Interview Questions
1. What is Cross-linking? What is the function of Crosslinking?
2. What are Rich Snippets and how can they affect SEO Rankings?
3. What is the Broad Core Algorithm Update?
4. What is a Google Penalty and how to avoid them?
5. What do you mean by Cloaking?
6. What is Google Search Console or Webmasters Tools?
7. What is more important, having quality content or a high amount of backlinks?
8. What is the BERT Algorithm?
9. What is a Disavow Link? How to Disavow a link from your website?
10. What are the most important factors for improving Google search rank?
11. What are AMP pages in SEO?
12. How to optimize for RankBrain?
13. What is the difference between white hat and black hat SEO?
14. How to increase my Page Rank?
15. How is the bounce rate calculated?
1.What is Cross-linking? What is the function of Crosslinking?
Cross-linking is a white-hat SEO strategy to improve rankings by passing link juice between 2 websites through reciprocal links and inbound links.
Cross-linking is used mainly to increase Domain Authority by maintaining high-quality links on 2 websites on a given topic.
2. What are Rich Snippets and how can they affect SEO Rankings?
Rich snippets are a special form of results found in Googleās Search Engine which is basically a form of Structured Data. Rich snippets do not affect the website’s ranking directly. However, presenting the data in an organized tabular form, which is easy for the bot to understand quickly is the main factor that results in better rankings in the long run while also improving your Page Rank.
3. What is the Broad Core Algorithm Update?
In October 2019, Google announced that Broad Core Update shall become more frequent since 2020. It is basically an important update which can directly impact search visibility and rankings to a number of websites. Each time such an update is rolled out, (one in Nov 2019 and one in Jan 2020) Google updates rankings on websites based on its fundamental rule, i.e. E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
4. What is a Google Penalty and how to avoid them?
A Google penalty is a negative impact on your websiteās search result ranking based on updates made to search algorithms or even a manual review. The penalty can be due to the various reasons with the main being usage of Black-Hat SEO techniques.
You can avoid a Google Penalty by avoiding these Black-Hat SEO Techniques:
Cloaking and/or Sneaky Redirects
Hidden Text
Keyword Stuffing
Pure Spam
Spammy Structured Markup
Thin Content With Little or No Actual Value
Unnatural Inbound and/or External Links
5. What do you mean by Cloaking?
Cloaking is a Black Hat SEO method in which content presented to the userās web browser and search engine bot are different. The content meant for the search engine bots is filled with keywords and the user content is normal, in accordance to best SEO practices. This is done by delivering content based on IP addresses or User-Agent HTTP header of user request page.
6. What is Google Search Console or Webmasters Tools?
It is the Google tool which is used to control your website errors, measure performance even also control your website presence in search result.
7. What is more important, having quality content or a high amount of backlinks?
Having quality content is the most important aspect of SEO along with creating high-quality backlinks that pass on good link juice. In terms of SEO, quality is always given more authority than quantity.
8. What is the BERT Algorithm?
BERT(Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a vital algorithm update rolled out by Google on 25th October 2019. This update equips the Search Engine Spider with a Deep Learning Algorithm related to natural language processing. It helps a machine to understand a sentence as a human would, including the nuances in the context.
9. What is a Disavow Link? How to Disavow a link from your website?
In this globalized and intricate generation of internet, there are many harmful or irrelevant sites that could have a negative impact on your site’s SEO if it had a backlink from them. To restrict this, these links are Disavowed, i.e. remove as your site backlink.
To Disavow a link from your website:
Go to Google Search Console and log in
Under the dropdown menu, select the Domain for which you have to disavow links
Click on āDisavow Linksā
Click āChoose Fileā
Upload the list of URLs or domains you need to disavow in a .txt format
10. What are the most important factors for improving Google search rank?
There are a number of factors which improve google search rank-
The quality of content on your website
The length of content that you are using for SEO
The freshness, unique and interactive of your content
By using backlinks
By improving the computation speed for the webpage
11. What is AMP pages in SEO?
The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is the project implemented by Google that aims to improve the loading speed of web pages on mobile phones. Although users use smartphones to surf the internet, there are still pages that are not adapted to these types of devices.
If the pages are not adapted to mobile phones, the user’s browsing experience decreases, especially when referring to the loading speed. For this reason, Google intends to make various solutions available to users to end this problem.
12. How to optimize for RankBrain?
In October 2015, Google unveiled its new algorithm called RankBrain, which uses artificial intelligence to filter the most relevant results and thus have a more exceptional ability to answer user questions.
Users no longer have to think with what words to perform the search. Actually, just talk directly with the machine. Therefore, in order for our content to position themselves better, they have to be answers to the problems of people written naturally.
The key is to write as if you were talking to someone in front of you, in a colloquial and clear way. RankBrain likes this content because it knows it is easier for most audiences to understand.
13. What is the difference between white hat and black hat SEO?
If the different techniques used by the webmaster to achieve the objective conform to ethical and normative parameters of search engines it is called White Hat, and if not, it is defined as Black Hat
White Hat SEO: When we talk about White Hat SEO, they are strategies that use ethical methods with ‘quality content’ created, which provides added value to the user and, contains relevant keywords in addition to collaborations with opinion experts or influencers. Ads are also included to help promote a website.
The most used technique for White Hat SEO is On-Page SEO which means the compliance of the website with a set of standards that make it easier for the search engine algorithm to track, index and classify semantically.
14. How to increase my Page Rank?
There is a number of ways which are used to improve the ranking of the websiteās pages such as ā
By pushing relevant and quality empowered content (promotional and informative)
By using target and commonly used keyword phrases
By placing and embedding keyword in the website content
By regularly updating the content
By linking the website with the platform which possesses high traffic
By using alt (alternative) tags or text descriptions
Black Hat SEO: Black Hat is a strategy that seeks immediacy in results and uses techniques that challenge the rules and guidelines of search engines. SPAM in forums or blogs, hidden texts, paid links, disorder and nonsense keywords but that quickly monetize and break navigation of the user with constant links that are not related to the content are some examples. Although these techniques can be effective in the short term, they can be penalized in the long run and be banned from the search engine, which would have a negative effect on sales and brand recognition.
15. How is the bounce rate calculated?
The definition of bounce rate is relatively simple to understand compared to other web analytics metrics. This does not mean that it is a superficial or unimportant fact since its analysis can reveal valuable insights.
The bounce rate offers information about the behavior of users of a website and shows their interaction on the page. Bouncing a web page consists of leaving it without interacting with the page in any way, such as writing a comment or clicking on a link. In other words, bouncing is about leaving the page before doing anything on it. The bounce rate is a parameter of Google Analytics to measure the interest of a website based on the visitor’s circulation through it, at a higher bounce rate, less content visited, which means that another page similar to yours with less rate Bounce will be classified as better quality.
Rb = Tv/Te
Where Rb is bounce rate
Tv is a total one-page visit
Te is total entrance visits
The formula for calculating the bounce rate is quite clear and can be summed up in a simple equation: the number of users who leave the page after just seeing the landing page (the first page they see on the website) and who do not interact on it divided by the total users of the site. Therefore, if 40 users leave without taking any action on a page and we have 100 users in total, the bounce rate is 40%.