SEO Interview Q & A

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Anytime you hire someone to provide a service, you need to ask questions to determine if that person or company is right for you. Here are some questions I found that are important in the SEO interview and my answers to those questions:


1. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
A. My experience is mainly with my own site at URL and one other site URL. So far, my site is on page one for narrow search terms involving outdoor recreation in Nevada. The other site has gone from not being listed at all in the first 10 pages of any search result to being in pages 2 and 3 of a couple of search engines. That work is ongoing at this time.
2. Can you write HTML code by hand?
A. Yes I can. I do use some WYSIWYG editors and then modify the code by hand as needed.
3. Could you briefly explain the PageRank algorithm?
A. In simple terms, Google uses the gross number of inbound links to a page to determine how important the page is. This "pagerank" has little to do with actual search results but can make a difference on user behavior.
4. Have you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced together from others?
A. No, I do make use of many tools already available on the internet as well as SEO programs that I have purchased.
5. What do you think of PageRank?
A. In relation to SEO projects, it is relatively unimportant but can give an indication of how much work needs to be done in gaining inbound links.
6. What do you think of using XML sitemaps?
A. I use them. They are an additional tool to help the search engines when they crawl a site. There is no requirement for any sitemap and your pages will get indexed without them if you pay close attention to navigation within your site.
7. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
A. Keyword analysis tools, keyword density tools, index checking, backlink checking, wordprocessor to check spelling and grammar, HTML validation and others.
8. Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from search engines using robots.txt vs meta robots tag?
A. Usually I would use the robots.txt to keep a search engine from indexing an entire directory on a site. This would often be directories dealing with admin functions or directories that only contain script or image libraries.
9. What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
A. Text on page! Search engines utilize text and only text in providing search results. That text is found in many place including the URL and title of your pages as well as the visible text you place on your pages.
10. Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
A. My experience in "copywriting" is limited to my site at URL. It is a blog about outdoor recreation in Nevada and so far is placing well in search results.
11. Have you ever had something you've written reach the front-page of Digg? Sphinn? Or be Stumbled?
A. Not yet! I am not particularly worried about it but I do try to write in such a way that others would be inticed to submit my articles.
12. Explain to me what META tags matter in today's world.
A. The most important META tag for SEO is your page description. Search engines do make use of this tag but it does not outweigh the title or visible text. The META keywords tag is not much of a factor in the major search engines but should not be overlooked.
13. Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
A. 1. Interview website owner or webmaster to get a good grasp of the site's purpose and goals.
2. Perform a keyword analysis to find best performing keywords that should be used for that site and for individual pages of the site
3. Analyze site content to determine usage of relavant keywords and phrases.This includes visible text as well at titles,META tags, and "alt" attributes.
4. Examine site navigation
5.Determine the existence of robots.txt and sitemap and examine those for effectivenes.
6. Make recommendations for changes needed for the site and each individual page.
14. If the company whose site you've been workind for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
A. I would update the old site with permanent redirects to to new page for every page. Then I would attempt to remove old content from the major search engines to avoid duplicate content issues.
15. Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important "on page" elements
A. #1 issue is visible text being relevant to expected search terms.
# 2 would then be page titles
# 3 is navigation and "alt" attributes for navigation items and link text.
# 4 would be "alt" attributes for images and other media presented on pages.
16. What do you think about link buying?
A. I discourage the practice for the most part. There are more effective means of paid marketing. One exception would be purchasing listings in highly reputable directories such as Yahoo directory.
17. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
A. LSI indexing ries to overcome the limitations of "literal" search term matching . For example, if someone is searching for "hiking in Norhter Nevada" a literal search would only match the words used without taking into account words such as "hike", "hiked". LSI can give more relevant results because it does take word usage and context into account determining what a page is "about" rather than a strict reliance on literal wording.
18. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
A. In regards to search results, it is a method that search engines such as google use to determine relevance of a page based on phrases acutally used in a document. For example, if you have a page instructing people on wildlife photography, the search engine would reasonably expect to see terms and phrases such as "selecting a camera", "appraoching wildlife", and "low light photo conditions". Related phrases will add to the relevance of a page where unrelated phrases will reduce the relevance of a page. This is one technique that Google is using to weed out "spam" sites.
19. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
A. Seo is search engine optimization and is the process you use in getting your pages to place well on search results. SEM is search engine marketing and involves purchasing advertising space on search result pages. Sponsored listings are SEM. Both are related though! When using Google Adwords, the better you optimize your pages for search, the less you will be paying for your selected keywords in the PPC campaign and the better placment your ads will get.
20. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks?
A. I check the competitors backlinks to find hightly relevant sites and request a link from them. If reciprocal linking is required, I may be able to place a lik back to them in a relevant portion of a page on the site but if not, I will state so and may not gain that link. Another method I use is to submit press releases to relevant media.
21. What role does social media play in an SEO strategy?
A. Social media such as social networking sites and news sites can provide for viral marketing. Viral marketing has proven to be powerful if the content of a site is appealing.
22. What things wouldn't you to do increase rankings because the risk of penalty is too high?
A. I would avoid any site with the appearance of a link farm. I would also avoid any "spam" practice such as unsolicited email campaigns, certain affiliate advertising sites, sites that re-direct visitors to your site, and anything resembling the practices of Zango.
23. Why might you want to use nofollow on an internal link?
A. Many sites have shoping carts and member login or logout links. This type of link is simply an administrative function and does nothig to contribute to site content. The search engine does not need to index those pages.
24. Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
A. Yes I am and the tool I use most frequently is Google's webmaster tools. I also use the available Yahoo hosting tools for my own sites. Knowing what search terms your visitors are actually using to find your site as well as where those visitors are coming from will help refine SEO efforts. The amount of time each visitor spends on your site will help in determining if content changes are needed.
25. From an analytics perspective, what is different between a user from organic search results vs. a type-in user?
A A user coming into your site from an organic search usually has never visited your site before or is performing a general search for a specific product or topic. These visitors are trying to find the site that most suits thier needs. A "type-in" user is specifally interested in your website. They may have found your URL in print advertising or from a friend. Often, these users are familiar with what you are offering and are coming back to your site as a repeat visitor.
26. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
A. The main indicator is to perform a search on all major search engines using the keywords/ keyphrases I am optimizing for. An analysis of those results will help to determine if optimization has gained in the results or lost ground. This analysis should be done over time as each search engine will update and index on a varying schedule. Another aspect is to use website statistics to determine where traffic is originating.
27. What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do you use?
A. Competitive analysis means taking a close look at websites that rank highly in search results and comparing those sites to the one you are optimizing. They have employed methods that are working and are a valuable source for ideas.
28. If you've done 6 months of SEO for a site and yet there haven't been any improvements, how would you go about diagnosing the problem?
A. I might approach the problem as if it were an entirely new project. Again taking a look at the keywords and phrases that I am attempting to optimize for and again taking a close inspection of top ranking competition. If the site is indexed and does show up in the irst 10 pages of a search but on in the top three, I would look into modification of major areas such as page titles, on page text, and page descriptions. If the site is not yet indexed or has been dropped from an index, there are major problems and the site may require a total re-work and re-submission.
29. How many target keywords should a site have?
A. I advise not more than three or four well related keyword phrases. This allows for more effective optimization.
30. You hear a rumor that Google is weighting the HTML LAYER tag very heavily in ranking the relevance of its results - how does this affect your work?
A. It doesn't unless the rumor proves to be fact. Yes, I check on the rumor but as with all rumors, it can have detrimental effects if you "jump on the band wagon" and it proves to be just a rumor with no basis in fact.
31. Why does Google rank Wikipedia for so many topics?
A. Wikipedia is an established authority! As such, it is referenced by huge numbers of other documents with relevant text associated with links back to Wikipedia.
32. If salary and location were not an issue, who would you work for?
A. Myself and only myself if those conditions existed.
33. Link Bait
Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention."[8] Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.
[edit] Link bait in search engine optimization
The quantity and quality of inbound links are two of the many metrics used by a search engine ranking algorithm to rank a website. Link bait creation falls under the task of link building, and aims to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a website. Part of successful linkbaiting is devising a mini-PR campaign around the release of a link bait article so that bloggers and social media users are made aware and can help promote the piece in tandem. Social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a single web page. Sustainable link bait is rooted in quality content.
Blogola:A slang term used in online marketing circles to describe the act of bribing or paying influential bloggers to create a buzz in the blogosphere about a specific product or technology in their blog.
34. Cached Links. Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the "Cached" link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.
When the cached page is displayed, it will have a header at the top which serves as a reminder that this is not necessarily the most recent version of the page. Terms that match your query are highlighted on the cached version to make it easier for you to see why your page is relevant.
The "Cached" link will be missing for sites that have not been indexed, as well as for sites whose owners have requested we not cache their content.
Link flooding, link injection, or link spamming is the act of inserting links to promote a service, wiki, internet forum, blog or company. Often this technique is used to increase search engine rankings. Link flooding/injection also occurs frequently in blogs with spam comments. Link flooding is also considered to be a type of spamming.
Cross Linking:
Referring to links between a family of domains - for example your business site, your personal homepage and your cat's homepage. Cross linking is sometimes used to inflate link popularity. Although not yet proven (to my knowledge), excessive cross linking is widely believed to be penalized by the search engines.
Collabulary:
n. A common vocabulary with which Web users categorize the data they find online, particularly one created in collaboration with classification experts to ensure relevance and consistency
COLLABULARY n. A collaborative vocabulary for tagging Web content. Like the folksonomies used on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, collabularies are generated by a community. But unlike folksonomies, they're automatically vetted for consistency, extracting the wisdom of crowds from the cacophony.
Example Citations:
People have a tendency to affect tagging-based search negatively in two primary ways: by not using enough or relevant tags; and by tagging the same links using vastly different tag words. For example, a link about "horses" may be tagged with "equine," "saddles," "mares," "foals," etc. In fact, it should be tagged as simply "horses". To overcome these problems, PreFound.com crawls the web sites that users are indicating they would like to share, automatically adds tags based on site content, and then runs the site through a process much like a "reverse thesaurus" which reduces large numbers of synonyms into single "collabulary" words.
Glossary of Web Terms

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is an advertising system in which the affiliate merchant rewards the affiliate partner for every sale and/or visitor.
AJAX--AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a web development technique for creating interactive web applications.

Blog--Blog is short for weblog. A blog is generally a journal or newsletter which is updated frequently. Blogs are easily updated and may allow comments from readers.

Bounce rate--The percentage of visitors who enter and exit the same page without visiting other pages on the same site.

CSS--CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS gives web developers more control over how web elements are displayed.

DHTML--DHTML stands for Dynamic HTML. DHTML generally takes advantage of CSS and JavaScript to create web applications or menus.

Google AdSense--AdSense is a diverse publisher program which uses the page's content to decide which ads will be displayed. Google has expanded the publisher program to allow publishers to select referrals which do not need to be contextually related.

HTML--HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a tag based ASCII language used to create web pages.

JavaScript--JavaScript is a client-side script language that can be embedded into HTML pages to create interactive elements.

Link bait--Link baiting is a technique used to create links by creating content that appeals to social networks and/or bloggers.

Link juice--Link juice is a term generally used to express the amount of page rank given to a page from an external link. However, link juice may also be measured by the amount of visitors a link produces.

MFA--Abbreviation for Made for Ads. It is most commonly associated with Made for AdSense, but sometimes used as Made for Affiliates.

PHP--PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a web programming server-side language that allows developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.

PR--PR is page rank. Page Rank is the popularity of a page as seen by Google. PR may also be used to describe which rank a page holds. ie; I have a PR of 3 (meanings I am ranked third for my specific keyword).

RSS--RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a type of XML which allows Internet browsers and other feed readers to display information from the file.

SE--SE stands for Search Engine. A search engine is a tool used to find information throughout the world wide web.

SEMSEM (Search Engine Marketing) is seen as a way to improve results from search engines. SEM may be done by search engine optimization or paid advertising.

SEO--SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a way to increase rankings within search engine results.

SERPs--SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the results of a search engine after a query.

Trust Rank--Trust Rank is the trust a search engine has in a website.

WWW--WWW is an abbreviation for World Wide Web.The World Wide Web is a network of servers linked by a common protocol through the Internet identified through Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI).

XML--XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a flexible language originally designed for large-scale electronic publishing. XML now plays an increasing role to exchange a wide variety of data over the web using structure by easily being extended to meet user needs.
Glossary
Algorithm A mathematical formula used by each search engine to determine where a web page will rank in the search results.
Anchor Text The visible text in a hyperlink you click to go to another page or website. Also known as "Link Text".
ALT tag Text that appears when you scroll over an image or a graphic or see when images are turned "off" on your browser. Also used by the visually impaired as screen readers can read this text.
Back Links The number of web pages found in a specific search engine or across the Internet that contain a link to a specific page. Also referred to as "inbound links" or "incoming links".
Bot An abbreviation for robot or spider. It is a software program that scans the web, indexing web pages by search engines or harvesting e-mail addresses.
Cache A snapshot of a web page as the search engine last recorded it. Viewing the cached version of a page will tell you what the search engine saw that led to a page's currently ranking.
Cloaking The act of presenting different information to a search engine spider that a human visitor will see. You can find more information on this in the Black-Hat Search Engine Positioning Tactics.

Crawler Another name for a search engine spider.
Cross Linking Multiple sites linked together to increase link popularity. Also referred to as "interlinking".
CSS Cascading Style Sheets. They are used to manipulate and easily manage the design and formatting of a website.
Directory Websites that list other websites, organized into various categories. Human editors assess each website and if approved, they place them into the specific category in the directory. Click here for a list of the major directories.

Description This term typically has two uses in search engine positioning:
1. it can refer to the description meta tag which is a line of code in the header of your page used to describe what that page is about, or
2. it can refer to a description of your site which you would submit to a webmaster you were interested in exchanging links with that they would put below your link on their resources page or directory.
Doorway Pages A page on your site not there to provide information but rather solely to rank for a specific keyword phrase in hopes that the visitor will go to one of your more useful pages after that. Sometimes used in conjunction with redirects and/or cloaking. You can find more information on this with the Black-Hat SEO Tactics.

Gateway Pages Another term for "doorway pages".
Google Bot or Googlebot Google's search engine spider.
Head Code that exists on your web page yet is essentially invisible to the visitor. This code includes the title, keyword meta tag, description meta tag, the robots tag and can also contain scripting and other additional information.
Hidden Text Text which is invisible to the human eye because it is set to the same color as the background. You can find more information on this with the Black-Hat SEO Tactics.

Header There are traditionally 6 header tags ranging from <H1> to <H6>. These tags are typically used to separate a web page into logical parts, acting as titles for various page sections. It is commonly believed that header content is assigned a higher weight than standard content as it generally appears more prominently on the page.
Inbound Link Another term for "back links".
Keywords Words used to identify the theme of your website.
Keyword Density The percentage of a given keyword or phrase. ex: 1 instances of a keyword in 100 words of page text, equals a 1% keyword density.
Keyword Stuffing Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding unnecessary keywords to a web page to lead search engines to consider the page to be more relevant. You can find more information on this in the Black-Hat SEO Tactics.

Link Popularity Another term for "back links".
Meta Tags HTML used in the source code to provide content and site information to search engine spiders.
Mirror A mirror is a nearly identical duplicate website (or page). You can find more information on this under "duplicate sites" on our Black-Hat SEO Tactics page.

Offsite Optimization The method of increasing a web site's rankings by influencing its relationships with other website, primarily links found on other web sites to the target web site.
Optimization Fine tuning a website or web page with the ultimate goal being to achieve higher rankings.
Outbound Link Linking from your website to another website.
PageRank Google's tool for measuring the importance of web pages.
PPC Pay-Per-Click. Search engines that operate by charging website per-click to appear higher in the rankings. You can view some of the main PPC engines here.

PR Another term for "PageRank".
Reciprocal Links Two sites exchanging links by placing a link to each other on each site. You can find additional information on this practice on our White-Hat SEO Tactics page.

Redirects A spam tactic used to send a visitor to a different page than the one found in the search results. You can find more information on this with the Black-Hat SEO Tactics.

Robot A name given to a spider/bot/crawler program that travels the web collecting data from websites.
Search Engine Optimization The practice of manipulating web pages and external factors such as linking in order to rank a website higher on the search engines. Also known as: SEO, search engine positioning, search engine placement, search engine marketing, search engine ranking and search engine promotion.
Search Engine Rankings Report A report that measures a web page or websites search engine rankings for a range of keyword phrases across the major search engines. For this aspect of the process we use a great program called WebPosition Gold.

SERP An acronym for "search engine results page".
Search Engine Submission The registering of your website to the search engines.
Slurp Yahoo!'s crawler.
Spider A program that visits and collects specific information from a web page, including the URL and indexing the keywords and text of each page it finds.
Splash Page Another term for "doorway page".
Title Tag Content that exists in the meta data of your page. This content often appears as the clickable title in the search engine results and will appear in your browser's navigation bar.
URL Uniform Resource Locator. The address where your website can be found. Also knows as a "domain".


Ever wondered what acronyms such as SEO, SEM or SMO stood for? Or what the difference between pay for inclusion and pay per click is?
We recognise that for many business owners some of the terminology associated with Search Engine Optimisation and Web Marketing can be very confusing.
Ireckon we have compiled a glossary of terms commonly used in SEO and Internet marketing circles. This is not a complete list, and will grow over time, but if you come across a term that you are not familiar with, and is not in this list, please feel free to contact us and we will endeavour to find out for you - and add it.
Adwords - Google's - Cost Per Click (CPC) based advertising system.
Agent Name - the name of the software accessing a web page.
Aggregator - Software that lets you automatically download content to your computer
Algorithm - A mathematical formula used to determine the value of a page when compared against others.
ALT Text - The text that appears when you put your mouse on top of an image or a picture.
Anchor Text - Also known as Link Text, the clickable text of a hyperlink.
API - Application Programming Interface.
ATF (Above the Fold) - This is the part of the user's screen that is always displayed.
Authority Site - A site that has many In-Bound links coming to it, and very often, few outbound links.
Back link - A text link to your website from another website.
Banned - A term that means a site has been removed from a search engine's index.
Black Hat - A term referring to the practice of "unethical" SEO. These techniques are used to gain an advantage over your competition.
Blog - A "Web Log" that is updated frequently and is usually the opinion of one person. Also joking stands for Better Listing on Google.
Blogged - Term referring to have bookmarked a blog in your browser.
Bot - Short for robot. Often used to refer to a search engine spider.
Browser - Software application used to browse the internet - Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the 2 most popular browsers.
BTF (Below the Fold) - This is the part of the user's screen that is hidden unless the user scrolls down on the page.
Cache - A copy of web pages stored within a search engine's database.
CAPTCHA - Stands for : Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Click Distance - The minimum number of clicks it takes a visitor to get from one page to another.
Click Through - The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.
Cloaking - A technique that shows keyword stuffed pages to a search engine, but a real page to a human user.
Contextual Link - Text links that are shown depending on the content that appears around them.
Conversion Rate - The number of visitors to a website that end up performing a specific action that leads to a conversion. This could be a product purchase, newsletter sign up or anything where information is submitted.
Converting Search Phrase - A phrase that converts traffic into money.
Cookie - Information stored on a user's computer by a website.
Copy - Text found on a web page.
Cost per Thousand (CPM) - The cost for each thousand impressions of your ad.
CPA - (Cost Per Action) - The price paid for each visitor's actions from a paid search.
CPC (Cost Per Click) - The amount it will cost each time a user selects your phrase or keyword.
Crawler - A bot from a search engine that reads the text found on a website in order to determine what the website is about.
Cross Linking - Having multiple websites linking to each other.
CTR (Click Through Rate) - The value associated to the amount of times a paid ad is viewed.
Dead Link - A hyperlink pointing to a non-existent URL.
Deep Link - A link on a website that is not reachable from the home page.
Delisting - When a site gets removed from the search index of a search engine.
Directory - Usually human edited, a directory contains sites that are sorted by categories.
DMOZ - Also known as the Open Directory Project.
DNS (Domain Name System) - A protocol that lets computers recognize each other through an IP Address, whereas the human sees a website URL.
Doorway Page - A web page designed to draw in Internet traffic from search engines, and then direct this traffic to another website.
Dynamic Site - A site that uses a database to store it's content and is delivered based on the variable passed to the page.
Error 404 - When a hyperlink is pointing to a location on the web that doesn't exist, it is called a 404 error.
External Link - A link that points to another website.
FFA (Free For All) - A site where anyone can list their link. Don't waste any time submitting your site to these places.
Filter Words - Words such as is, am, were, was, the, for, do, ETC, that search engines deem irrelevant for indexing purposes. Also known as Stop words.
Google AdWords - Google's PPC program.
Google Bombing - A technique where using the same text anchor links, many people link to a certain page, usually of irrelevant content.
GoogleBot - The spider that performs a deep crawl of your site.
Heading Tag - Tag that designates headlines in the text of a site.
Hidden Text - Text that can't be seen normally in a browser.
Hit - A single access request made to the server.
IBL (In-Bound Link) - A link residing on another site that points to your site.
Index - A term used to describe the database that holds all the web pages crawled by the search engine for each website.
Internal Link - A link that points to another page within the same site. Most commonly used for navigation.
Keyword Density - A ratio of the number of occurrences of a keyword or "keyword phrase" to the total number of words on a page.
Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - The KEI compares the number of searches for a keyword with the number of search results to pinpoint which keywords should be the most effective for your campaign.
Keyword Phrase - A group of words that form a search query.
Keyword Stuffing - Using a keyword or "keyword phrase" excessively in a web page, perhaps in the text content or meta tags.
KW (Key Words) - Used to define the terms a user might enter into a search engine to find information on their query.
Landing Page - Usually used in conjunction with a PPC campaign, they are call-to-action pages that prompt the user to engage the site.
Link - Also known as a hyperlink, it is the "clickable" area of text or image that allows for navigation on the Internet. Also the name of the main character og the Legend of Zelda video games.
Link Bait (Linkbaiting) - The process of getting users to link to your site.
Link Farm - A site that features links in no particular order which are totally unrelated to each other.
Link Partner - A website who is willing to put a link to your site from their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.
Link Popularity - How many sites link to your website.
Link Text - The clickable part of a hyperlink. Also known as Anchor Text or Anchor Link.
Listings - The results that a search engine returns for a particular search term.
Meta Description Tag - Hold the description of the content found on the page.
Meta Keywords Tag - Holds the keywords that are found on the page.
Meta Search Engine - A search engine that relies on the meta data found in meta tags to determine relevancy.
Meta Tags - Header tags that provide information about the content of a site.
MFA (Made For AdSense) - A term that describes websites that are created entirely for the purpose of gaming Google Adsense to make money.
Mirror Sites - A mirror site is a site that exactly duplicates another site.
Natural Listing - A listing that appears below the sponsored ads, also known as Organic Listings.
Niche - A specialised segment of a market that is usually geared towards one specific purpose.
NOFOLLOW - An attribute used in a hyperlink to instruct search engines not to follow the link. (And pass PageRank)
Off-Page Factors - Factors that alter search engine positions that occur externally from other website's. Having many links from other sites pointing to yours is an example of Off-Page Factors.
On-Page Factors - Factors that determine search engine positions that occur internally within a page of a website. This can include site copy, page titles, and navigational structure of the site.
OOP (Over Optimization Penalty) - A theory that applies if one targets only 1 keyword or phrase, and the search engines view the linking efforts to be spam.
Opt-In - When a user willing joins a subscription to a newsletter or some other service.
Organic Listing - The natural results returned by a search engine.
Outbound Link - A link from your site to any other site.
Page View - Anytime a user looks at any page on a website through their browser.
Paid Inclusion - A submission service where you pay a fee to a search engine and the search engine guarantees that your website will be included in its index. It can also be used as a term to include fee based directory submission.
Pay-Per-Click Management - Strategy, Planning and Placement, Monitoring and Adjustment of targeted keywords in the paid search results.
PPC (Pay Per Click) - A technique where placements are determined by how much id bid on a particular keyword or phrase. Can become very expensive.
PR (Google's PageRank) - Google's unique system of how it tries to predict the value of a pages rank.
Rank - Ranking - The actual position of a website on a search engine results page for a certain search term or phrase.
Reciprocal Link - When two sites link to each other.
Redirects - Either server side or scripting language that tells the search engine to go to another URL automatically.
Referrer - A referrer is the URL of the page that the visitor came from when he entered a website.
Results Page - When a user conducts a search, the page that is displayed, is called the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, which stands for "search engine results page."
Robot - Often used to refer to a search engine spider.
ROI (Return on Investment) - The cost it takes to in order to see success on your marketing investment.
Search Engine - Best described as a database of websites users can search using search terms. Every search engine has its own algorithm which defines how the results are displayed.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - The practice of getting a website found on the internet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The act of altering code to a website to have optimum relevance to a search engine spider.
Search Friendly Optimization (SFO) - As the term implies, this is the process of making a website search engine friendly.
Search Query - The text entered into the search box on a search engine.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) - The results that are displayed after making a query into a search box.
Sitemap (Site Map) - A page that lists all of the critical navigation points of a website.
Snippet - The text displayed from a search query.
Social Media Optimisation (SMO) - making use of Social Media sites (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us, MySpace) to promote a website - or - writing content (such as a blog entry) with the aim of being "picked up" by community based sites.
SPAM - Unwanted email or irrelevant content delivered. (or as some say, Site Placed Above Mine)
Spider - The software that crawls your site to try and determine the content it finds.
Splash Page - A page displayed for viewing before reaching the main page.
Stickiness - How influential your site is in keeping a visitor on your page.
Stop Word - A stop word is a "common word" which is ignored in a query because the word makes no contribution to the relevancy of the query.
Submission - The process of submitting URL(s) to search engines or directories.
Title Tag - It should be used to describe the web page using targeted keywords using no more that 60 characters, including spaces.
Tracking URL - Usually used in PPC campaigns, it is a URL that has special code added to it so that results can be monitored.
Traffic - The number of visitors a website receives over a given period. Usually reported on a monthly basis.
Unique Visitor - When a user visits a website, his/her IP address is logged so if he/she returns later on that day, the visit won't be counted - as a unique visit but as a page impression.
Universal Search - Launched in May 2007, this is Google's attempt to deliver the best result from the web. This can include video, images, news, podcasts or any other form of digital content.
User Agent - A User agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page. (Another term for Agent Name)
USP (Unique Selling Proposition) - Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point. The Unique Selling Proposition concept was first developed by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency. Basically, it's what sets you apart from your competition.
White Hat - A term that refers to ethical practice of SEO methodologies that adhere to search engine Terms of Service.
Folksonomy:
A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content;[1] this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.[

Geo Targeting:

Geo targeting in geomarketing and internet marketing is the method of determining the geolocation (the physical location) of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP or other criteria.
Geo-targeting lets you target your ads to specific locations and languages. For each AdWords campaign, you can select the countries or regions and the language(s) for your ad. That campaign's ads will appear only to users located in those areas and who have selected one of those languages as their preference.

Content is king; links are queen
Many times, web marketing experts speak of adding relevant content to your site to attract the search engines. But don't you know there is another tempting factor that search engines can't resist? If content is essential for your site's ranking; links are equally important. Content is king; links are queen. They are both essential for your site's success.
 
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The Post Shot itself Dead

Break it up Bro, or package it as a download or something.
 
nice post will definitely help people both online and offline, thanks for the share
 
You forgot to include article source ;) Let me do this for you -->

Code:
http://www.newsonarticles.com/2011/04/best-seo-interview-questions-and.html

Thank you.
 
You forgot to include article source ;) Let me do this for you -->

Code:
http://www.newsonarticles.com/2011/04/best-seo-interview-questions-and.html

Thank you.

Thank You I just forgot the URL but it is not the real one. I got it from rapidshare
 
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Did anyone else keep getting lost? A lot of this stuff is whatever. To sum it up. Backlinks, backlinks, and some more backlinks should do the trick
 
@ OP.... Give credit where it is due and say that you copied and pasted this shit from somewhere else.

Code:
http://seotipsforfresher.blog.com/2011/09/28/interview-questions-and-answers

You could at least try to format it so that it wont give you a fucking headache trying to read the shit.
 
Did anyone else keep getting lost? A lot of this stuff is whatever. To sum it up. Backlinks, backlinks, and some more backlinks should do the trick

I was afraid I would go into a seizure if I tried to read the 5th line of this copy and pasted shit.
 
Wow this is good advice I am starting out with SEO and this just clears a whole bunch of things up. For you to share this info is very nice of you thanks.
 
@ OP.... Give credit where it is due and say that you copied and pasted this shit from somewhere else.

Code:
http://seotipsforfresher.blog.com/2011/09/28/interview-questions-and-answers

You could at least try to format it so that it wont give you a fucking headache trying to read the shit.

HaHa
Actually this stuff is posted in so many sites. So I don't get the right sourse of it.
 
Very helpful post!

I think I am going to interview some gurus about that SEO soon..
 
this was the longest post:)

I was once called to an interview for a SEO job, the guy that was asking me questions was really funny.

He had no idea what to ask me about, i knew much more then him....that's how i realized it's better to start my own business. And so i did....:D
 
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