In the following HTML snippet: <a href="http://moz.com" title="SEO"><img src="img/software.jpg" alt="Marketing" title="Tools" width="100" weight="100"></a> What is considered the anchor text of the link?"
A: http://moz.com
B: SEO
C: Marketing
D: Tools
E: software
Ans: C
When is using rel="nofollow" NOT appropriate?
A: Paid links
B: Untrusted content
C: Press releases with optimized anchor text
D: Widely distributed footer links
E: None; all of these are appropriate
Ans: E
Which of the following types of sitemaps is NOT supported by Google?
A: News
B: Product
C: Image
D: Mobile
E: Video
Ans: B
What is the maximum number of URLs typically allowed in an XML sitemap file?
A: 500
B: 5,000
C: 50,000
D: 500,000
E: 5,000,000
Ans: C
In the following URL: http://store.example.com/category/keyword?id=123#top "store" represents the ____ and "com" is the ________
A: Subdomain, Top-Level Domain
B: Root Domain, Subdomain
C: Subfolder, Top-Level Domain
D: Page, Root Domain
E: Top-Level Domain, Protocol
Ans: A
What is the optimal HTTP status code to permanently remove a URL from Google's index?
A: 301
B: 302
C: 404
D: 410
E: 500
Ans:D
Which HTTP status code is best to serve when your site is down for maintence?
A: 200
B: 302
C: 404
D: 503
E: 90210
Ans:503
True or false: A 301 redirect passes roughly the same link equity as using the rel="canonical" tag.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Ans: A
How can meta description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?
A: They're an important ranking factor in the search algorithms.
B: They help to tell the search engines which keywords are most important on your page.
C: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing.
D: Trick question; meta descriptions are NOT important.
Ans: C
Which HTTP server response code indicates a file that no longer exists? (File Not Found)
A: 500
B: 301
C: 401
D: 404
E: 300
Ans: D
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?
A: 302
B: 301
C: 311
D: 500
E: 300
Ans: B
If you want a page to pass a value through its links, but stay out of the search engines' indices, which of the following tags should you place in the header?
A: NOINDEX, FOLLOW
B: NOODP
C: INDEX, NOFOLLOW
D: NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW
E: INDEX, FOLLOW
Ans: A
Which of the following methods is best used to handle duplicate-content URLs that include parameters or tracking code?
A: The rel="canonical" tag
B: Use numbers for your parameters, because Google won't crawl numbered URLs
C: Use the robots.txt file to block spiders from crawling the URLs with extra parameters
D: Answers A and B
E: None of the above
Ans: A
If you have a page at www.example.com/page1, which of the following robots.txt directives prevents search spiders from crawling the URL?
A: Allow: /
B: Disallow:
C: Disallow: /page1
D: Both A & C
Ans: C
You decide to add a blog to your eCommerce site. What is the preferred URL Structure?
A: www.example.com/blog
B: www.blog.example.com/
C: Create a new site at www.blog.com and link it to www.example.com
Ans: A
High-quality links to a site's homepage may help to increase the ranking ability of deeper pages on the same domain.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Ans: A
Pages generated by search results (Search within Search) are a good way to add content to your site.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Ans: B
Google's Panda update was also known as the ______ update.
A: Quality
B: May Day
C: Farmer
D: Vince
E: Caffeine
Ans: C
In general, internal links pass about the same value as external links.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Ans: B
Which of the following links is likely to pass the most value from a single page?
A: A universal footer link
B: A navigational link contained in the header
C: A left-hand navigation link
D: A right sidebar navigation link
E: A link contained in the main body text
Ans: E
What link format is used to fight blog comment spam?
A: rel="canonical"
B: rel="follow"
C: rel="author"
D: rel="nofollow"
E: rel="attribute"
Ans: D
To give credit for duplicate content that appears on another site, use...
A: A cross-domain canonical tag
B: A prominent link within the content at the top of the page
C: File a DMCA copyright notice
D: Give the author thanks in the body of the text
E: Send them ice cream
Ans: A
If a page includes more than one rel="canonical" Google will...
A: Ignore them all
B: Count the first one
C: Count the last one
D: Guess which one makes more sense, and use that one
Ans: A
Best practices for rel="canonical" link elements include:
A: Relative URLs
B: Absolute URLs
C: Nofollow the link element
Ans: B
What is an example of a "soft" 404 error?
A: A page that returns a 404 HTTP response code, but quickly changes to a 200 a short time later.
B: A page that returns a 200 HTTP response code, and displays a blank page.
C: A page that displays a 404 HTTP response code, and displays a 404 error page.
D: A page that returns a 404 code with pillows.
Ans: B
True or false: rel="canonical" can be used to point to content on a different domain.
A: TRUE
B: FALSE
Ans:A
The X-Robots-Tag should be located:
A: In your robots.txt file
B: In the <head>
C: In the HTTP headers
D: Anywhere inside the <body> element
E: In Robert Downey Jr.'s basement
Ans: C
Of the following, the best way to keep a URL from appearing in search results is:
A: Block robots from crawling the page in the robots.txt file
B: Nofollow all links to the page
C: Use the META robots NOODP tag
D: Use the META robots NOINDEX tag
Ans: D
If the robots <META> tag is missing, the default is:
A: NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW
B: INDEX, FOLLOW
C: NOINDEX, FOLLOW
D: INDEX, NOFOLLOW
E: NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOARCHIVE
Ans: B
The default file type for your sitemap is:
A: .pdf
B: .php
C: .png
D: .doc
E: .xml
Ans: E
The minimum REQUIRED tags in an XML sitemap include:
A: <urlset>
B: <url>
C: <loc>
D: None of these
E: A, B, and C
Ans: E
When including Open Graph (OG) tags on a webpage, which of the following is NOT a required property?
A: og: title
B: og:description
C: og:image
D: og:url
E: og:type
Ans:B
All other factors being equal, which would be the most desirable link profile?
A: One link from each of 100 different domains
B: 1,000 links all from one domain
C: 10,000 internal links
Ans: A
Which group of ranking factors do SEOs generally consider to have the largest influence on rankings?
A: Engagement Metrics
B: Social shares
C: Link-based metrics
D: Site speed
E: Exact match domains
Ans: C
Generally, Google refreshes its Panda data:
A: Daily
B: Weekly
C: Monthly
D: Yearly
E: Never
Ans: C
Mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor in Google's algorithm:
A: True, it is a ranking signal for both mobile and desktop results
B: True, it is a ranking signal for mobile results only
C: False, it is not a ranking signal at all
Ans: B
Implementing structured data may help:
A: Lead to rich snippets in search results
B: Enhance CTR from search engine results
C: Search engines understand your content
D: Your content to appear in specialized search results like "in-depth Articles"
E: All of these
Ans: E
Which of the following did Google confirm as a minor ranking signal?
A: Authorship Markup
B: Using Google Analytics
C: Sending Chocolate Chip Cookies to the Editors at Moz
D: Keyword Stuffing
E: HTTPS
Ans: E
Google's recommended actions for paginated content include:
A: Specify a "view all" page
B: rel="prev" and rel="next"
C: Do nothing
D: A and B only
E: A, B, or C
Ans: E
In the following attribute: hreflang="en-US" "en" is the _____ and "US" is the _____.
A: alternate, language
B: language, region
C: United States, English
D: region, language
E: the entire, universal symbol
Ans: B
Which of the following URL structures is NOT recommended to signal language targeting?
A: ccTLDs (example.de)
B: Subdomains with gTLDS (de.example.com)
C: URL parameters (example.com?loc=de)
D: Subdirectories with gTLDs (example.com/de)
Ans: C
Which element of a link does Google NOT consider?
A: The relationship/ownership/influence of the linking domain and linked-to domain
B: The rel="nofollow" attribute"
C: The domain on which the linking page is hosted
D: The HTML <id> attribute
Ans: D
Which of the following statements about anchor text is true?
A: For non-commercial queries, anchor text is less influential on a result's rankings.
B: If a URL itself is the linking anchor text, Google will treat the page's title element as anchor text, while Bing will use the URL.
C: When an embedded image is linking, the alt attribute of the image may be treated as anchor text.
D: Anchor text is mostly ignored by Google in 2014, but was powerful in years past.
Ans: C
Which of these concepts has Google filed a (now public) patent about?
A: The likelihood that content shared by a user of social networks will spread
B: The impact of lunar cycles on content creation and search queries
C: Labeling Facebook, Twitter, and other social network shares in search results
D: Modifying the flow of PageRank through links based on the HTML code-to-content ratio
Ans: A
In Local Search, which of the following are considered important ranking factors?
A: City and state appear in landing page title
B: Domain Authority of website
C: Proper category associations
D: Consistency of structured citations
E: All of these
Ans: E
What does the phrase "social shares and higher search rankings in Google are well-correlated" mean?
A: It means there's a chance (as expressed by the correlation coefficient number) that this input is used in Google's ranking algorithm.
B: It means that the more social shares a webpage has, the higher it appears in Google's search results for a given query.
C: It means that, on average, pages with more social shares appear higher in Google rankings than those with fewer shares. The correlation coefficient expresses the degree with which this occurs.
D: It means that social shares may or may not be used by Google's algorithm to rank webpages.
Ans: C
Which Google update was closely associated with speed, faster indexing and fresher web results.
A: Penguin
B: Panda
C: Venice
D: Vince
E: Caffeine
Ans: E
What are valid reasons why your webpage's title may not appear in Google's search results exactly as it does in the page title element in your HTML?
A: Google has overwritten your title element with a title taken from the Yahoo! Directory.
B: Your title does not contain your brand name or other key terms in the users' search query (or doesn't include them at the start of the title element), so Google is using text from elsewhere on the page.
C: Google is pulling a title for your webpage from one you entered into an AdWords ad for that URL (that produces a higher clickthrough rate).
D: Your page contains the meta "title-h1" tag specifying that Google should use the text within the H1 in place of the title element for the search results listing
E: Both options B & D
Ans: B
Which of the following are true about the growth of mobile vs. desktop search in Google?
A: Mobile search queries overtook desktop in 2013 and are expected to continue growing faster.
B: Desktop search queries are now shrinking, and mobile is growing, but will not overtake desktop in the next 2-3 years.
C: Both desktop and mobile are growing, but mobile is growing faster and is expected to overtake desktop soon.
D: Desktop is not growing (but not shrinking much). Mobile is expected to overtake desktop in a number of queries by 2016.
Ans: C
Which type of link has NOT been mentioned by Google as being risky for SEO?
A: Embedded links from infographics
B: Guest blog posts
C: Text link advertisements with rel="nofollow"
D: Article submission and directory sites
E: Private link networks
