Hubspot SEO Certification Answers 2023

Focusing on the user and making it easy for search engines to crawl your website
Creating lots of high quality content and personalizing it for your buyer personas
Adding more content to your website and focusing on your social media presence
Focusing on search engine crawlers and making it easy to share your content

True or False? Don’t use a page’s URL as your link description.

True
False

You’re trying to rank for one of your target topics using a web page that contains a long, canonical piece of written content. However, when you do your research on what’s already ranking for that topic by searching for it on Google, you notice that the majority of search results on page one are videos. Which of the following actions will give your website the best chance of ranking for this topic?

Do nothing. Because your web page is a lengthy piece of written content, Google will have more text to crawl – so eventually, it will rank your page above the video results.
Delete the written content, and replace it with a video version of that content on the same URL. Because Google is serving up mostly videos on page 1 for this particular topic, the written content doesn’t have a place.
Create a video about that topic, and add it to your existing written page. Because Google is serving up mostly videos on page one for this particular topic, you’ll want to have a video in there – but that doesn’t mean having written content to supplement it won’t help.

Dr. Dave Driscoll, a very credible and well respected authority on dentistry, just linked to a blog post that you wrote about how to floss from his website. When Google assesses the authority of your post and recognizes the link from Dr. Driscoll’s website, which search engine function is at play?

Crawling
Ranking
Discovering
Indexing

True or False? Authority directly impacts ranking strength.

True
False

What tool can you use to test for errors in structured data markup?

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
Google’s Rich Results Test
Google’s PageSpeed Insights
Both A & B

When should you decide to work with a developer to implement structured data on a page?

When there are multiple schema markups that you want to implement on a single page
When you are unable to use a plugin to add structured data to your website
You should always work with a developer to implement structured data.
When there are a large number of required or recommended properties in a markup

What is Schema.org?

A standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content
A website where you can input a type of structured data and generate completed markup for your page
The organization that creates the standardized language and rules used for structured data
Google’s proprietary source of structured data

Jo is a marketer at Papier, a stationery company that does most of their business online. Jo has noticed that Papier is falling behind their competitors in search results and wants to improve their ranking and clickthrough rate. How should Jo go about optimizing the Papier website for this goal?

Add structured data to the product pages to display reviews and ratings data in rich results, and optimize the pages’ meta descriptions.
Implement a topic cluster content strategy to create blog posts and a pillar page on the topic of stationery.
Submit their sitemap to Google Search Console and resolve any duplicate content issues and crawling errors.

What are rich results?

Google’s response to a user’s search query
Visually enhanced search results that provide supplemental information to the title, URL, and meta description of a web page
A standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content
A markup language

True or False? The majority of SERPs include some type of rich results.

True
False

True or False? Backlinks build authority.

True
False

Choose all that apply. What are the most important things to do when replying to press request alerts?

Respond quickly
Include an image or video
Give the journalist exactly the information they want
Make sure they know how authoritative your site is

When building a relationship with the goal of receiving backlinks, what is the first thing you should do?

Request a link from them
Deliver value to them
Pitch an idea for a piece they can write
Tell them how important you are

True or False? All link-building tactics require building a relationship in order to work.

True
False

How many links does it take to rank high in search results?

The same number of links that other pages on your site have
More links than your highest-ranking page has
The same number of links that the results ranking on page one have
None of the above

True or False? Google doesn’t care about the quality of backlinks, only the quantity.

True
False

What kind of content is most likely to be organically linked to?

Informational content
Promotional content
Clickbait content
All content is equally likely to be linked to.

Google measures how interesting other people think your content is through ___.

Links
Backlinks
Social shares
Page views

What is a pillar page?

A structural strategy to organize the information architecture of your website
A page such as your home page which links out to a large number of other pages on your site
A way to organize a site’s content pages using a cleaner and more deliberate site architecture
A website page that covers a specific topic in depth and is linked to a cluster of related content

What was the purpose of the Google Hummingbird algorithm update?

Associating past search history with similar themes and pulling together keywords and phrases
Parsing out phrases rather than focusing on specific search queries
Targeting link spam and manipulative link-building practices
Serving up more personalized and relevant search results

Which of these is an example of a long-tail keyword?

Glasses
Do I need glasses
Women’s eye glasses
What does my glasses prescription mean

Sam is the marketing director for StyleHub, a clothing boutique. They opened their brick and mortar store last year, but Sam only published the website a month ago and it isn’t receiving much traffic yet. Now, they’re ready to focus on SEO and have some resources to dedicate to it. Which three tactics should Sam focus on initially?

Creating a series of blog posts and pillar pages; Reaching out to journalists for backlinks; Running a keyword competitive analysis
Implementing structured data on the website; Optimizing the load time of the website; Guest blogging for other relevant, authoritative websites
Optimizing the website to follow on-page SEO best practices; Making the website mobile-responsive; Setting up a Google My Business profile

True or False? You should emulate the top-ranking content for your target keyword, but offer unique value.

True
False

What stage of the buyer’s journey is someone searching for “what is inbound marketing?” likely in?

Awareness
Consideration
Decision
None of the above

The different types of keywords are:

Fat head, chunky middle, body keywords
Head terms, chunky middle, topic keywords
Head terms, body keywords, long-tail keywords
Body keywords, chunky middle, long-tail keywords

Choose all that apply. When should you submit your sitemap to Google and other search engines?

When you first publish your website
When you publish a new web page
When you make a significant change to your site structure
When you redesign your website

True or False? The further away a page is from the homepage, the worse it is for that page’s SEO.

True
False

Which of these teams is NOT involved in the creation of a sitemap?

Marketing
Development
Sales
Legal
IT

True or False? You should use hyphens, underscores, or spaces between the words in your URLs.

True
False

What are the two biggest factors in the mobile user experience of your website?

Site speed and pop-ups
Responsive design and backlinks
Site speed and responsive design
Image compression and redirects

Choose all that apply. Which of these are ways to increase your site speed?

Compress images
Upload images at the exact dimensions they’ll be used
Add pages to your robots.txt file
Reduce the number of backlinks to your pages

What is the purpose of a 301 redirect?

To temporarily redirect users from one URL to another
To prevent search engine crawlers from indexing a page
To resolve duplicate content issues
To permanently redirect users from one URL to another

Choose all that apply. Why is it important to have HTTPS for your website?

It encrypts sensitive data, like passwords and credit card numbers.
It’s required by Google.
It increases users’ trust in your website.
It prevents your site from receiving inadvertent penalties.

True or False? Structured data is a markup language.

True
False

When should you use a robots.txt file?

When you have multiple versions of a page to indicate the preferred version
When your website receives a penalty from Google
When you have pages that you don’t want search engines to crawl and index
Whenever you feel like it

Why is having duplicate content an issue for SEO?

It can dilute your ranking potential.
It confuses users.
It can negatively affect your authority.
It isn’t an issue at all.

Which of these is NOT part of a URL?

Protocol
Domain
Path
Index

How do you build discovery and relevance for search engines?

By increasing the number of backlinks to your pages
By driving as much traffic as possible to your website
By creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to be known for
By guest blogging on popular, authoritative sites

True or False? Adding structured data to a page guarantees that it will appear as a rich snippet in search results.

True
False

How long should your page’s title tag be?

Under 60 characters
Under 120 characters
Over 60 characters
As long as possible

When performing keyword research, how can you determine which keywords you should create content for?

Define topics that you want your business to be known for, then find long-tail keywords within that topic area.
Perform a competitor analysis to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
Identify keywords that have the highest amount of search volume, then create as much content as you can on them.
A & B

What kind of company would benefit from the site links rich snippet?

All companies can benefit from site links rich snippets.
A company with a large website, recognizable brand, and high search traffic.
A company with a smaller, highly targeted website.
A company that has an ecommerce store which sells products online.

How do search engines use sitemaps?

Display it in rich results.
Web crawlers use a sitemap to understand a website’s structure so they can evaluate and rank it more easily.
Web crawlers use a sitemap to follow backlinks from one site to another and assign authority to those pages.
Search engines don’t use sitemaps, but SEO experts use them to determine the information architecture of a website.

Choose all that apply. Why are meta descriptions important?

They increase click-through rate and visits from organic search.
They increase visits from social media.
They increase the authority of a web page.
They give people the right information at the right time.

When would it be beneficial to have a different title tag than your heading tag?

When your heading doesn’t accurately describe the contents of the page
When your heading is too long and will get cut off in search engine results
When your title is more interesting than your heading
Never, the two elements should always be the same

What is the purpose of heading tags?

To provide a hierarchical structure to a web page
To entice readers to click through onto a page
To accurately describe a web page’s contents
To tell search engine crawlers information about a page

What is a backlink profile?

A list of all the sites your website is currently linking to
A list of all the sites you are reaching out to for backlinks
A list of all the pages on your website that need backlinks
A list of all the sites currently linking to your site

True or False? Google accounts for the majority of searches worldwide.

True
False

True or False? When you make a change to a page, Google immediately crawls it.

True
False

Zoe is a digital marketer at a graphic design agency, and she’s been tasked this quarter with improving the firm’s SEO. However, the only guidance she has received from her boss is to get the site to rank higher on Google. In order for Zoe to create a successful SEO strategy for the business, what should her first step be?

Perform an SEO audit of the firm’s website to determine if there are any crawl errors or content gaps
Set a SMART goal and establish KPI’s to track if her SEO efforts are successful
Outline a content calendar for the quarter, including target keywords with high search volume

What technical SEO issue can you solve with an SSL certificate?