All SEO Interview Questions and Answers

What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

Google can treat a long lasting 302 like a permanent redirect, but use the correct code from the start. See Redirection.

What is alt text and why is it important for SEO?

<img src="red-shoes.jpg" alt="Pair of red running shoes on a track" width="800" height="533">

Write a short natural description of what is in the image. Do not stuff keywords, and use an empty alt="" for decorative images. Good alt text also helps in Google Images. See Images.

What is anchor text?

In <a href="...">SEO title tag guide</a> the anchor text is “SEO title tag guide”. Search engines use it to understand the target page.

• Use descriptive text, not “click here”.
• Mix the words naturally, do not use the exact keyword everywhere.
• Keep it short.

See Anchor Tag and Links.

What is Google Search Console?

It is a free tool where you verify your website and see the data from Google: which searches bring visitors, how many clicks and impressions you get, which pages are indexed, errors, sitemap status, Core Web Vitals, and backlinks. You can also test one URL and request indexing. See Google Search Console.

What is SERP in SEO?

SERP is the page shown by a search engine for a search. It can contain paid ads, organic results, featured snippets, “People also ask” boxes, images, videos, maps and AI generated summaries. When we say “rank on the first page of SERP” we mean the organic listing on that page.

What is keyword stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is the bad practice of filling a page with the same keywords, in the text, in the tags or hidden. Example: “We sell cheap shoes. Our cheap shoes are the best cheap shoes in town.”

It makes the content hard to read, and it is against the spam policies of Google. Write naturally, and use the keyword and related words only where they fit. See Black Hat SEO.

What is the difference between white hat and black hat SEO?

See White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

What is organic traffic?

Organic traffic is the visitors who click your page from the normal (unpaid) search results. It is different from paid traffic (ads), direct traffic (typing the address), referral traffic (links on other sites) and social traffic.

In Google Analytics 4, open the Traffic acquisition report and look at the channel “Organic Search”. See Google Analytics.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is for businesses which serve people in a place, like a shop, a clinic or a service in a city. The main steps are: a complete Google Business Profile, the same name, address and phone number everywhere (NAP), real reviews, local citations, and location pages on the website. See Local SEO.

What is a 404 error and a soft 404?

A 404 is the HTTP status for a missing page. A soft 404 is a page that looks like “not found” but returns 200 (OK), or an empty page, or a redirect of all missing pages to the home page.

• Return a real 404 (or 410 for removed on purpose) for pages which do not exist.
• Redirect with 301 only if there is a close replacement page.
• Make a helpful custom 404 page.

See Custom 404 Page.

What is domain authority?

Domain Authority is a score from 1 to 100 made by the company Moz. Other tools have their own versions, like Domain Rating (Ahrefs) and Authority Score (Semrush). They estimate the strength of a site mostly from its backlinks.

Important: Google does not use these scores. They are useful to compare sites and to find link opportunities, but do not use them as a target by themselves.

What is E-E-A-T in SEO?

E-E-A-T is a framework in the Google quality rater guidelines. Raters use it to judge how reliable a page is. It is not a direct ranking factor or a score, but Google’s systems try to show content with these signs.

Show it with author bios, sources, clear About and Contact pages and honest reviews. See E-E-A-T and Helpful Content.

What are Core Web Vitals?

The values are checked on real users at the 75th percentile. Test with PageSpeed Insights and the Core Web Vitals report of Search Console. See Page Speed and Core Web Vitals.

What is structured data and schema markup?

Schema markup labels the parts of a page, like an article, a product with price and rating, an organization or breadcrumbs. Google recommends the JSON-LD format.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Example Site",
  "url": "https://example.com/"
}
</script>

It can give rich results, but it does not directly raise rankings. FAQ and HowTo rich results are no longer shown by Google. Test with the Rich Results Test. See Structured Data.

What is crawl budget?

Crawl budget depends on how much your server can handle (crawl rate limit) and how much Google wants to crawl your pages (crawl demand). For most small and medium sites it is not a problem. For sites with many thousands of URLs, wasting it on duplicate or useless URLs can delay the crawling of important pages.

• Remove or block useless URL parameters and internal search pages.
• Fix redirect chains and server errors.
• Keep the sitemap clean, and improve the speed of the server.

What is duplicate content and how do you fix it?

It happens with www and non-www, http and https, URL parameters, printer pages, or copied text. Google usually picks one version and ignores the others, but it may choose the wrong one.

• Use a canonical tag to point to the main version.
• Use 301 redirects when the extra URL is not needed.
• Keep one URL for each page, and make internal links consistent.
• Write unique content, especially for product and location pages.

See Canonical URLs.

What is the difference between noindex and robots.txt disallow?

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

If a page is blocked in robots.txt, Google cannot read the noindex tag, so it may stay in the index. To remove a page, allow crawling and add noindex.

What is mobile-first indexing?

Because most users search on phones, Google crawls and indexes pages with its smartphone bot first. If your mobile page has less content, fewer links or missing structured data compared to desktop, you can lose rankings.

• Use responsive design with the same content on all devices.
• Do not block CSS, JS or images for the mobile bot.
• Check pages with the URL Inspection tool.

See Mobile Friendly and HTTPS.

What is hreflang and when do you use it?

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/guide/">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/guide/">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/guide/">

Each version must list all versions including itself, and the links must be reciprocal. See International SEO and Hreflang.

What is the difference between a manual action and an algorithmic penalty?

See Black Hat SEO.