SEO Interview Questions – Set 06

What is the “500 internal server error”?

The “500 internal server error” is a common error. It is an HTTP status code that indicates something is wrong with the websites’ server, and the server is not able to identify the problem. This error is not specific as it can occur for different reasons. It is a server-side error which means the problem is with the website’s server, not with your PC, browser or Internet connection.

What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are the HTML tags that are used to provide information about the content of a webpage. They are the basic elements of SEO. Meta tags are incorporated in the “head” section of HTML, e.g.Meta tags are placed here.

The Meta tags are of three types. Each tag provides specific information about the content of the page. For example:<head>Meta tags are placed here</head>.

  • Title Tag: It is the most important of all the Meta tags. It tells search engines about the title your webpage, and it is displayed in search engine listings above the URL of your webpage or website. For example:<title>Title text</title>
  • Description Meta tag: The summary of your site or webpage is incorporated in this tag. It enables the search engine to display a brief description of your page in the SERPs. Through this tag, you tell users what your site is all about and what you are offering. For example: <meta name=”description” content = “your site’s summary”/>
  • Keywords Meta tag: In this tag, you place all of your main keywords and phrases that describe the content of your webpage. For example:<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords”/>

What is the difference between an inbound link and an outbound link in SEO?

An inbound link, which is also known as a backlink, is the incoming link to your site from an external source. It comes from an external site to your site. Whereas, outbound link is a link that starts from your site and points to another website. For example, if xyz.com links to your domain, this link from xyz.com is an inbound or backlink for your domain. However, it is an outbound link for xyz.com.

Define ON page and Off page SEO?

Main aspects of On page SEO are:

  • Page Title: It should be relevant, unique and should include your main keywords.
    Meta Descriptions: There should be a Meta description for each webpage, and it must contain relevant keywords for your content.
  • Meta Tags: You can add a set of keywords as Meta tags for each of your page.
  • URL Structure: You can include search engine friendly URLs for your webpage as it improves crawling. In SEO, shorter URLs containing targeted keywords usually perform better.
  • Body Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.): You can use body tags to break up your content into paragraphs to make it easier to read.
  • Keyword Density: You should include relevant keywords in your content but avoid excessively repeating or overusing keywords.
  • Image: You can use relevant images within your content to make your page visually more appealing and thus can improve the SEO of your site.
  • Internal Linking: You can place links to your other web pages to enhance your website. It enhances navigation and crawling.
    Off page SEO: It means optimizing your websites through backlinks, social media promotion, blog submission, press releases submission, etc.

Main aspects of Off page SEO are:

  • Social Networking Sites: There are many social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., where you can create your business page and perform similar tasks to improve the SEO of your site.
  • Blogging: You can write a blog for your website, product or service and submit it to niche blog directories, and blog search engines.
  • Forum Marketing: You can find online forums related to your site and interact with them by replying to threads, answering questions, offering advice and more.
  • Social Bookmarking: You can submit your blog posts and pages to the relevant and popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.
  • Link building: You can build external links to your site to bypass your competitors and improve your rank.
  • Press Release Submission: You can distribute your press release across various media to get authority backlinks and convey information to the public. It can bring your site on the first page for your keywords.

What is Domain Authority?

The Domain Authority is a metric introduced by Moz. It is designed to rank a website on a scale of 1-100. The score “1” is considered the worst and the score “100” is considered the best. The higher the score or DA, the higher will be the ability to rank on search engine result pages. So, it is an important factor that defines how well your website will rank in search engines.

What is Disavow tool?

The Disavow tool is a part of Google Search Console that was introduced in October 2012. It enables you to discount the value of a backlink in order to prevent link-based penalties. It also protects the site from bad links that may harm the website’s reputation.
Using this tool, you can tell Google that you don’t want certain links to be considered to rank websites. Some sites who buy links may suffer the penalty if they don’t get these links removed using Disavow tool. The low-quality backlinks, which you don’t control, may harm your site’s ranking. You can ask Google not to consider them when crawling and indexing your site.

What is AMP?

AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is an open source project that helps publishers to improve the speed and readability of their pages on mobile devices. It makes mobile pages easily readable and loading quicker for better user experience. This project was introduced jointly by Google, WordPress, Adobe and some other companies in 2015.

What is the Google Penalty?

A Google penalty refers to the negative impact on the search rankings of a website. It can be automatic or manual, i.e., it may be due to an algorithm update or for using black hat SEO to improve the SEO of a site. If the penalty is manual, Google informs you about it through webmaster tool. However, if the penalty is automatic such as due to the algorithm you may not be informed. Google generally imposes the penalty in three different ways: Bans, Rank Demotion, and Temporary Rank Change

What is RankBrain in SEO?

RankBrain is Google’s machine-learning artificial intelligence system designed to help Google to process search results and deliver more relevant information to users. It is a part of the Google’s Hummingbird search algorithm. It can learn and recognize new patterns and then revisit SERPs to provide more relevant information.

It has the ability to embed the written language into mathematical entities called vectors that Google can understand. For example, if it does not understand a sentence, it can guess its meaning with similar words or sentences and filter the information accordingly to provide accurate and relevant results to users.

What methods should you use to decrease the loading time of a website?

We should follow the following instructions to decrease the loading time of a website:

  • Optimize images: You can optimize images and decrease the file size without affecting the quality of that image. You can use the external picture tools to resize your images such as the Photoshop, picresize.com and more. Furthermore, use fewer images (avoid them unless necessary).
  • Use browser caching: Caching involves temporary storages of web pages that helps reduce bandwidth and improve performance. When a visitor visits your site, the cached version is presented that saves the server’s time and loads pages faster. So, use browser caching to make the process easier and faster for your repeat visitors.
  • Use content delivery network: It allows you to distribute your site across several servers in different geographical areas. When visitors request to visit your site, they will get the data from the server closest to them. The closer a server, the more quickly it loads.
  • Avoid self-hosted videos: Video files are usually large, so if you upload them to your web pages it can increase their loading time. You can use other video services like Youtube, Vimeo, etc.
  • Use CSS sprites to reduce HTTP request: It allows you to combine some images within a single image file by implementing CSS positioning of background. It helps you to save your server bandwidth and thus loading time of the webpage decreases gradually.