SEO Technical SEO 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which robots.txt directive is used to block all crawlers from accessing the entire site?
- User-agent: * Disallow: /sitemap.xml
- User-agent: * Disallow: / (Correct answer)
- User-agent: * Allow: /
- User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: *
Correct answer: User-agent: * Disallow: /
'Disallow: /' tells all robots not to crawl any page on the site.
Question 2: What does the 'hreflang' attribute tell search engines?
- The document's encoding format
- The target language and region for alternate versions of a page (Correct answer)
- The primary author's language
- The direction of text rendering
Correct answer: The target language and region for alternate versions of a page
Hreflang specifies the language and optional geographic targeting of a page so search engines serve the correct version to users.
Question 3: Which HTTP header can be used to set a canonical URL instead of an HTML tag?
- X-Robots-Tag
- Link: rel=canonical (Correct answer)
- Content-Location
- Vary
Correct answer: Link: rel=canonical
The HTTP Link header with rel=canonical allows non-HTML files like PDFs to specify a canonical URL.
Question 4: What is the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) threshold for a 'Good' rating according to Google?
- Under 1.0 second
- Under 2.5 seconds (Correct answer)
- Under 4.0 seconds
- Under 5.0 seconds
Correct answer: Under 2.5 seconds
Google considers an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less as 'Good,' measuring how quickly the largest visible content element loads.
Question 5: What does Google's mobile-first indexing mean for website owners?
- Google only indexes mobile apps
- Google primarily uses the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking (Correct answer)
- Mobile pages are ranked separately from desktop pages
- Sites without a mobile version are deindexed
Correct answer: Google primarily uses the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking
With mobile-first indexing, Googlebot predominantly crawls and indexes the mobile version of a site's content.
Question 6: What is a 'soft 404' error?
- A page that loads in under 404ms
- A page that returns a 200 OK status but displays a 'not found' message (Correct answer)
- A redirected page with broken links
- A page blocked by robots.txt but still indexed
Correct answer: A page that returns a 200 OK status but displays a 'not found' message
Soft 404s return a 200 HTTP status while presenting 'not found' content, confusing crawlers that can't distinguish them from real pages.
Question 7: Which tool can developers use to test how Googlebot renders a JavaScript-heavy page?
- Google Analytics Real-Time
- Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool (Correct answer)
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google Tag Manager Preview
Correct answer: Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool
The URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console shows how Googlebot renders a page, including JavaScript-generated content.
SEO Technical SEO 3
Which robots.txt directive is used to block all crawlers from accessing the entire site?