SEO Job Interview Questions
I’ve been tasked with adding an additional member to our team so I am posting about the process. These are the questions I’ll be asking in the first interview. If you’re looking for an SEO position, these might be some questions to be familiar with before you head into it.1) Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
2) Do you currently do SEO on your own sites and give me some examples. Do you operate any blogs? Do you currently do any freelance work and do you plan on continuing it?
3) Where do you think the SEO industry is headed?
4) What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?
5) Have you attended any search related conferences?
6) What SEO tools do you regularly use?
7) What SEO areas are you weak and strong in, and give examples of both.
What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
9) Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
10) What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks? What do you think about link buying, link bait, and other specific backlink strategies?
11) What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?
12) Are you familiar with any blackhat SEO techniques, search arbitrage, and affiliate marketing?
13) Are you familiar with enterprise web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
14) Are you familiar with A/B testing and multivariate testing?
15) Do you have experience in email marketing, banner advertising, other types of media buys and other forms of online advertising?
16) Are you experienced in managing PPC campaigns? To what extent and on what platforms?
17) Do you have experience in bid management tools, API tools, and click fraud issues?
18) Do you have experience in extensive competitive analysis and what techniques do you use?
19) What technologies are you familiar with? (We primarily use HTML, CSS, ASP, .net, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript)
20) Why are you moving from your current position and/or leaving any current projects?
21) Do you know who Matt Cutts is?
42) What is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
Thanks to Rand at SEOmoz.org for this post on SEO hiring. It helped quite a bit in assembling this list. Any additional questions anyone can think of?
*** UPDATE ***
I got several excellent questions from a couple forum postings. These get into the more complicated end of SEO.
22) What is page segmentation? (ever heard of VIPS?)
23) What’s the difference bewtween PageRank and ToolBar PageRank?
24) What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI - Indexing)?
25) What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
26) In Google Lore - what are ‘Hilltop’ Florida’ and ‘Big Daddy’?
*** UPDATE ***
For in-depth answers to some of these questions, visit SEO Interview Questions Part II.
- You Might Also Enjoy:
- SEO Interview Questions - Part II
- Learn Ninja Skills With The Internet Marketing Ninjas
- Get Answers….NOW!
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where can i get answer to all these questions?
Comment by sawan singh — August 7, 2007 @ 6:50 am
Not sure. I tell you what, I’ll do an update post this week on the questions, additional questions I’ve come up with since this post, AND the answers. Stay tuned.
Comment by TheMadHat — August 7, 2007 @ 10:02 am
[…] My previous post on SEO interview questions I had a commenter ask where they could find the answers to these questions. Most of them are purposely open ended to get an idea of the level of experience and knowledge of your candidate. I will take the more specific ones and provide some explanations. I have also added an additional question not on the original post. If you are looking to hire or want to dazzle your prospective employers at an interview this post may be helpful. […]
Pingback by SEO Interview Questions - Part II » TheMadHat — August 9, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
Thanks aaron. Great Post….
Comment by Hemanth — October 9, 2007 @ 12:52 am
Thanks for this post. I will be doing interviews this weekdays and the questions above will be my guide on what to ask.
Comment by Clipping Path Services — October 27, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
XRumer is the best tool for advertisement!
It’s have CAPTCHA recognizer, email verificator, and a lot of other functions…
But. I forgot link to it
Can you give me URL to the XRumer description? screenshots, etc.
Thanks
Comment by XRumakTheBest — November 6, 2007 @ 8:08 pm
Hi.
Good design, who make it?
Comment by naisioxerloro — November 28, 2007 @ 11:25 am
I did. I bought the logo design from a designer in Australia and the blog is just a modified template from somewhere.
Comment by TheMadHat — November 28, 2007 @ 11:28 am
it will be helpful if we can get answer to these questions
Comment by thecp — December 4, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Maybe you didn’t finish the post…the link to the answers is at the bottom…
And if you don’t know the ones I didn’t answer then you probably shouldn’t be applying for an SEO job.
Comment by TheMadHat — December 4, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
hi there,
Thank you very much for nice questions?
can you send me this questions answers also..
Regards
Arpit Kothari
Comment by Arpit Kothari — January 1, 2008 @ 6:59 am
[…] are a number of really good posts listing SEO interview questions. The Mat Hat and Stoney’s post’s immediately come to mind. Obviously your interview isn’t […]
Pingback by How to hire an SEO Rockstar — January 8, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
some answers of there questions are available on digital forum.
Comment by Abhay Mathur — January 9, 2008 @ 3:34 am
Yea, you mean the digital poser forum that copied my post? Screw that assbag.
Comment by TheMadHat — January 9, 2008 @ 8:00 am
I like the last four the best. Question 22, 23, 24, 25 can’t be BSed with buzzwords and fluff.
You REALLY have to watch it when hiring. Especially if you’re wanting a pro. I think the only way to make sure you are hiring a pro is to have a pro do the interview. Possible consulting niche here?
There are some of people out there who have been doing SEO for 4+ years that can rattle off “answers” that sound good to a lot of these questions, but won’t produce real results. Especially when being interviewed by non-SEOs and those new to the field. Some SEOs learned their stuff 4 or five years ago and are stuck in 2003. They read enough to “sound good” and know the buzz words, but when it comes to producing results…nada. Be careful.
Comment by Webster — January 12, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
I’ve read a number of these posts in the last 2 weeks about hiring questions and they all seem to have a drawback in my mind
1- many, if not most, of the items listed are ‘teachable’. If I hire someone who doesn’t know all the blogs to read, I can tell show them that and off they go, same with many of the terms, on-page items, etc.
What you can’t easily teach someone and therefore what I look for is business maturity, the ability to communicate, the ability to probe with their own questions.
I lot of these questions seem to want to hire someone just like themselves with the same knowledge, but I’ve found that hiring someone who has the attitude to learn, the ability to communicate and business sense will do much better in the long run.
The other issue in today’s job market is that it is certainly a buyers market in that there is much greater demand for search professionals than supply. Therefore finding someone who can answer all these questions to you satisfaction is quite difficult. Again, an argument for my position of hiring someone with ‘hard to teach’ skill and helping them learn the teachable skills
Comment by plane_crazy — January 13, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
Well… I normally ask:
1. Show me 3 different projects yuo’ve made within the last 6 month - and show me the results.
2. How much do you need in salary?
3. When can you start?
Comment by Rosenstand — January 14, 2008 @ 11:40 am
Nice solid questions to vet a potential SEO. Number 22 stomps me, going to research page segmentation to see if it is of any importance.
Comment by Nascar — January 14, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
[…] werden, die man einem SEO stellen sollte um seine Fähigkeiten unter die Lupe zu nehmen: SEO Job Interview Questions. Sehr schön Frage 21) Do you know who Matt Cutts […]
Pingback by SEO, SEM und SMO News | Online Marketing und SEO Blog — January 15, 2008 @ 6:34 am
Interesting questions….maybe you could also ask what to you think is the most important element in SEO. Last time I employed a contractor (to do consulting on a case by case basis) - I got them to do a report on an existing site- the standard was not good- not enough knowledge and focus on wrong points. Also the move from employment to self employed (accountability for independent actions) was also a challenge.
Comment by Paul from SEO Training Live — January 20, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
Nice questions, I had a client a few weeks ago who gave us a questionaire even larger then that. I’d also say that conferences isn’t that big of a deal if your big into reading, and on the Sphinn scheme… speaking of which where is the question asking “Do you know what Sphinn is?”
Comment by SEO Canada — February 1, 2008 @ 1:34 am
If I had no idea of what SEO was, and I read this for the first time I would have assumed, my god SEO is like rocket science!
All those amazing terms (ViPS, LSI, Hilltop). OH PLEASE !
Knowing what ViPS/LSI/Hilltop is wont really grant you in ranking in the SERP. Sure it’s great to blah blah about it, and maybe bait a few links, but thats about it.
One of the biggest part of SEO are just hard and monotonous tasks. Stop over glorifying this profession. and I point to shoe money’s article about SEO s are the new used car salesmen).
Enough with the crap darn it.
Comment by Fucktard — March 5, 2008 @ 2:59 am
Great, another shoemoney fanboy. First of all, you’re name is now Fucktard, since you’re too much of a chicken shit to leave an actual one. Second, Mr Fucktard, look at the date on this post…over a year ago.
Yes, LSI and Hilltop are rather out of date questions at this point, but knowing what they are will give the person asking the questions an idea of how long you’ve been around.
As for page segmentation, if you think knowing that doesn’t help then you’re a tool fucktard and I certainly wouldn’t hire you. What you’re saying is a footer link carries the same weight as a link inside editorial content. But being the fucktard you probably are you probably do think that.
Thirdly, learn how to link to a post fucktard. Get the fuck off my blog you troll piece of shit.
Comment by TheMadHat — March 5, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Another question asking at interview is: “How do you analyze website traffic? Is the traffic factors analysis is compulsory in SEO Process?”
I have asked these question two times in my interview. But I am sure these question are important.
Comment by Web Analytics Forum — March 24, 2008 @ 12:35 am
Hi there,
I’m a SEO beginner/noob and all these questions got me thinking how much of a noob I really am and also how much I still have to learn. I’m no expert at research but I know questions are always a great starting point. Seems I have a lot of starting points to take away with me after reading your post.
Thanks,
Erfan.
Comment by SEO beginner — April 16, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
…and here’s my question for you Aaron…
What’s the salary like?
Comment by Aidan Rogers — April 17, 2008 @ 12:06 am
[…] seen several SEO job interview related posts pass by, but I haven’t seen a link building related one yet. If you’re […]
Pingback by Link Building Job Interview? Here’s 5 Questions to Ask | Wiep.net — April 21, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
Good list of questions… but would someone conducting interviews be that familiar with SEO? It’s kind of a new profession.. I bet you that most companies are hiring their first SEOs
Comment by James — April 27, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
@James, Yes that does depend. These are the questions I would ask when looking for people to add to my team. Actually, some of these are a bit outdated as I wrote this over a year ago, but the fundamentals are still there.
Comment by TheMadHat — April 28, 2008 @ 10:38 am