SEO

Question 1

What is a search engine?

Answer 1

Technology that searches the web and returns relevant, quality information based on a user’s search query.

It is a software system designed to search for information on the Web.

The information that it returns may be a mix of web pages, images, text-based or videos.

Question 2

When you search on Google for “gift ideas”, what are you searching?

Answer 2

Google’s index to find every page relevant to those terms

Question 3

When you search on Google, how does Google determine what pages to include on the SERP and in what order to display them?

Answer 3

It compares all web pages against more than 200 metrics

Question 4

Search engines find as much information on the internet as they can compile the SERPs. What do they use to do this?

Answer 4

Bots/Spiders/Crawlers

Question 5

What is SERP?

Answer 5

Search Engine Results Page

Question 6

What are the two types of results you can see in the SERP?

Answer 6

1. Paid search (SEM)

2. Natural or Organic (SEO)

Question 7

SEO is the process of what?

Answer 7

Making a site more relevant and content discoverable - to both search engines and searchers. This helps the site rank higher in the search results, improving site traffic.

Question 8

What are the 3 main areas of SEO?

Answer 8

• Technical
• Content
• Off-page

Question 9

Technical refers to what? (main area of SEO)

Answer 9

The nuts and bolts of a website code and other owned assets. Search engines have a limited amount of resource - the easier you make it for them to crawl and understand a site, the more and faster they’ll index it.

Question 10

Content refers to what? (main area of SEO)

Answer 10

Everything the user sees when they look at your website - design layout, text on page, images, videos and other engagement objects

Question 11

Off-page refers to what? (main area of SEO)

Answer 11

Links and other external signals from other websites to your own.

Question 12

Search engines will lower your position in the SEP if there are violations of certain standards. What is a common violation?

Answer 12

Keyword stuffing, where lots of lengthy, unnecessary content is used.

Question 13

What are the four areas we can optimise for search engines?

Answer 13

• Technical or accessible - a solid tech foundation that provides an optimal search engine and user experience
• Quality content - showcase your offering and optimised to drive conversions
• Authority - signals that the people are engaging, referencing and recommending
• Experience - boost user experience metrics and conversion rate by uncovering obstacles to conversion

Question 14

What does URL stand for?

Answer 14

Uniform Resource Locater - it is an address of a webpage

Question 15

What is meta-data?

Answer 15

A snippet of text in a web page’s code that describes the content of the page, and is used as the website’s description in a search engine results page.

Meta titles and meta descriptions come up on the SERPs when you create a query.

The title tags are the clickable blue links in search results and the black test is often the meta description of the page

Question 16

What are Heading Tags/Elements?

Answer 16

The heading element in HTML defines a structure for headings in a document - H1 being the most important, descending to H6

Question 17

What are keywords?

Answer 17

A short list of words that describe the content of a webpage/ These aren’t used by search engines, this is typically what we optimise towards.

Question 18

What is internal linking?

Answer 18

A link that points to a resource found on the same website that the link is found on. e.g. linking a “contact us” page from the “about” page

Question 19

What is alt-text?

Answer 19

A word or phrase that describes the content of an image

Question 20

What are backlinks?

Answer 20

Links from one site to another completely different site?

Question 21

What are the four technical SEO ranking factors that ensure websites are accessible and able?

Answer 21

• No duplicate content
• Accessible sitemap - so that the search engine can find all the URLs that it needs to index or archive your content
• Optimised navigation - must be easy to follow and makes sense, this takes time and resources. The more time Google spends crawling your website, the more money it costs them.
• On Page - Titles, descriptions and making sure things are easy to understand

Question 22

What are some content ranking factors to ensure that your content is quality and deserves to outrank your competitors?

Answer 22

• Understand your audience content needs
• Lower bounce rate and increase engagement
• Industry leader for your topic
• Shareability on other channels (i.e. social media)
• Fresh and up to date

Question 23

What are the 3 key authority ranking factors for Authority?

Answer 23

• Backlinks - links count as votes toward a site and its perceived authority
• Domains - links from relevant, high authority domains benefit a site
• Engagement - does a real audience socialise on a site and do they click through to engage with content? (Kate Hudson shares your Oscars website, not Joe Biden)

Question 24

How do we optimise Experience?

Answer 24

• Optimise site speed
• Focus on CRO (the process that increases the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. It involves understanding the user journey through a site, what actions they take and what’s stopping them from completing your goals).

Question 25

What are the three tasks to profile a User?

Answer 25

• Keyword research
• Search console analytics - helps understand how people interact with your organic search presence including impressions, click through rates, ranking positions and for what search query.
• Market research