Digital Marketing Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is HTTP / HTTPS / HTTP2? Explain connections and how they flow.
HTTP = not secure page
HTTPS = Secured page for which seo score will be given
1. Do root domains have trailing slashes?
https://example.com/ or https://example.com . There is no functional difference between those two URLs. Webmasters are free to include or to leave out that trailing slash when linking
1. What are the fundamental parts of a URL?
URLs are a mix of Protocol , Domain parts,Subdomains.TLDs,Path ,Parameters and Fragments
1. What is "www," anyway?
World Wide Web (WWW)
1. What are generic ccTLDs?
https://www.example.fr (France)
https://www.example.co.uk (United Kingdom)
https://example.com.eu (European Union)
ccTLD shows users and search engines in what country, sovereign state, or dependent territory a website is registered
1. Describe the transaction between client and server?

1. What do we mean when we say "client side" and "server side?"
2. Name 3 common servers. Explain each one.
Web Server, FTP Server, Virtual Server
1. How does DNS work?
Domain name server - When you enter a URL into your Web browser, your DNS server uses its resources to resolve the name into the IP address for the appropriate Web server
1. What are ports?
A port number is a way to identify a specific process to which an Internet or other network message is to be forwarded when it arrives at a server
1. How do I see/find my public IP address?
using tools like https://www.whatismyip.com/ we can find out
1. What is a proxy server?
Proxy servers allow to hide, conceal and make your network id anonymous by hiding your IP address

1. What is a reverse proxy server?
A reverse proxy is a device or service placed between a client and a server in a network infrastructure
1. How do CDNs work?
CDN (content delivery network) Basically increase page speed by reducing server request, refers to a geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content.
1. What is a VPN?
VPN (Virtual Private Networks) If Many employees needed to connect to a certain computer from different locations then VPN is used.
1. What are server response codes and how do they relate to SEO?
301 - seo friendly and permanent redirection code
302 - seo friendly and temporary redirection code
404 - for error pages
1. What is the difference between URL rewriting and redirecting?
URL-rewrite rules are transformation patterns applied by your webserver in order to effect redirects.

example
A rewrite rule may specify that all incoming URLS of the form www.ABC.com be redirected to abc.com

1. What is MVC?
MVC is framework
1. What is a development sprint / scrum?
2. Describe a development deployment workflow.
3. What are the core functions that power Google search?
4. What is PageRank?
Its a numeric value provided by google to tell how important page is on the web. it is measured as 1/10 , 2/10. 2/10 and so on..
1. What is toolbar PageRank?
The Google Toolbar long had a PageRank feature which displayed a visited page's PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10
1. What is the reasonable surfer model?
2. What is the random surfer model?
3. What is Mozrank, Domain Authority, and Page Authority — and how are they calculated?
Domain Authority is a score measured by MOZ out of 100. It predicts how good any Website will rank in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Whereas DA measures strength of entire Domain or Sub-Domain, Page Authority (PA) measures strength of an individual Webpage.
calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and number of total back links, content, on page optimisation

1. Name 3 Google search parameters and explain what they do (hint: gl= country).
2. What advanced operator search query will return: all URLs with https, with “cat” in the title, not including www subdomains, and only PDFs?
3. Describe filtering in search results, and which parameter can be appended to the search URL to omit filtering.
4. How can I Google search by a specific date?
5. If we say something is "indexed," what does that mean?
indexed means - a page is stored in google index server
1. If we say something is "canonicalized," what does that mean?
canonicalised means - duplicate page
1. If we say something is "indexable," what does that mean?
a page which not in google index server, can be indexable and display in search results
1. If we say something is "non indexable," what does that mean?
a page cant get cache by google
1. If we say something is "crawlable," what does that mean?
crawl able or indexable both are same
1. If we say something is "not crawlable," what does that mean?
not crawlble or not indexable both are same
1. If we say something is "blocked," what does that mean?
the page is blocked and not showing in google search results
1. Give examples of "parameters" in the wild, and manipulate any parameter on any website to show different content.

1. How should you check rankings for a particular keyword in a particular country?
we can use adpreview tool
1. Where are some places online you can speak to Googlers for advice?
google product forum, summits, twitter and other forums
1. What are the following: rel canonical, noindex, nofollow, hreflang, mobile alternate?(Explain each directive and its behavior in detail and state any variations in implementation)
rel canonical - to remove duplicate pages
no index - letting google bots know , don't index this page
no follow - letting google bots know , don't follow this page links
hreflang - mentioning language tag en=in , en-us like this

1. Explaining metrics from popular search tools
2. Explain SearchMetrics search visibility — how is this calculated? Why would you see declines in SM graphs but not in actual organic traffic?
3. Explain Google Trends Index — how is this calculated?
4. Explain Google Keyword Planner search volume estimates & competition metric — is search volume accurate? Is the competition metric useful for organic?
5. Explain SEMrush.com’s organic traffic graphs — Why might you see declines in SEMrush graphs, but not in actual organic traffic?

1.What are some external but important factors which impact the ranking?

2.How many types of Meta Tags are there in SEO and what are their characters limits?

3.How you will start keyword research? Which tools would you use for doing it?

4.Differentiate between Dofollow and Nofollow?

5.What do you understand by Keyword stemming?

6.What do you mean by Backlink and mention about quality and spam backlinks?

7.What are out bound Links?

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

9.Name few Black Hat SEO techniques?

10.What is Google Sandbox?

11.What is the meaning of competitive analysis?

12.What is 301 redirect and write the code by taking one example site?

13.What are search console?

14.What is robots.txt and write the code by taking one example site

15.What will you do, for the company website you are working for, decides to move all the contents to new domain?

16.What is the latest update in SEO?

17.To increase rankings, what things should not be performed to avoid a penalty?

18.What are the key aspects of Penguin update?

19. What is Disavow tool?

20. What is AMP

21. What is Blog commenting and forum posting? are they have any impact on SEO Score

22. What is XML Sitemap and html sitemap and mention the importance.

23. Which Tools used for SEO ?

24. What is Canonical issue ?

25. How to remove Canonical Issue ?

26. I wish to remove visits from my own office from getting counted in Google Analytics. How can I do so?

27. What is the difference between exit rate and bounce rate?

28. How will you check the number of backlinks of your competitors site?

29. What do you mean by anchor text?

30. What is meant by conversions and how will you track conversions through GA?

31. What is the difference between a users and a session in google analytics?

32. Where can I find the UA tracking code?

33. What is difference between Goals & Funnels ?

34. What is “Not Set” and “Not Provided” in Google Analytics?

SEO Interview Questions & Answers
1) What is Digital Marketing? It’s is advertising delivered through digital channels such as social media, mobile applications, email, web applications, search engines, websites, or any new digital channel.
2) What are Search Engine and crawler?
Search Engine: A search engine is a web-based tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web. Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search.
Crawler: The process of collecting information about web pages is performed by an agent called a crawler Ex: Robot, Spider
3) What is SEO?
It is a process of getting any website in 1st page of search engines like Google naturally for the targeted keywords using ON page optimization and Off page Optimization. Search engine robots crawls millions of web pages every day and adds the information in database, whenever a user types a query in Google search box it retrieves the search results based on the authority of the site.
Benefits of SEO:
Increase organic traffic for a site.
Increase ranking for high search volume keywords.
Generate leads and turns visitors to buyers.
Expands your business throughout the world.
Makes your website stands in No.1 position and ahead of your competitor ranking position.
4) What are the methods in SEO?
ON Page Optimization
Off Page Optimization.
5) What is a keyword? A word used to find information when researching in search engine.
6) Name keyword research tools?
Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, Keyword.io, Uber Suggest, Bing Keyword Tool.
7) How to connect to server? With C Panel?

8) What is On-Page Optimization?
ON Page is a process of doing changes within the website like title, URL Structure, headings, content etc.
9) What are On-Page Factors?
Title Tag, Description Tag, Header Tags, URL Structure, Web Content Optimization and many more.
10) What is a Title Tag and its importance and pixel and length?
It is the label for the browser and it appears in search results.
Drives initial click for the users and appears in search results.
Page title also known as title tag.
Pixel Length: 512
Ideal length of characters: 70 (if more than 70 it shows dots in search results)
11) What is a Description Tag and its importance and pixel and length?
It is the summary of the webpage Length should be maximum 300 characters. Add the description with meaningful sentence and with targeted keywords without stuffing.
Use SEO Mofo snippet optimizer tool before you actually add in the webpage source code as it shows the snippet preview. http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
12) What are Header Tags and explain about the importance of H1?
H1 to H6 are header tags for a webpage. Each Webpage should have web content. Web content should be divided into paragraphs. Each paragraph should have heading H1, H2 are the important header tags used for a webpage Use targeted keywords in H1&H2
13) What is Bread Crumb Navigation?
It is the navigation for the user to move front and back pages in the website. To give a clear path to user all ecommerce sites uses bread crumb navigation now It increases internal links strength.
Code to be used
<a href=’http://www.firstcry.com’>Home</a> > <a href=’http://www.firstcry.com/clothes-and-fashionaccessories’> Clothes & Fashion Accessories</a><a href=’http://www.firstcry.com/shorts-skirts-andjeans/6/221′> Shorts, Skirts & Jeans</a> 301
14) Explain about 301 Redirection and procedure?
The 301 redirect is a permanent redirect page.
Page completely moved to new URL or new address.
Old Domain to New Domain

Whenever there are 404 broken links for the site 301 has to be done to get rich user experience Even in search engine point of view important broken links or renamed urls has to be redirected to working pages or new urls.
Go to 301 redirection tag generator tool
Enter Old URL, New URL
Generate the code and copy the code in notepad and save as .htaccess
Upload the .htaccess file in the root folder of the server.
15) Explain about 404 broken links?
Links which does not exist in our website and pointing from other sites to our sites are called as broken links.
Like URL NOT FOUND, Page Not Found, URL is renamed.
16) What is Custom 404 Error Page?
Custom 404 error page is required for all the wrongly typed urls (pages which are not existing in the site) in the site. These urls when typed in browser shows page not found in the server.
So a custom 404 page has to be designed and give links to working pages or home page.
Ex: www.amazon.com/abcd
www.ebay.in/abcd
Another method: Permanently redirecting all not found url’s to home page
Ex: www.flipkart.com/abcd (it immediately re directs to home page i.e www.flipkart.com
Code to be added in error document file to create custom 404 error
Error Document 404 http://www.example.com/404.html
17) What is Web Content Optimization?
Minimum 300 words for every page.
Write the content with 1% keyword density and 0% plagiarism.
Check web content in every webpage for plagiarism Ex: duplichecker.com, copyscape.com
Spam Content types
Content Scraping: Content scraping is taking the content from one site and reusing it on another site
Same Site Duplication: Duplicate content present in same site in different pages and in internal blogs
Do not index the content but follow the links on the page
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”>

18) What is Keyword Density?
Keyword Density tells you the how often a search term appears in a text relation to the total no of words in text
Keyword Density = No. of Keywords / No. of words in text * 100
19) What is Keyword Stuffing?
It is consider as a web spam or spam indexing in which keywords are loaded in to web pages of Meta tags.
20) What is LSI Keywords?
The LSI are semantically associated with the main keyword that users enter over the search engine.
These Latent Semantic Indexing keywords we can find at the bottom page as “searches related to”.
21) What is Internal Links, External Links, Footer Links and their benefits?
Internal Links: These are the links which are presented in our website.
External Links: These are links which goes outside from our website also called as out bound links.
Eg: Social media sites, third party sites.
Footer Links: These are the links which are present in the common footer of the website.
22) What is Sitemap?
It is an xml file which consists of all urls of a website. Sitemap is for crawlers to visit the website and add the urls in the database. Makes faster indexation of all urls in search results. Update the sitemap in webmasters if any new or old urls are added
23) How to generate the sitemap.xml file?
Go to https://www.xml-sitemaps.com (This site will show up to 500 urls for free)
Enter the Home Page of the website and click start.
Download the uncompressed xml sitemap and upload in the root folder of the server.
Check in the frontend by typing: example.com/sitemap.xml
Benefits: It is created for the faster indexation of our website in search engines.
24) Difference between the sitemap.xml and sitemap.html?
Sitemap.xml is for search engines.
Sitemap.html or sitemap.php is for users (One single html page consists of all links of our website)

25) What is Robots.txt?
It is a text file which tells crawlers to crawl the website or block the site
Termed as Allow or Disallow
Code to be used:
a) User agent: *
Allow: / Allow all crawlers from all content
b) User –agent: *
Disallow: / Blocks all crawlers from all content
c) User-agent: Google Bot
Disallow:/Books Block a specific web crawler from a specific folder
d) User-agent: Google bot
Disallow:/services/advertising.html Block a specific web crawler from a specific webpage
Add the required code, save the file name as robots.txt and upload the file in root folder of server
26) Name popular SEO Tools?
Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Moz, SEMRush, SEO Quake, Wappalyzer etc.
27) What is ALT Tag and why we use it?
The required ALT attribute specifies an alternate text for an image.
If the image can’t be displayed then the ALT attribute provides the alternative information for an image.
If a user for some reason cannot view the image because of slow internet connection then ALT tag will show text.
ALT Tag can increase the SEO Ranking of website’s images in Google image search results.
28) How to know the website loading speed?
Check loading speed of your website using www.pingdom.net
Ideal loading time should be 2 seconds.
If it’s more than 2 seconds check the size of images, minimize java script , avoid excessive flash images in the webpage, do not upload direct videos( use embedded codes from youtube).
29) What is a favicon?
The logo which appears in title bar of a website.

30) What is White Hat technique? White hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies. White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, link building to improve the link popularity, site architecture, site performance and writing content for human readers.
It is also called as Ethical SEO.
31) What are 3 important Google Ranking factors?
a) Content b) Back Links c) Rank Brain
32) What is Black Hat technique? Black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines. Black hat SEO techniques include Keyword Stuffing, invisible text, clocking, link farming, hidden text and door way pages, adding unrelated keywords to the page content or page swapping (changing the webpage entirely after it has been ranked by search engines).
33) What is URL Canonical? A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.
34) What is web-Redirect? URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened. Similarly, domain redirection or domain forwarding is when all pages in a URL domain are redirected to a different domain, as when wikipedia.com and wikipedia.net are automatically redirected to wikipedia.org. URL redirection is done for various reasons:  for URL shortening;  to prevent broken links when web pages are moved;  to allow multiple domain names belonging to the same owner to refer to a single web site;  to guide navigation into and out of a website;
35) What is Https? Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a variant of the standard web transfer protocol (HTTP) that adds a layer of security on the data in transit through a secure socket layer (SSL) or transport layer security (TLS) protocol connection.

36) What is schema.org Structured Data? Schema.org is the result of collaboration between Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! to help you provide the information their search engines need to understand your content and provide the best search results possible at this time. Adding Schema markup to your HTML improves the way your page displays in SERPs by enhancing the rich snippets that are displayed beneath the page title.
37) Types of schemas? Structured data can be used to mark up all kinds of items from products to events to recipes. It is most often used to provide additional information about the following:  Creative work  Event  Organization  Person  Place  Product
38) What is Domain Authority, Page Authority, Alexa Rank? Domain Authority (DA): It is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. Page Authority (PA): It is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. Alexa Rank (AR): It is a measure of website popularity. It ranks millions of websites in order of popularity, with an Alexa Rank of 1 being the most popular. Alexa rank is calculated using a proprietary methodology that combines a site’s estimated traffic and visitor engagement over the past three months.
39) What is Google Penalty? A Google penalty is the negative impact on a website's search rankings based on updates to Google's search algorithms or manual review. The penalty can be a by-product of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for various black-hat SEO techniques.
40) Explain about Google Algorithms?
https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-updates-explained-282627
Know more about latest Google algorithms also.
41) What is Off-Page Optimization?
Off Page: Building back links for a website in high authority sites.

42) Name the Off-Page Techniques? Directory Submission, Social Bookmarking, Classified Ads, Web 2.0, Local or Business Listings, Business Profile Creation, Blog Commenting, Guest Blogging.
43) Which techniques come under content marketing?
Article Submissions, PDF Submissions, Press Release Submissions.
44) What are SEO Auditing Tools?
Screaming Frog Tool, iwebchk, SEOptimer
45) Why wappalyzer is used? Wappalyzer is a cross-platform utility that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, ecommerce platforms, web frameworks, server software, analytics tools and many more.
46) What is Do Follow and No Follow back links?
Do Follow: Search engine will pass the domain authority for our website back links present in other sites.
(rel = no follow tag will not be there).
Benefit: Authority, Traffic
No Follow: Search engine will not pass the domain authority for our website back links present in other sites.
(rel = no follow tag will be there).
Benefit: Link Count, Traffic (Ex: Social Media Sites, Business listings)
Note: To find Do Follow or No Follow, Click inspect element on anchor text and observe.
47) What is a Anchor Text? Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. <a href="http://www.example.com">Example Anchor Text</a>
48) Rules to follow to build a back links?
Quality of back links (DA, PA, AR)
Relevancy of the content between two sites,
Proper use of anchor text,
Avoid site wide links,
Avoid links from low quality sites.

49) What is Google page speed insights?
It shows the strength of the website. To know the issues in Mobile, Desktop versions.
50) What is Google Suggest or Auto Complete?
When user enters a word in search field then Google shows a drop down menu, Such suggestions are a collection of the most frequently search terms over the Google search engine.
51) What are Competitive Back link Analysis tools?
Ahrefs.com, Semrush.com, majestic.com, SEO profiler.com, seopoersums.com
52) How will you find the number of pages indexed in Google search engine?
Site: example.com
The total number of pages from your site that have been added to Google Index.
Cache: example.com
To know on which date Google crawl our website.
Links: website.com
To know the links of our website.
53) Where will you add the url's to get indexed?
URL Inspection Tool
54) What is Google Search Console? Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results.
55) What is the importance and why we use Search console? Search Console offers tools and reports for the following actions:  Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.  Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.  View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.  Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.  Show you which sites link to your website.  Troubleshoot issues for AMP, mobile usability, and other Search features.

56) How to verify our website in Search Console and explain the process?
HTML file upload
HTML Tag
Google Analytics Verification
57) How to check whether the website is having the search console or not?
Tag assistance verification in source code.
When HTML Tag verification is done by website then we can find search console of the website by checking the source code is site-verification.
58) What is AMP? AMP stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages.” It is an Open Source Framework that was launched as a joint initiative by Google and several other technology and publishing companies. With AMP, it is possible to create simple mobile websites that load almost instantly. Characteristic features of AMP are reduced JavaScript and CSS elements, and the use of a Content Delivery Network.
59) What is URL Inspection Tool (Fetch as Google)?
Whenever the pages are not indexed, find it and add URL page in URL Inspection tool.
60) What is Index Coverage report (crawl)?
To know the 404 Broken links
61) What is Rich Results Report (Structured Data)? Rich results are when your pages show up in the search results as rich cards or other forms of rich snippets. The report gives you a better sense of how many impressions and clicks you get for rich results and how the click-through rate might differ compared to normal search results.
62) What is Sitemap Report? Use the Sitemaps report to submit a sitemap for your property, to see your sitemap submission history, and to see any errors that Google encountered when parsing your submitted sitemaps.
63) What is Text to HTML Ratio?
Text to Html Ratio minimum 20%
Myths: Google does not index pages with low Text to HTML ratio
Google will penalize my site if my page is more than 100KB
Fact: Higher Html to text Ratio is to increase user experience

65) What is a SERP feature? A SERP feature is any result on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that is not a traditional organic result. The most common SERP Features are: 1. Rich Snippets which add a visual layer to an existing result (e.g., review stars for product ratings) 2. Paid Results that are bought by bidding on keywords (e.g., AdWords or Google Shopping) 3. Universal Results that appear in addition to organic results (e.g., image results, new results, featured snippets) 4. Knowledge Graph data which appears as panels or boxes (e.g., weather, Celebrity Knowledge Panel)