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Digital Marketing Search Engine Optimization Flashcards
61 question-and-answer cards covering Search Engine Optimization as it is examined in Digital Marketing. 24 of them are printed below, taken from across the deck — no signup, no paywall on the preview.
24 sample cards from the Search Engine Optimization deck
Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.
What distinguishes a high-quality backlink from a low-quality one?
High-quality backlinks come from authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy sites with natural anchor text and editorial placement; low-quality backlinks come from spammy, irrelevant, or paid link farms and can trigger penalties.
Name three white-hat (ethical) backlink building techniques.
Guest blogging on relevant sites, creating link-worthy content (skyscraper technique), broken link building, digital PR/outreach, and earning editorial mentions.
What is domain authority (DA)?
Domain Authority is a third-party metric (developed by Moz, scored 1-100) that predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search results based largely on its backlink profile; it is not a Google ranking factor itself.
What are social media signals in SEO?
Social signals are the likes, shares, comments, and overall engagement a page receives on social platforms; while not a direct ranking factor, they increase content visibility, traffic, and the likelihood of earning backlinks.
What is guest blogging and how does it help SEO?
Guest blogging is writing and publishing articles on other relevant websites, typically in exchange for a backlink and exposure; it builds authority, referral traffic, brand awareness, and quality backlinks when done on reputable sites.
What is a key risk of guest blogging for SEO?
Excessive, low-quality, or purely link-focused guest posting on spammy sites with over-optimized anchor text can be seen as a link scheme and trigger a Google penalty; guest posts should prioritize genuine value and relevance.
Why does website speed matter for SEO?
Faster loading improves user experience, reduces bounce rate, and increases conversions; page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor, especially for mobile, and is measured partly through Core Web Vitals.
What are Google's three Core Web Vitals metrics?
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP, loading performance), Interaction to Next Paint (INP, responsiveness, which replaced First Input Delay), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS, visual stability).
What is a good target for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?
LCP should occur within $2.5$ seconds of when the page first starts loading for a good user experience; $2.5$-$4.0$ seconds needs improvement, and above $4.0$ seconds is poor.
Name three common techniques to improve website loading speed.
Compressing and optimizing images, minifying CSS/JS/HTML, enabling browser caching, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and reducing server response time.
What is mobile optimization in SEO?
Mobile optimization is designing and configuring a site to deliver a fast, usable experience on mobile devices through responsive design, readable text, tap-friendly elements, and fast load times.
What is mobile-first indexing?
Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a site's content for crawling, indexing, and ranking, so the mobile experience must contain the same content and be fully optimized.
What is responsive web design?
Responsive web design is an approach where a single site layout automatically adapts to fit any screen size using flexible grids, fluid images, and CSS media queries, providing an optimal experience across devices.
What is the difference between crawlability and indexability?
Crawlability is whether search engine bots can access and read a page's content, while indexability is whether that page is allowed and eligible to be stored in the index and shown in results; a page can be crawlable but blocked from indexing (e.g., via noindex).
What is the purpose of a robots.txt file?
Robots.txt is a text file at a site's root that instructs search engine crawlers which URLs or directories they may or may not crawl, helping manage crawl budget; it controls crawling but not indexing directly.
What is an XML sitemap and how does it aid indexing?
An XML sitemap is a file listing a site's important URLs (with metadata like last-modified dates) submitted to search engines to help them discover, crawl, and index pages more efficiently, especially on large or new sites.
What does the meta robots 'noindex' directive do?
The noindex directive tells search engines not to include a specific page in their index, so it will not appear in search results even if it is crawled.
What are HTTPS and SSL, and why do they matter for SEO?
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, now TLS) is a protocol that encrypts data between browser and server, and HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP using it; HTTPS is a confirmed Google ranking signal and builds user trust by securing data.
How can users visually identify that a site uses HTTPS/SSL?
The URL begins with 'https://' and browsers display a padlock icon in the address bar, indicating an active SSL/TLS certificate encrypts the connection.
What is Google My Business (Google Business Profile)?
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that lets businesses create and manage their listing across Google Search and Maps, controlling information like address, hours, reviews, and photos to boost local SEO.
What is a key ranking factor for local SEO in Google Business Profile?
NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone number matching across the web), along with proximity to the searcher, category relevance, positive reviews, and profile completeness/prominence.
What is the 'local pack' in local SEO?
The local pack (map pack) is the block of typically three local business listings shown with a Google Map at the top of search results for location-based queries, powered largely by Google Business Profiles.
What is white-hat versus black-hat SEO?
White-hat SEO uses ethical, guideline-compliant techniques focused on user value (quality content, natural links), while black-hat SEO uses manipulative tactics (keyword stuffing, cloaking, link buying) that violate guidelines and risk penalties.
What is keyword stuffing and why should it be avoided?
Keyword stuffing is unnaturally overloading a page with keywords to manipulate rankings; it degrades readability, violates search engine guidelines, and can result in ranking penalties.
What this deck covers
The Search Engine Optimization deck follows the Digital Marketing Search Engine Optimization syllabus — 8 chapters and 26 topics — so questions land on material that is genuinely examinable rather than trivia around it. That works out to roughly 7.6 cards per chapter.
Answers are written to be recallable, not just readable — averaging about 205 characters, which is long enough to carry the reasoning and short enough to say out loud.
A deck like this earns its keep on the second and third pass. Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then use the cards to find the specific facts that have not stuck.
Search Engine Optimization flashcards FAQ
How many Search Engine Optimization flashcards are in this Digital Marketing deck?
61 cards. This page previews 24 of them, sampled evenly across the deck so you can judge the difficulty before installing anything.
Are these Digital Marketing flashcards free?
Yes. The preview here is free to read with no signup, and the full 61-card deck is free inside the Examius app.
What do the Search Engine Optimization cards cover?
They follow the Digital Marketing Search Engine Optimization syllabus — 8 chapters and 26 topics — so the questions track what is actually examinable.
How should I use these flashcards?
Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then drill the deck. Examius schedules each card with spaced repetition, so cards you keep missing come back sooner and ones you know drift further apart.