SEO TEST

What is a link audit and why should you do one?``

A link audit is basically an audit of the links that point to your website, the backlinks. SEO experts to link audits prior to doing a link building campaign, but also to make sure external links are of the quality you want to help with SEO.

What method do you use to redirect a page?

In general, a 301 redirect is the best way to redirect a page so you don't lose any SEO value that has been accumulated.

How do you measure SEO success?

Increasing traffic to a website or particular landing page, increasing conversions such as newsletter signups or sales, growing the number of inbound links, driving traffic for a particular keyword phrase, or increasing referral traffic. It's critical that an SEO professional measures result to know if the tactics and strategy need to change to succeed.

Why do internal links matter?

Internal links are links within your website linking to another page within your website. Internal links help all of the content on your website to get crawled and ranked.

What is keyword stemming and why does it matter?

Keyword stemming is adding on to the stem of a word. For example, if the word interview was your stem, variations could be interviewing, interviewer, interviews. Using keyword stemming helps you to use more relevant keywords on a webpage without keyword stuffing or ending up with content that reads poorly.

What's your greatest digital marketing success story?

LA society top page

Which meta tags matter?

Meta tags have changed since SEO became a common practice, but two remain critical: the page title and the meta description. The page title (sometimes called SEO title) plays an important role in ranking but it is also important because it is the title that shows on the Search Results Page (SERP). It must use a keyword to rank well with Google but it must also be compelling so a user will want to click on it. The meta description does not affect ranking, but it also plays a role on the SERP because it also must make the user want to click on the search result.

Which SEO tools do you regularly use?

Moz, Ahrefs, Google Analytics

What is link building and why does it matter

Google exists to serve the searcher. That means Google is constantly trying to determine which results are most relevant to any given searcher and any given time. In addition to relevance, Google considers credibility too. So the search engine looks to see if other websites have linked to yours. If so, that means your content is worth linking to and is, therefore, more credible when compared to a website not linked to externally. In a nutshell, link building is what SEO professionals do to try and get links to their websites in order to improve search results.

Explain Google's projected plan for indexes in 2018.

Google is going to have two indexes, starting at some point in 2018: one for desktop searches and one for mobile searches.

What is Google's preferred method of configuring a mobile site?

Google prefers that mobile websites are configured using responsive web design.

Which webmaster tools do you use and why?

HTML improvements, Content keywords, Sitemaps

How has Hummingbird changed the landscape of search?

Hummingbird has helped to make search contextual, moving us away from the strict adherence to keywords toward understanding a searcher's intent.

How did you learn SEO?

I've taken courses from university and at trade schools like General Assembly, I've attended workshops, I've studied all over the web and I've worked on it for companies in the past

How will you measure success as an SEO analyst or specialist at our organization?

be prepared to answer it by showing you understand SEO's role in the bigger picture. Talk about aligning with business objectives, achieving goals and driving results, not just "winning more searches."

What is page speed and why does it matter?

: Page speed refers to how fast your site loads for a user, something Google takes into account while ranking websites since a faster loading page directly translate to better user experience. If the interviewer asks what you would do to increase page speed, describe how you've achieved this in the past with examples such as reducing image sizes, enabling compression, reducing redirects, removing render-blocking JavaScript, leveraging browser caching, improve server response time, using a content distribution network to compress files, optimizing the code etc.

What are backlinks?

A backlink is what we call the links into a website from an external source, as mentioned in link building.

What is a canonical issue?

A canonical issue happens when you seem to have duplicate content. (Google penalizes for duplicate content.) This might happen if you have different versions of a URL pointing to the same webpage, for example, http://exampleURL.com and http://www.exampleURL.com.

What is HUMMINGBIRD?

A: Hummingbird was an overhaul of Google's search algorithm, released in 2013. It strives to move beyond just keywords and understand a searcher's intent.

What are accelerated mobile pages (AMP)?

AMP is a Google-back project to push for pages that load quickly on mobile devices.

What qualities are required in order to be effective in an SEO role, in your opinion?

An SEO professional must have good research skills, for one thing, as well as strong analytical skills. An ability to spot trends and adapt to change is also important.

How do you approach keyword research?

Analyzing competitor keyword strategy - finding out most popular pages URL's competitors are getting traffic for (SEM RUSH) Take most popular pages and analyze with Ahrefs to determine how many links those pages have Look for the most popular pages with least amount of links (because these sites have the best results with least amount of competition because there's no having to build a lot of backlinks) Use Google Search console to analyze positioning and statistics Use Google Trends - breakdown what keywords are climbing in popularity - go after the ones growing but not at the top

How do you evaluate web analytics to measure SEO performance?

As part of your answer you will want to talk about how you use Google's web analytics to look at direct navigation, referral traffic, numbers of visits, conversions, time on page, etc. and how you interpret all of that data to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.

What is RankBrain and why does it matter?

As with so many things Google, no one can say exactly what it is. RankBrain is part of Google's search algorithm. It's an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system used to process billions of web pages to help determine which results are the most relevant, in particular, queries that are new and not necessarily related to specific keywords (to really dumb down the explanation). There isn't a way to optimize websites for RankBrain other than to continue to focus on quality content because RankBrain is less about keywords.

How do you use content marketing for SEO?`

Content marketing is crucial to effective SEO because Google wants quality content, it gives you content to optimize for SEO, and it creates content other websites will link to (when done right). Content marketing is often done via a blog, but content can be created in many other forms as well, such as video, podcasts, infographics, ebooks and so on.

Why do you need to know about backlinks to competitors' websites?

Doing an analysis of a competitors' websites is a useful way to execute a competitive analysis to basically see if you should be emulating anything that they are doing.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz. It predicts how well a website will rank in search results.

What is the difference between a dofollow and nofollow and how are they used?

Nofollow links exist because we don't want every single webpage or link to be something a search engine crawls and ranks. Therefore, nofollow link attributes tell search engine bots not to follow a certain link. The link is still clickable for a user, but not followed by a bot. On the other hand, all other links could be considered dofollow links, even though they don't have to have special attributes to tell the search engines bots to follow them—the bots will by default.

What is on page vs off page SEO?

On-page SEO includes the factors you can control, such as keywords, content, page structure, internal linking, load time, etc. Off-page SEO includes those factors you can't control, such as backlinks.

How do you see SEO and PPC working together to improve results?

PPC can be used to drive traffic while waiting for pages optimized for SEO to start ranking. Also, we no longer have keyword research tools just for SEO, so we have to use PPC tools. PPC can be used to try out a keyword before committing to using it for SEO.

What is PageRank and why does it matter?

PageRank is about credibility and it is used to help rank your pages. Credibility is determined in part by the age of the page, the amount and quality of the content, and the number of inbound links.

What are the latest Google updates that have impacted SEO?

Panda and Penguin were the two most significant Google updates, although the search giant is constantly making changes to its search algorithm. Panda was introduced in 2011 and targeted poor quality content. The Penguin update was released in 2012 and targeted spammy link building techniques. Both are regularly updated by Google.

What are rich snippets? `

Rich snippets are the featured text that appears at the top of the organic search results, in a box and sometimes with an image. Webmasters can use structured data to mark up content so that search engines can easily identify the type of content and deliver it as a rich snippet. Rich snippets are not part of SEO, but if used, they can deliver better results on the SERPs.

What is the relationship between SEO and SEM?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. The biggest difference between the two is that SEO is free and SEM is paid. SEM includes pay-per-click advertising and display ads that are purchased. Despite the major difference between the two, they work best in unison.

What is the most important thing to look for when doing keyword research?

Search volume and relevancy

What makes a website search engine friendly?

Several factors make a website search engine friendly, including keywords, quality content, titles, metadata, etc. A website needs these factors to be ranked by a search engine and therefore found by a user

How do you use social media marketing for SEO?

The degree to which social media influences search rankings is not known, but social media still matters. For example, it can help you get backlinks when you share website content via social media platforms, and it builds your brand, which makes your website more likely to get the clicks on the search results page.

Which SEO factors are not in your control?

he biggest SEO factor not in your control is Google! How exactly Google ranks websites is unknown. The company does not make public the search algorithms it uses, although SEO professionals have determined the best practices we adhere to in order to achieve results. However, Google doesn't like young domains that aren't yet tried-and-true, and you can't control that if you're launching a new site. Nor can you force people to link to your site, share your content, spend more time on your site, or come back to your site for another visit. Google looks favorably on all of these factors and ideally a marketing department is working hard to create content and user experiences that will make these happen, but these factors are beyond the control of the SEO person.

How can you do SEO for a video?

ideos are growing increasingly popular on the web, which can improve SEO if the videos produced get attention and therefore shares and backlinks. But to get the video seen can require SEO to get it found, and Google can't watch a video. It needs the same types of information required for text-based pages to rank a video. Including the transcript as a text is an easy way to do SEO for a video because search engines can crawl the text. In addition, the same attention should be paid to keywords, page titles, and descriptions.

What is your approach to developing an SEO strategy?

include knowing the short- and long-term goals, knowing the competitive landscape, understanding the audience, etc

How do you stay up-to-date on the near-constant search algorithm changes?

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