Advanced SEO Interview Questions for eCommerce Websites

SEO has been the ultimate buzzword in the digital media for quite a long time. From content marketing to attracting heavy traffic to any websites and ensuring the success of any social media campaign, SEO is the key to success!

SEO is unique and is highly evolving these days. SEO is quite difficult to interpret and contains a vocabulary and language of its own. Hence, as a SEO you have a lucrative career and high in demand among global corporations. The importance of SEO starts with the desire of the companies to gain more traffic for their websites.

Therefore get a competitive edge in your next SEO interview by reading these eCommerce SEO interview questions:

Definition for SEO?

Best Possible Answer:

SEO is the collection of strategies that we are following to get visitors to our website from search engines via organic search results.

If we want to change the domain name of well ranked website in SERP. Is it possible to retain the same keyword positions?

Best Possible Answer:

Yes, definitely you can. Just 301 redirecting the corresponding old URLs to the new URLs. In initial after you may experience a drop in rankings. Once the new URLs get indexed, you can expect a same position that it had earlier.

Can you name the SEO blogs that you regularly read?

Best Possible Answer:

• Search Engine journal.
• Search Engine Land.
• SEOMOZ.
• SEOSmarty.
• Jimboykins

What SEO tools do you regularly use?

Best Possible Answer:

1. Google Adwords Tool to find keywords suggestions and search count.
2. IP Blacklist tool.
3. Server Header checker.

How can you rate you out of 10 in the following areas On-Page Optimization, Off-Page Optimization, Photoshop, and Coding (PHP)?

Best Possible Answer:

• On-Page Optimization – 09
• Off-Page Optimization – 08
• Designing – 06
• Coding (PHP) – 03

How can you optimize a website having 2 lakh pages?

Best Possible Answer:

Following are the special additional SEO stuffs that can be implemented for dynamic website:

• Generation of dynamic title & description.
• Dynamic XML Sitemap generation.
• Good Internal link structure (Normal).

What’s special in XML Sitemap and where do you submit that?

Best Possible Answer:

That is a file which list all the pages of website in XML format designed for SE’s. Here you can give the crawlable frequency and also you can define the priority of all the web pages (1.0, 08. 065 etc). This can be submitted in Google Webmaster tools.

What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site for a particular keyword?

Best Possible Answer:

• Keyword in anchor text of external & internal back links.
• Internal link structure.
• Keyword density in content, title, description, alt tags, h1 tag etc.

What is Cross linking and what are the function of Cross linking?

Cross-linking is used to refer the process of linking one site to another site.
It provides the users with reference sites that contain the content related to the search.
The 2 websites cross-linking do not be owned by the same person.
In other words, cross-linking is a barter wherein I link to you and you link to me.
It could be a 2-way link or 3-way link. In a 2 way link site A links to site B and site B links to site A. In a 3 way link, site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links to site A.

What is the main purpose of using keyword in SEO?

Keyword is a single word, and while a combination of those keywords makes phrases. To populate the subjects over the internet these keywords or phrases are used by the search engines. Search engine stores keywords in the database, and when search is done, it will come up with the best possible match.

Can you mention the functions of body content relevance?

Whenever there is a text that does not have images on the web page it is referred as body content relevance or non-image text. It helps in good optimization of the sites and also to improve your ranking in the search engine.

What do you mean by Cloaking?

Cloaking is a deceptive way of optimizing your website for search. In this technique, a different content will be show to the search engine crawler than what is presented to the end users.

Which are the types of Meta Tags in SEO and what are their characters limits?

Below are main types of Meta tags in SEO:

• Meta Description tag with 1200 pixels limits.
• Meta Keyword tag.
• Title Tag with 600 pixels limits.
• Meta Robots.

How many characters can be used in Meta Description tag?

We can add 222 characters in Meta Description tag and 70 characters in title tag. Though Google now places a pixel limit.

What is Google Sandbox?

Google sandbox is an imaginary area where new websites and their search rating are put on hold until they prove worthy for ranking. In other words, it checks the standard of the website.

Tell me something about Black Hat SEO?

In order to get a high ranking in search engine result page, websites go for various methods and techniques which are characterized by two categories. The only method acceptable by search engine guidelines is known as ‘White Hat SEO’, other methods which are not acceptable by search engine guidelines is known as Black Hat SEO.

Name few Black Hat SEO techniques?

• Link Farming.
• Hidden text, etc.
• Gateway or Doorway pages.
• Cloaking.
• Keyword Stuffing.

Can you differentiate between ‘nofollow’ and ‘dofollow’ link?

‘Nofollow links’ do not pass Link juice and have no impact on Google’s Ranking Algorithm. ‘Dofollow link’ passes link juice and has an impact on Google’s Ranking Algorithm.

What is the difference between PR (page rank) and SERP (Search engine result page)?

Page rank is calculated on the basis of quality inbound links from other website or webpages to our webpage or a website.

The placement of the website or web-pages which is returned by the search engine after a search query or attribute is called as SERP – Search Engine Result page.

Given below are objective type questions with answers for advanced SEO interview questions for eCommerce Websites:

What is the main advantage of using Meta Description tag in SEO?

1. It helps to rank high in search engines
2. Meta Description tags helps search engines list a website
3. Meta Description tags are not important in SEO
4. It helps the searcher to get a brief idea about the page before he click

Ans: d) It helps the searcher to get a brief idea about the page before he click.

Note: Meta Description tag serves as a copy that will tempt searchers to click on your listing

If you have URL like www dot example dot com/admin what is the best direction to add in robots.txt to restrict search engine bots from crawling the page?

1. a) Allow:
2. b) Disallow: /admin
3. c) Allow: /admin
4. d) Disallow

Answer: b) Disallow: /admin

Which is most advisable SEO friendly URL (URL structure) to start a blog in a website?

1. a) www dot blog dot example dot com
2. b) Create blog dot com and attach to website
3. c) www dot example dot com/blog

Answer: c) www dot example dot com/blog

Which is the nick name of Google Panda Algorithm Update?

1. Farmer
2. Pigeon
3. Caffeine
4. Vince

Ans: a) Farmer

What is mean by on page SEO OPTIMIZATION?

1. a) A number of modifications made within website and website pages
2. b) Practice of analyzing website
3. c) Practice of building back links
4. d) Researching on website’s quality levels & improving

Ans: a) Modifications made within website like changes and alterations made in head & body sessions of website page and over all modifications made within the website can be called as on page SEO optimization.

The company which provides Traffic Ranking & analysis tools names “Alexa”?

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Amazon
4. Ask

Ans: c) Amazon

Reference: Alexa is website traffic analysis tool provided by Amazon.com. Alexa traffic ranking is estimated on the data signals send by alexa tool bars installed in browsers.

Google Algorithm Penguin is connected which kind of spamming activity?

1. Low quality content publishing
2. Low quality link building
3. Connected with low Google page rank
4. Connected with local visibility

Ans: b) Low quality link building

Reference: Penguin algorithm update is an update conducted by Google against low quality link building for effecting manipulation of search engine listing.

Which one below is the best seo practice while conducting title optimization?

1. Use less than 512 pixel width for your title with 50 to 70 characters.
2. Use important keywords near to the beginning.
3. The titles used in each pages should be unique.
4. All the above are best seo practices in title optimization.

Ans: d) All the above are best seo practices in title optimization.

If robots Meta tag is not included in a website page the effect is?

1. The website page will not indexed by search engine bots
2. The website page will not be followed by search engine bots
3. The website page will be indexed and followed by search engine bots
4. The website page will be not indexed in search results and followed.

Ans: c) The website page will be indexed and followed by search engine bots

Reference: For every web pages the default value for robots Meta tag will be “index, follow” so website pages will be crawled, cached and indexed by the website.

Which HTPP status code shows ok or success message about a website page?

1. 200
2. 500
3. 404
4. 503

Ans: a) 200

Reference: HTPP status code 200 says ok or success message about a website page.

Which Google algorithm update was created to manipulative link building techniques to rank in Google search engine ranking?

1. Panda
2. Penguin
3. Pigeon
4. humming bird

Ans: b) Penguin

Which on below is the best practice when your produce a Meta description for a website page as part of search engine optimization?

1. Complete the meta description with in 155 characters
2. Use unique descriptions in your meta description tags
3. Produce the best description to achieve better click through rate (CTR)
4. All the above are best practices

Ans: d) All the above are best practices

Which HTTP status code given below represents a permanent redirect status for a webpage?

1. 200
2. 301
3. 404
4. 500

Ans: b) HTTP Status code 301 says a permanent redirect for a website page.

Name of Google’s algorithm update rolled out on 21st April connected with mobile optimized websites?

1. Pigeon
2. EMD Update
3. Mobilegeddon
4. Humming Bird

Ans: c) Mobilegeddon

Mobilegeddon is the latest search engine algorithm update made by Google which provides better search engine ranking for website which are optimized for mobile devices.

In SEO, URL provided with canonical tag gives equal effect of which redirection to search engines

1. 301 permanent redirection.
2. 302 temporary redirection.
3. 307 Redirect.
4. Meta Refresh Redirection.

Ans: a) 301 permanent redirection rule.