Most 77 SEO questions that people ask

September 22, 2022 Zaher Zaidan

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SEO questions invade the internet every day. This is because SEO has the biggest influence on ranking and bringing free organic traffic to our websites.

Beginners, as well as experts, need to learn SEO daily for its great impact first, and secondly to meet search engines’ algorithm requirements that are updated every now and then.

Based on a survey I did on social media, I have selected the most frequently asked 77 SEO questions and acronyms by people.

What is a search engine?

It may seem easy to most of you to answer this question, but it is one of the first SEO questions that beginners start with.

A search engine is a software that people type in their queries into to get answers. It takes questions and then gives answers.

This process is done within a glimpse. The questioner types his question, then the software starts searching for the nearest and best answers to list them in front of the reader.

Google is the most popular search engine on earth.

What is SEO?

“SEO” is the process of optimizing your website, URL, page, or post in order to rank it in search engines.

It consists of three major kinds:

You may like to read “The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO.”

What are the SERPs?

SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Pages.

When you type your query into a search engine, like Google, for instance, you get your results displayed to you on hundreds of pages.

These pages are called the SERPs.

All people compete to rank their website pages on the first page of the SERPs by writing great content and following good SEO practices.

Also read: How to write 1500 words in 5 minutes.

Others pay Google to put their posts on the front page. This is called the PPC method.

So, the SERPs provide two types of search results.

Organic
PPC

Name other search engines than Google.

Bing, Yahoo, Yandex (Russian-Dutch), DuckDuckGo, and Baidu (Chinese) are the most popular after Google.

YouTube is also a search engine, but it specializes in video search only.

There are many other search engines other than the ones mentioned above, but they are less popular.

Why is SEO important?

This is absolutely one of the most frequently asked SEO questions by bloggers.

If your posts are displayed on the second page of the SERPs or beyond, then they’re unlikely to be visible.

Also read: 9 reasons why you are not getting traffic

We all compete to get our posts on page one in order to get clicks and hence conversions. This cannot be done without having a well-optimized website and optimized content, besides other SEO-related practices.

SEO plays a huge role compared to the “Pay-Per-Click” method.

This is because it brings you organic traffic that will always come even if you stop posting; whereas, with PPC, your post will no longer be displayed once you stop your ad campaign.

When talking about visibility and free traffic, SEO is the most important factor.

Learn how to get free traffic from Quora

What are the most important ranking factors?

accessible and secure website.
page speed
unique content
Mobile usability
user experience
linking
Domain authority

What is meant by “organic traffic”?

SEO questions never miss this one.

Organic traffic is the free traffic that you get from search engines.

Whenever someone clicks on your posts that appear in the SERPs, it is counted as organic traffic.

This kind of traffic is what you need to see in your business.

What is PPC?

Pay Per Click.

It is a method used to pay search engines to put your website or a post at the top of the SERPs.

Search engines display your post on top of organic results as an Ad. Whenever someone clicks on it, you pay for this click from the budget deposited in your advertisement campaign.

What is Google sandbox?

Think of it as a probation period that Google needs before allowing your posts to rank.

Google has never declared that the sandbox effect is one of its algorithms, but many SEO experts said they went through this period when they were beginners.

So, Google uses this filter to let new websites gain some authority before it allows ranking.

As a beginner, it’s a sign that you are under the sandbox effect if you rank on other search engines but not on Google. Do your homework, and give it some time.

The sandbox effect may last from weeks to months.

What is Google Autocomplete?

How many times have you asked yourself how Google knows what I am going to type?

Don’t be shy. I’ve asked this a lot before.

Autocomplete is a function in search engines that helps you search faster.

When you type something in Google, the autocomplete function displays a list of options in front of you based on your search history and popular searches.

What is Googlebot?

It is the bot assigned by Google to crawl your pages before indexing.

The Google bot follows your links to collect data about the type of your content and many other aspects.

You need to keep this inspector satisfied with what you post.

What are DA and PA?

DA means Domain Authority.

It is a metric developed by MOZ to measure websites. It has a scale from 1 to 100.

The more DA your website has, the higher the chances of ranking.

Websites above 60 are considered excellent, from 50 to 60 are considered good, from 40 to 50 are average, and from 30 to below are not good.

PA means page authority. It also has a scale from 1 to 100. It specializes in measuring a specific page based on links, backlinks, and social shares.

Both DA and PA scores give you an idea about how likely you are going to rank.

What does www stand for?

World-Wide-Web

It refers to all the websites that can be accessed on computers or other devices.

They are pages full of information in different formats, like text, images, and others.

What is a domain?

Computers know one language; numbers.

People won’t remember your address if it is 198.11.22.33. Instead, the domain name is the alternative.

So, if you want to reach my website, you don’t have to type 121.22.33.44, you only have to type my domain name “zeeanswers” followed by the TLD.

Get a free domain and SSL

What is a TLD?

It stands for Top-Level Domain.

It is the last part of the internet address like “.com”, “.org”, “.net” etc.

What is a ccTLD?

ccTLD is a country code top-level domain. Each country has its own domain extension.

It is used for a country, state, or territory inside a country.

The ccTLD of Canada is “.ca”, Britain “.uk” etc.

What does “URL” stand for?

“URL” stands for Uniform Resource Locator.

People, by mistake, use the domain name and URL interchangeably. They confuse them.

A domain name is part of the URL.

A URL consists of two main components:

Protocol identifier: For the URL https://mywebsite.com, the protocol identifier is HTTPS

Resource name: For the URL https://mywebsite.com, the resource name is example.com

A URL, domain name, and other components create a complete web address.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is the place where you put your website in order for it to be delivered to users.

Web hosting companies have giant servers to save your data and send it to users whenever they type your domain name.

What is White Hat SEO?

White-hat SEO is the legit SEO process we apply that meets the requirements of search engines and where no spammy techniques are applied.

What is Black Hat SEO?

All beginners who seek fast revenue ask this SEO question.

The name talks about itself.

“Black-hat methods” are the methods and techniques adopted to rank highly on the SERPs but go against the rules and requirements of search engines.

They differ from buying traffic, buying links, cloaking, and other cheating methods.

Keep in mind that at any time of using these methods, a penalty is waiting for you.

What is a PBN?

“PBN” stands for Private Blog Network.

This network is designed to send links in large numbers to your site in order to get higher authority.

These are expired or auctioned domains that have many visitors and are purchased for the purpose of linking to the main website.

People buy these networks, make some changes, add new content, and stuff them with links that lead to their original website.

Some others use them to sell backlinks to beginners.

The good news doesn’t last forever. The bad news is that this is considered a black hat method, and it is severely penalized by search engines once they discover it.

The next time someone offers you a backlink, check his website before getting into trouble.

What are all the popular SEO tools available on the market?

Google Console
SEMrush
Ahrefs
MOZ
Ubersuggest
SpyFu

What is a do-follow link?

A do-follow link is a link that you include in your pages to other websites, and it tells search engines to point back to your website.

If you link to a high-authority website that allows do-follow links, the search engines will follow the link, link back to you, and pass the link juice from that site to yours.

This has a significant impact on SEO and hence ranking.

Therefore, when you want to link to other websites, make sure they are high-authority ones.

What is a no-follow link?

However, there are links that you can insert without having them point back at you. They’re referred to as no follow links. They don’t assist with higher positioning in SERPs or increase PageRank.

Many businesses use no-follow links in order not to pass their link juice to others since everyone competes with everyone.

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your website pages and posts with all their on-page appearance.

This includes optimizing your URL, headings, content, keywords, meta tags, keyphrase distribution and density, internal and outbound links, text length, and readability optimization.

Most of the SEO questions in my survey asked about on-page optimization. This shows how important it is, and why it is the second SEO step after keyword research.

The ultimate guide to on-page SEO

What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing your content from outside of your website.

This includes external linking, backlinks, guest posting, and social media exposure.

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website to meet the technical requirements of the search engines in order to rank higher in the SERPs.

Many people fail to distinguish between on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO, but they all lead to the same result, which is ranking in the SERPs.

Even with valuable content, you need to be visible for search engine crawlers to crawl and index your site; otherwise, everything you’re doing is useless.

Crawling, indexing, and fixing technical issues like duplicate pages, broken links, thin content, and others are the main issues of technical SEO.

Learn more about technical SEO

What is keyword frequency?

The frequency of a certain keyword phrase on a web page is measured by its appearance, i.e., how often this keyword appears in a post.

It’s important to avoid keyword stuffing when optimizing a web page for search engines.

You can use the Yoast plugin in WordPress to help you distribute your keywords equally between paragraphs.

What is “Keyword Difficulty”?

When you use an SEO tool to find the best keyword to rank, you’ll see a metric for keyword difficulty.

The results are based on how many people are competing for this keyword, and how popular it is.

The more number means that the big whales are there on the top of the list and you should avoid using this keyword and search for similar, or long-tail ones.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is how much you use a keyword in a single post or page.

There’s no specific formula to know the exact number of keywords per number of words.

SEO plugins like Yoast or RankMath help in this. They tell you if you are using too many or fewer keywords.

Always make sure to avoid stuffing because Google hates it.

What is Keyword Proximity?

When two keywords are on a web page, Keyword Proximity displays how far apart they are.

What is Keyword Stuffing?

In order to rank possible keywords, a black-hat SEO technique called keyword stuffing raises the keyword density to an extremely high level.

Using keyword stuffing to trick search engines is not advised and should be avoided at all costs.

What is Keyword Stemming?

Keyword stemming refers to Google’s ability to understand the root word and its variations.

To use keyword stemming, you should make use of the keyword stem, and add suffixes and prefixes to it.

For instance, if you use the word “write” as a keyword, you should be able to use “writing, writable, written: and others as well.

Algorithms will understand that they come from the same stem.

It is advised to use synonyms rather than stemming because search engines are becoming cleverer to distinguish them and consider them the same as the original keywords.

What is Keyword Prominence?

It tells where your keyword is located in the post.

it is advised by Yoast to use it in the title, introduction, and conclusion, as well as to sprinkle it sometimes in the body.

What is a long-tail keyword?

Short keywords (one or two words) are very broad and are very difficult to rank. The competition is fierce there and beginners have no chance.

On the contrary, using long-tail keywords allows you to aim for more specific user intent.

Long-tail keywords consist of 4-5 words.

To make it clearer, if you type the word “Sony”, you’ll get more than 1.3 billion results, but if you use the long-tail keyword “Is Sony a good brand?”, you’ll get 125 million. This is an example of how to escape high competition and have higher chances for ranking, even if you’ll get less traffic.

What is the bounce rate in SEO?

When someone visits a page on your site and leaves without taking any action, like clicking on a link, this is considered a bounce.

A bounce rate is the percentage of visits with no further action and no viewing of other pages.

This is a way to know how valuable and user-friendly your pages are. The higher the bounce rate score, the worse your site is.

To avoid scoring high, write magnetic content, use lots of internal links, and finally enhance the user experience.

Learn how to use internal linking perfectly.

What is dwell time?

Dwell time is the time spent on a page after choosing it from the SERPs to the time you return to the results page.

It often happens to us when we click on a result to find that the page is loading slowly or not appealing to let us continue reading.

A good dwell time is between 2-4 minutes which is enough to have a good idea about the website and what to expect.

Learn how to increase your dwell time and decrease your bounce rate.

What are header tags?

The header tags are the headers on your page. They range from the biggest H1 to the smallest H6.

They are of great importance to splitting your paragraphs and holding your keywords wherever applicable.

H1 and H2 are most used, then whenever you need more subheadings for an idea, you start using H3 and above.

What are meta descriptions?

The meta description is a snippet of the text. It is that part (around 160 characters) that summarizes the text and gives the user a quick look at what they can expect to read in the post.

It appears below the title on the search engine results page.

SEMrush does not consider it as a ranking factor, and if you forget to write it, Google will automatically choose a piece of your text to implement instead. But Google wants you to write a meta description because you know your content better than they do. So, it is something you don’t want to miss.

Brian Dean of Backlinko has invented a formula for creating a meta description:

This is a [content overview]. Learn how to get [specific benefit] from this [content description].

What is a slug?

A URL slug is a piece of URL that is located at the end of the domain after the last backslash.

If you look at the URL of the post you are reading now, you can see that the slug is SEO questions.

This optimized slug has two important roles, one for SEO and the other for user experience.

As for SEO, having a slug that contains the target keyword is more beneficial to search engines than having a slug composed of a string of numbers and characters.

Furthermore, the slug is important to tell Google bots to crawl and index your post after giving them an indication of what your post is about.

To do this, make sure to go to your WordPress dashboard, then permalinks, and choose “post name”.

The slug also enriches the user experience since using an optimized one with words is more appealing and looks trustworthy.

What are internal links?

Internal links are the links you use inside a page or a post to refer to another page or post on your website.

Google crawls websites through links, and without them, it is hard for it to understand the type of content and what it is all about.

Internal linking plays a massive role in SEO.

It is of great importance to use internal linking wisely and without stuffing.

These links will keep users on your website as long as possible, increasing your dwell time and decreasing your bounce rate.

Learn how to wisely use internal linking.

What are outbound links?

Outbound or external links are links that go from your website to another website.

It is advised not to stuff your website with outbound links because you will pass the link juice to them.

That’s why you should always link to high-authority websites in order to tell Google what content you have and build a connection with other reputable websites. Who knows? They may link back to you and give you some valuable backlinks.

If you don’t want to pass link juice to smaller websites, you can use no-follow links.

What are inbound links?

Also known as backlinks, these are the links that other websites use to link to your website.

Google rates them as the most important ranking factors.

If you get backlinks from high-authority websites, it will give Google an indication that your website is authoritative and has high-quality content, and deserves a push to rank higher.

What is robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text file that works as a traffic officer. It gives search engine crawlers instructions on how to index and cache a webpage, a file from a website or directory, or a domain.

What are anchor texts?

As for Yoast, the anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link.

Have you noticed the underlined word “Yoast” in blue? It is an anchor text. They may be used as a single word, a URL, a question, or in other forms.

Anchor text has a great impact on both SEO and user experience.

Furthermore, they make your site structure clear to search engines.

Links give Google an indication of what your context is, but you need not deceive Google by using the post keyword in context links because it will find it hard to distinguish which topic is the most relevant, the post you are writing, or that you are linking to.

Context linking is also of great importance because it tells the user what to expect and where it leads him before clicking on it.

What is a title tag?

The title tag is simply the title.

The objective of a web page may be understood by Google and users thanks to the title tag. Using your major keyword in the page title optimization is a crucial on-page duty.

Additionally, the title tag has to be strong enough to entice clicks from search engine users who want to visit your website.

What are SEO-Friendly URLs?

SEO-friendly URLs are those keyword-optimized, short, clear URLs that contain no characters and numbers and give users a feeling that you are trustworthy.

What is Robots Meta Tag?

They are sometimes called “metatags.” They are pieces of code that instruct crawlers on how to crawl or index a web page.

This gives commands like FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW, INDEX, and NOINDEX.

They differ from Robot Txt in the efficiency of allowing or disallowing single files and pages, whereas Robot Txt is more efficient in allowing and disallowing sections of a site.

What is a 301 redirect?

The 301-redirect technique is a permanent way to send people and search engines from an old URL to a new URL.

A 301 redirect is seen as the ideal option when a webmaster has to change a URL for a variety of reasons since it transfers the majority of the link juice from the old page to the new one.

What is ALT Tag?

A description should be added to each image you post on your website using the HTML property known as the alt tag.

If an image cannot be shown in the browser for whatever reason, people can read the alt tags to determine what the picture is about. Additionally, it helps search engines comprehend the image’s subject matter, which enhances their comprehension of the page. Search engine image results for a website’s photos can be improved by using alt tags.

What are backlinks in SEO?

A backlink is a link from one website to another.

If we include a link to a website in our post, this means we are giving it a backlink. That’s why we all tend to be linked from high-authority websites to our websites in order to get more authority and rank higher.

A high-authority link to our website tells search engines that our website is also valuable and deserves high rankings.

What is an RSS Feed?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS). The process of submitting RSS feeds to an RSS submission directory is known as RSS feed submission.

Staying current with your favorite websites, such as blogs or online magazines, is simple with RSS Feeds. When a site offers an RSS feed, you are alerted whenever a new article is published and may choose to read the whole content or just a summary.

What is referral traffic?

Referral traffic refers to the traffic that comes to your website from a link on another website.

For example, if website X uses a link to your website, any traffic that clicks on that link will count as referral traffic.

What is CTR?

Click Through Rate.

Impressions are how many times users see your links. Clicks are clicks.

CTR is the number of impressions divided by the number of clicks.

If 100 people see your links(impressions) and 10 of them click on them (clicks), then the CTR is 10%.

It has nothing to do with ranking, but it helps businesses to have a full view of how their businesses are performing and to make some changes in order to increase the CTR.

What is “CPC”?

COST Per Click.

It is the amount of money charged to an advertiser per click that users make.

The value of the click is determined based on the niche, location, traffic, and other factors.

PPC is Pay Per Click, and CPC is the cost of this click.

What is EMD?

It is an Exact Match Domain that includes the search phrases like “buygrocery.com”.

What is Canonical URL?

A canonical URL is a means to inform search engines which particular URL is the original and which one you want to be featured in search engines when there are several copies of a website.

Websites may prevent duplicate content problems by using canonical URLs. Canonical problems can arise in a variety of situations, including those using distinct dynamic properties on the same page, print versions, and more.

What is an HTML sitemap?

It is a web page having the form of a list where all pages are listed in a way that lets users see every page and navigate easily.

It’s not advised that you create HTML if your website is organized and doesn’t contain a massive number of pages.

What is an XML Sitemap?

XML is a file that contains the essential pages of your site. It lists them in order to let Google crawl and index them.

It also aids in the structure-understanding of search engines for your website. All of your website’s critical pages should be crawled by Google.

Pages might be difficult to discover when they are created with no internal links leading to them. Finding material may go more quickly with the aid of a sitemap.

What is Google Algorithm?

The Google algorithm is a set of guidelines, instructions, and codes, that aid the search engine in producing results that are pertinent to user searches. The Google algorithm is believed to employ more than 200 ranking variables to determine the position of a web page for certain keywords.

Google gives code names to every update they make in their algorithms, like the Hummingbird, the Panda, The Penguin, and others.

What is Google Penalty?

When you violate Google’s regulations and guidelines, you get penalized.

The penalty could happen automatically by the algorithms or manually due to a manual review by Google executives.

That’s why you must avoid black-hat methods because once you are penalized, it takes a long time to uplift the penalization.

What are rich snippets?

Rich snippets are a type of structured data that enables websites to provide users with additional information and increase clickthrough rates.

Rich snippets don’t raise a web page’s ranking, but they can raise the CTR if they are presented well, which can raise the ranking over time.

Search result pages display the title, meta description, and URL. In the case of rich snippets, they display more detailed data.

Google has clearly announced that using rich snippets is not a ranking factor, but who knows? This may change in the future.

What is cloaking?

Cloaking is a black-hat technique in which you fool search engines and users by using content (title) in the search engine so that when a user clicks on it, he finds different content.

For instance, you click on this post in the search results to find that the content is about bodybuilding.

In this method, people use easy-ranking keywords to cloak the hard-ranking ones in their posts.

Cloaking is a serious violation of Google and is severely penalized.

Also read: 11 mistakes to avoid making when writing

What does EAT mean?

Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

What is “Google Analytics”?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that you can use to monitor and assess the effectiveness of your website.

This tool keeps track of a variety of user behaviors when they visit your site, including user interaction, visitor flow, the number of conversions, demographic information like age and gender, real-time active users by country, and other metrics.

Google Analytics is a free tool that shows you how your website is performing and where it needs to improve.

What are all the crucial factors in improving my ranking?

The quality of your content
The age of your website’s
freshness of posts (Google loves fresh content).
Backlinks
authority of your website.

If you look at the above factors and analyze them, you will understand that success needs some time. Nothing comes easily, so do not quit early.

How do you optimize a URL?

Keep it simple
Short
Include your keyword

What are social signals?

Social signals are engaging behaviors that users do on their social media accounts, such as likes, dislikes, comments, shares, and views.

Join our community on Facebook “Bloggers Space” to exchange knowledge.

What is cross-linking?

Cross-linking is the technique of connecting two websites together for SEO purposes. It is used to enhance the number of inbound links to a page that contains relevant SEO keywords.

Cross-linking in SEO may increase a page’s position in search results for particular keyword phrases and drive referral traffic.

What is Rankbrain?

RankBrain is an AI algorithm that Google uses to specify the intent of searchers.

It searches your pages to decide which one to rank according to many factors, above all users’ experiences.

What is SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is the health check-up of your website.

It should be done every now and then in order to assure you that you are on the safe side and that you can rank on search engines.

This is about repairing errors, fixing crawling and indexing issues, page speed, broken links, and others when you go technical.

Other types of SEO audits include on-page and off-page audits.

Checking out your content, linking, meta tags, image size and format, backlinks, and others is a major part of this process that will lead to getting more visibility and enhancing users’ experience, hence your chances to rank.

What is Guest Posting?

One of the most successful link-building strategies is guest blogging, in which you approach a reliable, authoritative website and offer to write for them in exchange for a link back to your website.

The exposure of your website among your target audience and potential website visitors grows with guest blogging, which also strengthens the authority of your website and gives search engines an indication that your website deserves a higher ranking.

How long does it take to rank on Google?

This is one of the most famous SEO questions asked by people, and the answer is always the same; “it depends”.

It depends on many factors that we know little about, among which is website age.

A long time ago, it was easy to launch a website, publish a post, and rank in just a few weeks. Today, a period between 6 and 12 months is likely to be the answer.

What are the doorway pages?

They are pages that focus on the same keywords, and are well-optimized for SEO but lead to another page.

For instance, if your aim is to rank for the keyword “best laptop”, You create other pages like ” best laptops in New York”, “best laptops in Washington”, and “best laptops in California”, then redirect these pages to your main page “best laptop”.

What you are doing here is that you are fooling searchers and search engines as well.

Whenever someone clicks on one of the above search results, he will be redirected to your intended page. This means that you are pushing him to slip into your funnel.

Using doorway pages is a black-hat method that you ought to avoid.

Explain LSI keywords

Latent Semantic Indexing

They are words that are related to the main keyword and google deal with them as semantically relevant.

For example, if your main keyword is “soccer,” words like “goalkeeper,” “kick,” and “dribble” are LSI keywords because they point to the target keyword and resemble it.

What is the Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is a free service the search engine offers to users to evaluate the standing of their website in Google’s eyes.

In addition to being able to examine the indexing progress, crawl errors, crawl status, keyword performance, and backlinks, webmasters may also submit XML sitemaps, apply for page reindexing, and disavow URLs.

What is the Disavow Tool?

The Google Search Console’s Disavow Tool enables publishers to inform Google that particular connections from other sites should not be taken into account and should be avoided.

It aids websites in staying clear of any actions based on broken connections.

Conclusion

Many SEO questions come to our minds if we want to master SEO. The above are the most asked, but always remember that the more technologies move forward, the more we ask and learn.

It’s your turn to tell me what I have missed, write your answers and share to let others gain more knowledge.

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