The document contains a series of SEO interview questions along with their correct answers, focusing on topics such as title lengths in Google search results, anchor text, HTTP status codes, best practices for sitemaps, and SEO tactics like canonical tags and mobile vs. desktop search trends. The queries cover fundamental SEO concepts and technical details crucial for optimizing web content and improving search engine rankings. It serves as a comprehensive resource for preparing for SEO-related interviews.

1. SEO Interview Questions with Answers by
SeoMoz
The maximum length of titles displayed in Google's search result is typically:
A: 155 characters
B: 512 pixels
C: 60-80 Characters
D: 44 Characters
E: Varies by browser resolution
Correct Answer- B: 512 pixels
In the following HTML snippet: <a href="http://moz.com" title="SEO"><img
src="img/software.jpg" alt="Marketing" title="Tools" width="100" weight="100"></a> What is
considered the anchor text of the link?
A: http://moz.com
B: SEO
C: Marketing
D: Tools
E: software
Correct Answer- C: Marketing
When is using rel="nofollow" NOT appropriate?
A: Paid links
B: Untrusted content
C: Press releases with optimized anchor text
D: Widely distributed footer links
E: None; all of these are appropriate
Correct Answer- E: None; all of these are appropriate
Which of the following types of sitemaps is NOT supported by Google?

2. A: News
B: Product
C: Image
D: Mobile
E: Video
Correct Answer- B: Product
What is the maximum number of URLs typically allowed in an XML sitemap file?
A: 500
B: 5,000
C: 50,000
D: 500,000
E: 5,000,000
Correct Answer- C: 50,000
In the following URL: http://store.example.com/category/keyword?id=123#top "store"
represents the ____ and "com" is the ________
A: Subdomain, Top-Level Domain
B: Root Domain, Subdomain
C: Subfolder, Top-Level Domain
D: Page, Root Domain
E: Top-Level Domain, Protocol
Correct Answer- A: Subdomain, Top-Level Domain
What is the optimal HTTP status code to permanently remove a URL from Google's index?
A: 301
B: 302
C: 404
D: 410
E: 500
Correct Answer- D: 410

3. Which HTTP status code is best to serve when your site is down for maintence?
A: 200
B: 302
C: 404
D: 503
E: 90210
Correct Answer- D: 503
True or false: A 301 redirect passes roughly the same link equity as using the rel="canonical"
tag.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- A: TRUE
Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines
and humans)?
A: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile
B: www.wildlifeonline.com/category/277/article/563
C: www.wildlifeonline.com/O0665?id=563&cat=277
D: text.wildlifeonline.com/category/crocodile
E: www.wildlifeonline.com/563
Correct Answer- A: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile
How can meta description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?
A: They're an important ranking factor in the search algorithms.
B: They help to tell the search engines which keywords are most important on your page.
C: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing.
D: Trick question; meta descriptions are NOT important.
Correct Answer- C: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing.
Which HTTP server response code indicates a file that no longer exists? (File Not Found)

4. A: 500
B: 301
C: 401
D: 404
E: 300
Correct Answer- D: 404
Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been permanently relocated and
all links to the old page will pass their influence to the new page location?
A: 302
B: 301
C: 311
D: 500
E: 300
Correct Answer- B: 301
If these URLs have the same content, example.com/avocado and example.com/avocado/ are
technically considered duplicate content and should be fixed.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- A: TRUE
Which of the following methods is best used to handle duplicate-content URLs that include
parameters or tracking code?
A: The rel="canonical" tag
B: Use numbers for your parameters, because Google won't crawl numbered URLs
C: Use the robots.txt file to block spiders from crawling the URLs with extra parameters
D: Answers A and B
E: None of the above
Correct Answer- A: The rel="canonical" tag
If you have a page at www.example.com/page1, which of the following robots.txt directives
prevents search spiders from crawling the URL?

5. A: Allow: /
B: Disallow:
C: Disallow: /page1
D: Both A & C
Correct Answer- C: Disallow: /page1
You decide to add a blog to your ecommerce site. What is the preferred url structure?
A: www.example.com/blog
B: www.blog.example.com/
C: Create new site at www.blog.com and link it to www.example.com
Correct Answer- A: www.example.com/blog
High-quality links to a site's homepage may help to increase the ranking ability of deeper
pages on the same domain.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- A: TRUE
Pages generated by search results (Search within Search) are a good way to add content to
your site.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- B: FALSE
Google's Panda update was also known as the ______ update.
A: Quality
B: May Day
C: Farmer
D: Vince
E: Caffeine
Correct Answer- C: Farmer

6. In general, internal links pass about the same value as external links.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- B: FALSE
Which of the following links is likely to pass the most value from a single page?
A: A universal footer link
B: A navigational link contained in the header
C: A left-hand navigation link
D: A right sidebar navigation link
E: A link contained in the main body text
Correct Answer- E: A link contained in the main body text
To give credit for duplicate content that appears on another site, use...
A: A cross-domain canonical tag
B: A prominent link within the content at the top of the page
C: File a DMCA copyright notice
D: Give the author thanks in the body of the text
E: Send them ice cream
Correct Answer- A: A cross-domain canonical tag
If a page includes more than one rel="canonical", Google will...
A: Ignore them all
B: Count the first one
C: Count the last one
D: Guess which one makes more sense, and use that one
Correct Answer- A: Ignore them all
Best practices for rel="canonical" link elements include:

7. A: Relative URLs
B: Absolute URLs
C: Nofollow the link element
Correct Answer- B: Absolute URLs
What is an example of a "soft" 404 error?
A: A page that returns a 404 HTTP response code, but quickly changes to a 200 a short time later.
B: A page that returns a 200 HTTP response code, and displays a blank page.
C: A page that displays a 404 HTTP response code, and displays a 404 error page.
D: A page that returns a 404 code with pillows.
Correct Answer- B: A page that returns a 200 HTTP response code, and displays a blank page.
True or false: rel="canonical" can be used to point to content on a different domain.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- A: TRUE
The X-Robots-Tag should be located:
A: In your robots.txt file
B: In the <head>
C: In the HTTP headers
D: Anywhere inside the <body> element
E: In Robert Downey Jr.'s basement
Correct Answer- C: In the HTTP headers
Of the following, the best way to keep a URL from appearing in search results is:
A: Block robots from crawling the page in the robots.txt file
B: Nofollow all links to the page
C: Use the META robots NOODP tag
D: Use the META robots NOINDEX tag
Correct Answer- D: Use the META robots NOINDEX tag

8. If the robots <META> tag is missing, the default is:
A: NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW
B: INDEX, FOLLOW
C: NOINDEX, FOLLOW
D: INDEX, NOFOLLOW
E: NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOARCHIVE
Correct Answer- B: INDEX, FOLLOW
The default file type for your sitemap is:
A: .pdf
B: .php
C: .png
D: .doc
E: .xml
Correct Answer- E: .xml
The minimum REQUIRED tags in an XML sitemap include:
A: <urlset>
B: <url>
C: <loc>
D: None of these
E: A, B, and C
Correct Answer- E: A, B, and C
When including Open Graph (OG) tags on a webpage, which of the following is NOT a
required property?
A: og:title
B: og:description
C: og:image
D: og:url
E: og:type

9. Correct Answer- B: og:description
True or false: For best results, incorporate authorship markup on every page of your website,
including the homepage and category pages.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Correct Answer- B: FALSE
All other factors being equal, which would be the most desirable link profile?
A: One link from each of 100 different domains
B: 1,000 links all from one domain
C: 10,000 internal links
Correct Answer- A: One link from each of 100 different domains
Which group of ranking factors do SEOs generally consider to have the largest influence on
rankings?
A: Engagement Metrics
B: Social shares
C: Link-based metrics
D: Site speed
E: Exact match domains
Correct Answer- C: Link-based metrics
Generally, Google refreshes its Panda data:
A: Daily
B: Weekly
C: Monthly
D: Yearly
E: Never
Correct Answer- C: Monthly

10. Google's recommended format to implement structured data is:
A: Microdata / Schema.org
B: Microformats / vcards
C: RDFa / XHTML
Correct Answer- A: Microdata / Schema.org
Implementing structured data may help:
A: Lead to rich snippets in search results
B: Enchance CTR from search engine results
C: Search engines understand your content
D: Your content to appear in specialized search results like "in-depth Articles"
E: All of these
Correct Answer- E: All of these
Implementing authorship on your content:
A: Guarantees a rankings boost through Author Rank
B: Disassociates your content from spam
C: Prevents duplicate content
D: May lead to enhanced CTR through authorship photos in search results
E: Helps get you that book deal
Correct Answer- D: May lead to enhanced CTR through authorship photos in search results
Google's recommended actions for paginated content include:
A: Specify a "view all" page
B: rel="prev" and rel="next"
C: Do nothing
D: A and B only
E: A, B, or C
Correct Answer- E: A, B, or C
In the following attribute: hreflang="en-US", "en" is the _____ and "US" is the _____.
A: alternate, language
B: language, region

11. C: United States, English
D: region, language
E: entire, universal symbol
Correct Answer- B: language, region
Which of the following URL structures is NOT recommended to signal language targeting?
A: ccTLDs (example.de)
B: Subdomains with gTLDS (de.example.com)
C: URL parameters (example.com?loc=de)
D: Subdirectories with gTLDs (example.com/de)
Correct Answer- C: URL parameters (example.com?loc=de)
Which of the following statements about anchor text is true?
A: For non-commercial queries, anchor text is less influential on a result's rankings.
B: If a URL itself is the linking anchor text, Google will treat the page's title element as anchor text,
while Bing will use the URL.
C: When an embedded image is linking, the alt attribute of the image may be treated as anchor text.
D: Anchor text is mostly ignored by Google in 2014, but was powerful in years past.
Correct Answer- C: When an embedded image is linking, the alt attribute of the image may be
treated as anchor text.
Which of these concepts has Google filed a (now public) patent about?
A: The likelihood that content shared by a user of social networks will spread
B: The impact of lunar cycles on content creation and search queries
C: Labeling Facebook, Twitter, and other social network shares in search results
D: Modifying the flow of PageRank through links based on the HTML code-to-content ratio
Correct Answer- A: The likelihood that content shared by a user of social networks will spread
What does the phrase "social shares and higher search rankings in Google are well-
correlated" mean?"
A: It means there's a chance (as expressed by the correlation coefficient number) that this input is
used in Google's ranking algorithm.
B: It means that the more social shares a webpage has, the higher it appears in Google's search
results for a given query.

12. C: It means that, on average, pages with more social shares appear higher in Google rankings than
those with fewer shares. The correlation coefficient expresses the degree with which this occurs.
D: It means that social shares may or may not be used by Google's algorithm to rank webpages.
Correct Answer- C: It means that, on average, pages with more social shares appear higher in
Google rankings than those with fewer shares. The correlation coefficient expresses the degree with
which this occurs.
Which Google update was closely associated with speed, faster indexing and fresher web
results.
A: Penguine
B: Panda
C: Venice
D: Vince
E: Caffeine
Correct Answer- E: Caffeine
What are valid reasons why your webpage's title may not appear in Google's search results
exactly as it does in the page title element in your HTML?
A: Google has overwritten your title element with a title taken from the Yahoo! Directory.
B: Your title does not contain your brand name or other key terms in the users' search query (or
doesn't include them at the start of the title element), so Google is using text from elsewhere on the
page.
C: Google is pulling a title for your webpage from one you entered into an AdWords ad for that URL
(that produces a higher clickthrough rate).
D: Your page contains the meta "title-h1" tag specifying that Google should use the text within the
H1 in place of the title element for the search results listing
E: Both options B & D
Correct Answer- B: Your title does not contain your brand name or other key terms in the users'
search query (or doesn't include them at the start of the title element), so Google is using text from
elsewhere on the page.
Which of the following are true about the growth of mobile vs. desktop search in Google?
A: Mobile search queries overtook desktop in 2013 and are expected to continue growing faster.

13. B: Desktop search queries are now shrinking, and mobile is growing, but will not overtake desktop in
the next 2-3 years.
C: Both desktop and mobile are growing, but mobile is growing faster and is expected to overtake
desktop in the next 1-2 years.
D: Desktop is not growing (but not shrinking much). Mobile is expected to overake desktop in
number of queries by 2016.
Correct Answer- C: Both desktop and mobile are growing, but mobile is growing faster and is
expected to overtake desktop in the next 1-2 years
Which type of link has NOT been mentioned by Google as being risky for SEO?
A: Embedded links from infographics
B: Guest blog posts
C: Text link advertisements with rel="nofollow"
D: Article submission and directory sites
E: Private link networks
Correct Answer- C: Text link advertisements with rel="nofollow"