SEO Specialist interview questions
These are the questions in the HeyMarketers Screened interview for seo, plus the ones hiring managers ask most for SEO specialists. For each, we say what a strong answer shows.
What reviewers score
Every Screened interview is scored against the same written rubric, and a person makes the call.
- Craft and depth
- Technical and content SEO judgment, prioritisation by impact, and awareness of how AI search is changing the work.
- Results and measurement
- Specific outcomes with numbers, a clear baseline, and honest attribution of their own contribution.
- AI-native practice
- Concrete tools and workflows, judgment about where AI helps or hurts, and checks on AI output.
- Communication
- Clear, structured answers that a hiring manager could follow without follow-up questions.
Our screening questions
1. Introduce yourself in under a minute: what you do, who you do it for, and what you're looking for next.
Recorded on video, up to 1 minute, with 30 seconds to think first. Strong answers are short and specific: what you do, for whom, and what you want next.
2. Tell us about your biggest SEO win. What was the starting point, what did you do, and how did traffic and signups change?
Recorded on video, up to 2.5 minutes, with 30 seconds to think first. Reviewers look for technical and content SEO judgment, prioritisation by impact, and awareness of how AI search is changing the work.
3. You inherit a site whose organic traffic dropped 30% in three months. How do you work out why, and what do you check first?
Recorded on video, up to 2.5 minutes, with 30 seconds to think first. Reviewers look for technical and content SEO judgment, prioritisation by impact, and awareness of how AI search is changing the work.
4. How are AI Overviews and answer engines changing what you prioritise?
Answered in writing. Reviewers look for real tools and workflows, and judgment about where AI helps or hurts.
5. Walk us through how AI fits into your work today. Which tools do you use, roughly how much of your output does AI touch, and what have you automated in the last few months?
Recorded on video, up to 2.5 minutes, with 30 seconds to think first. Reviewers look for real tools and workflows, and judgment about where AI helps or hurts.
6. Describe a time AI-assisted work went wrong. What happened, how did you catch it, and what do you do differently now?
Answered in writing. Reviewers look for real tools and workflows, and judgment about where AI helps or hurts.
Other questions hiring managers ask
7. How would you prioritise a backlog of 200 SEO issues?
Listen for: An impact and effort framework, and starting with what blocks indexing of money pages.
8. Walk me through a site migration you've run.
Listen for: Redirect mapping, a pre-launch crawl, monitoring after launch, and what went wrong.
9. When would you not create a page for a keyword?
Listen for: Cannibalisation, intent mismatch, or no way to make the page better than what ranks.
10. How do you report SEO to a CEO who only cares about revenue?
Listen for: Attribution to signups or pipeline, with honest caveats.
11. What's your view on programmatic SEO?
Listen for: Unique data per page, indexation thresholds, and awareness of thin-content risk.
12. How do you decide between updating an old page and writing a new one?
Listen for: Looking at existing rankings, links and intent before deciding.
How to prepare
- Show a before-and-after: a site, the change you made and the traffic and signup numbers, with dates.
- Bring one technical story (a migration, an indexing bug) and one content story (a page or program that ranked).
- Talk in business outcomes. 'Organic demos up 40%' beats 'traffic up 200%'.
- Have an opinion on AI search backed by something you've measured.
New to the role? Read what SEO specialists do, the skills that matter and what they're paid.