How to Analyse Your Competitor and Beat Them in SEO

 

Getting to Know Your Competitors

We all know knowing our Competitors means we have to identify and, after that, evaluate our competitors in terms of strategy and what their strengths and weaknesses are. In doing such, we will be positioned to gain some valuable data which contribute to improve your own SEO strategy.

First of all, the scope of one’s industry needed to be stipulated clearly with a definition of the market segment existing within that scope. Truly, identification of a competitor usually pertains to firms offering similar products or services while targeting the same audience.

 Once identified, scrape data about their online presence, content strategies, the keywords they rank for, and their backlink profiles. For that you need Ahrefs . When you understand what’s working for your competitors, fine-tune your SEO strategy to outclass them.

Competitor analysis is fundamental in understanding the dynamics of your market and the strategies of your improvement. It involves:

1. Defining the Market Segment: Clearly outline the niche or market segment your business operates within. This helps in narrowing down the competitors who are directly relevant to your business.
2. Identifying Competitors: Competitors can be direct (offering the same product/service) or indirect (different products but targeting the same audience). For e.g, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are direct competitors, while Coca-Cola and a local beverage company might be indirect competitors.
3. Data Collection: Use SEO tools Ahrefs to gather comprehensive data on competitors’ keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and content strategies.
4. Analysis of Online Presence: Assess their website structure, domain authority, social media presence, and overall online engagement.

Understanding these basics provides a foundation for deeper analysis and strategy development.

Identify Your Top Competitors

Effective SEO requires you to identify your top competitors. All you have to do is do a simple search on Google for your major keywords, and the businesses that show up near the top of the page are most likely going to be your direct competitors. 

Other tool like Ahrefs let you find competitors by searching for overlapping keywords or sharing domain authority. You should be tracking your direct competition as well as indirect competitors.

Direct competitors offer similar products or services as yours, while indirect competitors compete in the same markets for the same target group but offer very different ends. Knowing precisely who your competitors is vital so you know exactly with whom to size up for the event.

Steps to Identify Competitors:

1. Keyword Analysis: Perform a Google search for your primary keywords. The top-ranking websites are your potential competitors.
2. SEO Tools: Use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to identify competitors based on keyword overlap and domain authority.
3. Categorizing Competitors: Distinguish between direct and indirect competitors to gain a holistic view of the market landscape.

Gathering Competitor Data: Tools and Techniques

Gather data on the competition which involves specialized tools and techniques. SEO tool like Ahrefs can be used to devise complete data on your competitor’s keywords, backlinks, and traffic sources. 

These tools can yield an analysis of content strategies by competitors and top pages performance on their sites. Docial media monitoring tools like Hootsuite and BuzzSumo are able to return view pertaining to a competitor’s social media presence and the level of engagement.

 You can track competitors’ mentions all over the web due to the set up of Google Alerts. Once the information has been collected and analyzed, lucid pictures of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors will draw out to fine-tune the strategy.

Tools for Data Gathering:

1. Ahrefs: Offers detailed insights into backlinks, keyword rankings, and top-performing content.
2. SEMrush: Provides competitive analysis, keyword research, and site audit tools.
3. Moz: Known for its domain authority metrics and link analysis.
4. Hootsuite and BuzzSumo: Monitor social media engagement and content performance.
5. Google Alerts: Track mentions of competitors across the web for real-time updates.

Analyse Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses

Image by Backlinko

If you are out to outsmart your competitors in SEO, consider what their strengths and weaknesses are. Start with an analysis of their domain authority, backlink profile, and keyword rankings using thorough tools like Ahrefs or Moz. Run through their content to get topics that they write about and the frequency at which they do so.

 Check social engagement and see how they do it with the target audience. You may identify loopholes in their strategy, such as weak content or weak backlink profiles. Determining the weak points of the competitor, you can exploit them in terms of SEO to better your cause. Recognizing the strengths will allow you to pick out the successful tactics in your strategy.

Analysis Techniques:

1. Domain Authority and Backlink Profile: Use Ahrefs and Moz to assess the quality and quantity of backlinks.
2. Content Evaluation: Analyze the frequency, quality, and topics of published content.
3. Social Media Engagement: Monitor engagement metrics and interaction quality on social media platforms.
4. Identifying Gaps: Look for weaknesses like low-quality content, outdated information, or poor user experience.

Evaluate Competitor Marketing Strategies

Knowing what your competitors do is the most important reason you will stay ahead of them at SEO. Check their content marketing strategies: blog posts, videos, and infographics.

 Know which type of content goes viral to get maximum engagement and traffic. Analyze their email marketing campaigns — know how they nurture leads and retain customers. Know their social media strategies to understand how they engage with their audience and promote content.

 Tools such as SEMrush and BuzzSumo can help in revealing the most shared content and top influencers for your chosen niche. Knowing what your competitors do in their market strategy will help you stay ahead of them in developing a better plan to capture and maintain customers.

Components of Marketing Strategy Evaluation:

1. Content Marketing: Assess blog posts, videos, and infographics for engagement and traffic.
2. Email Marketing: Review how competitors use email campaigns to nurture and retain customers.
3. Social Media: Analyze social media strategies, including types of content shared and engagement levels.
4. Top Influencers: Identify key influencers and their impact on the competitor’s brand.

Understand Competitor Product/Service Offerings

Knowing what your competitors really have to offer in terms of products or services is very critical in effective SEO analysis. Take some time to view what exactly they offer on their websites.

 Look through their pricing, features, and USPs. Match these up against your products or services, outlining gaps or areas for improvement. Customer reviews and testimonials can divulge a great deal of information regarding the likes and dislikes of the customer towards the competitor’s offerings.

 You can apply this information when refining your offerings to better serve customer needs and expectations. With superior offers, you tend to attract more visitors who can be converted to customers.

Steps to Understand Product/Service Offerings:

1. Website Analysis: Review competitors’ websites to understand product features, pricing, and unique selling points.
2. Comparison: Compare competitors’ offerings with your own to identify gaps and opportunities.
3. Customer Feedback: Analyze customer reviews and testimonials to understand strengths and weaknesses.

Assess Competitor Online Presence and SEO

Know your opponents by peeking through their online presence and SEO strategies. Begin with website structure, page load times, and mobile responsiveness; test tools include Google PageSpeed Insight and the Mobile-Friendly Test). 

Observe keyword rankings and backlink profiles via a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Identify the keywords they are targeting and how they are optimizing that content. Check their on-page elements: title tags, meta descriptions, header tags. 

See their presence in terms of social media and how much engagement it drives. Knowing precisely how your competitors optimize their online presence will help you come up with a better SEO strategy to outrank them.

Key Metrics for Online Presence and SEO:

1. Website Structure and Load Times: Use Google PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test for performance analysis.
2. Keyword Rankings and Backlinks: Analyze with Ahrefs or SEMrush for competitive insights.
3. On-page SEO Elements: Review title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags.
4. Social Media Presence: Evaluate engagement levels and content strategies on social media.

Monitor Competitor Customer Reviews and Feedback

By researching customer reviews and feedback for a competitor, it indicates some of the company’s strengths and weaknesses. Research review sites such as Yelp and Google My Business, and find online forums peculiar to your industry.

 Note the positive and negative customer feedback. The more positive reviews show what your competitors are doing right; the more negative will indicate where they fall short.

 Use this information to enhance your own products or services and resolve similar issues within your business. It will help you see how to better place your brand concerning customer expectations by knowing how they feel about your competitors.

Review Monitoring Strategies:

1. Review Sites: Monitor platforms like Yelp and Google My Business for customer feedback.
2. Feedback Analysis: Evaluate both positive and negative reviews to identify areas for improvement.
3. Industry Forums: Participate in and monitor industry-specific forums for additional insights.

Leverage Competitor Analysis for Strategic Planning

Use competitor analysis to make decisions that will work for your strategic planning. Map out exactly in the areas that your competitors excel and where they are the worst, while also setting plausible goals with real realistics from those benchmarks. 

Develop strategies to overcome them in content, backlinks, and social media engagement by modeling exactly what works for your competitors. Keep tracking competitions continuously to update information as to new strategies and actions it may take.

 Conducting competitor analysis gives an insight into the effective strategic decisions at the very instance of the formulation of strategic planning, thereby being ahead in the competitive landscape.

Steps for Strategic Planning:

1. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: Use competitor insights to set goals and benchmarks.
2. Develop Improvement Strategies: Focus on content, backlinks, and social media based on competitor success.
3. Continuous Monitoring: Regularly update your analysis to adapt to competitors’ changes.

Develop a Competitive Advantage Strategy

Basically, developing a competitive advantage strategy refers to differentiating your business from your competitors.

 Understand what the competitors’ analysis compromises of to identify unique selling points that set your business apart.

 Zero in on those areas where most of your competitors are weak and where better value can be given by you. Come up with quality content that hits on their gaps and also targets unexploited keywords.

 Build relevant backlinks by contacting authoritative sites that are related to your niche. Engage your audience with social media to gain brand advocacy and trust.

 A well-differentiated competitive advantage will seek to drive more traffic to a website, better the search engine rankings, and beat the competition.

Competitive Advantage Tactics:

1. Unique Selling Points: Identify and emphasize what sets your business apart from competitors.
2. Content Development: Create high-quality content targeting gaps in competitors’ offerings.
3. Backlink Building: Strengthen your backlink profile through authoritative industry websites.
4. Social Media Engagement: Build brand loyalty and trust through active social media interaction.

Measure the Effectiveness of Your SEO Strategy

This makes it very important that, after making changes based on competitor analysis, the effectiveness of your SEO strategy is very closely tracked.

 A proper track of KPIs through tools such as Google Analytics and Search Console should include organic traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rates.

 Notice how your keyword ranking has changed over time and how it compares to your competitor’s ranking. Keep a tab on your backlink profile; it should be growing with improving quality.

Run periodic content audits regarding your on-page SEO to find more areas wherein further optimization can be adapted. A sound measure of strategy and continuous measurement of it makes sure that one improves constantly ahead of the competition.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

1. Organic Traffic: Track increases in traffic from search engines.
2. Bounce Rate and Conversion Rates: Monitor user engagement and conversions.
3. Keyword Rankings: Compare your rankings to competitors.
4. Backlink Profile: Ensure continuous growth and improvement.

Utilize Advanced Analytics for Deep Insights

Advanced analytics can give more in-depth insights about your SEO performance and competitor strategies. 

Tools like Google Data Studio and Tableau will help to effectively visualize the trends and patterns of the data.

Use all the tools below to build custom dashboards that help in tracking specific SEO metrics and competitor performance performance indicators.

Advanced analytics empowers you with long-term trends, forecasts of future performance, and unseen opportunities. With this information at hand, you will be able to change YOUR decisions and adjust the SEO strategy according to today’s fast-moving market pace.

Advanced Analytics Tools:

1. Google Data Studio: Create custom dashboards for SEO metrics.
2. Tableau: Visualize data trends and patterns for deeper insights.
3. Custom Dashboards: Track various metrics and competitor performance indicators.

Stay Updated with Industry Trends and Changes

SEO is constantly changing; every single day, with search engine algorithm changes, changes in user behavior, and industry/marketplace changes. So, to stay competitive, one needs to be on top of all those.

Keep up to date with all the news there is by following good SEO blogs. Keep attending various industry conferences and webinars to learn about the other latest developments.

 Share your own insights and experience with others in the SEO community, and get involved in forums and social media. It will make you aware of current industry trends and developing strategies in SEO so that things don’t get outdated

Keeping Up with Trends:

1. SEO Blogs and Forums: Follow reputable sources for the latest updates.
2. Industry Conferences and Webinars: Attend events to learn from experts.
3. Community Engagement: Participate in discussions on forums and social media.

Conclusion

Analyzing your competitors and developing a robust SEO strategy involves a systematic approach that includes understanding the basics, identifying top competitors, gathering data, and evaluating strengths and weaknesses. By leveraging advanced tools and techniques, you can gain valuable insights that help refine your strategy. Regularly measuring the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and staying updated with industry trends ensures sustained success. Ultimately, a well-informed and adaptive SEO strategy will enable you to outperform your competitors and achieve your business goals.

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A Guide to Hiring an SEO Provider

If your business has any online components (such as a website), then SEO is crucial to the ongoing success of your business. You may have the most expensive website in your industry, but without web traffic (visitors) to that website, it is essentially useless. It is not just traffic that you need, but targeted traffic. A good quality SEO service can provide relevant, consistent web traffic to your website(s). This guide will allow you, as a non-expert, to distinguish between good and bad SEO providers. There are many of both kinds, this guide should help you to find the good ones.

SEO needs to be implemented in a way that is effective in achieving your SEO goals and providing that all important meaningful presence on the World Wide Web.

Quality SEO is a crucial investment when it comes to developing successful expansion and growth strategies.

Ineffective SEO implementation, renders your SEO efforts wholly ineffective and a waste of your money.

6 things you need to know and understand before hiring an SEO provider:

1) Hiring an SEO provider should be seen as an investment in your business. You should not view it as a business expense, but rather a business strategy and an effective way of enhancing your business presence within your business sector. Try not to begin your search with the intention of "buying some SEO". Hiring an SEO provider should be viewed rather as hiring an employee that understands and cares about your business and its online objectives.

2) The first page of Google (or any search engine) is everything. Few people ever go to the second page of the search results anymore. Google is so good at being a search engine that people blindly trust Google's ability to deliver the most relevant results on the first page. Think about how often you click through to the second page. This means that if your business is not on the first page, it's almost as good as nowhere. The top positions on page one get the most clicks, which decrease as you progress downwards on the page.

3) The 'big' keywords are not everything. It is better to be on the first page for a few smaller keywords, than try to rank for bigger keywords and not be on the first page at all. For example, an accountancy business in Preston may not rank for the highly competitive keyword 'accountant' (unless they have a lot of SEO budget and time to wait for rankings); but the same business could conceivably rank highly for the keyword 'chartered accountant Preston'. A good SEO provider should research the keywords that your business could realistically rank on page one for and also keywords that have enough search volume to be worthwhile for your business to try ranking for.

4) SEO is all about beating your competition. There is no guarantee from the search engines to say you will be on the first page of Google if you do certain things. Put simply, SEO works like this:

The search engines have their conventions; websites that conform by giving the search engines what they want, will find themselves achieving better search engine rankings. The only thing standing between you and the top spots in the search rankings is your competition. Not your actual business competitors, but your online competitors. The websites that currently have the top spots in the search engines for your desired keywords are your online competition, and you need to beat them out of those top spots. Some keywords will be easy to rank for, others will be more difficult. It is only your online competition that dictates which will be the case for each individual keyword. A good SEO provider will research the competition for each of your keywords. Then, after the most effective keywords for your business sector have been identified they should be implemented in accordance with point number three above.

5) On-page and Off-page SEO.

Search engine optimisation is a complex and ever-evolving science, but in order to intelligently interview a prospective SEO provider you need to understand that there are two main types of SEO.

On-page SEO relates to the factors on your website that affect your SEO (keywords, usability, page headings, outbound links, internal links, etc.).

Off-page SEO are the factors that relate directly to matters outside of your website that affect the SEO of the website, such as back links, citations, social sharing, etc.

SEO providers can work on your off-page SEO fairly easily, but if you are not willing to change on-page SEO, according to their recommendations, you cannot blame them for lack of results. A good SEO provider will review your website and report back about your on-page SEO, and how it can be improved. You should have your web designer make the adjustments.(Remember he is the expert in this field)

6) An increase in search engine ranking is not necessarily an increase in leads and sales. All your SEO provider can do is get your website, videos, Google Places, articles, blog posts, etc. further up the search engine results. They cannot guarantee an increase in sales or leads, because that factor is determined by your own sales funnel. It is not the SEO provider's job to make sure that the extra web traffic you receive will convert to more leads or sales. Your website needs to convert those visitors with good marketing, which is an issue for your marketing consultant to deal with.

The key differences between 'good' and 'bad' SEO providers:

Good SEO Providers

Good SEO providers know and understand the points mentioned above. You can judge this by their answers to the questions provided later in my next article.

Good SEO providers want to build a solid foundation and a proper SEO plan for your business, with extensive initial keyword and market (competitor) research. They will often insist upon it, even if the prospective client does not see the need. Sometimes a good SEO provider will refuse to work with a client that does not want the important groundwork to be done, because they know that without it they will not be likely to provide the client with the results that they want. A good SEO provider will want to provide their client with results as their first priority. Often a client will say "but I've already done the keyword research myself". Many potential clients sit down for 5 or 10 minutes to write out all the keywords that they think are relevant to their business, and then think that they have now done all the keyword research that is needed. Real keyword research is a lengthy, investigative process.

Good SEO providers use responsible SEO methods, such as paying more attention to on-page SEO, securing quality back links, improving citations, aiding social sharing, ensuring a good user experience, etc.

Bad SEO Providers

Bad SEO providers will want to take their clients' money as their first priority. They will not conduct proper keyword and market research, but will say, for example, "what are your three keywords and your URL that you want to rank for". If this happens (as it often does) you can be sure they are simply plugging your website into software to get irrelevant back links all over the internet, using spam blog comments, link farms and other means. In many cases this approach is ineffective because the URL, or domain, may not match the client's desired keywords. This can also damage the reputation and, ironically, the long-term SEO and credibility of the website.

Bad SEO providers use bad quality SEO methods (Sometimes referred to as Black-hat methods), Utilising these methods can have an extremely detrimental effect on how your website is perceived by search engines. This in turn may result in your website being (Sand boxed). Needless to say this is extremely undesirable, as damage such as this is extremely difficult to reverse.

Ensure you get the specialist SEO who knows how best to highlight the attributes of your company and can draw attention to your products and your services in a way that really makes your business stand-out on the worldwide web.

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SEO Interview Questions and Answers for SEO Executives and Analysts

SEO Interview Questions for Freshers

If you’re applying for an SEO job at a beginner level, prepare for your job interview ahead of time with these SEO interview questions for recent graduates, or beginners. Many of these are appropriate SEO interview questions for 1-year experience and are geared toward someone with a solid education in SEO or some actual on-the-job experience.  

1. What makes a website search engine friendly?

   Several factors make a website search engine friendly, including keywords, quality content, titles, metadata, etc. A website needs these factors to be ranked by a search engine and therefore found by a user.

2. How do you measure SEO success?

   You might want to answer this question based on the type of company you’re interviewing for, as goals might differ. In addition, there are a variety of ways to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and, therefore, success. During an SEO interview, possible answers might include increasing traffic to a website or particular landing page, increasing conversions such as newsletter signups or sales, growing the number of inbound links, driving traffic for a particular keyword phrase, or increasing referral traffic. It’s critical that an SEO professional measures result to know if the tactics and strategy need to change to succeed.

3. How did you learn SEO?

   Obviously, this answer will depend on your individual situation, but it matters because a potential employer wants to ensure that you are well-versed in SEO best practices. If you learned SEO by the seat of your pants at your last job because someone had to do it, an employer might doubt the quality of the skillset you offer. And, if that’s the case, you can always get certified before applying for that job to ensure you are well trained!

4. Which SEO tools do you regularly use?

   You will likely have tools you’re familiar with, and you’ll want to talk about those. If you don’t yet have much of a toolbox because you’re new to SEO, check out the multiple webmaster tools Google offers, as well as the tools offered by Moz.

5. How do you approach keyword research?

   As with the question above, your answer might vary. You’ll want to explain which keyword tools you use for research, as well as how you go about it. For example, if you use Google Keyword Planner to do your keyword research, then that’s your answer for the tool used. But you must also explain how you go about it. You must demonstrate you do more than simply guess at a keyword and type that into the tool before checking the results. For example, perhaps you use personas to consider potential problems a prospect faces, and you look for keywords around that. You should also explain that you consider longer keyword phrases, search volume, and the competitiveness of a keyword. Demonstrate that you know how to find the sweet spot in keyword research, where the keyword narrower so it’s targeted and has good search volume, but is not highly competitive.

6. What is link building and why does it matter?

   Google exists to serve the searcher. That means Google is constantly trying to determine which results are most relevant to any given searcher and any given time. In addition to relevance, Google considers credibility too. So the search engine looks to see if other websites have linked to yours. If so, that means your content is worth linking to and is, therefore, more credible when compared to a website not linked to externally. In a nutshell, link building is what SEO professionals do to try and get links to their websites in order to improve search results.
   

7. What are backlinks?

   A backlink is what we call the links into a website from an external source, as mentioned in link building.

8. What is page speed and why does it matter?

   Page speed refers to how fast your site loads for a user, something Google takes into account while ranking websites since a faster loading page directly translate to better user experience. If the interviewer asks what you would do to increase page speed, describe how you’ve achieved this in the past with examples such as reducing image sizes, enabling compression, reducing redirects, removing render-blocking JavaScript, leveraging browser caching, improve server response time, using a content distribution network to compress files, optimizing the code, etc.

9. What method do you use to redirect a page?

   In general, a 301 redirect is the best way to redirect a page so you don’t lose any SEO value that has been accumulated.

10. How can you do SEO for a video?

    Videos are growing increasingly popular on the web, which can improve SEO if the videos produced get attention and therefore shares and backlinks. But to get the video seen can require SEO to get it found, and Google can’t watch a video. It needs the same types of information required for text-based pages to rank a video. Including the transcript as a text is an easy way to do SEO for a video because search engines can crawl the text. In addition, the same attention should be paid to keywords, page titles, and descriptions.

11. Which meta tags matter?

    Meta tags have changed since SEO became a common practice, but two remain critical: the page title and the meta description. Stick to these when answering your interview question. The page title (sometimes called SEO title) plays an important role in ranking but it is also important because it is the title that shows on the Search Results Page (SERP). It must use a keyword to rank well with Google but it must also be compelling so a user will want to click on it. The meta description does not affect ranking, but it also plays a role in the SERP because it also must make the user want to click on the search result. You should also mention that Google recently increased the character length limit of meta descriptions to around 280 to 320 (no one is sure of the actual limit yet).

12. What is the difference between a do-follow and no-follow and how are they used?

    Nofollow links exist because we don’t want every single webpage or link to be something a search engine crawls and ranks. Therefore, no-follow link attributes tell search engine bots not to follow a certain link. The link is still clickable for a user, but not followed by a bot. On the other hand, all other links could be considered do-follow links, even though they don’t have to have special attributes to tell the search engine bots to follow them—the bots will by default.

13. Which SEO factors are not in your control?

    The biggest SEO factor not in your control is Google! How exactly Google ranks websites is unknown. The company does not make public the search algorithms it uses, although SEO professionals have determined the best practices we adhere to in order to achieve results. However, Google doesn’t like young domains that aren’t yet tried-and-true, and you can’t control that if you’re launching a new site. Nor can you force people to link to your site, share your content, spend more time on your site, or come back to your site for another visit. Google looks favorably on all of these factors and ideally a marketing department is working hard to create content and user experiences that will make these happen, but these factors are beyond the control of the SEO person.

14. What is on-page vs off-page SEO?

    This gets back to the question about the factors that are outside of your control. On-page SEO includes the factors you can control, such as keywords, content, page structure, internal linking, load time, etc. Off-page SEO includes those factors you can’t control, such as backlinks.

15. What are some black hat SEO practices to avoid?

    Ideally, you won’t interview with an organization that condones any black hat SEO practices, but it might be a trick question to make sure you wouldn’t use them either. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, copying content from another site, exchanging or trading links, buying links, hiding text, and using a link farm are all underhanded techniques frowned upon—and penalized—by Google.

16. What is the relationship between SEO and SEM?

    SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. The biggest difference between the two is that SEO is free and SEM is paid. SEM includes pay-per-click advertising and display ads that are purchased. Despite the major difference between the two, they work best in unison.

17. What qualities are required in order to be effective in an SEO role, in your opinion?

    This is a question requiring a subjective answer, but you might want to think through all of the different skill sets required to be good at this kind of job. An SEO professional must have good research skills, for one thing, as well as strong analytical skills. An ability to spot trends and adapt to change is also important. As you think through the answer to this SEO interview question, consider your own strengths as an SEO professional. Could you weave those into this answer?

The  SEO interview questions listed above are aimed towards professionals with about a year’s worth of experience. They’re likely transitioning into SEO as part of establishing a digital marketing career and perhaps have only a certification and not a reputed track record. For those with more experience, read on for advanced SEO interview questions.

SEO Interview Questions for Analysts

If you’re applying for an SEO analyst or specialist position, you should review the more advanced SEO interview questions below, because you probably won’t be asked about the beginner level SEO topics covered above.

1. What training do you have as an SEO analyst or specialist?

   This is a question only you can answer, but be prepared to answer it in a way that emphasizes your experience and any advanced SEO training you’ve done.

2. What kind of analytics do you perform and what do you look for?

   Because of the job you’re applying for, you might be asked several of these types of SEO analyst interview questions. Be ready. Talk about the tools you use for analytics, what you look for, and how you use those metrics to measure results and plan to make changes.
   

3. Which SEO analytics don’t get enough attention, in your opinion?
   

   As per the question above, you’ll answer this based on your own experience. It might be that there are features of Google Analytics that many people don’t know how to use, or that people get caught up in the details and forget to look at the big picture, or perhaps they neglect to align analytics to the SEO strategy. Answer the question as you see fit, but do be prepared to answer it.
   

4. What is keyword stemming and why does it matter?
   

   Keyword stemming is adding on to the stem of a word. For example, if the word interview was your stem, variations could be interviewing, interviewer, interviews. Using keyword stemming helps you to use more relevant keywords on a webpage without keyword stuffing or ending up with content that reads poorly.

5. What is the most important thing to look for when doing keyword research?
   

   This is a subjective question! People new to SEO tend to focus on popular keywords without considering the competitiveness of that keyword, so that’s something you could mention. Search volume and relevancy are other factors you might discuss.

6. What is a canonical issue?

   A canonical issue happens when you seem to have duplicate content. (Google penalizes for duplicate content.) This might happen if you have different versions of a URL pointing to the same webpage, for example, http://exampleURL.com and http://www.exampleURL.com.

7. How have you dealt with link penalties?

   We hope you haven’t had any link penalties slapped on you by Google due to your SEO efforts, and you might want to make that clear to your interviewer! Then address the steps you’ve taken to find bad links, and either fix them if you can or to disavow those you can’t.

8. Which webmaster tools do you use and why?

   Google offers so many valuable tools! Demonstrate your knowledge of them and your proficiency with them when answering this question.

9. What is Google’s preferred method of configuring a mobile site?

   Google prefers that mobile websites are configured using responsive web design.
   

10. What are rich snippets?

    Rich snippets are the featured text that appears at the top of the organic search results, in a box and sometimes with an image. Webmasters can use structured data to mark up content so that search engines can easily identify the type of content and deliver it as a rich snippet. Rich snippets are not part of SEO, but if used, they can deliver better results on the SERPs.

11. Why do you need to know about backlinks to competitors’ websites?
    

    Doing an analysis of competitors’ websites is a useful way to execute a competitive analysis to basically see if you should be emulating anything that they are doing.

12. What is a link audit and why should you do one?

    A link audit is basically an audit of the links that point to your website, the backlinks. SEO experts to link audits prior to doing a link building campaign, but also to make sure external links are of the quality you want to help with SEO.

13. Which are the major Google updates that have impacted SEO?

    Panda and Penguin were the two most significant Google updates, although the search giant is constantly making changes to its search algorithm. Panda was introduced in 2011 and targeted poor quality content. The Penguin update was released in 2012 and targeted spammy link building techniques. Both are regularly updated by Google.

14. How has Hummingbird changed the landscape of search?
    

    Released in 2013, Hummingbird has helped to make search contextual, moving us away from the strict adherence to keywords toward understanding a searcher’s intent.

15. What are accelerated mobile pages (AMP)?

    MP is a Google-back project to push for pages that load quickly on mobile devices.

16. How do you stay up-to-date on the near-constant search algorithm changes?

    You’ll want to answer this question based on the sources that you rely on for up-to-date SEO and Google news.

17. How will you measure success as an SEO analyst or specialist at our organization?

    As with the answer above, this will be subjective, but be prepared to answer it by showing you understand SEO’s role in the bigger picture. Talk about aligning with business objectives, achieving goals and driving results, not just “winning more searches.” 

Those are some suggested SEO interview questions for professionals with around 3 years of experience under their belt or an SEO analyst. If management is the direction you’re headed in, you will want to keep reading for the SEO interview questions and answers for experienced managers and executives. 

SEO Interview Questions for Executives

If you’re interviewing for an SEO executive or manager position, you can expect to field questions about any of the topics addressed above, as well as questions about your management experience. As an SEO executive or manager, you’ll be expected to know SEO basics as well as other aspects of digital marketing, such as website optimization, content marketing, search engine marketing, strategy, and analytics. You will probably manage a team of copywriters and web developers in order to implement and achieve SEO goals for your organization.

1. What are some common SEO mistakes you’ve seen in other organizations?
   

   If you’re an experienced SEO executive or manager, this should be an easy question for you to answer! You can talk about the obvious mistakes such as using the wrong keywords (which is possible in so many ways), not keeping up with changes made by Google, not optimizing for mobile, ignoring analytics, and so on, but mention others that are particular to your experience too.

2. What is RankBrain and why does it matter?

   As with so many things Google, no one can say exactly what it is. RankBrain is part of Google’s search algorithm. It’s an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system used to process billions of web pages to help determine which results are the most relevant, in particular, queries that are new and not necessarily related to specific keywords (to really dumb down the explanation). There isn’t a way to optimize websites for RankBrain other than to continue to focus on quality content because RankBrain is less about keywords.

3. What is PageRank and why does it matter?

   PageRank is about credibility and it is used to help rank your pages. Credibility is determined in part by the age of the page, the amount and quality of the content, and the number of inbound links.

4. How do you use content marketing for SEO?

   Content marketing is crucial to effective SEO because Google wants quality content, it gives you content to optimize for SEO, and it creates content other websites will link to (when done right). Content marketing is often done via a blog, but content can be created in many other forms as well, such as video, podcasts, infographics, ebooks and so on.

5. How do you use social media marketing for SEO?

   The degree to which social media influences search rankings is not known, but social media still matters. For example, it can help you get backlinks when you share website content via social media platforms, and it builds your brand, which makes your website more likely to get the clicks on the search results page.

6. How do you see SEO and PPC working together to improve results?

   This is another SEO interview question you’ll answer based on your experience, but some specifics you might mention include how PPC can be used to drive traffic while waiting for pages optimized for SEO to start ranking. Also, we no longer have keyword research tools just for SEO, so we have to use PPC tools. PPC can be used to try out a keyword before committing to using it for SEO.

7. What is your approach to developing an SEO strategy?

   Again, you’ll answer this question based on your own experiences and knowledge. Factors you might mention include knowing the short- and long-term goals, knowing the competitive landscape, understanding the audience, etc. But how you as an SEO expert go about developing the strategy will probably be unique to your experience.

8. How do you evaluate web analytics to measure SEO performance?
   

   As part of your answer, you will want to talk about how you use Google’s web analytics to look at direct navigation, referral traffic, numbers of visits, conversions, time on page, etc. and how you interpret all of that data to measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.

9. What’s your greatest digital marketing success story?

   Obviously, this is an advanced SEO interview question we can’t help you with, but you have to anticipate and be ready to answer the question, preferably with some hard data to add credibility to your story.

10. What is your experience with managing a marketing or SEO team?

    Again, this is an advanced SEO interview question we can’t help you with, but you are interviewing for an SEO executive or manager job, so you will need to talk about your experience as a manager

11. Explain Google’s projected plan for indexes in 2018.

    Google is going to have two indexes, starting at some point in 2018: one for desktop searchers
    and one for mobile searches.

12. What is Hummingbird?

    Hummingbird was an overhaul of Google’s search algorithm, released in 2013. It strives to move beyond just keywords and understand a searcher’s intent.

13. Why do internal links matter?

    Internal links are links within your website linking to another page within your website. Internal links help all of the content on your website to get crawled and ranked.

14. What is Domain Authority?

    Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz. It predicts how well a website will rank in search results.

15. How do you stay current with Google’s changes as well as industry changes?

    To answer this question, you’ll want to talk about those blogs or newsletters you follow, probably including the well-known SEO websites such as Moz and Search Engine and, but also including any others, you find beneficial.

16. How do you see SEO changing in the near future?

This answer is more subjective and no one will fault you if it turns out your predictions were wrong, but giving a well thought out answer shows you pay attention to the industry. You can talk about the two indexes Google will start using in 2018 and how that will affect mobile SEO and the continued importance of providing a good user experience (and what that might look like). Local search is still a hot topic, as is voice search. Take a look at what the pundits are saying prior to your answering your SEO interview questions and you’ll come across as someone in the know.                                                                                                    




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