Digital marketing careers are growing rapidly. SEO is a key component of inbound marketing. This document provides 60 frequently asked SEO interview questions and answers to help those pursuing careers in digital marketing. It covers fundamental SEO concepts like on-page and off-page optimization, backlinks, keywords, meta descriptions, Google algorithms, and popular SEO tools.

1. [UPDATED] Top 60 SEO
Interview Questions and
Answers for 2021
Digital Marketing as a career option growth is growing rapidly. According to the
recent research data by IEEE GlobalSpec Media solutions – ‘There was a little surge in
marketing budget of companies which is around 58% & 55% for SEO & social
media respectively in 2017 when compared to the past year”. SEO (Search Engine
Optimisation) is one of the key components of Inbound Marketing. Because more and
more people are choosing Digital Marketing as a career, we thought we should create
a set of 60 SEO Interview Questions and Answers that are frequently asked in
the Digital Marketing Interviews.
Here are some SEO interview questions and answers that are going to be asked
in an SEO interview in 2021:

2. 1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the art of getting quality traffic and
ranking websites on search engines naturally or without paying any penny to the
search engine.
Also read: What is SEO? What are the Benefits of SEO for Business Growth?
2. Why Should We Use SEO?
SEO is critical with regard to inbound lead generation. It’s standout amongst the most
financially savvy methods for getting quality leads. As most web searches begin on
Google, it’s essential to rank higher in the SERPs on Google (World’s greatest Search
Engine). This can only be done through a proper SEO plan.
3. Tell us about the two types of SEO?
Two types of SEO are –
i) On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is the optimization done on the website to improve the search rankings.
Few examples would be:
• Writing a proper title, H1.
• Including the focused keyword in the meta description
• Writing in-depth and engaging content (If you are interested in knowing more about
the right length of a blog post make sure read this article by the Minneapolis SEO –
Hook Agency)
ii) Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO relates to any task done, off-site to improve the search rankings. This
mostly includes the creation of backlinks, social media signals, etc.
4. What is a Backlink?
Backlinks are links coming from another website. In simpler words, when a website
links to another website it builds a backlink.
Backlinks play a very crucial role in ranking websites higher on search engines.
5. What are the two types of Backlink?
Backlinks are only of two types –
1. Do-Follow Backlinks

3. 2. No-Follow Backlinks
For No-follow links, the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) is used in anchor text code, and for
the do-follow links, a simple anchor text code is used.
Example of a Do-follow backlinks: <a href=”https://www.escalesolutions.com”>Do-
follow link Example</a>
Example of a No-follow backlinks: <a href=”https://www.escalesolutions.com”
rel=”nofollow”>No-follow link Example</a>
Also read: Steps to a successful SEO for your Business
6. What do you mean by Do-Follow
Backlinks?
DoFollow links are those links in which dofollow meta tag is being used. It benefits by
passing link juice which has an impact on Google Ranking Algorithm.
7. How is a Do-Follow Link Different from a
No-Follow Link?
Do-follow links pass link juice which no-follow links don’t pass any link juice. Hence,
no-follow links have little to no impact on Google Ranking Algorithm. This is true for
all search engines.
8. What is a Keyword?
A keyword in SEO is a key phrase or set of words that are inside the website content
to help users find the specific website by entering relevant search queries on Google
and other search engines. Keywords play an important role in ranking a website
because they make websites identical to search queries made by users.
Keywords can be of different types –
1. Short-tail keyword
2. Long-tail keyword
9. What is an Anchor Text?
Anchor Text is that visible, clickable text which you see. The text is basically an overlay
of the text. In modern browsers, it is often blue and underlined.

4. 10. Mention the Different Types of Anchor
Text?
Anchor text can be of different types. The limit of using it on your own is your
Imagination. Till then, some types which I encountered –
1. Keywords:
– Exact Match Keyword: Example – best website development company
– Partial Match Keyword – Eg – world’s best website development company
2. Branded – Eg – Escale Solutions, Zoruk, FellaFeeds
3. Naked URLs – https://www.escalesolutions.com/
4. Generic – Click here, visit here, Read more, etc.
5. Image – When an image is linked, Google considers the text contained in the image’s
alt attribute as the anchor text.
Also read: How to build the right content marketing strategy for SEO growth
11. What is the Meta Description Length?
The predefined length of a Meta Description in Google is up to 160 characters.
12. What is the Title Tag Length?
The predefined length of a Title Tag aka Headline in Google is up to 60 characters.
Google (search engine) typically displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag.
13. What is Google Sandbox?
Google Sandbox is a filter that prevents new websites from ranking in the top results
of Google.
14. What is a Long Tail Keyword?
Long-tail keywords are those kinds of keywords that are more than 3 words. These are
very beneficial in driving targeted traffic to website pages. Most of the time these are
very easy to rank for on Google.
Eg – best Bluetooth speakers under Rs1500
15. What are LSI Keywords?
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a system inside search engines use to analyze the
other words people use surrounding a given topic. It’s mostly the keywords, Google
suggests at the bottom of the page.

5. Source: Google SERP
16. Name some of the SEO Blogs You
Follow?
A few of my favorite SEO blogs are –
1. Moz
2. Backlinko
3. Search Engine Journal
4. Search Engine Land
17. What does Competitive Analysis Mean
in SEO?
Competitive Analysis in SEO is the comparison between the website page people are
working on & the website page that has been already been ranked on Google search
engine. The competitive analysis is very essential in SEO because it gives important
insights and facts about your competitors by which you can easily defeat them in the
race of ranking.

6. 18. What is 301 Redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect to another website where you want it to redirect
which passes between 92-99% of link priority (ranking power) to the redirected page.
A 301 is the HTTP status code for such types of redirects.
19. What are the Most Important Places
the Main Keyword should be Included?
The keyword should be included in the following elements –
1. Title of the Page
2. Meta Description
3. The body of the post
4. The headline of the page
5. The HyperLink
Also read: 10 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate
20. What was Google’s Recent Algorithm
Update?
There were 5 significant updates this year –
1. Passage Ranking — February 10, 2021
2. Product Reviews Update — April 8, 2021
3. Broad Core Algorithm Update — June 2, 2021
4. Known Victims Protection — June 10, 2021
5. Page Experience Update — June 15, 2021
6. June 2021 Spam Update — June 23, 2021
7. Spam Update Part-2 — June 28, 2021
8. July 2021 Core Update — July 1, 2021
9. July 2021 Core Update Completed — July 12, 2021
10. Google Link Spam Algorithm Update — July 26, 2021
11. Google Webpage Title Update — August 24, 2021
21. What is Robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a text file that tells the search engine crawlers what file of the website to
index and cache. It’s very crucial when it comes to On-Page SEO.
22. What is Keyword Density?

7. Keyword Density is the percentage of the number of times the keyword is mentioned
in the content in comparison to the total number of words. So if my keyword is
mentioned 15 times in 1000 words content the keyword density would amount to
1.5%. Try to maintain the keyword density between 1-3% only.
The formula for calculating Keyword Density:
Keyword Density = No. of keywords / Total no. of words × 100
23. What is the use of Google Search
Console?
Search Console is the suite of tools and reports offered by Google to help one measure
their site’s Search traffic and performance, fix issues, etc.
24. Name the Different Types of Heading
Tags?
There are a total of six HTML headings – H1 to H6.
25. Tell us Your Favorite SEO Tools and
Their Use?
• Google Keyword Planner (used for keyword research)
• Ahrefs (used for keyword research, competitor analysis & backlink analysis)
• Yoast SEO (used for On-Page SEO)
26. What is Organic Search Result?
Any free search results that pop on Google for a particular keyword search is called an
organic search result.

8. Source: Google
27. What is Google Bot & It’s
Functionality?
Google bot helps in Caching, Crawling, and indexing of a webpage on Google.
28. What is White Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO is the technique used to improve the SEO of a page that is legal,
authentic and according to the guidelines of search engines.
29. What is Black Hat SEO? Name A Few
Black Hat Techniques?
SEO is termed as Black Hat when techniques used to improve the SEO of a page are
not acceptable by the guidelines of the search engines.
Few Black Hat techniques-

9. 1. Creation of PBN links
2. Keyword Stuffing
3. Redirection of Expired Domains
4. Cloaking
5. Duplicate Content
6. Article Spinning
30. Why is the Headline of a Page Very
Important?
The headline of a page is very important in SEO as it tells search engines and the users
the expected web page’s content.
31.WhatisSEOAudit?TellMeTheProcess
In Brief.
An SEO audit gives a better understanding of the web pages, traffic, and errors of a
particular website. It is a great way to improve search engine rankings. In the SEO
audit process, we use several tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, etc. for getting all the
loopholes on the websites. All on-page and backlinks factors are recorded in the SEO
audit report.
Also read: Ways to Instantly Identify a Fraudulent SEO Firm
32. What is Structured Data in SEO?
Structured data refers to any information which has a high degree of organization,
such that inclusion in a relational database is seamless and readily searchable by
simple, straightforward search engine algorithms or other search operations.
Structured data has become increasingly important to SEO. But make sure to use the
complete and well-formed structured data code to a webpage because incomplete
structured code is not crawled by Google bot.
33. What are the 2 Best Ways to Reduce
Page Loading Time?
The best Ways to Reduce page loading time is –
1. Optimizing Images using Lossless Compression
2. By Enabling Browser Caching

10. 34. What is SEO-Friendly URL?
SEO-friendly URLs are those URLs that have a good structure and correct length.
35. What is Web Crawling?
Crawling or web crawling is an automated process through which search engines
filtrate web pages for proper indexing.
36. What is SERP?
SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page. It is the page that displays all the results
of the query which you just search on the search engine to enter the website.
Source: Google
37. What is Canonical URL?
Canonical URLs relate to the concept of telling the search engines to show this URL to
the people who want to visit my website.
38. What is Internal Linking?
Internal Linking is the process of hyperlinking or connecting different pages of the
same domain or website.
39. What Is XML Sitemap?
XML or Extensible Markup Language is primarily developed to inform the search
engines about the website URLs that are available for indexing and crawling.

11. 40. What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is a performance metric developed by Moz (founded by Rand
Fishkin), which rates any website on a 1-100 scale. Moz bar extension is used by many
SEOs on their browser so that they can see the Domain Authority and Page Rank of
any website.
41. What is Guest Posting?
Guest Posting is basically writing articles & publishing on someone else’s website.
Sometimes, it’s free, sometimes it’s paid. Depending on the traffic of the website.
42. What are the most important Google
ranking factors?
The most important Google ranking factors are-
• Freshness in the Content
• Quality Backlinks
• Mobile First
• Domain Authority(DA)
• Page Speed
• Brand Strength
• Social Signals
• Content Type
• Content Freshness
• Schema Code
• HTTPS
• Domain Strength
• Content Depth
43. What is Googlebot?
Googlebot is Google’s web crawler to crawl, find, & index web pages.
44. What is Schema Markup?
Schema Markup is structured data that is used to implement within the website for
search engines to understand your website better and provide additional information
to users on SERP. It’s a rich snippet that improves the CTR of the listing thus improves
the ranking in long run.

12. 45. What you can get from Google
Analytics?
The main information that we get from Google Analytics are:
• Audience Devices
• Funnel Flow
• Location of your users
• Good and bad performing channels
• Real-time users report
• Webpage speed
• List of popular pages
• Visitor Behavior and internal search
• Goals and conversion
46. How to decrease the loading time of
the website?
We can decrease loading time by
• Optimize CSS delivery to reduce HTTP request
• Minifying code
• Using external style sheets
• Compressed images (without compromising the quality)
• Less self- hosted videos
• Enable browser caching
• Use CSS sprites to reduce HTTP request
47. What are the tools you use for SEO?
The tools you have used in the past/present must be listed here like-
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush, Similar Web, Ahrefs, Alexa.
48. What is EMD?
EMD (Exact Match Domain) is a domain that includes search phrases.
For example:
escalesolutions.com

13. 49. How to optimize a website with
millions of pages?
Special attention needs to be given to the following section for that kind of website:
• Dynamic XML sitemap
• Creating dynamic meta tags
• Strong internal structure for navigation.
50. What are the social media platform
used for SEO?
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn are some crucial platforms that are used for
online promotion.
51. What are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are saved on the user’s local computer when browsing
and sent back to the server when the user visits the same sites again and again.
They are largely used in online marketing to better understand user behavior on the
web.
52. What do you know about Google My
Business?
Google My Business is a product from Google.
Google My Business is a type of digital business directory, which the search engine
provider uses for various areas of its search results. The owner of a company with a
Google account can use the free service to edit and optimize their entry. Entries are
possible for all kinds of companies and freelancers, from Small businesses to big
businesses, and from restaurants to lawyers or artisans. To ensure profile data
from Google My Business is displayed in searches certain conditions must be met.
53. What is Search Engine Spam?
Search Engine Spam refers to measure to try to influence the position a website has in
search engines.

14. For eg., the abnormal use of a high number of keywords, i.e, keyword stuffing, within
a website’s content and meta tags. When search engines discover search engine spam
on a website, that site is penalized. It may be removed from the search
engine’s index so that it no longer appears in search results.
54. What do you mean by Search Volume?
Search volume means the number of search queries for a specific keyword in search
engines.
In digital marketing, the search volume is a measure of the amount of traffic
your website can expect on the search result page, & can help you determine the best
priorities for SEO and content optimization.
55. What do you know about SSL
Encryption?
SSL Encryption (Secure Sockets Layer) is a connection between a server and a client
which is encrypted.
This implies that it cannot be viewed by third parties. The encryption generally takes
place via the HTTPS protocol. Nowadays SSL encryption of websites is considered a
Google ranking factor.
56. What is Zero Click Searches?
Zero click searches are queries in search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. that do not
send a third-party website from an organic search result. Around 50 percent of
searches currently end without a click on an organic search result.
57. What is Universal Search?
In the context of SEO, Universal Search (also called Blended Search or Enhanced
Search) is the integration of additional media like videos, images, and/or maps –
displayed above or amongst the organic search results of search engines like Google
or Bing.
58. What is a Plagiarism Finder?
A Plagiarism Finder checks the uniqueness in the text created in the Content Editor. It
shows to what extent the content can also be found on other websites. Thus, the

15. Plagiarism Finder analyzes the content and compares it with the websites that rank for
the same topics on Google.
59. How Google Keyword Planner works?
The Google Keyword Planner is a tool by Alphabet Inc., available as part of its Google
Ads program.
With the help of the Google Keyword Planner, advertisers can determine what level of
traffic can potentially be obtained with a certain budget & campaign. The Google
Keyword Planner can only be used with a valid Ads account.
60. What is Google Lighthouse?
It is an open-source tool for running technical website audits. Lighthouse was
developed by Google, and it analyzes the following aspects of a URL: Performance,
Accessibility, SEO, Progressive Web App, and Best Practices.
Conclusion
I hope all the SEO interview questions and answers were helpful and you’ll learn a lot
from these elaborated questions and answers. This article will not only boost your SEO
knowledge but also build confidence in you. All the best for your interview.
If you feel there are any other questions that are missing from this list then please feel
free to comment below, we’d love to include them in our list.