SEO certification study guide

Which of these is an example of a top-level domain?

.org

What kind of company would benefit from the site links rich snippet?

A company with a large website, recognizable brand, and high search traffic.

What is a backlink profile?

A list of all the sites currently linking to your site

What is a pillar page?

A website page that covers a specific topic in depth and is linked to a cluster of related content

Choose all that apply. Which of these tactics will help improve your website's internal linking?

Add a related posts section to your blog. Create a pillar page and topic cluster.

Jo is a marketer at Papier, a stationery company that does most of their business online. Jo has noticed that Papier is falling behind their competitors in search results and wants to improve their ranking and clickthrough rate. How should Jo go about optimizing the Papier website for this goal?

Add structured data to the product pages to display reviews and ratings data in rich results, and optimize the pages' meta descriptions.

What kind of heading tag should you use for subtitles on a page?

B or C

How do you build discovery and relevance for search engines?

By creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to be known for

Choose all that apply. Which of these are ways to increase your site speed?

Compress images Upload images at the exact dimensions they'll be used

You're trying to rank for one of your target topics using a web page that contains a long, canonical piece of written content. However, when you do your research on what's already ranking for that topic by searching for it on Google, you notice that the majority of search results on page one are videos. Which of the following actions will give your website the best chance of ranking for this topic?

Create a video about that topic, and add it to your existing written page. Because Google is serving up mostly videos on page one for this particular topic, you'll want to have a video in there - but that doesn't mean having written content to supplement it won't help.

When building a relationship with the goal of receiving backlinks, what is the first thing you should do?

Deliver value to them

True or False? Adding structured data to a page guarantees that it will appear as a rich snippet in search results.

False

True or False? Domain authority is a ranking factor in Google's algorithms.

False

True or False? Google doesn't care about the quality of backlinks, only the quantity.

False

True or False? It is a best practice to make your URLs as long and descriptive as possible.

False

True or False? No matter what SEO tool you use, the metrics will be exactly the same.

False

True or False? The same SEO strategy will yield the same results for all websites.

False

True or False? When you make a change to a page, Google immediately crawls it.

False

True or False? You should optimize a single page for multiple keywords.

False

True or False? You should use hyphens, underscores, or spaces between the words in your URLs.

False

What do you need to balance when doing SEO?

Focusing on the user and making it easy for search engines to crawl your website

What tool can you use to test for errors in structured data markup?

Google's Structured Data Testing Tool

The different types of keywords are:

Head terms, body keywords, long-tail keywords

Choose all that apply. Why are internal links important for SEO?

Index

What kind of content is most likely to be organically linked to?

Informational content

Why is having duplicate content an issue for SEO?

It can dilute your ranking potential.

Choose all that apply. Why is it important to have HTTPS for your website?

It encrypts sensitive data, like passwords and credit card numbers. It increases users' trust in your website.

What technical SEO issue can you solve with an SSL certificate?

Lack of site security

Sam is the marketing director for StyleHub, a clothing boutique. They opened their brick and mortar store last year, but Sam only published the website a month ago and it isn't receiving much traffic yet. Now, they're ready to focus on SEO and have some resources to dedicate to it. Which three tactics should Sam focus on initially?

Optimizing the website to follow on-page SEO best practices; Making the website mobile-responsive; Setting up a Google My Business profile

If you track nothing else for SEO, make sure you track ___.

Organic traffic

Chris is a marketing manager at The Pet Box, which offers subscription boxes for pet owners. Chris wants to increase traffic to The Pet Box's main product page. Right now that page ranks on the second page of search results for their target keyword. Chris has started improving the on-page SEO of the page, optimizing it for their target keyword, and seeking backlinks from popular pet care blogs. In order to track progress towards their goal, which metrics should Chris track?

Organic traffic, position, impressions, backlinks

What was the purpose of the Google Hummingbird algorithm update?

Parsing out phrases rather than focusing on specific search queries

Dr. Dave Driscoll, a very credible and well respected authority on dentistry, just linked to a blog post that you wrote about how to floss from his website. When Google assesses the authority of your post and recognizes the link from Dr. Driscoll's website, which search engine function is at play?

Ranking

Choose all that apply. What are the most important things to do when replying to press request alerts?

Respond quickly Give the journalist exactly the information they want

Which of these teams is NOT involved in the creation of a sitemap?

Sales

Choose all that apply. What data can you gather about your website from Google Search Console?

Search impressions Position in SERPs Clickthrough rate

Choose all that apply. What does your backlink profile measure?

The number of inbound links to your website. The number of unique domains that link to your website. The quality of inbound links to your website.

How many links does it take to rank high in search results?

The same number of links that the results ranking on page one have

Choose all that apply. Why are internal links important for SEO?

They help users and search engine crawlers navigate your site. They pass link authority from one page to another.

Choose all that apply. Why are meta descriptions important?

They increase click-through rate and visits from organic search. They increase visits from social media. They give people the right information at the right time.

What is the purpose of a 301 redirect?

To permanently redirect users from one URL to another

What is the purpose of heading tags?

To provide a hierarchical structure to a web page

What is the primary goal of a search engine?

To serve users the most relevant content that matches their search query

Which of these is a strategy to determine the internal linking structure of a website?

Topic clusters

True or False? All link-building tactics require building a relationship in order to work.

True

True or False? Authority directly impacts ranking strength.

True

True or False? Backlinks build authority.

True

True or False? Don't use a page's URL as your link description.

True

True or False? Structured data is a markup language.

True

True or False? The further away a page is from the homepage, the worse it is for that page's SEO.

True

True or False? The majority of SERPs include some type of rich results.

True

True or False? You should emulate the top-ranking content for your target keyword, but offer unique value.

True

How long should your page's title tag be?

Under 60 characters

How do search engines use sitemaps?

Web crawlers use a sitemap to understand a website's structure so they can evaluate and rank it more easily.

Which of these is an example of a long-tail keyword?

What does my glasses prescription mean

When should you decide to work with a developer to implement structured data on a page?

When there are a large number of required or recommended properties in a markup

Choose all that apply. When should you submit your sitemap to Google and other search engines?

When you first publish your website When you publish a new web page When you make a significant change to your site structure When you redesign your website

When should you use a robots.txt file?

When you have pages that you don't want search engines to crawl and index

When would it be beneficial to have a different title tag than your heading tag?

When your heading is too long and will get cut off in search engine results

Why is over-optimizing bad?

You can't collect any impactful data to inform your next steps