SEO Technical SEO & Site Architecture 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which HTTP status code should be used when permanently redirecting a URL to a new location?
- 302 Found
- 301 Moved Permanently (Correct answer)
- 404 Not Found
- 410 Gone
Correct answer: 301 Moved Permanently
A 301 redirect tells search engines the move is permanent, transferring link equity to the new URL.
Question 2: What is the primary purpose of an XML sitemap?
- Improve page load speed
- Help search engines discover and index pages (Correct answer)
- Redirect broken URLs
- Store user session data
Correct answer: Help search engines discover and index pages
An XML sitemap lists URLs on a site so crawlers can efficiently discover and prioritize pages for indexing.
Question 3: Which robots.txt directive prevents all crawlers from accessing an entire website?
- User-agent: * Disallow: /all
- User-agent: * Disallow: / (Correct answer)
- User-agent: * Block: true
- User-agent: all Noindex: /
Correct answer: User-agent: * Disallow: /
"User-agent: * Disallow: /" blocks all crawlers from accessing any path on the site.
Question 4: What does the canonical tag (rel='canonical') primarily solve?
- Slow page load times
- Duplicate content issues (Correct answer)
- Broken internal links
- Missing meta descriptions
Correct answer: Duplicate content issues
The canonical tag tells search engines which version of a duplicated or similar page should be treated as the authoritative source.
Question 5: Which crawl budget factor does Google consider most important for large websites?
- Number of social media shares
- Crawl rate limit and crawl demand (Correct answer)
- Number of H1 tags per page
- Keyword density across pages
Correct answer: Crawl rate limit and crawl demand
Google's crawl budget is determined by crawl rate limit (server capacity) and crawl demand (popularity and staleness), making efficient crawling critical for large sites.
Question 6: What is the recommended maximum depth (clicks from homepage) for important pages in a well-structured site architecture?
- 10 clicks
- 7 clicks
- 3 clicks (Correct answer)
- 1 click
Correct answer: 3 clicks
Pages within 3 clicks from the homepage are considered easily accessible and typically receive stronger crawl priority and link equity.
Question 7: Which structured data format does Google recommend for implementing Schema.org markup?
- Microdata
- RDFa
- JSON-LD (Correct answer)
- Open Graph
Correct answer: JSON-LD
Google recommends JSON-LD because it can be placed in the <head> section without altering visible HTML content, making it easier to implement and maintain.
SEO Technical SEO & Site Architecture 1
Which HTTP status code should be used when permanently redirecting a URL to a new location?