Friday 29 December 2017

MBA Marketing Interview Questions and Answers

Q-1) what is marketing??
Ans. There are numerous good definitions of marketing available everywhere so you need to select your effective one and prepare for that to discuss in interview, in case. Some are as follows?*Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.*Marketing is communicating the value of a product, service or brand to customers, for the purpose of promoting or selling that product, service, or brand?*The management procedure through which goods and services move from concept to the customer?*The activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering products to persons.

Q-2) what is the most interesting thing about marketing and sales? 

Ans. The most significant and interesting thing you need to know about marketing and sales is that both activities are simple and fun.

Marketing is a fun, creative activity. A lot of it, as you will see, is brainstorming around your cause and the persons whom you hope to influence.
*Sales is also a fun activity, believe it or not. Okay perhaps not if you’re really shy, in which case you may want to stick with behind the scenes marketing or other activities. But many people, once they know what they’re doing and get in certain practice, find that they like sales.

Q-3) what is the difference between marketing and selling?
Ans. This is the most usual question asked in every marketing interview. So the differences are:

*Selling begins when a product or service becomes obtainable for consumption or use. This function covers retailers’ awareness and assurance on the product and cultivating customer advocacy for the maker of the product or service.

*Marketing, on the other hand, is much broader in scope and starts long before the selling procedure takes place. It covers everything about the market, the consumer, and the brand.

Q-4) Tell me something about 4p’s of marketing?
Ans. The following describes the four P’s of marketing:

*Product: 
Products are the goods and services that your business offers for sale to your target market. When developing a product you must consider quality, design, features, money covering costs expenses packaging, customer service and any subsequent after-sales service.

*Place: 
Place is in regards to distribution, location and methods of getting the product to the customer. This includes the location of your business, shop front, distributors, logistics and the probable use of the internet to sell products directly to customers.

*Price: 
Price concerns the amount of money that customers should pay in order to purchase your products. There are a number of considerations in relation to price including price setting, discounting, credit and cash purchases as well as credit collection.

*Promotion: 
Promotion refers to the act of communicating the advantages and worth of your product to consumers. It then includes persuading general consumers to become customers of your business using methods such as advertising, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion.

Q-5) Tell me something about PLC (Product life cycle).
Ans. The product life cycle has four very clearly defined stages, each with its own characteristics that mean dissimilar things for business

.
*INTRODUCTION
In the Introduction stage of the product life cycle, a product or a service is introduced to the market. Customers are testing the product in this phase.


*GROWTH
After a product is introduced in the market, consumers become more interested in it. This is called the Growth stage of the product life cycle. Sales are increasing and competitors are emerging as well. Products become more profitable and companies form alliances, joint ventures, and takeovers.

*MATURITY
The market has reached saturation. Some producers at a later stage of the Maturity stage of the product life cycle begin to leave the market due to poor profit margins. Sales dynamics is beginning to decrease.


*DECLINE Continuous decline in sales signals entry into the Decline stage of the production life cycle. Competition is taking over your market share at this point. Financial and production conditions are becoming unfavorable.

Q-6) for a new salesperson, what are his needs? 

Ans. New salespersons needs:

* He needs to know the info on company history, its policies, rules and regulations etc.
*Information about the product- its features, usage, demand.
*Systems and processes as followed by the company. This might include the work timings, overtime, field work, work culture of that particular organization etc.
*Training on the basic ethics that need to be followed while selling a product.
*He should know the basics of selling the different products of the company.

Q-7) why do you want to work in marketing field? 

Ans. The best method to answer this question is, first of all, to be prepared and knowledgeable about this field. Spend some time researching the marketing field so you can talk about the benefits of working in this area. Compare your goals, let the interviewer know what best you can do in marketing job even though the question is about why you want to work here, you still need to convince the interviewer that hiring you will benefit the company.

Q-8) what are the keys to marketing success? 

Ans. The keys to marketing achievement are:

*Budgeting.
*Targeting.
*Analyzing the Competition.
*Working Your Customer Base.
*Development of Objectives.

Q-9) what motivates you?
Ans. Here the interviewer is trying to understand the key to your being fruitful in the job he is interviewing for, and wishes to make sure it’s a good fit. So consider, in advance of interviewing, what actually does motivate you and come up with some specific examples to share during the interview. It’s all in the detail. Whatever you say, you need to back it up with examples

Q-10) Are you competitive by nature? 

Ans. Competition is very significant to survive in the market so to achieve success in this field you have to be competitive. Suite the examples of your work related to market competition in your answer as proof.

Q-11) Mention the various components of marketing management?
Ans. Marketing management components can be distributed into following points:

a. Corporate level: It consists of company’s mission and objectives.
b. Functional level: Non marketing and marketing institutions are involved in it.
c. Marketing level: It consists of situation analysis, objectives, strategy, implementation, budget, and evaluation.
d. The marketing mix consists of product, distribution, promotion, and price.

Q-12) what were the different methods used in marketing earlier?
Ans. There were three marketing approaches used earlier:

A. Production orientation: An organization which focuses on production specializes in producing most of the given services and products without considering the quality.

B. Product orientation: An organization which focuses on product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of the products.

C. Selling orientation: An organization which uses sales orientation mostly focuses on the selling or promoting a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such.

Q-13) Explain Service marketing. Also explain what is a service?
Ans. A. Service marketing can be defined as marketing of services. It’s not same for tangible products. Services if compared with goods then neither all products are purely goods nor services. In more clear words service can be defined as

B. use of the service is not separated from its purchase.

C. A service can never be in material form and therefore it cannot be touched, seen, heard, tasted, or smelled.

D. The use of a service is inherently subjective, i.e. if many individuals are experiencing services then each of them will experience it uniquely.

Q-14) what is an International marketing plan?
Ans. a. It involves the organization in making more than one marketing decisions across the nations.

b. There are several reasons to enter an international market led by large market size and diversification.

c. There are also several reasons to avoid entering international markets, including too much red tape, trade barriers, and transportation difficulties.

d. The stages of going international are as follows: exporting, licensing, joint ventures, direct investment, U.S. commercial centers, trade intermediaries, and alliances.

Q-15) what is marketing communication?
Ans. Marketing communication can be defined as the efforts made by the seller to convey his message to his buyers and to accept it in retrievable form. The main point of communication process is persuasion. It is completely goal oriented. It is not a haphazard activity. Each of its tool contains of specific complexities and potentialities that justify managerial specialization.

Thursday 2 November 2017

MBA HR Interview Questions And Answers

1. Hello, how are you today?
This is more of a “make yourself relaxed” statements. Answer with a lovely smile. If you had any anxiety during the day, don’t hesitate to mention it. But make sure you express it in a positive note.

Examples:
 “I am very well today sir, thanks”.
“I am very well today sir, just that the traffic here is bit of a bother. But I made sure, I start a bit early to beat it.”

2. Tell me about yourself?
The FIRST & BEST question for any HR interview. The answer to this mostly sets the tone of rest of the interview. Good news is – You can earn plenty of points if this is answered right.
 
Give a brief of your education background (up to plus 2 is fine, your family and location, any of your hobbies etc.
 
You can also mention one of your major successes, if it fits the situation.
 
Keep the answer to just about 3-4 sentences and not more than that.

No need to describe your strengths & weakness at this points (as that will definitely come along).
 
 A common error seen is most HR interview is to start the sentence like “I am basically from...” No need to start a sentence like that.
 
Keep the answer simple, to the point and give space and time for additional questions. Do not stretch it too much.
Example:

“Hi I am Kiran and hails from Bangalore. I did my B.Tech in electronics and communication from Rameswara College of engineering, which is under Bangalore University. I had completed my plus two from Chinmaya Vidhya Mission School and secured 98% in CBSE Boards. I have four members in my family and I am the youngest son. I love outdoor sports, especially athletics and was a member of college athletic team.”  

3. What are your key strengths?
This is another most general question in any HR interview. The idea here is to understand how much you know about yourself and how assured you are about your strengths.
 
Just stay positive. Even an easy answer like “I am a very positive person” is good enough.
 
You can also change this as per the need of the interview. Knowing a bit about the profile you are being interviewed helps as well.

Explaining your strength with an experience from the past is necessary here.

Example:
   
“Sir, my greatest strength is my capability to learn things rapidly. For example, I had to represent my college in an inter college science exhibition, and was introduced to the team at the very last minute. I was capable to understand our exhibits and artifacts and present them with great achievement”.
 
“I think my greatest strength is my positive attitude, even during the most hardest of times. During my college project, there has been couple of occasions, when our idea was not falling in place and the results were negative. I had to trust and think positively and keep my team motivated to persist on our idea, and finally we got the desired result.”

 “My best skill would be my verbal capability and articulation skill. I have worked as editor for our college magazine and have been involved with various literary forums during my school and college days.

4. What is one thing, which you want to improve about yourself? (OR) what are your weaknesses?
This is a trick question. The expectation here is to answer a negative trait with a positive twist. Somewhat which in general a weak point of a person, but is alright from an organization perspective.
Example
 
 “I tend to try to take up too numerous things, leaving little time for myself.”
 
“I am a perfectionist and sometimes, concentrate too much on one solo task to get it to perfection, using up time from other tasks”.
 
“I tend to say Yes, when someone asks for support. I am working on learning to say No at times”.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
This is a question planned to know, what are your career aspirations, how long would you be committed to the organization, is there any instant plans for you to move on etc. If you have a genuine plan, explain it with reasoning. If you do not have any exact plans as of then, give a generic answer along with some interesting activity you would like to take up.

Example

  “I would like to see myself donning one of the senior positions in the organization contributing to technology as well as participating in business progress. I am hoping, I can position myself with relevant experience by then.”

 “As a fresher, I am assuming by first five years will be a vast learning curve. I want to absorb much of the industry knowledge and also to sharpen my technical abilities. In next 5 years I see myself playing numerous roles in the team from a developer to leading a team.”

“I would like to see myself as a technical architect in next 5 years. My core competency is with technologies, and I would like to work and contribute in the field of most recent technologies and advancements. I would like to get take up some of the major technology certifications”

6. Have you been in some challenging situation? Explain how you handled it?
This is naturally an add-on question to explain your strengths that you mention before. This is good chance to give a suitable example, as to why you mentioned what your strengths are.
Example:

“Yes, we did have some challenging situation during our final semester project delivery. Generally the type of code logic we were trying to implemented, works with a 64bit processor, while we were trying to make it work with a lower configuration, because of budgetary constraints”. Theoretically it was possible, but result was not coming through and the team required to give up and upgrade the hardware. I was positive, that this will work and that we stick to the plan and figure out our actual problem. It took some effort to convince my team, lots more hard work and few additional hours of reading, but finally we stayed positive and cracked the issue and delivered the project.

The above example, explains your strength like Positive thinking, hard work etc.
 
“I have a big passion for sports and have been a regular member of college athletic team. There was an event coming up somewhat ahead of one of our exam schedule. Although our coach said, I can skip the competition, I was sure I can win points for the college. So I decided, I will put in additional time in studies late evenings, while also practicing and attending the event. I had to stretch a bit physically & mentally, and also manage my time tightly. But finally I was capable to win the tournament and also come out with good scores in exam.

The above showcases, you multitasking ability, time management, passion for things and hard work.

7. Why Should We Hire You?
As a fresher, you can’t commit to any expertise in any specific domain. So this question is planned to understand what quality of yours will be supportive most for the company. Knowledge about company and what quality of yours suits the organization, is the key to answer this. In case you don’t know much about the company, quick learning ability, flexibility, team player etc. are few mutual qualities that will fit any organizational needs.

Example:
 
“I have had some internships and industry exposure. So being a fresher, it will still be simple for me adapt to the new environment, which is significantly lessen my training cost.”

“I have a sharp learning curve, which will support company ramp me up quickly as a productive resource. An example of my learning curve is my final year project, where I have worked on a short time frame on a completely new technology”

“I am a strong team player a good leader. I have been leading teams for technical and cultural activities during my college days. In your company I will be a great player within any challenging team and deliver leadership when opportunity arises”.

8. What are your hobbies and interests?
You cannot say, you don’t have any other interests, other than academics. Even if you are very studious, your answer must contain reading non-textbooks and following cutting edge stuffs in technology. A company looks for an applicant who are more rounded and keeps diverse interests in life. Identify one of your interests other than academics and prepare answer based on that (Don’t include eating, watching TV, sleeping etc.)

Example:
 
  “I love singing and I also play instruments like Guitar.”
    “Outdoor sports is my interest. Especially cricket”
      

9. Who is the most inspiring person in your life?
The significant part is not who, but why? When you answer this question with a name, you must follow it up with why he / she is most inspiring person.
Example:
 
“My greatest inspiration is Sachin Tendulkar. He had such a humble upbringing & his hard work took him to the greatest heights in the world of sports. He still keeps himself rooted and stays humble. I also believe in hard work and humility”.

“My greatest inspiration is my dad. He has always thought me to not worry about my weakness and take most benefit of my strengths. This has developed a lot of confidence in me during tough times.”

10. Are you willing to change your role and profile when required for project?
As a fresher, your most sought after quality is flexibility. You need to showcase, you are flexible and prepared to learn. Saying you are flexible doesn’t necessarily mean, you will be forced into things, you don’t like. It just shows your positive attitude to learn and try new things.
Example:

“Yes, most certainly sir. As a fresher, I hope and wish to learn as much things as possible. I believe taking up different roles and profiles only supports me learn and grow in this industry”

11. Are you ready to relocate?
As long as you do not have any compelling reasons, being a fresher it is better to be prepared for relocation. Today’s IT industry works on global operation model, where they have offices located at numerous locations. These are staffed strategically, as per need and business necessity and there could be a need for your skills at a particular location.
Being flexible sufficient to suit the staffing need of a company is a great advantage for a fresher and since most of fresher move around with less baggage (example: being single), it is easier for company to move them at short notice. Remember, this applies for a foreign country placement also. So denying a relocation means, you are also saying “No” to an onsite chance as well.
Example:

 “Yes, most definitely. I believe being at different locations supports me learn about new culture and people.”
 
  “Yes, I don’t see a problem in relocation. It’s always a better learning experience than being around with same environment and people”

12. Are you flexible with timings (if have to work in shift)?
This question yet again checks about your flexibility. The same answer above applies here. If there is a genuine problem for you to work in night or early morning shifts, mention that.

13. Do you wish to pursue higher education?
If you are seriously considering higher education, it’s wise to say so.
    If you are unsure (may be – May not be), your answers might be –
   
“I am interested in higher studies, but not immediately. I want to get started working and then look for higher education based on my experience and career progressions.”
     
 “Yes, but not immediately. I plan to take up part time studies, with either an MBA or an VLSI engineering masters, depending on which will be more beneficial for my line of work.”
     Some companies support and provide numerous incentives for part time, full time studies. If you already know of any such programs, it will be good to align your answer according to that.

14. Interview Questions on about Company?
In today’s world, with so much information accessible online and through many sources, it is a grave mistake to not read up about the company, you are attending the interview for. A good knowledge about the company during the interview shows your genuine interest in getting placed. Few basic things that you need to look up about a company are
Domain expertise of the company
Various industries they cater to
Few niceties about being employed at that company (Eg: Best employer award by Times magazine)

    Locations they operate from and main business geographies.
    Company history, its current leaders
    General working culture
    Any subsidiaries or affiliated companies

15. Why do you want to work for us?
Mention some good word about the company at the same time, try to align a strength of yours with the company vision or goal or working culture.
Example

“Working for an organization, which has won best employer award multiple times, in itself is a motivating factor. But more significantly, I would like to start off my career at a place, which values ethical practices and encourages overall development of a person.”
 
“I have always admired XYZ (company), for the cutting edge products and developments it bring about in the modern world. The impact of our work, is directly reflected among the society in general, which is a great feeling. I would like to be a part of this modern day game changer bandwagon.

Note the clever & subtle use of “our” work instead of “your” work. You already seems to be a part of company.
 
 “I believe, life is always a mix of hard work and fun. I find the work culture of xyz to carry the same principle. “Work hard... Party harder”. What better way to start off my career, than at a place, where I will feel like home.”

16. What is one thing that you like about our company?
Again, always know about the company before picking your answer. A wrong line of answer might cost you the job itself. Like you go to a research Organization & tell about your partying habit, you most likely lose the probability to get through. Most likely one of the above answers applies here also. The difference is, you don’t have to align this with your interests & strengths.

17. What are your expectations from your first job?
You can always quote an easy vision or strategy which you like about the company. As a fresher, your most significant expectation should be “To Learn” & this is what most companies expect from you. There could be extra personal expectation like contributing to society, placing yourself within corporate world, paying off your education loan etc.
Examples:
 
“I have had lot of studies during all these years, but mostly theoretical leanings. My first & foremost expectation from my first job would be to learn how all these are applied in a practical and industrial way. I also want to be a part of the business culture and learn how this is run.”
  
“I consider my first job as an extension of my studies only. More like a practical class. I want to learn a lot of new technologies, learn how the corporate world works, be part of a big energetic team and contribute to the projects, develop my soft skills and to prepare myself for tougher challenges in future.”

18. Do you have a referral in this company?
The question might be for two reasons

To understand, if you are familiar with the company culture.

If you will be motivated sufficient to join the company, if given an offer.

If there is someone close to you, working in the company, or if there are several people you know as working here, there is a high possibility, you will be a long term prospect for the company.
So, if you know anybody or many, working in the company, give the name, department & employee number. No need to tell any fake names or numbers, because in case of any verification, you could lose out a chance to make it.

Wednesday 25 October 2017

SEO Interview Questions and Answers


1. What is SEO.
Ans. In easy words, SEO or Search Engine Optimization means to any activity performed for the improvement of Search Engine rankings of websites or web-page, products, services or other content. It displays unpaid results which is also referred to as “free”, “organic”, “natural” or “earned” results.

2. What is a Search-Engine?
Ans. A search engine is a web-based software system which is established to search and locate relevant information on the World Wide Web. Search engines usually answer the queries entered by the users and present them a list of search results.

3. Name of a few search engines.
Ans. Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, DuckDuckGo and Yandex.

4. What is World Wide Web?
Ans. The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web, which was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in the year 1989, is an information system of internet servers having webpages where especially formatted documents and resources, supported by Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP, can be placed by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) with other hypertext links.

5. What is a Domain?

Ans. On the internet, the domain is just a part of the network address and acts as a descriptor for websites. It contains email addresses, website addresses and addresses of Internet Protocols such as SSH, IRC and FTP.

6. What is a website?
Ans. A website holds a collection of web pages or formatted documents that can be accessed over the Internet. Websites are normally identified with domain names or web addresses.

For Example, if you type the web address www.mytasker.com over the internet, it would take you to the home page of the definite website.

7. What is a Web server?
Ans. A web server is a computer program with an IP address and domain names that show web pages to users when requested. Web server accepts and processes requests sent through HTTP.

For example, when you enter the URL ‘mytasker.com/blog’ over the web browser, request is sent to the web servers which bear ‘mytasker.com’ as the domain name.

8. What is Crawling?
Ans. Crawling or web crawling refers to an automated procedure through which search engines filtrate web pages for proper indexing.

Web crawlers go via web pages, look for relevant keywords, hyperlinks and content, and bring info. back to the web servers for indexing.

As crawlers like Google Bots also go through other related pages on websites, companies build sitemaps for better availability and navigation.

9. What is Indexing?

Ans. Indexing starts when the crawling procedure gets over during a search. Google uses crawling to gather pages relevant to the search queries, and creates index that includes specific words, or search terms and their locations.

Search engines answer queries of the users by looking up to the index and showing the most suitable pages.

10. What is SERP?
Ans. Search Engine Result Page or SERP refers to the page that is showed when a specific search query is entered over the search engine. Apart from showing a list of results, SERP might also contain advertisements.

11. What is organic result?
Ans. Organic result in SEO denotes to the listing of the web pages that are most appropriate to the search query entered by the user. It is also referred to as “free” or “natural” result. Receiving a higher ranking in the organic result over the search engines is the very purpose of SEO.

12. What are paid results?
Ans.
Paid results in SEO mean the exact reverse of organic results. It usually denotes to advertisements that are displayed above the organic results.

Some website owners make payments to Google to display their websites for certain search terms or keywords. Paid results highlight when some user enters a search query with those keywords.

13. What is “Google Suggest” or “Autocomplete”?
Ans. Google Suggest is a part of the auto-complete task of Google search engine. When any user enters a word or some letters over the search bar, Google shows several associated terms to him/her in a drop down menu. Such suggestions are a collection of the most commonly search terms over the Google search engine.




14. What is On Page SEO?
Ans. On page SEO refers to all the actions performed inside the websites to get higher ranking and more relevant traffic from the search engines.

On page SEO is related to the optimization of the content as well as the HTML source code of any web page. Some of its aspects contain Meta tags, title tags, Meta description and heading tags.

15. What is Off Page SEO?
Ans. Off page SEO relates to the other aspects that effect the search ranking of websites on the Search Engine Result Page.

It refers to the promotional activities, such as content marketing, social media and link building performed outside the boundaries of any web page to increase its search ranking.

16. What is keyword?
Ans. Keyword means any word serving as a key. Keyword in SEO refers to the key phrases and words contained in the web content which helps the users to find the specific website by entering appropriate search queries over the search engines.

17. What is long tail keyword?
Ans. Long tail keywords are phrases having over 4+ words that make search results extremely specific.



These long phrases are used by clever SEO experts when they attempt to draw quality traffic to their websites rather than having random traffic, and enhance their lead conversion rates.
Also, long tail keywords are easy to rank as compare to single word keyword.

18. What are LSI keywords?
Ans. LSI keywords or Latent Semantic Indexing are semantically related with the main keyword that users enter over the search engines.

How to find LSI keywords?

Let’s say, you are writing about On Page SEO. Now, search for your keyword (On page SEO) in Google and scroll down to the “Searches Related to…” area at the bottom of the page:
With the use of LSI keywords that are linked with the main keywords in terms of relevancy search engines can identify the semantic structure of the keywords and extract the unseen meaning of the text to bring the most suitable results on SERPs.



19. What are Heading tags?
Ans. In SEO, heading or header tags are used to separate the heading and sub-heading of any content from the rest of the web page. There are 6 heading tags used in SEO in a top down hierarchy.

Ranging from h1 to h6, header tags bring coherence in content along with relevancy and keyword consistency in the search results showed on SERPs.

20. What is Canonical URL?
Ans. Canonical URLs relate to the concept of selecting the best URL for the web pages that the visitors want to see. Also, known as canonical tags, these URLs support in content syndication when multiple versions of a same page become obtainable over the Internet. Thus, it is used to resolve problems related to content duplication.

For example, most individuals would consider these the same URLs:
www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp
But technically all of these URLs are dissimilar.

21. What is Page Title?
Ans. A page title, or title tag, is the main text that describes a web page. It is the second-most significant on-page SEO element (behind your main body content), is the easiest SEO section to edit and appears in three key places.



22. What is the definition of URL?
Ans. Uniform Resource Locator or URL acts as a generic term used to specify all types of web addresses found on the web.

URLs deliver users with ways to identify and locate resources and documents on the web. URLs hold internet protocols, IP address of the host and the domain name along with other information.

23. What is SEO friendly URL?
Ans. SEO friendly URLs are used to optimize the structure and word usage in URLs so that the procedure of indexing a website by search engines become better.

SEO techniques, such as putting keywords and having right length and file structure in the URLs, help in improving website ranking and improving website navigation.

Search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) and users might have problems with complicated URLs. Clean and simple URL supports users and search engines to understand a page topic easily.

Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that the first 3-5 words in a URL are given more weight.

So try to make your URLs small and simple. And always include your target keyword in your URL.

24. What are meta descriptions?
Ans. Meta descriptions are also called HTML attributes which must provide an exact description of any web page content. These descriptions act as preview snippets of the web pages over the SERP page.



Meta descriptions, which must ideally be within 150 characters, enhance the promotional value of the web pages, and can gain greater user click-through, if performed properly.

25. What are backlinks?
Ans. Backlinks are also called incoming links that assist users to shift from one web page to the other web pages. These links play a vital part in SEO.

When Google search engine views many quality backlinks to a page, it considers the page to be more relevant to the search query, which helps in its indexing procedure and improves its organic ranking on SERPs.

26. What is a Do-Follow link?
Ans. A Do-Follow Link, as the name suggests, lets Google link calculator called PageRank to count all the inbound links from other web pages and websites as link points.
The higher the link juice or link points are, the greater would be the search ranking of that web page, as these links make the web page appear very relevant and common to the Google search engines.

27. What is a No-Follow link?
Ans. A No-Follow link is just the opposite of a Do-Follow link as such the link attributes do not let the Google bots to follow them. These links cannot be followed by robots; only humans can do it.

No-follow link attributes are structured in the following way:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link text</a>

28. What is internal linking?
Ans. Internal Linking is a procedure of providing hyperlinks on the web pages that connect to the same domain. It is another way of directing the visitors from one web page to another of the similar website.

They assist search engine spiders to crawl and index all the inner pages of a website/blog easily and such links help in building information hierarchy while pushing up the link juice level in any given website and allowing the visitors to navigate the website pages correctly.

29. What are incoming links?
Ans. Inbound Links, also known as incoming links or backlinks, refer to the hyperlinks existing on a third-party web page that directs users to your web page only.

Inbound links can be based on both text and graphics. Nevertheless, textual inbound links are more valuable in drawing greater traffic and improving the PageRank level of any webpage.

30. What is an outgoing link?
Ans. An outbound link is a hyperlink that points at a targeted or external domain and is different from the links present on the Source domain. For example, if you provide links of other third-party web pages on your website, those would be external links to your site.

Outbound links bear great importance in SEO as they provide your web pages with more excellence and value for the search engine ranking. Google search engine counts outbound links as third-party votes which enhance the ranking of your web page.

31. Why are backlinks important in SEO?
Ans. From the perspective of SEO, there is a difference among backlinks and quality backlinks.

For Google search, random backlinks do not offer any assistance. Google assesses the quality of the backlinks existing on a webpage with the relevancy found in the content of both the web pages.

The higher is the relevance between the unique content and backlink content, the greater becomes the quality of the backlinks.

Quality backlinks bring more referral traffic to a website/blog, and most significantly will improve the ranking of a webpage.

32. What are the most important Google ranking factors?
Ans. According to Andrey Lipattsev, the Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, the top three ranking aspects affecting the search engine algorithm of Google are:
#1 Content
#2 Backlinks
#3 Rank Brain


33. What is robots.txt?
Ans.
Robots.txt is one technique of telling the Search Engine Bots about the web pages on your website which you do not want them to visit.


Robots.txt is valuable for preventing the indexation of the parts of any online content that website owners do not want to show.

IF you want to block all search engine robots from crawling your website, just put the follow code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /


IF you want to block Google from crawling your website, just put the follow code:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /


It is significant to decide the location of Robots.txt very sensibly, or else errors might occur while displaying the website.

34. What is HTML Sitemap?
Ans. An HTML sitemap comprises of one solo HTML page that bears the links of all the web pages of any specific website. This sitemap holds the foundation of all web pages of any website.

HTML sitemap contains all formatted text files and linking tags of any website. It is particularly valuable when you have a large website with multiple web pages, because it helps you to enhance the navigation of your website by listing all the web pages in one place in a user-friendly way.

35. What is XML Sitemap?
Ans. XML or Extensible Markup Language is mainly created to facilitate the functionality of the search engines.



A good XML sitemap informs the search engines about the number of pages present on a specific website, the frequency of their updates and the time of the last modifications performed on them, which supports in proper indexing of the website by the search engines.

36. How can I see what pages are indexed in Google?
Ans. There are 2 ways to see if the webpages of any specific website are indexed by Google.

1) One can check the Google Index Status of any specific website via Google Webmaster tools. After adding the website on the dashboard and verifying the ownership, clicking on the tab “Index status” would display the numbers of pages indexed by Google.



2) One can also do a manual search on Google by typing on Google search bar site:domainname.com, and the number of pages indexed would display on the SERP.




37. What are doorway pages?
Ans. Doorway Pages, also known as gateway pages, portal pages or entry pages, refer to web pages or websites that are developed for higher ranking when specific search queries are entered.

Such pages give method to multiple web pages on the SERP which lead users to the same web destination. These can also funnel the users to intermediate pages that does not hold as much standing as the final webpage. 2 common forms of doorway pages are cloaking and redirecting pages.

38. What is anchor text?
Ans. Anchor text indicates to a visible hyperlinked text that can be clicked through. Such hyperlinked texts link to dissimilar documents or locations accessible on the web.

These texts are often underlined and blue in color, but different colors may be given with the changes in the HTML code.

Anchor text supports users to connect to diverse data that are relevant to the resource page or content. Anchor texts can be of different kinds such as keyword rich anchor, generic anchors, branded anchors, image anchors etc.

SEO best practices dictate that anchor text must be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text.



39. What is Image Alt Text?
Ans. Google Bots cannot process images on the web. So, it makes use of the alt features to understand what an image is all about.

The Image Alt text is usually considered as an alternate text for an image, which provides a textual substitute to the web crawlers to index the web page bearing the image.

Suitably phrased alt tags can increase the SEO ranking of your website’s images in Google images search results, as they tend to add more worth to the user experience.

40. What is Google Webmaster Tools/Google Search Console?
Ans. It was on 20th May, 2015 that Google changed the name of Google Webmaster tools to Google Search Console.



Google Search Console offers free web services to the web masters by enabling them to monitor and sustain the online existence of their specific websites.

Google Search Console supports the business owners, SEO experts, site administrators and web developers to see the crawl errors, crawl stats, backlinks and malware with a click of a button. .

41. What is 301 Redirect?
Ans. 301 redirect is measured as one of the most effective methods of performing redirects on any website. When a web address has been changed permanently, it is best to use 301 redirects which will redirect all the users to the fresh web address.

With this redirect, the search engine passes all the values related with the old website to the new website. Furthermore, 301 redirect also pushes all the link juice to the fresh web address that keeps the ranking of the website unaffected.

42. What is Google Analytics?
Ans.  Launched in 2005 by Google, Google Analytics is one of the most empowering analytical tool in SEO, which supports the web masters to track and display the traffic on their websites.

It is a freemium web service, which means that it provides sure basic services free of charge while the best services demand investment.

One of the benefits of using Google Analytics is that it can be combined with other Google products such as Public Data Explorer, Google AdWords etc.




43. What is Google PageRank?
Ans. Google PageRank was a calculative software which determined the relevancy of one web page based on the amount of quality backlinks it holds.

Note: Presently Google doesn’t use PageRank to rank a webpage. Google’s John Mueller said Google perhaps won’t update Toolbar PageRank in the future.

44. What is Domain Authority?
Ans.  Measured to be one of the most influential SEO factors, domain authority is a main performance metric developed by MOZ, which rates any website on a 1-100 scale.

The greater you’re DA, the more possible your website to have strong traffic and high ranking in Google.

You can check domain authority of any website in Open Site Explorer.
This metric efficiently predicts the search ranking of any website in future, based on the strength of the domain authority.

Domain authority is evaluated to check the reliability of any website. Lots of high quality and relevant backlinks support to increase Domain Authority.




45. What is Search Engine Submission?
Ans. Search engine submission refers to a specific activity of the web masters in which a website is straight submitted to the search engine so that its online recognition and visibility is improved.

In other words, it is one way of informing the search engines about the presence of any website, which is then indexed by the search engines and reflected on the SERP page.

This is also performed by the web developers and the SEO experts so that the search engines reflect the most current content of the website.

46. What is Directory Submission?
Ans. Directory submission in SEO relates to the listing of any web address or site with the relevant information over numerous web directories under a specific category.

Directory submission does the same function as phone directory and increases the fame of websites with greater online exposure. Directory submission can be both free of cost and paid.

Note: Over the last few years, directories have changed – they are no longer good for getting thousands of links to your site so you can game Google. Nowadays, directories are appreciated when used carefully.

47. What is Article submission?
Ans. Article submission is considered a part of Off Page SEO optimization. Article submission, which includes the presentation of articles to online article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleTrader etc. with accurate anchor text for link building, is done for the promotion of any website.

Even though it enjoyed wide popularity as one of the extremely effective SEO techniques, article directories lost its charm with Matt Cutts, Google’s webspam team head, issuing a notice against its usage in 2014.

48. What is Press Release submission?
Ans. Press release submission includes writing press releases and submitting them to effective and popular PR sites for building incoming links to any specific website.

Online press-releases remain in the database forever, which means that they might be used anytime by anyone in need. It also improves the online visibility of websites in the future.

49. What are Classified ads?
Ans. A classified ad is a form of advertising which is mainly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which might be sold or distributed free of charge.

Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, though display advertising is more widespread.

50. What is Forum Posting?
Ans. Forum posting is the act of engaging, interacting, and writing on a forum thread by leaving a simple response to the thread or to a particular post by a user on the same thread. Posting on popular forums is a powerful technique of engaging and interacting with new users, while driving prospective customers to your website or business.

Example: FileZilla Forums, WebmasterWorld…   

51. What is a Business directory?
Ans. A business directory is a website or printed listing of information which lists all businesses inside some category. Businesses can be categorized by business, location, activity, or size.
Business might be compiled either manually or via an automated online search software.

52. What is Social Bookmarking?
Ans. Social bookmarking is a way for folks to store, organize, search, and manage “bookmarks” of the web pages. Users can save these links to the web pages that they like or want to share, using a social bookmarking site to store these links.

These bookmarks are generally public, and can be viewed by other members of the site where they are stored.

53. What is Social Networking?
Ans. Social networking is the practice of expanding the number of one’s business and/or social contacts by making connections through persons, often via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.



54. What is RSS Feed?
Ans. RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering frequently changing web content. RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate data automatically. A standard XML file format ensures compatibility with numerous different machines/programs.

RSS feeds also benefit users who want to receive appropriate updates from their favorite websites or to aggregate data from many sites.

55. What is Guest posting?
Ans. Guest posting is the procedure of creating content and publishing it on another person’s website. Guest posting blogs let to show author bio (writer) at the top or bottom of a guest post.

Following is an example of guest posting Author bio:

Blogs are the most standard platform for guest posting. This is a great technique to build an online reputation, backlinks and for a company to get much required recognition.

56. What is Blog commenting?
Ans. Blog commenting is a common online marketing strategy of leaving thoughtful comments on a blog post, where an individual or a business must be able to gain online presence.

Blog comments can establish an individual or a business as a thought leader in a particular industry, which might lead to new business chances and also a link building tactic, since the comment links back to the page that was submitted in the “Website” field.

57. What is Google Algorithm?
Ans. pertinent to the queries made.

Google’s algorithm does the work for you by searching out Web pages that comprise the keywords you used to search, then assigning a rank to each page based on numerous factors, including how numerous times the keywords appear on the page, quality of the page etc.

Google uses many other criteria that change periodically to deliver more relevant results.

58. What is Google Panda?
Ans. Google Panda was a change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change meant to lower the rank of “low-quality sites” or “thin sites”, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Google Panda was created to target sites that publish low quality content and penalize them if possible.

59. What is Google Penguin?
Ans. Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better identify and regulate websites that were measured spammy or overly-optimized.

The Penguin targeted sites that manifested keyword stuffing as well as those that practiced black-hat SEO. On the other hand, this algorithm rewarded the sites that used white-hat SEO and that were of high quality in a generic sense.

60. What is Google Hummingbird?
Ans. Google Hummingbird is a search algorithm used by Google from August 30, 2013. It was intended to embody the special characteristics of speed and accuracy.
One of the significant advantages of Hummingbird is that Google was capable to refresh not just their index but their search engine as well. However, they also retained significant elements such as the search algorithms they previously created.

61. What is Mobilegeddon?
Ans. Mobilegeddon is a name given by webmasters and web-developers to Google’s algorithm update of April 21, 2015.

The key effect of this update is to give importance to the web sites that display well on smartphones and other mobile devices.

Single pages can be tested for “mobile-friendliness” using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google.

62. What is HTTPS/SSL Update?
Ans. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is the protocol for secure communication on the World Wide Web. It stops eavesdroppers from seeing information that visitors send or receive over the Internet.

HTTPS/SSL is essential for SEO.
Why?
Because, Google is giving secure sites a ranking boost (slight).

63. What is Google Pigeon Update?
Ans. Google Pigeon is the code name given to one of Google’s local search algorithm updates released on July 24, 2014.

It intended to increase the ranking of local listing in a search which also affects the search results shown in Google Maps along with the consistent Google search results.

64. What is Google Penalty?
Ans. A Google Penalty is the negative result on a website’s search rankings based on the updates to Google’s search algorithms and/or manual review.

It can be an unlucky malfunction of an algorithm update or an intentional penalization for numerous black-hat SEO techniques.

65. What are Google Sitelinks?
Ans. Google Sitelinks are the sub-listings that will sometimes display under the first listing on the first page of Google search results.

These are hyperlinks to website sub-pages that appear under specific Google listings to help users navigate the site.

These are automatically added by Google using its algorithms. Page content, Site structure, Internal links and user behavior might be responsible for these.

66. What is Google Knowledge Graph?
Ans. The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to improve its search engine’s results with semantic-search information gathered from a wide diversity of sources.
Google Knowledge Graph ensures a visually appealing and intuitive graphical presentation of info related to queries.



It organizes data for presentation around what it calls entities, which include persons, places, organizations, sports teams, works of art, movies, etc.

67. What is Google My Business?

Ans. Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses, brands, artists, and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can both relief customers find you and tell them the story of your business.

In addition to providing the details for your Local Search listing, the Google My Business page connects you to your Google+ Page, Google Analytics, and Adwords Express.

Its uses includes:

Updating business information
Adding photos of your business
Connecting straight with customers
Monitoring and responding to Google reviews
Managing information

68. Popular SEO Blogs to follow?
Ans. Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, Content Marketing Institute, Moz, KISSmetrics, HubSpot etc.

69. What is AMP
Ans. AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source coding standard for publishers to be capable to load their sites quickly on mobile since mobile responsiveness might be unimpressive and slow compared to the desktop resources which are heavy and plenty.

70. Name of a few Popular SEO Tools
Ans. The names of a few SEO tools are Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Buzzsumo, Bing Webmaster Tools, SEMRush, Check My Links etc.

71. What is cloaking?
Ans. Cloaking is a method used to deliver the content on a Web page to a search engine in a way that is different to what the user was searching for.

The purpose of cloaking is to boost a website’s search engine rank on certain keywords. Cloaking takes a user to the other sites than what he or she expects by disguising those sites’ real content.

72. What is keyword density?
Ans. Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page. Keyword density can be used as a for defining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. The percentage is always in comparison to the total number of words on the web-page.

73. What is keyword frequency?
Ans. Keyword frequency is the number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a single Web page.

74. What is Google sandbox?
Ans. Google Sandbox is a filter placed on fresh websites as a result of which, a site does not receive good rankings for its most important keywords or phrases. Even with good content, a site is might still significantly affected by the Sandbox effect.

A site is sandboxed when it is new and does not rank for the keyword phrases that are not very competitive in Google.

75. What is Disavow tool?


Ans. Google’s link disavowal tool lets publishers to inform Google that they don’t want certain links from external sites to be measured as part of Google’s system of counting links to rank websites.
So, you can ask Google to remove certain URLs or domains as a ranking factor in the indexing of your site by creating a .txt file with a list of these domains or URLs and sending it to Google.

76. What is Google Fetch?
Ans. Fetch is a Google tool which allows you to test how Google renders a URL on your site. You can use Google Fetch to see whether Googlebot can access a page on your site, how it renders the page, and whether any page resources are blocked to Googlebot.



This tool can be efficiently used for the following purposes:
Troubleshooting webpages to increase the performance in SEO.
Submitting pages for indexing whenever the content is changed knowingly.
Finding out the pages affected by any malware attack.

77. How do you separate words in URL?
Ans. You should use hyphens to separate words in URL.

Here is an example:



78. What is Google’s Rich Answer Box?
Ans. A rich answer is any attempt by Google to answer the searcher’s query in search results in a way not requiring a click through to a website.



Rich answers come in several forms which can be recipes, sports scores, stock graphs, calculators, sliders, text-based answers, numbered step by-step directions, maps, and much more.
The forms of rich answers:
Answers provided by Google
Basic Snippets
Featured Snippets

79. What is ccTLD?
Ans. Its country code top-level domains.

80. What is Black Hat SEO?
Ans. It is the use of violent SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on the search engines and typically do not obey search engines guidelines.

81. Name a few Black Hat SEO techniques?
Ans. A few black hat SEO techniques are:
Link Farming
Hidden text
Gateway or Doorway pages
Cloaking
Keyword Stuffing

82. What is Duplicate content?
Ans. Duplicate content, as the name suggests, usually refers to the substantial parts of content inside or across domains that are either identical or significantly similar.

83. What is CTR and how to boost it?
Ans. The click through rate is measured by dividing the number of times a link appears on a search engine results page by the number of times it is truly clicked on by a visitor.

A high organic CTR in Google or any search engine means you get good traffic.

The methods to boost CTR are:
Write Well Headline and make it interesting
Write exceptional Meta description
Put Your Main Keyword in Your Display URL

84. What is bounce rate?
Ans. Bounce rate is the number of visitors which a site receives only for them to leave the site after viewing only one page.



It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave or “bounce” rather than continuing on to view the other pages within the same site.

85. What is Pogo-Sticking?
Ans. Pogo-sticking is defined as going back and forth from a search engine results page (SERP) to an individual search result destination site.



This means that when the searcher clicks on a link on a SERP, sees that it’s not what he/she is looking for, immediately leaves by hitting the back button.

Google doesn’t like pogo-sticking at all. The cause why is very obvious: when users repeatedly visit your page, but don’t stick around to read what you’ve written, it becomes apparent that the page doesn’t really please the users.

86. Differences between bounce rate and pogo sticking?
Ans. The difference between bounce rate and pogo sticking is:

Bounce rate: A high bounce rate is not always bad, as it can mean that while the visitor didn’t travel deeper into a site, he spent some time on the page and got an answer to his question. He might have saved the URL or might come back later, but since he didn’t spend more time reading the content, the activity is measured a bounce.

Pogo sticking: Pogo sticking happens when a user performs a search, clicks on a result, very rapidly clicks back to the search result page, and clicks on a different result. This type of behavior is a direct result of instant dissatisfaction in the search result. This always has a negative aspect to it.

87. What is Alexa Rank in SEO?
Ans. Alexa.com is a website that ranks websites based on traffic, so in terms of SEO, moving up or down the ranks of Alexa is indicative of how effective your SEO campaign has been.



The rank is calculated using a combination of the estimated average regular unique visitors to the site and the estimated number of page views on the site over the past three months. The site with the highest combination of unique visitors and page views is ranked as #1.

88. What is goal in Google analytics?
Ans. Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. The goal is to make sure that users can review online campaigns by tracking page quality and conversions basically to increase lead generation on their websites.

According to Google: Goals measure how well your site or app accomplishes your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion that contributes to the achievement of your business.

89. What is funnel in Google analytics?
Ans. A funnel is useful when you are looking to track the pages your visitors land on as well as the path that visitors use to land into the page. These are defined as funnels, as you’re setting up a pathway to track if the visitors walked the same pathway.

Funnels will restrict the number of completed goals to only those who follow through the whole pathway.

90. What is referral traffic?
Ans. Referral traffic is Google’s way of reporting visits that came to your site from resources outside of its search engine.

For example, when somebody clicks on a hyperlink to go to a new page on a different website, Google Analytics tracks the click as a referral visit to the second site.`

91: What is Google trends?
Ans. Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc. that displays how often a particular search-term is entered or used to search, relative to the total search-volume across numerous regions and languages in the world.

The Google Trends tool uses real-time search data to assist you gauge consumer search behaviors over time.



Most key of all, Google Trends shows you high-volume trending search terms in your place.

92: What is content marketing?
Ans. Content marketing is a method focused on creating and distributing valuable and meaningful content to attract and retain a fixed audience and, eventually, to drive profitable customer actions.
   
93: What are crawl stats?
Ans. The Crawl Stats report delivers information on Googlebot’s activity on your site for the last 90 days. These stats take into account all the content kinds that are downloaded by Google such as CSS, JavaScript, and Flash.



Google’s ability to fetch and crawl web pages is incredibly efficient and the crawl stats provides insights for the same with whole data on the statistics.

94. What is Web Hosting?
Ans. Web hosting refers to any service providing space for websites over the Internet. Web host allows your website to be viewed by others through modem or network by making space over its server.


There are different types of web hosting services obtainable today which are used as per the needs and requirements of the web developers.

95. What is SEO friendly URL?
Ans. SEO friendly URLs are used to optimize the structure and word usage in URLs so that the procedure of indexing a website by search engines become better.


SEO methods, such as putting keywords and having proper length and file structure in the URLs, help in improving website ranking and improving website navigation.


Search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) and users might have problems with complicated URLs. Clean and simple URL helps users and search engines to understand a page topic simply.
Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that the first 3-5 words in a URL are given more weight.
So try to make your URLs short and simple. And always contain your target keyword in your URL.

96. What are 404 errors?
Ans. 404 errors are considered one of the most potential impediments in the mode to successful SEO. When a specific URL is renamed or becomes non-existent, any links linking to that URL would result in 404 errors.



Interesting thing is, Google does not penalize any website for 404 errors. Nevertheless, if the search engines constantly fail to crawl the internal links of any website, the search ranking of that website is very probable to drop with low traffic.

97. What is contextual backlink?
Ans. Contextual backlinks are links to external websites that are placed inside the main or primary content of a web page.



Here is an example of a contextual backlink:

Contextual backlinks are much more powerful than any other backlinks. Also, this type of backlinks are extremely hard to get.

98. What is the meaning of competitive analysis?
Ans. A competitive analysis is a major part of your company marketing plan. This analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the present and potential competitors.


This analysis offers both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify chances and threats.

99. What is Google Dance?
Ans. Google Dance is an outdated slang term used to define the time period when Google rebuilds its rankings, and as a result of this rebuilding, the rankings order of Websites on Google’s SERP might fluctuate repeatedly.


The results fluctuate widely within a 3 to 5 days period. Googlebot revisits each website, figures out how many sites link to it, and how numerous it links out to, and how appreciated these links are.

100. Definition of SEO Audit?
Ans. An SEO Audit is a health check for your website which involves searching at the technical infrastructure of your website to optimize Search Engine visibility, usability and conversion.
You can identify difficult areas that need improvement to create an action plan while a good SEO audit keeps your website up-to-date with the latest developments in search marketing.