the content will appear, which should be under 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) detects responsiveness, which is measured by the delay between user interaction and browser response, which should be under 100ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures stability by analyzing the content shift during loading, which should be under 0.1 seconds.
Q.16 How does page speed affect SEO?
Ans. Page speed is directly linked to the user experience. Ensuring a faster-loading website will enhance its ranking on search engines and minimize bounce rates.
Q.17 What is Bounce Rate?
Ans. Bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave a website without interacting with it. In most cases, a bounce rate of 40% is considered good. Whereas now, instead of bounce rate, you will see an engagement rate option.
Q.18 What are some popular SEO tools you know?
Ans. Some of the most efficient SEO tools I know of are Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and Screaming Frog. Most of these are industry-leading tools used for keyword research, competitor analysis, monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting.
Q.19 What is a Canonical Tag?
Ans. Canonical tags are an HTML element that tells search engines which version of the page is the master when we have duplicate content across multiple URLs.
Q.20 What is the difference between 301 and 302 redirects?
Ans. 301 is a permanent HTTPS status code that directly sends the user and the search engine from one URL to another. This indicates that a page is now permanently redirected to another location. On the other hand, a 302 redirect is a temporary HTTPS code that sends the user, along with the search engine, to a different location, indicating that the original page will return to its original location soon.
Q.21 What is the role of Alt Text in SEO?
Ans. Alt text provides a written description for an image, helping search engines understand image content and improve accessibility.
Final Words
These were the beginner-level SEO interview questions with answers. These questions will do wonders for you if you are looking forward to diving into the world of digital marketing through an SEO job profile. Preparing these questions in advance will help you clear your interview seamlessly and book you a decent-paying first job. But if you need more guidance, you can book a free career counseling session with us, and we will give you a clear roadmap to start your digital marketing career in this high-paying field.
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