Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO tests how search engines discover, understand, and rank pages, plus how to align content with intent. The exam covers crawlability, indexing, on-page relevance, links, technical health, and E-E-A-T signals.
Core rules and concepts
- Search engines crawl URLs, index eligible pages, then rank them for queries. robots.txt controls crawling; a noindex meta tag or header controls indexing. Canonicals consolidate duplicate URLs.
- Map one primary intent per page. Use titles, headings, internal links, and body copy to satisfy that intent; avoid keyword stuffing.
- Technical basics: XML sitemaps, clean internal linking, mobile-friendly rendering, HTTPS, and Core Web Vitals thresholds (LCP ≤2.5s, INP ≤200ms, CLS ≤0.1 at the 75th percentile).
- Off-page authority still matters, but relevance and link quality beat raw volume.
- E-E-A-T is not a single score; demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust through authors, citations, accurate claims, and clear ownership.
Worked example
A page ranks position 8 for a query with 10,000 monthly searches and earns a 2% CTR, or 200 visits. If improved relevance and title testing move it to position 3, a reasonable CTR assumption is 10%, or 1,000 visits. The gain is 800 visits. At a 3% conversion rate, that is 24 extra conversions. The reasoning: model ranking movement through CTR and conversion, not rankings alone.
Traps that cost marks
Blocking CSS or JS that Google needs to render; using robots.txt to deindex a page; cannibalizing one query with several near-duplicate pages; chasing high-volume terms with mismatched intent; and promising rankings on a fixed timeline.