Interview question
Topic Links are
Seo question
- Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
A. My experience is mainly with my own site at www.creativeblossom.in and one other site www.chiraagtechno.com. So far, my site is on page one for narrow search terms involving outdoor recreation in Nevada. The other site has gone from not being listed at all in the first 10 pages of any search result to being in pages 2 and 3 of a couple of search engines. That work is ongoing at this time.
- Can you write HTML code by hand?
A. Yes I can. I do use some WYSIWYG editors and then modify the code by hand as needed.
- Could you briefly explain the Page Rank algorithm?
A. In simple terms, Google uses the gross number of inbound links to a page to determine how important the page is. This "page rank" has little to do with actual search results but can make a difference on user behavior.
- Have you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced together from others?
A. No, I do make use of many tools already available on the internet as well as SEO programs that I have purchased.
- What do you think of Page Rank?
A. In relation to SEO projects, it is relatively unimportant but can give an indication of how much work needs to be done in gaining inbound links.
- What do you think of using XML sitemaps?
A. I use them. They are an additional tool to help the search engines when they crawl a site. There is no requirement for any sitemap and your pages will get indexed without them if you pay close attention to navigation within your site.
- What SEO tools do you regularly use?
A. Keyword analysis tools, keyword density tools, index checking, back link checking, word processor to check spelling and grammar, HTML validation and others.
- Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from search engines using robots.txt vs. Meta robots tag?
A. Usually I would use the robots.txt to keep a search engine from indexing an entire directory on a site. This would often be directories dealing with admin functions or directories that only contain script or image libraries.
- What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
A. Text on page! Search engines utilize text and only text in providing search results. That text is found in many place including the URL and title of your pages as well as the visible text you place on your pages.
- Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
A. My experience in "copywriting" is limited to my site at www.creativeblossom.in It is a blog about outdoor recreation in Nevada and so far is placing well in search results.
- Have you ever had something you've written reach the front-page of Digg? Sphinn? Or be stumbled?
A. Not yet! I am not particularly worried about it but I do try to write in such a way that others would be incited to submit my articles.
- Explain to me what META tags matter in today's world.
A. The most important META tag for SEO is your page description. Search engines do make use of this tag but it does not outweigh the title or visible text. The META keywords tag is not much of a factor in the major search engines but should not be overlooked.
- Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
A. 1. Interview website owner or webmaster to get a good grasp of the site's purpose and goals.
2. Perform a keyword analysis to find best performing keywords that should be used for that site and for individual pages of the site
3. Analyze site content to determine usage of relevant keywords and phrases. This includes visible text as well at titles, META tags, and "alt" attributes.
4. Examine site navigation
5. Determine the existence of robots.txt and sitemap and examine those for effectiveness’.
6. Make recommendations for changes needed for the site and each individual page.
- If the company whose site you've been workind for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
A. I would update the old site with permanent redirects to to new page for every page. Then I would attempt to remove old content from the major search engines to avoid duplicate content issues.
- Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important "on page" elements
A. 1. issue is visible text being relevant to expected search terms.
2. would then be page a title
3. is navigation and "alt" attributes for navigation items and link text.
4. would be "alt" attributes for images and other media presented on pages.
- What do you think about link buying?
A. I discourage the practice for the most part. There are more effective means of paid marketing. One exception would be purchasing listings in highly reputable directories such as Yahoo directory.
- What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
A. LSI indexing rise to overcome the limitations of "literal" search term matching. For example, if someone is searching for "hiking in Norhter Nevada" a literal search would only match the words used without taking into account words such as "hike", "hiked". LSI can give more relevant results because it does take word usage and context into account determining what a page is "about" rather than a strict reliance on literal wording.
- What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
A. In regards to search results, it is a method that search engines such as Google use to determine relevance of a page based on phrases actually used in a document. For example, if you have a page instructing people on wildlife photography, the search engine would reasonably expect to see terms and phrases such as "selecting a camera", "approaching wildlife", and "low light photo conditions". Related phrases will add to the relevance of a page where unrelated phrases will reduce the relevance of a page. This is one technique that Google is using to weed out "spam" sites.
- What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
A. Seo is search engine optimization and is the process you use in getting your pages to place well on search results. SEM is search engine marketing and involves purchasing advertising space on search result pages. Sponsored listings are SEM. Both are related though! When using Google Ad words, the better you optimize your pages for search, the less you will be paying for your selected keywords in the PPC campaign and the better placement your ads will get.
- What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks?
A. I check the competitor’s backlinks to find nightly relevant sites and request a link from them. If reciprocal linking is required, I may be able to place a lik back to them in a relevant portion of a page on the site but if not, I will state so and may not gain that link. Another method I use is to submit press releases to relevant media.
- What role does a social medium play in an SEO strategy?
A. Social media such as social networking sites and news sites can provide for viral marketing. Viral marketing has proven to be powerful if the content of a site is appealing.
- What things wouldn't you to do increase rankings because the risk of penalty is too high?
A. I would avoid any site with the appearance of a link farm. I would also avoid any "spam" practice such as unsolicited email campaigns, certain affiliate advertising sites, sites that re-direct visitors to your site, and anything resembling the practices of Zango.
- Why might you want to use nofollow on an internal link?
A. Many sites have shoping carts and member login or logout links. This type of link is simply an administrative function and does nothing to contribute to site content. The search engine does not need to index those pages.
- Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
A. Yes I am and the tool I use most frequently is Google's webmaster tools. I also use the available Yahoo hosting tools for my own sites. Knowing what search terms your visitors are actually using to find your site as well as where those visitors are coming from will help refine SEO efforts. The amount of time each visitor spends on your site will help in determining if content changes are needed.
- From an analytics perspective, what is different between users from organic search results vs. a type-in user?
A A user coming into your site from an organic search usually has never visited your site before or is performing a general search for a specific product or topic. These visitors are trying to find the site that most suits thier needs. A "type-in" user is specifally interested in your website. They may have found your URL in print advertising or from a friend. Often, these users are familiar with what you are offering and are coming back to your site as a repeat visitor.
- How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
A. The main indicator is to perform a search on all major search engines using the keywords/ key phrases I am optimizing for. An analysis of those results will help to determine if optimization has gained in the results or lost ground. This analysis should be done over time as each search engine will update and index on a varying schedule. Another aspect is to use website statistics to determine where traffic is originating.
- What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do you use?
A. Competitive analysis means taking a close look at websites that rank highly in search results and comparing those sites to the one you are optimizing. They have employed methods that are working and are a valuable source for ideas.
- If you've done 6 months of SEO for a site and yet there haven't been any improvements, how would you go about diagnosing the problem?
A. I might approach the problem as if it were an entirely new project. Again taking a look at the keywords and phrases that I am attempting to optimize for and again taking a close inspection of top ranking competition. If the site is indexed and does show up in the irst 10 pages of a search but on in the top three, I would look into modification of major areas such as page titles, on page text, and page descriptions. If the site is not yet indexed or has been dropped from an index, there are major problems and the site may require a total re-work and re-submission.
- How many target keywords should a site have?
A. I advise not more than three or four well related keyword phrases. This allows for more effective optimization.
- You hear a rumor that Google is weighting the HTML LAYER tag very heavily in ranking the relevance of its results - how does this affect your work?
A. It doesn't unless the rumor proves to be fact. Yes, I check on the rumor but as with all rumors, it can have detrimental effects if you "jump on the band wagon" and it proves to be just a rumor with no basis in fact.
PHP interview question
· What does a special set of tags <? = and?> do in PHP? - The output is displayed directly to the browser.
· what’s the difference between include and require? - It’s how they handle failures. If the file is not found by require (), it will cause a fatal error and halt the execution of the script. If the file is not found by include(), a warning will be issued, but execution will continue.
· I am trying to assign a variable the value of 0123, but it keeps coming up with a different number, what’s the problem? - PHP Interpreter treats numbers beginning with 0 as octal. Look at the similar PHP interview questions for more numeric problems.
· Would I use print "$a dollars" or "{$a} dollars" to print out the amount of dollars in this example? - In this example it wouldn’t matter, since the variable is all by itself, but if you were to print something like "{$a},000,000 mln dollars", then you definitely need to use the braces.
· How do you define a constant? - Via define() directive, like define ("MYCONSTANT", 100);
· How do you pass a variable by value? - Just like in C++, put an ampersand in front of it, like $a = &$b
· Will comparison of string "10" and integer 11 work in PHP? - Yes, internally PHP will cast everything to the integer type, so numbers 10 and 11 will be compared.
· When are you supposed to use endif to end the conditional statement? - When the original if was followed by : and then the code block without braces.
· Explain the ternary conditional operator in PHP? - Expression preceding the ? is evaluated, if it’s true, then the expression preceding the : is executed, otherwise, the expression following : is executed.
· How do I find out the number of parameters passed into function? - func_num_args() function returns the number of parameters passed in.
· If the variable $a is equal to 5 and variable $b is equal to character a, what’s the value of $$b? - 100, it’s a reference to existing variable.
· What’s the difference between accessing a class method via -> and via ::? - :: is allowed to access methods that can perform static operations, i.e. those, which do not require object initialization.
· Are objects passed by value or by reference? - Everything is passed by value.
· How do you call a constructor for a parent class? - parent::constructor($value)
· What’s the special meaning of __sleep and __wakeup? - __sleep returns the array of all the variables than need to be saved, while __wakeup retrieves them.
· Why doesn’t the following code print the newline properly? <?php
$str = ‘Hello, there.nHow are you?nThanks for visiting TechInterviews’;
print $str;
?>
Because inside the single quotes the n character is not interpreted as newline, just as a sequence of two characters - and n.
· Would you initialize your strings with single quotes or double quotes? - Since the data inside the single-quoted string is not parsed for variable substitution, it’s always a better idea speed-wise to initialize a string with single quotes, unless you specifically need variable substitution.
· How come the code <?php print "Contents: $arr[1]"; ?> works, but <?php print "Contents: $arr[1][2]"; ?> doesn’t for two-dimensional array of mine? - Any time you have an array with more than one dimension, complex parsing syntax is required. print "Contents: {$arr[1][2]}" would’ve worked.
· What is the difference between characters �23 and x23? - The first one is octal 23, the second is hex 23.
· With a heredoc syntax, do I get variable substitution inside the heredoc contents? - Yes.
· I want to combine two variables together:
$var1 = 'Welcome to ';
$var2 = 'TechInterviews.com';
What will work faster? Code sample 1:
$var 3 = $var1.$var2;
Or code sample 2:
$var3 = "$var1$var2";
Both examples would provide the same result - $var3 equal to "Welcome to TechInterviews.com". However, Code Sample 1 will work significantly faster. Try it out with large sets of data (or via concatenating small sets a million times or so), and you will see that concatenation works significantly faster than variable substitution.
· For printing out strings, there are echo, print and printf. Explain the differences. - echo is the most primitive of them, and just outputs the contents following the construct to the screen. print is also a construct (so parentheses are optional when calling it), but it returns TRUE on successful output and FALSE if it was unable to print out the string. However, you can pass multiple parameters to echo, like:
<?php echo 'Welcome ', 'to', ' ', 'TechInterviews!'; ?>
and it will output the string "Welcome to TechInterviews!" print does not take multiple parameters. It is also generally argued that echo is faster, but usually the speed advantage is negligible, and might not be there for future versions of PHP. printf is a function, not a construct, and allows such advantages as formatted output, but it’s the slowest way to print out data out of echo, print and printf.
· I am writing an application in PHP that outputs a printable version of driving directions. It contains some long sentences, and I am a neat freak, and would like to make sure that no line exceeds 50 characters. How do I accomplish that with PHP? - On large strings that need to be formatted according to some length specifications, use wordwrap () or chunk_split().
· What’s the output of the ucwords function in this example?
$formatted = ucwords("TECHINTERVIEWS IS COLLECTION OF INTERVIEW QUESTIONS");
print $formatted;
Job interview question
• What is your greatest weakness?
• What is your greatest strength?
• Describe a typical work week.
• Do you take work home with you?
• How many hours do you normally work?
• How would you describe the pace at which you work?
• How do you handle stress and pressure?
• What motivates you?
• What are your salary expectations?
• What do you find are the most difficult decisions to make?
• Tell me about yourself.
• What has been the greatest dissatisfaction in your life?
• What are you passionate about?
• What are your pet peeves?
• What do people most often criticize about you?
• When was the last time you were angry? What happened?
• If you could relive the last 10 years of your life, what would you do differently?
Miscellaneous
• If the people who know you were asked why you should be hired, what would they say?
• Do you prefer to work independently or on a team?
• Give some examples of teamwork?
• What type of work environment do you prefer?
• How do you evaluate success?
• If you know your boss is 100% wrong about something how would you handle it?
• Describe a difficult work situation / project and how you overcame it.?
• Describe a time when your workload was heavy and how you handled it. ?
• More job interview questions about your abilities. ?
• More job interview questions about you? Job Interview Questions About the New Job and the Company
• What interests you about this job?
• Why do you want this job?
• What applicable attributes / experience do you have?
• Are you overqualified for this job?
• What can you do for this company?
• Why should we hire you?
• Why are you the best person for the job?
• What do you know about this company?
• Why do you want to work here?
• What challenges are you looking for in a position?
• What can you contribute to this company?
• Are you willing to travel?
• Is there anything I haven't told you about the job or company that you would like to know?
Future question
• What are you looking for in your next job? What is important to you? -
• What are your goals for the next five years / ten years? How do you plan to achieve those goals?
• What are your salary requirements - both short-term and long-term?
• Questions about your career goals. ?
• What will you do if you don't get this position?
Future question
- What are you looking for in your next job? What is important to you? -
- What are your goals for the next five years / ten years? How do you plan to achieve those goals?
- What are your salary requirements - both short-term and long-term?
- Questions about your career goals. ?
- What will you do if you don't get this position?
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