Top 11 SEO Interview Questions to Ask Candidates

We’ve all been there. 

You have a candidate that looks promising on paper, but then the interview doesn’t go as well as planned.

Or worse… You hire them to handle your digital marketing, only to find out they’re barely knowledgeable about the topic past what anyone else can just Google.

As the need for digital marketing experts becomes more mainstream, you might be tempted to hire someone in-house to handle these types of tasks.

And that’s why we’ve put together this excellent list to help you gauge whether a candidate knows their search engine optimization (SEO) as well as they claim they do.

Check out these 11 SEO interview questions:

General Questions for Beginners

These four questions are designed for level one candidates, which are those with right around a year of SEO experience.

Each one is designed to determine their basic understanding of the process and how they personally approach key elements, like keyword research or analytics tools.

1. What Makes a Website Optimized for Search Engines?

With this answer, quality candidates should mention both on-page and off-page elements, like using keywords and updating meta descriptions.

Furthermore, they should go into a bit of why it is important and the most vital elements they feel should be included when optimizing a new page.

If they seem to misunderstand the question, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t know the answer. 

This one is purposely meant to be incredibly simple and obvious, making it possible for the candidate to overthink what you’re looking for in an answer.

However, use it as a jumping-off point to probe deeper into their understanding of SEO.

2. How Did You Learn SEO and What About It Excites You?

This is more of a personal aspect question with no right or wrong answer. 

Let the candidate talk about why they learned SEO in the first place and the different parts that make it their favorite part of digital marketing to do.

Right away, you should be able to tell whether they really enjoy the process or if they’re just looking for any foot in the door they can get.

On the surface, SEO tasks can be pretty dry for those who don’t find joy in the process. And the candidate’s answer will easily tell you which category they fall into.

3. Explain Your Method for Approaching Keyword Research?

With this SEO interview question, more details are better. 

A candidate should never just say they find keywords with a high search volume and then write content around those words.

Instead, they should talk about elements like user intent, competitor analysis, positive keywords, negative keywords, and more.

If they successfully answer this question with technical details, it is safe to say they are likely a moderate-level candidate. 

However, even simplistic answers with specifics can be fine for lower-level candidates.

4. What Tools Have You Used to Track and Analyze SEO Data?

For this question, there’s also no right or wrong answer. 

Generally, you’ll want to see if the candidate has any familiarity with popular software platforms, like Moz or Google Analytics.

Those who are truly excited about this job position should even be able to rattle off a few of their favorites and why those programs are so useful.

This is a good time for you to take notes, as well. 

Sometimes, candidates have great tips on the latest and greatest tools that your business can use for future digital growth.

SEO Interview Questions to Ask Moderate-Level Candidates

Moderate-level candidates are those that have two to five years of direct experience with search engine optimization. 

They’re also highly skilled with pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and can likely list clients they’ve worked with in the past.

At this career point, they should be able to explain both on-page and off-page optimization techniques clearly and concisely.

As an interviewer, don’t be afraid to dig into more technical aspects or ask to have them explain their definition of certain terms to demonstrate their knowledge.

5. Why is Link Building Important for SEO?

The basic answer to this is that Google favors websites that are popular and it determines popularity by the number of other pages linking to it.

Any answer that elaborates on this fact is a good enough answer. 

Those with strong SEO skills should be able to further discuss the best ways for making this happen and why bad backlinks — i.e. those from spammy sources — can cause potential ranking penalties.

6. How Do You Approach Recommending Changes?

The basic job of any SEO expert is to take their knowledge of industry best practices, analyze the website in question, and then come up with a list of recommended changes. 

In some cases, they’ll be applying these alterations themselves, but not always.

Candidates should be able to clearly articulate why changes need to be made while fully communicating the benefits of doing so.

Also, try to prod a little to see what they would do in a situation where their recommendations were not adopted or ignored. 

This could spark an interesting view on how well they work as a team or do when their ideas are not immediately accepted.

7. What Are Your Thoughts on Black Hat SEO?

As a brand, your website should avoid black hat practices at all costs. 

After all, these are the sneaky little things that some SEOs try to use to get a jump on the competition, but they’re super risky.

Your candidate should state this and fully explain that these elements are to be avoided, no matter what. 

You can also ask them to list examples of which black hat techniques are the worst or any time they’ve seen them used with poor results.

8. How Often Should You Post Content for Better SERP Rankings?

This is a bit of a trick question, as there’s no real timeframe for how often you need to post. 

But there’s a little more to it than that, and the way a candidate answers will give you an understanding of their individual skill level.

Quality candidates will be able to explain that consistency is key. And that the more posts you have up, the easier it is to rank for multiple keywords.

Again, this is a question that you need to feel out to see their response. The more detailed or logical, the better their understanding of the process.

What to Ask SEO Experts and/or Agencies

If you’re looking to hire an SEO expert or an agency, you’ll want to include these questions in your interview process. 

They feature a high level of technical aspects that go far beyond what a novice digital marketer would know.

In addition, they ask the candidate to explain basic strategy and describe how they would handle certain situations. 

The more detailed they can get in their response, the better their understanding of how SEO works.

9. How Would You Catch Up to the Competition If You Were Far Behind on Creating Content?

This is another subjective answer that will depend on the candidate’s personal experience and how they solve issues.

In general, they should include things like competitor analysis to see what the other company has posted, creating content with specific sets of keywords to try to improve rankings, and even optimizing old content to rank for new search terms.

10. Explain the Crawler Trap Problem and Three Ways You Can Fix It

Search engines only have a limited number of pages to crawl on a website within a given period of time. 

Referred to as a crawl budget, it can be easy for a bot to get stuck on pages that have no bearing to your search ranking, such as technical ones or simple contact pages.

A good answer from a candidate should explain this problem clearly and talk about ways to mitigate it, like using rel=no_follow tags and using a robots.txt file.

11. What’s the Easiest Way to Prevent Search Engines from Crawling Specific Pages on a Website?

The answer you’re looking for is a robots.txt file. 

However, there are multiple ways to do this and the question itself really builds off the answer from the previous one in this list.

The real reason you would use this SEO interview question is to check the technical understanding of a potential candidate. 

The more detailed they can be, the easier it is to see if they know their stuff.

Wrap Up: Ready to do these SEO Interview Questions?

Hiring an SEO expert to improve your website rankings is an easy way to increase organic traffic and outperform the competition. 

However, it is vital that you hire the right person with the ideal skillet. 

Using these eleven questions, you should be able to gauge whether the individual or agency you’re looking to hire is a good fit for the job.

But knowing your website’s current search engine optimization maturity level is important, too. 

Check out our SEO Maturity Assessment to see where you’re currently at!