In this post, we’ve compiled 58 common SEO interview questions. Plus, sample answers so you’re fully prepared for your upcoming SEO interview.
Getting hired as a search engine optimizer is no easy feat. You’ll need to demonstrate a deep understanding of SEO strategies, tactics, and tools during the interview process
I should know – I’ve interviewed dozens of SEO candidates over the years. And I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my own SEO job interviews!
That’s why I decided to create this comprehensive guide. It covers the most common and tricky SEO interview questions hiring managers love to ask.
Plus, it provides sample answers to help you craft thoughtful responses that will impress any interviewer.
So if you have an SEO interview coming up, keep reading! I’m going to walk you through exactly how to prepare and what to expect.
Why SEO Interview Questions Matter
The interview is your chance to showcase your abilities to the hiring manager.
But it’s also the company’s opportunity to determine if you’ll be a good fit for the role.
After all, they don’t want to make a costly hiring mistake by bringing on someone under-qualified who can’t deliver results.
That’s why they use targeted SEO interview questions to thoroughly assess your skills.
They want concrete examples of your experience doing things like:
- Conducting keyword research
- Optimizing sites for search engines
- Fixing technical SEO issues
- Building links
- Analyzing data and reporting on performance
If you can demonstrate your expertise in these areas, you’ll be well on your way to landing the SEO job.
How to Prepare for SEO Interview Questions
With the right preparation, you can enter your SEO interview feeling confident and ready to tackle any question they throw your way.
Here are my top tips to prep for success:
Brush up on SEO fundamentals
Review SEO basics like on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and technical SEO. Know the most important ranking factors and best practices.
Research the company
Thoroughly explore their website, blog, social media, and press coverage. Get familiar with their products/services, SEO strategies, and competitors.
Practice answering common questions
Rehearse your responses to expected SEO interview questions (I’ve included many below!). Get feedback from colleagues. Tweak and refine your answers.
Prepare examples of your work
Line up specific examples that highlight your skills and achievements. Quantify your results when possible.
Plan relevant questions to ask the interviewer
This shows your interest in the company. Ask about goals, challenges, team culture, or day-to-day responsibilities.
Review the job description again
Make sure you understand the role’s duties and requirements inside and out.
Get a good night’s sleep!
Arrive well-rested, refreshed, and ready to focus.
Proper preparation takes time and dedication. But it’s well worth the effort.
You’ll have the confidence to handle whatever questions come your way during the big day!
Next, let’s look at some of the most common and tricky SEO interview questions and sample answers.
25 Common SEO Interview Questions and Answers
SEO Basics
What is the difference between on-page and off-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to optimizing elements you have direct control over on your website, such as titles, headers, content, site speed, etc.
Off-page SEO refers to external factors that influence rankings, like link building, social media engagement, and brand mentions. On-page SEO establishes your authority while off-page SEO signals it to search engines.
What is site architecture and why does it matter for SEO?
Site architecture is the structure of your website, including the hierarchy, navigation, and underlying code. It impacts SEO because it determines how easily search engines can crawl, index, and understand your site’s content.
An optimized architecture with clean URLs, efficient navigation, and semantic markup helps search engines discover and rank your pages.
What is local SEO and how is it different from regular SEO?
Local SEO helps businesses rank higher in map listings and local search results in their geographic area. It involves optimizing your Google My Business listing as well as using locally-targeted keywords, schema markup, and citations.
The main difference from regular SEO is the focus on reaching nearby customers searching for your products or services. Location data signals like addresses and phone numbers are crucial.
Keyword Research
Walk me through your process for conducting keyword research.
First, I brainstorm a list of seed keywords based on the business goals, products/services, and target customers. Next, I use keyword research tools like Semrush to find long-tail variations and low competition keywords related to my seeds.
Then I analyze the keywords for difficulty, CPC, search volume, and searcher intent. Finally, I prioritize the keywords that align with business goals and have sufficient volume and difficulty scores for us to realistically target.
How can you determine the commercial intent for a keyword?
I look for buying signals in the keyword itself. Words like “buy,” “price,” “discount,” etc. indicate it’s likely a purchasing search.
I also analyze the top-ranking pages in the SERPs. If they are dominated by ecommerce stores and product pages, that’s a sign of transactional intent.
Content Optimization
How do you optimize content for SEO?
I start by researching keywords and topics that are relevant for the business to determine focus and headers. Then I optimize on-page elements like title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, etc. around the primary keywords, while naturally incorporating secondary keywords in the copy.
I format content for scannability with lists, headers, etc. Finally, I include links to internal service and product pages to enable site navigation.
What are the most important elements of an SEO-friendly blog post?
The headline and featured snippet, since they will be indexed prominently and influence click-through rate.
Using the target keyword naturally in these elements is key. Other important factors are word count, optimizing images with alt text, links to internal resources, meta descriptions, and formatting content for on-screen readability.
Link Building
What strategies have you used to build high-quality backlinks?
Some successful tactics I’ve used are guest posting on authority sites in our industry, creating resources like tools or calculators to provide value to backlink prospects, participating in relevant forums and communities to gain links, and collaborating on co-branded content like ebooks, surveys or studies.
How do you evaluate the quality of a potential link opportunity?
I look at metrics like domain authority, organic traffic, page authority, and recent linking domains of the site. I also qualitative assess the context of the link opportunity and make sure the website is relevant to our business. Additionally, I examine their existing link profile for unnatural links.
Technical SEO
How can duplicate content issues negatively impact SEO? And what are some ways to fix or prevent duplicate content?
Duplicate content dilutes the page authority and search relevance for original content. It can also lead to ranking penalties.
To fix it, I would consolidate or 301 redirect duplicate pages, use canonical tags to point to the preferred URL, or add noindex to redundant pages. To prevent it, I would suggest dynamically generating unique meta descriptions, using version control with updates, and rewriting stale or scraped content.
What core web vitals should be monitored for technical SEO?
The three primary ones are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). LCP measures loading experience. FID measures responsiveness. And CLS measures visual stability. Optimizing these contributes to better user experience and SEO performance.
Reporting & Results
How do you track and report on the results of an SEO campaign?
I use metrics aligned to the original goals like rankings for target keywords, overall organic traffic from search engines, click-through rate from rankings, and conversion rate of traffic to sales. I compile analytics data and rankings data into reports. I present insights into successes, wins, areas for improvement, and next steps in an easy-to-understand executive summary.
Tell me about a time when your SEO efforts significantly increased traffic and revenue for a client. What specific strategies drove this SEO success?
For a client in the home services industry, I expanded their local SEO keyword strategy to target more commercially-driven service queries with higher intent to buy. Implementing this long tail strategy helped increase their local organic traffic by 34% over 6 months. More high-converting traffic led to a 42% bump in revenue from SEO during that period.
Analyzing Results
Your client’s organic traffic suddenly dropped. How would you investigate the possible causes?
I would first check Google Search Console for manual actions and algorithmic notices. If clear issues don’t present themselves there, I would review SEMrush organic research data for ranking fluctuations and loses.
I may also analyze competitors to see if they were impacted similarly. I would crawl the site for technical problems and check analytics for engagement drops. If I still can
3 What Are Some Popular SEO Myths?
Answer: There are several common SEO myths that have persisted over time.
For example, people still believe keyword density is crucial for ranking.
This myth suggests that the number of times a keyword appears in the content affects search engine rankings.
However, search engines have evolved to prioritize content quality over keyword density.
So, focusing on creating high-quality content that naturally incorporates relevant keywords is the way to go.
Some people also believe that SEO is all about tricking search engines.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth. SEO is about providing a positive user experience and delivering value with your content.
Using tricks like keyword stuffing and cloaking to try to trick search engines can get you in trouble and hurt your rankings.
Another popular misconception is that having more pages leads to better rankings.
Simply having a large number of pages on your website doesn’t directly translate to better rankings.
Its more important to focus on creating valuable and relevant content that addresses user needs.
Quality and relevance trump quantity.
4 What Are Search Engine Bots?
By asking this question, the interviewer can assess your basic knowledge and understanding of how search engines work
Answer: Search engine bots are software programs that visit websites on the internet and collect information about them.
They are also called “crawlers,” “spiders,” or “robots.”
With the data they collect, search engine bots make an index of the web, which is like a big list of all the pages and their content.
This is an index that search engines use to give people relevant and useful results when they search for something online.
