SEO Interview Questions – Set 03

What are the advantages of submitting sites to search directories?

Submitting sites to a search directory is used to get backlinks to your website. It is one of the key methods to improve the SEO of a site. The more backlinks you get, the more is the probability that the search engine will index it sooner, compared to when it is not listed. Directory submission is mostly free.

You can also enter a site title, which is different from the URL, containing your keywords. In this way, you can generate anchor text for your site. Furthermore, most of the search directories are ranked higher in the search engine result pages so if you submit your site to such directories, there will be more chances of your website receiving high page rank.

When is reinclusion applied in a search engine’s index?

If your website is banned by the search engines for using black hat practices and you have corrected the wrongdoings, you can apply for reinclusion. So, it is a process in which you ask the search engine to re-index your site that was penalized for using black hat SEO techniques. Google, Yahoo, and other search engines offer tools where webmasters can submit their site for reinclusion.

What are the causes of HTTP 404 errors?

HTTP 404 error is technically a client-side error which means it is your mistake, i.e., the requested page is not present in your website. If you had maintained that page in your site, it would have been indexed by the crawler and thus would have been present in the server. Furthermore, you also receive this error, when you mistype a URL or when a webpage or resource is moved without redirecting the old URL to the new one. So, whenever you move your webpage redirect the old URL to the new URL to avoid this error as it may affect the SEO of your site.

What is webmaster tool in SEO?

A webmaster is a free service by Google which provides free Indexing data, backlinks information, crawl errors, search queries, CTR, website malware errors and submits the XML sitemap. It is a collection of SEO tools that allow you to control your site in Google as well as allows Google to communicate with webmasters. For example, if anything goes wrong like crawling mistakes, plenty of 404 pages, manual penalties, and malware identified, Google will speak to you through this tool. If you use GWT, you don’t need to use some other costlier tools. So, it is a free toolset that helps you understand what is going on with your site by providing useful information about your site.

What is Google Panda?

Google Panda is a Google algorithm update. It was primarily introduced in 2011 to reward high-quality websites and diminish the low-quality websites in SERPs. It was initially called “Farmer.”

Panda addressed many issues in Google SERPs, such as:

  • Thin Content
  • Duplicate Content
  • Low Authority
  • Content Farming
  • High ad-to-content ratio
  • Low-quality user-generated content (UGC)

What is an internal link?

An internal link is a URL link placed on your website that points to your another webpage. It is different from an external link which leads to another website. Internal links are very useful regarding SEO as they:

  • Provide site structure: The internal links of a website helps search engines to crawl and index your website. Search engine crawlers or robots use internal links to evaluate your website and are better informed while ranking your website on search engine result pages.
  • Enhance user experience: The internal links in product pages, blog posts, contact us forms, etc., enhance users’ website experience. Furthermore, these links can be used to take prospects to your core pages to convert them into customers.
  • Minimize bounce rate: The internal links keeps visitors on your website for longer and thus helps reduce bounce rate and increases the likelihood of them buying your products or services.

Who does SEO?

They are called SEO executives, Webmasters, Websites optimizers, Digital marketing experts, etc.

SEO executive: He is responsible for increasing the number of visitors or traffic to a website using various SEO tools and strategies.

SEO/SMO analyst: He is responsible for planning and implementing SEO and social media strategies for the clients. He is supposed to quickly understand and support initiatives to achieve the objectives and goals of the client campaigns.

Webmaster: He is responsible for maintaining one or more websites. He ensures that the web servers, software, and hardware are working smoothly.

Digital Marketing Expert: He is responsible for planning and executing digital marketing programs to promote the brand or increase the sales of the products and services of the clients.

What is Google PageRank?

PageRank is one of the important ranking factors that Google uses to rank the web pages on the basis of quality and quantity of links to the web pages. It determines a score of a webpage’s importance and authority on a scale of 0 to 10. A webpage with more backlinks will have a higher PageRank than a webpage that has fewer backlinks. It was invented by Google’s founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Note: At present, Google is not using PageRank as a ranking factor or to rank a webpage.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

SEO: It is a process of increasing the online visibility, organic (free) traffic or visitors to a website. It is all about optimizing your website to achieve higher rankings in the search result pages. It is a part of SEM, and it gives you only the organic traffic.

Two types:

  • On-Page SEO: It deals with the optimization of a website for maximum visibility in the search engines.
  • Off-Page SEO: It deals with gaining natural backlinks from other websites.

SEM: It stands for search engine marketing. It involves purchasing space on the search engine result page. It goes beyond SEO and involves various methods that can get you more traffic like PPC advertising. It is a part of your overall internet marketing strategy. The traffic generated through SEM is considered the most important as it is targeted.

SEM includes both SEO and paid search. It generally makes use of paid searches such as pay per click (PPC) listings and advertisements. Search ad networks generally follow pay-per-click (PPC) payment structure. It means you only pay when a visitor clicks on your advertisement.

What is Google My business?

Google My Business is a free tool of Google which is designed to help you create and manage their business listings on SERPs, i.e., to manage your online presence on Google. Using this tool, you can easily create and update your business listings such as you can:

  • Update business name, address and hours
  • Upload your business’s images
  • Manage and reply to customer reviews
  • Get custom insights like how customers are responding to your business online
  • Get notifications when customers talk about your business
  • Can manage multiple locations from one dashboard
  • Can invite others to manage your business listings