List of 13 most common, important and anticipated questions that will be shot at you if you are going for a SEO job interview. Equip yourself with its answers and help yourself in earning your dream SEO job. ALL THE BEST!!!

1. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential)
© EduPristine – www.edupristine.com
Most anticipated SEO Job Interview Questions and their Answers

2. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 1
With Digital Marketing booming, it is making tremendous job opportunities in its
various branches, one of which is SEO. If you are reading this article, we are sure that
you know what SEO is, which saves you from boredom of SEO definition we would
have given. So which questions do you think are usually asked in the interview?
Depends on the interviewer, right? Let us make it easy for you.
After asking and consulting many SEO experts we have gathered some questions
which are generally asked by any interviewer if you are going for a SEO job interview.
Take advantage of these questions to the fullest and get your SEO dream job. Forget
not to give us the treat.

3. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 2
13 Interview Questions and Answers

4. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 3
1. What do you know about Google’s algorithm updates?
Answer: In order to make the deserving websites with better content rank higher than others
in the search results, Google is constantly trying to work on their algorithm. Google introduced
Google Top Heavy Update and Google Penguin Update in 2012, Google Hummingbird in 2013
and Google Pigeon Update in 2014. All these updates have helped Google in improving its
algorithms and that in turn have helped many websites to get their deserving place in search
results.
You can get a good overview via this Moz inventory of all the Google algorithm updates.

5. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential)
2. What is a Google “Penalty”?
Answer: The negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's
search algorithms or manual review is called a Google Penalty. It can be an unfortunate by-
product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO
techniques. Engaging into practices which go against webmaster guideline can get you a
penalty.
4

6. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential)
3. What is Webmaster tools?
Answer: Google provides Webmaster tools service which helps you in getting backlink
information, search queries regarding crawl errors, indexing data, etc. Webmaster
tools help you in maintaining and monitoring your site’s presence in Google search
results.
5

7. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential)
4. What are different types of SEO tools?
Answer: SEO tools help in improving website’s rankings and reviewing a website. Backlink
Analyzer, Domain Age Tool, Domain Popularity Analyzer, Google Pagerank, Google Banned Tool,
Keyword Density Checkers, Keyword Suggestion Tool, Plagiarism Checker, Outbound Link
Checker, Backlink Building Tools or Services, Link Validator, etc are some of the tools that can
assist you very much in SEO. These are some common tools which are used by SEO experts.

8. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 7
5. What are the different types of Ethical SEO?
Answer: Standards and search engine functionality to provide the optimization for the website
are offered by ethical SEO. It assists in positioning of the results that is longer lasting and
adapts to the frequent changes made in the algorithms. It provides a way to optimize the
search sites by making it appear on the search engine and promote it using the best
techniques which can be legally used.

9. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 8
Read the detailed blog HERE

10. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 9
6. What is the purpose of cloaking?
Answer: Cloaking is one of the unethical practices in SEO that provides deceiving mechanisms
for the search engines. It provides use of false pages that are loaded with the keyword and
other content that is search engine optimized. Cloaking enables search results to rank the
page higher in search engines. Cloaking provides use of false pages that are loaded with the
keyword and other content that is search engine optimized. Not very prevalent after the
recent Google algorithm updates which penalize keyword stuffing.

11. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 10
7. What is Cross linking and its functions?
Answer: The process of linking one site to another and providing a way to allow access to it is
called cross linking. Reference sites are made available to users searching for the related
content. Purpose of displaying the page on search engines using SEO techniques and methods
is fulfilled by cross linking. The site ranking is calculated on the basis of the relevance of the
sites and then it is reflected on the search engine.

12. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 11
8. Tell me something about Googlebot.
Answer: Googlebot is the name of the search engine spider for Google. It is a web crawling
software by Google, which allows it to scan, find, add and index new web pages. It will visit
sites which have been submitted to the index every once in a while to update its index.
Googlebot only follows HREF "Hypertext Reference" links which indicates the URL being linked
to and SRC "Source" links.

13. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 12
9. What is Google Sandbox?
Answers: It is a belief that Google has a filter that places all new websites under restrictions
for a certain amount of time to prevent them from ranking in searches. According to the
sandbox effect, Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into
what is referred to as its "sandbox". It helps to counter the ways that search engine optimizers
attempt to manipulate Google's page ranking by creating lots of inbound links to a new web
site from other web sites that they own. It usually lasts for between two and six months from
the site's launch date.

14. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 13
10. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
Answer: SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is used for the promotion of a website through Search
Engine Result Page (SERP). It uses the search engines to advertise your website or business to
Internet customers and send a more targeted traffic to your website. SEO (Search Engine
Optimization is used to optimize the search results of your website or webpage. SEO aims to
provide better organic search results. Both processes aim at increasing visibility of website or
webpage in search engines but follow different methods. SEM will provide some instant
results but the effect of SEO will be long-lasting. This is one of the frequently asked seo job
interview questions.

15. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 14
11. Tell me something about Black Hat and White Hat SEO?
Answer:
Black Hat SEO refers to the use of optimizing strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only
on search engines and not a human. It usually does not obey search engines guidelines. Black
Hat tactics are remarkably effective but implementing Black Hat SEO tactics and strategies can
get your site banned from search engines, excluding you from the number one traffic referral
source on the Internet.
White Hat SEO refers to the use of optimizing strategies, techniques and tactics that focus
mainly on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine
rules and policies. White Hat SEO is any practice that escalates your search performance on a
search engine results page while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within
the search engines' terms of service.

16. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 15
12. What will be your next step if your SEO techniques do not work?
Answer: First attempt should be to try analyzing the problem and then solve it step by step.
1st step: I would try to see if it is a new project, and then I would re-check the key words.
2nd step: I would look for relevant keywords that can be helpful.
3rd step: I will make some changes in page content, titles and description if webpage and
website has been indexed well but still not appearing on the first few pages of search engine
results.
4th step: If the website is not indexed properly or if it is dropped from the index, than it might
have some serious issues and re-working on it might do the job.

17. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 16
13. What are long-tail keywords in SEO?
Answer: Long-tail keywords are precise keyword phrases which are longer than normal
keywords. Visitors are most likely to use them when they are searching for anything specific.
Long-tail keywords offer much higher conversion rates and better search positions. For e.g. if
someone is looking for bag to purchase on the internet then just putting ‘bags’ as the
keywords will not fetch you precise results because of the competition. But if someone is
looking for a ‘pure leather medium size sling bags’ and if that is the keyword you have
optimized your page for, then it will help you get that user and convert him into your
customer.

18. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential) 17
You can read the detailed blog on our website:
Most important and frequent SEO job interview Questions and their Answers
The world is now online. It is all about reaching out to them. EduPristine's Digital Marketing course
enables you to learn everything from SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing to Email Marketing; which
will help you in reaching out to the world in a better way. We provide Classroom and Online Training.
All Trainings are held by Industry Professionals where along with training you get insights into Digital
Marketing with their experience and expertise.
For further details visit our website www.edupristine.com

19. © EduPristine For [Insert Text Here] (Confidential)
© EduPristine – www.edupristine.com
help@edupristine.com
www.edupristine.com
Thank You!