Frequently asked Search engine optimisation questions
1. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
2. Can you write HTML code by hand?
3. Could you briefly explain the Page Rank algorithm?
4. How you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced together from others?
5. What do you think of Page Rank?
6. What do you think of using XML site maps?
7. What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?
8. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
9. Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from search engines using robots.txt vs meta robots tag?
10. What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
11. Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
12. Have you ever had something you’ve written reach the front-page of Digg.com? Sphinn? Or be Stumbled?
13. Explain to me what META tags matter in today’s world.
14. Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
15. If the company whose site you’ve been working for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
16. Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important “on page” elements
17. Review the code of past clients/company websites where SEO was performed.
18. What do you think about link buying?
19. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
20. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
21. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
22. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for back links?
23. What role does social media play in an SEO strategy?
24. What things wouldn’t you to do increase rankings because the risk of penalty is too high?
25. What’s the difference between Page Rank and Tool Bar Page Rank?
26. Why might you want to use no-follow on an internal link?
Search engine optimisation questions related to analysis
1. Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
2. From an analytics perspective, what is different between a user from organic search results vs. a type-in user?
3. How do you distinguish the results of your search optimization work from a seasonal change in traffic patterns?
4. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
5. What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do you use?
6. 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?
7. How many target keywords should a site have?
8. How do you help a customer decide how to their budget between organic SEO and pay per click SEM?
9. 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?
10. Why does Google rank Wikipedia for so many topics?
Industry Involvement
Search engine optimisation questions ooops interview questions.
1. If salary and location were not an issue, who would you work for?
2. In Google Lore - what are ‘Hilltop’, ‘Florida’ and ‘Big Daddy’?
3. Have you attended any search related conferences?
4. Google search on this candidates name, (if you cannot find them, that’s a red flag).
5. Do you currently do SEO on your own sites? do you operate any blogs? do you currently do any freelance work and do you plan on continuing it?
6. Of the well known SEOs, who are you not likely to pay attention to?
7. What are some challenges facing the SEO industry?
8. What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?
9. Who are the two key people who started Google?
10. Who is Matt Cutts?
11. If you were bidding on a contract, what competitor would you most worry about?
Open Ended
Search engine optimisation questions regarding SEO experience
1. Tell me your biggest failure in an SEO project
2. What areas of SEO do you most enjoy?
3. In what areas of SEO are you strongest?
4. In what areas of SEO are you weakest?
5. How do you handle a client who does not implement your SEO recommendations?
6. Can you get “xyz” company listed for the keyword “Google” in the first page?
7. What do you think is different about working for an SEO agency vs. doing SEO in-house?
8. Why are you moving from your current position and / or leaving any current projects?
This is some few SEO interview Questions? I like to Answers On this, Let us Discuss On this question.1) Give me a description of your general SEOexperience.
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 organicallyranking 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 back linkstrategies?
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?
1 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?
22) 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 ***
22) what is page segmentation? (Ever heard of VIPS?)
23) What’s the difference between 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’?
Page Rank algorithm?PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).The name PageRank is a trademark of Google. The PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). The patent is not assigned to Google but to Stanford University.
Some More are:
One thing I have learnt quickly in this game is that it is always the best prepared candidate that gets the job. It is impossible to predict what questions will be thrown at you but a bit of preparation and research can go a long way. I came across this post today from http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=201 and had to share it here, sample interview questions to really test your knowledge and help you clinch that dream job:
1. What SEO results can you show?
2. What do you believe are important things to take into consideration when optimising a site?
3. Who do you respect in the industry?
4. What web analytics programs are you familiar with?
5. List On-Page SEO factors
6. List 5 link building techniques.
7. What is page segmentation? (Ever heard of VIPS?)
8. What’s the difference between PageRank and ToolBar PageRank?
9. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI - Indexing)?
10. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
11. What is sandbox?
12. How long does it take to get out of sandbox?
13. How can you track your rankings?
14. What services does the wordtracker offer, and how do they relate to seo?
15. What are the common factors between google/yahoo/msn?
16. How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines?
17. What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine?
18. Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service? Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.
19. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
20. 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?
22. Where do you think the SEO industry is headed?
23. What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?
24. Have you attended any search related conferences?
25. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
25. What SEO areas are you weak and strong in, and give examples of both.
26. What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
28. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks? What do you think about link buying, link bait, and other specific backlink strategies?
29. What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?
blogs, rss, podcasting
30. Are you familiar with search arbitrage?
31. Are you familiar with enterprise web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
32. Are you familiar with A/B testing and multivariate testing?
33. Do you have experience in email marketing, banner advertising, other types of media buys and other forms of online advertising?
34. Are you experienced in managing PPC campaigns? To what extent and on what platforms?
35. Do you have experience in bid management tools, API tools, and click fraud issues?
36. Do you have experience in extensive competitive analysis and what techniques do you use?
37. What technologies are you familiar with? (We primarily use HTML, CSS, ASP, .net, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript)
38. Why are you moving from your current position and/or leaving any current projects?
39. Do you know who Matt Cutts is?
44. In Google Lore - what are ‘Hilltop’ Florida’ and ‘Big Daddy’?
45. What changes did you make and what ranking effect did it have?
46. What is sticky content?
