Quiz for SEO Experts

Which of the following is the least important area in which to include your keyword(s)?

Meta Keywords
Internal Anchor Text
Title
Meta Description
Body Text

Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and humans)?

blog.wahidqazi.com/144/
blog.wahidqazi.com/category/seoquiz/
blog.wahidqazi.com/quiz/seoquiz/
blog.wahidqazi.com/category/277/article/563/
blog.wahidqazi.com/06O7?id=567121

When linking to external websites, a good strategy to move up in the rankings is to use the keywords you're attempting to rank for on that page as the anchor text of the external-pointing links. For example, if you were attempting to rank a page for the phrase "hulk smash" you would want to use that phrase, "hulk smash" as the anchor text of a link pointing to a web page on another domain.

False
True

Which of the following is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?

Frequently add new content
Search for your website more frequently in the major engines
Increase your "crawl frequency" in Google Webmaster Central
Submit your website through Search Engines' Submission form
Add a short "crawl delay" parameter to your robots.txt file

Which of the following is a legitimate technique to improve rankings & traffic from search engines?

Adding keyword-dense meta tags to each of your site's pages
Re-writing title tags on your pages to reflect high search volume, relevant keywords
Submitting your domain to the top 2000 search engines on the web
Registering keyword-rich domains and replicating your site on each one
Hosting your site on a "search engine optimized" web hosting platform

Danny Sullivan is best known (in the field of web search) as:

The recently-promoted CEO of Ask.com
A journalist and pundit who covers the field of web search
The founder of the upstart search engine, Mahalo
A nitpicky bastard that no one really likes
Google's internal search marketing evangelist

Which of the following is the WORST criterion for estimating the value of a link to your page/site?

The popularity of the domain on which the page is hosted according to Alexa
The ranking of the linking page for its targeted keywords
The PageRank of the page in the Google toolbar
The inclusion of the page in the indices of the major search engines
The number and quality of other external links on the page

How can Meta Description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?

They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing
They're an important ranking factor in the search algorithms
They help to tell the engines which keywords are most important on your page
Trick question - meta description are NOT important

Which of the following content types is most easily crawled by the major web search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Ask.com)?

Executive EXE Files
Windows Media Player Files
XHTML
Flash Plugin Files (SWF)
Java Applets

Which of the following sources is considered to be the best for acquiring competitive link data?

MSN/Live
Yahoo!
Alexa
Google
Ask.com

Which of the following site architecture issues MOST impedes the ability of search engine spiders to crawl a site?

Pages that require form submission to reach database content
Dynamic pages with 2 or more variables in the URL string
Web pages that employ iFrames
Missing robots.txt file
Buying links from large text link networks

What is the generally accepted difference between SEO and SEM?

SEO refers to organic/natural listings while SEM covers PPC, or paid search
SEO tends to be a West coast term, SEM is more East coast.
No difference, they're synonymous
SEM implies association with a traditional marketing company, while SEO is usually independent or unaffiliated with traditional marketing.
SEO focuses on organic/natural search rankings, SEM encompasses all aspects of search marketing

Which of these is NOT generally considered to be a highly important factor for ranking for a particular search term?

HTML Validation (according to W3C standards) of a page
Quality and quantity of external links to the page
Temporal relevance - the number and quality of links pointing to a page over a given time span
Link popularity of a page within the domain (internal link popularity)
Keyword usage in the title tag of the page

When creating a "flat architecture" for a site, you attempt to minimize what?

The amount of vertical scrolling necessary for navigation
The number of links a search engine must follow to reach content pages
The KB size of search-targeted pages
The number of tabs/windows that open during normal navigation
Number of colors used in the design

In the search marketing industry, what is traditionally represented by this graph?

The "long tail" theory of keyword demand
Number of users as ranking in the SERPs goes down
The number of links required to reach a certain amount of searchers
Traffic levels of the Technorati top 100 blogs
Yahoo!'s popularity 2000-Present

Which of the following is NOT a "best practice" for creating high quality title tags?

Make sure the title is unique for every page
Limit the tag to ~65 characters, including spaces
Write compelling copy that encourages users to "click" your listing
Include an exhaustive list of keywords

Which of the following character limits is the best choice to use when limiting the length of title tags (assuming you want those tags to fully display in the search results at the major engines)?

65
80
40
110
22

PageRank is so named because it was created by Larry Page, not because it ranks pages.

False
True

A page on your site that serves as a "sitemap," linking to other pages on your domain in an organized, list format, is important because...

It reduces the crawl rate of spiders to your pages
It's required for submission to many important search engines
It is the preferred navigational method of most web users outside the US
It may help search engine crawlers to easily access many pages on your site

Which of the following search engines patented the concept of "TrustRank" as a methodology for ranking web sites & pages?

MSN/Live
Google
Exalead
Teoma (prior to Acquisition by Ask)
Yahoo!

Why are absolute (http://www.mysite.com/my-category)URLs better than relative ("/my-category") URLs for on-page internal linking?

You get keyword weight out of the domain name in the URL
When scraped and copied on other domains, they provide a link back to the website
They're filled with vodka
Search engines can't spider relative URLs
They provide more keyword context for search engines judging internal links

How can you avoid the duplicate content problems that often accompany temporal pagination issues (where content moves down a page and from page to page, as is often seen in lists of articles, multi-page articles and blogs)?

Add a meta robots tag with "noindex, follow" to the paginated pages
Link to paginated pages with rel="nofollow" in the link tag
There are no duplicate content problems associated with pagination
Display each page in a new tab/window

If you update your site's URL structure to create new versions of your pages, what should you do with the old URLs?

Shut them down and request removal via Webmaster Central in Google and Site Explorer in Yahoo!
301 redirect them to the new URLs
Move them to a subdomain
Create 404 pages with the old URLs so search engines & visitors know the content is no longer found on them
Nothing, keep them active so the links to them aren't lost.

When you have multiple-pages targeting the same keywords on a domain, which of the following is the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization?

Increase the keyword density on the most important page to be greater than that of the other pages
Restrict search engine from crawling/indexing any of the less important pages
Place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links
Remove the duplicate keywords from the Meta Keywords tag on the less important pages

The de-facto version of a page located on the primary URL you want associated with the content is known as:

Heretical Version
Empirical Version
Home Page
Preferential Version
Canonical Version

Which domain extensions are more often associated with greater trust and authority in the search engines?

.mobi and .info
.com and .net
.gov, .edu, and .org
.edu, .mil and .gov
.org and .net

High quality links to a site's homepage will help to increase the ranking ability of deeper pages on the same domain.

TRUE
FALSE

The practice of showing one version of content on a URL to search engines, and another, different version to human visitors of the same URL is known as?

Phasing
IP Delivery
Trapping
Cloaking
Phishing

Which HTTP server response code indicates a file/folder that no longer exists?

500
301
404
401
300

Spammy sites or blogs begin linking to your site. What effect is this likely to have on your search engine rankings?

A very slight positive effect is most likely, as search engines are not perfectly able to discount the link value of all spammy sites
It may negatively affect your rankings as search engines associate your site with bad neighborhoods on the web
It will boost your rankings at Live/MSN, keep them the same at Yahoo! and lower them in Google as the three engines treat spammy links in different ways
No effect - the search engines discount all spammy sites from passing link value, but do not penalize sites for receiving these links

A link from a PageRank "3" page (according to the Google toolbar) hosted on a very strong, trusted domain can be more valuable than a link from a PageRank "4" page hosted on a weaker domain.

TRUE
FALSE

What's the largest page size that Google's spider will crawl?

100K
No set limit exists - Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile
250K
1000K

Is it generally considered acceptable to have the same content resolve on both www and non-www URLs of a website?

No, this may cause negative indexing/ranking issues
Yes, the search engines recognize they're the same thing

Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been temporarily relocated and links to the old location will not pass influence to the new location?

311
304
302
500
301

Which of these is least likely to have difficulty ranking for its targeted terms/phrases in Google?

An established domain moving to a newly registered domain
An old, established domain whose content appears in indexable format on many other old, established domains
A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links
A brand new domain that quickly buys a large number of links from a link broker
An old domain transferred to a new registrant and repurposed

What is the advantage of putting all of your important keywords in the Meta Keywords tag?

They will be bolded in searches for that term
You have to have a term in Meta Keywords in order to bid for AdWords to that page
It increases relevance to Yahoo! and MSN/Live, although Google & Ask ignore it
Your competitors will be able to see what search terms you're targeting
There is no specific advantage for search engines

Which of the following link building tactics do search engines tacitly endorse?

Link building via general, webmaster-focused directories
Viral content creation & promotion
Reciprocal link exchange programs
Renting pages from trustworthy domains and placing links on them
Buying links from link brokers & networks

Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been permanently relocated and all links to the old page will pass their influence to the new page location?

301
302
311
300
500

Which of the following factors is considered when search engines assign value to links?

The visual appearance of the link using external CSS files
The date/time the link was created and the temporal relationship between that link's appearance and other time-sensitive criteria
A footnote at the bottom of the page referencing the link and indicating whether it is an editorial endorsement
The use of the rel="high" tag to indicate that the link's value should be larger than other links on the page
The use of a proper link title in the HTML tag of the link, matching the anchor text of the link

There is no apparent search engine rankings benefit to having a keyword-matched domain name (eg www.example.com for keyword "example").

FALSE
TRUE

If you want a page to pass value through its links, but stay out of the search engines' indices, which of the following tags should you place in the header?

Use meta robots="index, nofollow"
Use meta robots ="index, follow"
Use meta robots="autobot, decepticon"
Use meta robots="noindex, follow"
Use meta robots="noindex, nofollow"

Which of these factors is LEAST likely to decrease the value of a link?

The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)
The link contains the tag - rel="nofollow"
The link exists on a page that is not indexed
The linked-to and linking sites are both hosted on the same IP address
The linked-to and linking sites are both registered to the same company/individual

Which of the following is a requirement for getting in the Google Local listings?

A physical mail address in your claimed location
A telephone number with a prefix matching the claimed location
Registering the site with Google's Webmaster Tools program
A 3-digit numerical string in the URL of content pages
Proof of listing in a Google-approved, local Yellow/White Pages phonebook

Which of the following engines offers paid inclusion services for their main web index (not advertising):

Ask
Yahoo!
Google
MSN/Live

When is it advisable to leave the meta description off of a page?

When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all
When you don't want people to know what the page is about
When you're not sure what to write
When the page is very focused toward one keyword, and a description wouldn't help.
When the page is targeted to so many keywords that writing a meta description might hurt the click-through rate from the search results

A domain will not be hurt by having a penalized site or page 301′d to it.

TRUE
FALSE

Which of the following strategies is the best way to lift a page out of Google's supplemental index?

Change the last-modified date so it looks like it was recently updated
Submit a reinclusion request
Increase relevant keyword density on the page
Link to it internally from strong pages

Which of the following is NOT speculated to be a contributing factor in achieving "breakout" site results in Google?

Having multiple popular pages on your site
Global link popularity
Having an active AdWords campaign
Search volume for your domain name

Which of the following is the best method to insure that a page does not get crawled or indexed by a search engine?

Submit a negative listing through the search engines' submission forms
Only link to the page with the rel="nofollow" attribute
Restrict the page using robots.txt
Restrict known IP addresses of search engine spiders from reaching the page

If you want to rank for a country specific TLD/Top-Level-Domain extension (such as Yahoo.jp or Google.ca) which of the following is NOT important?

Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension
Hosting the domain on an IP address in the targeted country
Registering a domain extension that matches the targeted country (i.e. .nl for the Netherlands or .cn for China)
Registering with local search extensions of the major engines to confirm your geographic location
Acquiring links from domains located in the target country

Which of the following CANNOT get you penalized at the major search engines?

Linking to spammy sites
Selling links that pass value
Stuffing keywords on your pages
Using "nofollow" internally on your site to control the flow of link juice
Copying the content of other sites and republishing it

Which of the following directories had its ability to pass link value removed?

www.lii.org - The Librarian's Internet Index
dir.yahoo.com - Yahoo! Web Directory
www.bluefind.org - The Bluefind Web Directory
www.dmoz.org - The Open Directory Project

Which of the following is an acceptable way to show HTML text to search engines while creating a graphical image to display to users?

CSS layers - show the text on a layer underneath the image atop
CSS image replacement - create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class
User-agent based cloaking - show search engine agents text and browser agents the image
IP-based Cloaking - show search engine IPs the text and other IPs the image

For high-volume search phrases, the Search Engines usually will not differentiate between singular and plural versions of a term (eg "cell phone" vs. "cell phones" or "bird feeder" vs. "bird feeders").

TRUE
FALSE

If your site is ranked in the #1 organic position for a given query, advertising in the top paid position for that search result will generally not produce an additional volume of search traffic.

TRUE
FALSE

What's likely to happen if multiple accounts on a single IP address vote up a story at Digg in a short time period?

Nothing special, just more Diggs
Your accounts will be suspended
You'll automatically be grouped together into a friend network
Your story will be buried

Let's assume that you're running SEO for an auction website with many listings, sorted by categories and subcategories. To achieve the maximum search engine traffic benefit, what should you do with individual product/auction pages after the auction has expired and the product is no longer available?

Nothing, leave them alone in case they have links to them
301 redirect them to the most appropriate category page associated with the product
Place a "noindex, nofollow" on them to keep them out of the SERPs
Drop the pages and leave a 404 error code on the URL so search engines and visitors know the page is no longer accessible
301 redirect the pages to the home page to keep any external link juice flowing through the site

Which factor is most likely to decrease the ranking value of a link?

Uses "click here" as the anchor text
Links from a page that has no visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar
Very low vertical position in the page code
Comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links
Uses your homepage URL as anchor text

Which of the following search engine and country combination does not represent the most popular search engine in that country?

Korea / Naver
United States / Google
Russia / Yandex
China / Baidu
Japan / Yahoo

Where do search engines consider content inside an iFrame to be located?

On the page where the iFrame is displayed
On the source page the iFrame pulls from
Search engines cannot spider content in iFrames

If the company you buy links from gets "busted" (discovered and penalized) by a search engine, the links you have from them will:

Be flagged in link search results at the engines
Cause your site to be penalized
Continue to function exactly the same
Stop passing link value
Cause your site to be banned from the engine

Which of these queries would not have an "Instant Answer" or "Onebox Result" on Google?

Seattle to London
Number of Horns on a Unicorn
Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco
Edward Hopper
Salsa Recipes

Which major search engine serves advertising listings (paid search results) from the PPC program of one of the other major engines?

Ask.com
Yahoo!
MSN/Live
Google

Duplicate content is primarily an off-site issue, created through content licensing deals and copyright violations of scraped and re-published content, rather than a site-internal problem.

TRUE
FALSE

Links from 'noindex, follow' pages are treated exactly the same as links from default ('index, follow') pages.

TRUE
FALSE

Which metric is NOT used by the major search engines to measure relevance or popularity in their ranking algorithms?

Anchor text of links pointing to a page
Keyword density in text on the page
Global link popularity
Keyword usage in page titles
Keyword usage in the URL

If they have the same content, the Search Engines will consider example.com/avocado and example.com/avocado/ to be the same page.

TRUE
FALSE

Which Search Engines currently allow the 'nocontent' attribute?

MSN
Yahoo!
Google
Yahoo! & Google only
MSN & Google only

In which of the following countries does Ask.com have the most significant percentage of search engine market share?

United Kingdom
Canada
South Africa
United States
Australia

For search engine rankings & traffic in Google & Yahoo!, it is generally better to have many, small, single topic focused sites with links spread out between them than one, large, inclusive site with all the links pointing to that single domain.

TRUE
FALSE

The 4 major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask serve what approximate percentage of all searches performed in the US?

~50%
~75%
~95%
~85%
~80%

The linkfromdomain operator displays what information and is available at which search engine(s)?

Data on who is linking to a given website - available at MSN/Live only
Data on who is linking to a given website - available at Google & Yahoo!
Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at Google & Ask.com
Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at MSN/Live only
Data on which sites are linking to multiple domains - available at Yahoo! only

Which of the following social media websites is the least popular (as measured by active users & visitors)?

Wikipedia
StumbleUpon
Digg
Yahoo! Answers
Newsvine

Which of the following pieces of information is NOT available from current keyword research sources?

Estimated volume of searches per month
Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers
Demographic data on searchers who use a particular term/phrase
Popular terms/phrases related to a given keyword

The use of AJAX presents what common problem for search engines and websites?

Web pages with AJAX frequently take too long to load, causing crawlers to abandon them
Search engines will not index pages with Javascript on them
It creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs
It is less likely to be linked-to than standard XHTML pages

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