So, you think you know your SEO inside and out, eh? Well, now's your chance to show your stuff. SEOmoz is proud to announce the SEO Expert Quiz. 75 action-packed questions designed to test your mettle, covering all corners of the SEO universe from beginner knowledge to sneaky tricks only true Dark Lords of the SERPs will know. Once completed, you'll have the chance to share in your triumph (or tragedy) by slapping your SEOmoz SEO Quiz badge on your site to let the world know how hard you rock the SEO game.
SEOmoz SEO Expert Quiz
UPDATE from Rand: Just a warning to folks - this is a tough quiz, and it's a bit time consuming. However, I do think there's a lot of good knowledge to be gained from taking it, and even if you disagree with some of the answers, that debate alone should add to the value of the quiz. Jeff & Scott both put a ton of work into this, and I'm really proud of the results. Great work to both of them.
p.s. There's 271 points available because the questions are weighted - easy questions aren't worth as much as hard questions. And yes, Rebecca only scored a 4.. :)
p.s. There's 271 points available because the questions are weighted - easy questions aren't worth as much as hard questions. And yes, Rebecca only scored a 4.. :)
I got a .0123% and was termed "drunk loser"
Seems like an accurate quiz. A little too accurate.
It's only because there weren't any questions about Google gadgets!
LOL. Legendary
I am eagerly awaiting "SEOquiz II: The Remix" which will surely feature:
i) A countdown timer subtracting one point for each minute that you take.
ii) A question on Rand's facial hair.
iii) A bonus round where 'Angry' Matt pops-up in the bottom right corner of the browser and yells "Toasty!".
And here are my favorite excuses for my result:
Ambiguity (i didn't read the question properly)
User interface (I'm uncoordinated and clicked on the wrong answer)
Pro-American - eg. the question about which major SE uses another SE's PPC listings - in Australia MSN uses Yahoo.
Followed-up by a Whiteboard Friday telling how NOT to complete the quiz
And so then I asked Rand, what happens as time passes and the quiz answers are no longer correct, will the quiz be manually updated or will you let the Quiz-Deserves-Freshness factor kick in?
*boom* *tish*
SEO stand-up!
Yes, I scored a 4. I actually don't know anything about SEO. My presentations at conferences are actually sock puppet theater shows.
Now now rebecca - don't put yourself down, I've heard plenty of good things about your performances. Er, I mean presentations ;-)
Perhaps, but you look great in home made tee shirts. Priorities.
That's not necessarily so bad. Was it 4% correct or 4 correct answers? The latter would work out to maybe as much as 6%.
Hey, I got a 71%! Not bad for a girl who, in college, refused to get an email address because she thought the internet was just a passing fad (and who never heard of SEO until about a year ago).
I must add - many of the questions I knew were from reading the Premium Membership Q & A. That has become quite an impressive treasure trove of SEO knowledge. I routinely learn interesting new things by reading through the questions and answers.
You mention discussion with what you think may have a different answer.
#3 When linking to external websites, it's wise to use the keywords you're attempting to rank for on that page as the anchor text of the external-pointing links.
I would think would be True. The quiz explination for the answer being false mentions keyword cannibalization which is what I would consider an internal issue. So if the question asked about internal links, the answer would then of course be false.Am I off base?
Jeremy - in addition to the cannibalization issue, you're essentially creating more competition for yourself. Let's say you were trying to rank #1 for "car loans" - you certainly would not want to link out to another website with the anchor text "car loans" as you'd be giving that site not only your link juice, but relevancy for your target term.
I suppose it could be argued that if the hubs and authorities model is strong, there might be some advantage to this, but I'd still say that you wouldn't want to use the anchor text for the phrase you want to rank for.
Assuming the hubs and authorities model is in effect in even a small way, whether or not I linked out to external sources with my anchor text from a page is highly dependant on the site I'm working on. If the site is ecommerce, then no I won't link out. If the site is classified as information or news site that could qualify for hub or authority status, then yes I do. That's what information and news sites do. So it only reinforces my site's classification.
I know there has been some chatter lately on whether Google is classifying sites and serps. I'm not really sure why it's been coming up lately but it's been happening for a long while now.
NY Times Quotes from Matt
As long as Google is classifying a site, I'm going to play right into that classification. If I startle the line, I might get left in limbo. Better to specialize in on classification.
Like I said - that point is well taken, but I'd still never use the anchor text as the texdt I'm trying to rank for. I just can't see the advantage of creating more competition for yourself.
What if the site you link out to stands little chance of ranking for the keyword. Maybe you are one of only 2 sites linking to that page and the site has low authority, and your page has 100 times the volume of links to it related to the keyword you are targeting?
You wouldn't be creating competition in this case.
I think this question is a close one too. I've seen some great results with sites where adding a few links out to your competitors (and by competitors, I'm talking about results that rank in the same space as you, not necessarily direct competitors) has helped greatly.
In particular, adding links to sites that rank no 1 for your keyphrase in different search engines (e.g. adding links to the no1 spot for 'keyphrase' in google.com when you're trying to rank no1 in google.co.uk) has had positive results for me.
Still, I see what you're getting at Rand and I think broadly speaking you should be very wary of linking out using your target keyphrase.
I agree with Jeremy here.
To be honest, I'm quite surprised at your answers on this issue both in the quiz and on the comments.
The concepts of "giving away link juice" and not wanting to give other sites relevancy are very outmoded concepts in this industry, imo.
Of course, I realise that the quiz was a bit of fun and necessarily simplistic. But the idea of "link juice" is way overrated in the scheme of things, with people being obsessed about the value of an external link from an internal page with possibly 20+ other links to internal and external pages on it.
And as you yourself mention numerous times elsewhere on this site, the concept of link value in terms of "juice" is becoming less cut-and-dried as a method of determining search results.
I would certainly rate the potential on-page and "site neighbourhood" advantages as being at least a wash compared to the potential loss of any "juice".
Your comments about boosting sites which could compete with yours are, I find, even stranger coming from an SEO/SEM, who should possess the skills and/or confidence to be immune from worrying about the potential effects of a link to a site in the same area.
I am not advocating deliberately linking to your #1 competitor from your home page, but equally, linking to sites which are reputable resources in the community/industry is a good policy for boosting the credibility of your site (and increasing its "linkability") in both terms of independence and a "non-optimised" footprint.
It certainly has more in common with your link-bait strand of thinking and, if the other sites are good enough, they are going to be getting good links anyway.
I would presume that that is the reason that you freely link out to competing web marketing companies and communities here, for example.
Stever - I think you missed my point. Linking out = good. Using the anchor text you're attempting to rank for = bad. That's the focus of the question.
To be fair, I don't think I did, Rand, since I was responding in part to you referring to wasting "link juice" in the comments.
As far as the anchor text issue is concerned, while I may not link to another site offering the same product with the text "car loans", I would certainly have no compunction linking to an auto industry site page with the phrase "car loans comparison study". I guess we'll just have to disagree on that one...;)
Here's the answer: If you just spent the time to answer 75 questions about SEO instead of working - you're a horrible SEO. Get back to work!
I happen to consider this quiz an absolutely invaluable research tool. . .full of vodka.
I just had to answer, "By showing your competitors your important keywords" for the Meta Keywords advantage question. That's definitely an advantage, one moving in the wrong direction, but still...
Lol - there were definitely some questions where the wrong answer was just too damn funny not to use it!
In which case the final titles should have been Newbie, Novice, Master, Dark Lord and SEO Jester...
I certainly know where I'd fit!
Agreed... my cursor kept being magnetically pulled towards "Autobot, Decepticon" on one particular question...
that was a classic... love the humor in the test questions!~
Autobot, decepticon LOL.
That one amused me as well. As did "they're filled with vodka."
One of the most useful job related things I have seen in ages so many thanks! One of the biggest problems I think new SEOers like myself often face is that we don't know what we don't know....this definately helped show and fill some of my gaps in knowledge.
I have a slight problem in that I surprised myself with a professional 72% whilst my obviously more experienced boss came in as a Newbie with 68%...I have sent him off to get me coffee :-)
I think some of the wording for several of the questions could be better. Most of the ones I got wrong were down to trying to work out what was being said on no coffee and having been up for an hour.
You keeping track of the scores?
I was wondering that. Should be viewable from profile pages (but then I would say that [*cough* 93% *cough]). Speaking of which, is there any way to get back to results afterwards? I want to query the whole noindex,follow thing. I still think I got that the right way round, but got it marked as wrong...
There was one of those questions that I thought I answered correctly too that was marked differently...I'm wondering if we mis-read the question somehow.
I got 91 % and am now a seo dark lord. I am now only allowed to start black hat projects? :-)
I think you got question "65" false, too. My answer was "true" and as I understand Matt that is the right answer?? With "noindex,follow" in the Metatag, Google is following the links. I don´t really understand your answer: "This is FALSE - the default for search engines is "index, follow" so "noindex, follow" would actually prevent all pages without explicit meta robots tags from being crawled."
Isn´t the question about how would Google treat the links on a page with "noindex,follow"-Metatag??
Hi Jojo. I think you're right - I think this is now corrected (see Rand below). I said the same as you, so I hope we're right....
Yeah. I am just wondering how many points I lost through this question? :-)
actually you raise a good point. questions squarely geared toward a dark lord proper are not really in the quiz (which is all as it should be), so that the designation happens to get awarded upon successful completion thereof isn't really appropriate might inadvertently stoke a bit of confusion around the concept.
it's not the first time seomoz has made an apparent choice-of-words slip but i've never harped on the nit and still won't. seomoz has published an amount of content clearly addressing definitions of black hat that makes up for it.
fun link bait.
Sorry Rand... It had to be done...
Dark Lord Rand
Mmmm. Strong in the ranking this one is.
I'd like to see the Jedi mind trick used to convince Matt Cutts that "these aren't the spam sites you're looking for... move along"
I think the answer for #65 is coded wrong as well unless I'm not reading it right:
Your Answer: FALSE
Correct Answer: TRUE
This is FALSE - the default for search engines is "index, follow" so "noindex, follow" would actually prevent all pages without explicit meta robots tags from being crawled.
Great quiz...very entertaining!
Yeah. I answered that the other way round as well. I thought 'follow' meant 'treat links as usual'...
There's a test today? Anybody got an extra pencil?
Here's a thought,: Maybe you guys could put together a more rigid and controlled version of this test. . .and offer SEOmoz Certification. Maybe a snazzy little badge that would be centrally controlled by you guys in the same vein as an SSL-certficate seal (so nobody could just copy/paste without being certified). Something like a "Better SEO Bureau." You guys are already approaching that position of authority. . .
I think you could charge a decent amount of money for it as well - but if would have to be pretty well-controlled since you're basically lending your brand to other SEO's and "vouching" for their knowledge. Maybe only a handful would get it. . .I, for one, would be ready to jump through hoops to get it. I'd even fly to Seattle.
ps I scored an 80% - when are you guys going to hire me?
I got a novice :( I've been doing this for a decade too...
#1 rankings abound and some really cool clients...
I know I rushed about 25% as I was "breaking my neck" here but novice it was!
Insert tears.....
I concur. I'm still waiting for a reputable SEO certification to finally establish credibility in a very shady industry. I touched on it a bit on another post here - https://www.seomoz.org/blog/answer-these-ten-questions-before-you-charge-for-seo-services#jtc31302
Hmm... only 72% - definitely good fun and educational... though also "debatable" ;-) For instance, Down Under (as in Australia) the general SEO/SEM definition is clearly different from the US and Europe. And there were a couple of other answers in there that I'm not too sure about... Oh, and please try to fix the Q65 answer. I got that right, but your thingie counts it as wrong...
Great fun! Thanks a lot!Radzster
I did better than I thought I would - 87% = SEO master. I guess I don't need to become a premium member after all! Touchee! hahaha, j/k.
I got 100%! How? I took the quiz twice :-) That's what I've learned thru seo..lol
@rebecca: when will be the next puppet show?
the main thing I learned from this quiz is that I'm dyslexic.
lol
Hi guys,
Just want to report a potential bug. I completed about half the questions, went to lunch and then completed the rest.
As it presented the results, it seems to have lost the answers I provided for the first 35 questions, and giving me score of 90/257.
Might want to look into it.
Cheers,
Luke
Interesting quiz, there are a few areas where the correct answer certainly isn't clear. I mean for the question "Why are absolute (https://www.mysite.com/my-category)URLs better than relative ("/my-category") URLs for on-page internal linking?" my answer of "D. They're filled with Vodka" is quite obviously correct.. Really this is the best "SEO Expert Quiz" I've seen around though!
I'm wondering if the quiz has a problem at the end, it just finished and left me with a little bar graph, no points or explanations. I would have liked to paste some of the questions in here to see what other people thought of the same question.
Updated.. Turns out my machine just lagged out at about half way through the quiz. Finished it now with an 83% with which I'm pretty satisified. Maybe after reading 50 blogs a day for another year I'll be a dark lord.
When interviewing potential candidates for SEO positions this could be an excellent tool.
Hmm... Never thought of it that way, but you may be on to something. Maybe we'll use it to test potential future employees.
It´s hardly to think that this wasn´t your primary goal. As soon as I´ve seen it, I thought "Nice, again Rand stole my idea and translated it into English." :) I will do it in the evening.
Hmm, well, a nice linkbaiting campaign, not more. I think it is useful to determine if someone is a SEO fool or he/she knows the basics, but not the SEO Lord quiz it claims to be. After that, I think the best SEO quiz is a SEO contest. The Nr.1 after those contest you can employ without thinking.
haha. That was the first thing I thought too. Maybe this will be the exit exam for your SEO Seminar as well.
or you could come up with a decent set of SEO certification quizzes (like this...) that isn't promoting someone's personal agenda (i have seen in the past), and update it regularly like CE for nurses, massage therapist's, attorney's financial counselors, etc.. you would have to find someone that isn't actively soliciting SEO clients (as not to be biased), and keeps the ceritifcation stuff updated.
i liked the test but i missed all the linking questions, simply because never have nor never will use buying links, (except Yahoo! - channel specific publications, etc..), as a way to do SEO.. at some point it gets abused and they will flag it so never really used them.. and yes we get first page placements for our client on a regular basis..
However.
#74..
CPC.. overture bid tool? not sure if it still exists.. but that did give..
wouldn't the correct answer be demographic data on searchers?
where can u find the demographic data on searchers for those people specifically looking for "ultra low power lcd modules" race, sex, etc?
I also thought the same thing on PPC Bid Cost vs Demographic. It may be my definition of demographics being age, sex, race, etc. that misled me (though I may not be aware of some of the tools, data sources out there for this information).
The answer about Yahoo / Japan was wrong. Google is not the most popular or most used search engine in Japan. Yahoo Japan is still number one though Google is moving up on them.
Here are some easier to understand stats:
https://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1642
I liked the international questions, just need to research a little more before seo expert quiz v2.
Yes Jeff, you are indeed correct.
Rand cites a Nielsen Netratings report that shows only 6% of Yahoo Japan usage is on Yahoo's search pages against 74% of Google search usage.
However, that 6% is from a total of 8.63 billion minutes spent on Yahoo properties!
Time spent on Yahoo Search = 518 million minutes.
Time spent on Google Search = 339 million minutes.
Here is the full Nielsen Netratings Japan report in English: https://csp.netratings.co.jp/nnr/PDF/Newsrelease08282007_e.pdf
In other words, Comscore shows Yahoo Search has more searches performed (2.7 billion vs 2.0 billion) and Nielsen Netratings shows users spent more total time on Yahoo Search than Google Search.
Another answer to change Rand!
Can you trace IP's to see if we are lying about our score......because if not I am Dark Lord!!
Some of the questions have pretty subjective answers.
Like where is the best place to re-direct expired content, that is more a business issue than a direct optimization issue. Really the phrasing on the questions could use a little bit of tweaking. I feel there are some questions where I knew what you meant, but only because I know the way you think from reading the blog.
High-quality linkbait which I am glad to link to. A valuable resource. I would be surprised if some of the people offering SEO services in my area could score more than 40%.
Hm, well I fecked something up. :) Basically, the quiz results show that I didn't even answer the first 46 questions... It shows nothing under the "Your answer" and just takes the first 46 as false... Hm, it may be because I had breakfast somewhere in the middle of taking the quiz... :)
Took the quiz again - not having a break in the middle. It worked. 72%. I'm a Professional. :)
Who is Gordon Hopper, anyway?
Yes, a few answers I would quibble, but quizes are always ike that - you have to understand exactly what the quiz master meant by the words in the question :)
Yeah baby! 100%
The Dark Lord is in the house!
https://www.seo10x.com/blog/?p=12
76%, I can live with that. Great quiz guys!
I am now officialy an SEO Master.
I think you should challenge the top SEO's to take it and put the results up on the SEOmoz.
(Wait. hold on, Aaron thought what?)
Cool quiz and great linkbait.
I do feel that some questions, while good to know, aren't very relevant to daily SEO work (in my opinion). I'm referring to the Larry Page question, which I had wrong. ;-)
It's good that those specific questions don't carry as much weight though.
I think it's a pity that we can't save the quiz RESULTS as a bookmark, turning the result page into a variable url so we can send it to friends and save the page in our bookmarks to read the questions we answered wrongly, later on. If I missed the big obvious button that let's you save your results in this way, let me know.. I tend to be blind as a bat when it comes to the big-red-push-me buttons.
All in all a great quiz, great linkbait and a great way to test (or brush up) your knowledge.
I had 72%, which I'm quite pleased with, considering I didn't wake up too long ago, haven't had my cup of tea and don't work in the SEO/SEM-field or have the time to read up on things as much as I'd like.
Go, go reading SEOMOZ for a good while and SEOMOZ Premium Membership. =P
Thanks for the work you put into this. =)
Another classic example of excellent link bait from the Seomoz team, fun and will definately cause a lot of buzz. I scored higher than I thought and that is thanks to all the great info that available from this site. A small addition would be option to send the result via email at the end of the test so you can use them as reference. Thanxs again!!!
BTW just to say my coding is a lot more ledgible than my english...don't think my dyslexia stretches to markup and oop!
SEO Master - YES!
This is awesome, makes me want to carry a laptop with an aircard at all times just so the next time I run into a self-proclaimed SEO expert I can whip out this quiz on the spot for them to take to prove it to me =)
Any plans for a mobile version coming out soon to save me from lugging my laptop around?
Great job guys!
i like now that i kinda have an answer to the question i posed here...
Hi, Finally a newbie of NEWBIE like me can now have a regular or idea-brainstorm to up my SEO ideas and knowledge. Truly, as I am writing am also taking the quiz. My main concern is to learn enough money making SEO ideas to take my online site to greater height. I hope to come back and let you know the final results. Thanks
I would have scored better if i wasn't distracted by The Simpsons (d'oh), but I'm still very happy with my score. What's better than pro? I hope to find out in the next quiz :)
I won't complain here about the questions I disagree with -- I did that in the thread at Sphinn -- but I do have to say something about the badge: it's too big. It wouldn't fit in my right column, so I had to download a copy, resize it and recode the whole dealio. Because of that, you're only going to see that I'm linking to you if someone happens to click it, rather than getting a hit whenever a page on my blog loads.
Oh man, I'm such a sucker for tests.
I don't know what my 75% really means in the grand scheme of things, but I'll confess to the dumb delight in thinking, "Wow...I'm an SEO Professional!"
Thanks to Rand & Co. for pushing the SEO peanut forward.
OK I got 52, I really need to do some more study.
The "TrustRank" question...
Google has an intent to use patent for the words only "TrustRank" for which they just received a third extension.
https://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78588592
Since this indicates that have not yet done so, "TrustRank" cannot be attributed to any Google patent.
"TrustRank" as defined and outlined by the white paper, Combatting Spam with TrustRank, is a pending Yahoo patent.
https://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060095416%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20060095416&RS=DN/20060095416
Dave
I took the test... Uh! I'm an SEO Professional. It's good to know that my seo knowledge is building up, still have a lot of reading to do. Thanks for for the quiz.
It will be great to have some feedback on the answers of the quiz, also saw some people mentioned about seomoz.org doing some kind of certification through this type of tools, it would be great.
There are still some answers that I disagree in based on my experience. But then this serves as a red flag for me to double check on my own SEO beliefs and see if maybe I have more room for improvement. Still a good quiz that provides further insights.
75%, SEO professional... not so bad for an answering from France with some question regarding mainly US market... Wonder what will be the score and ranking of others members of my team... :-)
Ok so I got to about question 26 and it totally borked up, just kept calculating my score after the last question....so I may try it again soemtime, but it took so long to get to that 26th question and then it stops working?
I got a 81%. I actually learned something after reviewing what I had answered incorrectly. I then retook it and got a 97%. (Either I really wanted to improve or I really didn't feel like getting some work done today...lol)
If nothing else the quiz pointed out the some weak areas that I might want to look into.
81% - I'm an inhouse SEO and I sent it on to some other folks here who often seem to think they know enough to do our SEO themselves. Most didn't finish it. The one who did got 6%. So now I will use my shiny 'SEO Master' badge to reassure my mostly clueless overlords that I know what the hell I'm doing. Thanks!
Great repertoire of thought-provoking questions!
Out of curiosity, what was the average score?
We're doing the best we can to log the scores right now, and should, hopefully, have a recap post with some metrics once the quiz has had time to collect some data.
Great quiz, great link bait, good learning experience and yes, I too felt the D'Oh feeling just after providing a response I knew was wrong because I didn't read the question carefully enough. I'll settle for the 77% pro rating though.
Providing the answers and the logic behind them was a good learning experience. Taking the same quiz a second time and getting a new rating to post on your web site should not be an option though, as it calls into question the credibility of the badge.
I'm wondering how Mystery Guest did...
Please change the code for embedding the result of the quiz, so the URL of the background image is put into single quotes, it helps!
Thanks for the cool quiz!
86% - SEO Master :)
So Am I eligible to get a job on Google for editing web results ;)
Got a 71% myself.
Great quiz although I don't agree with 1 or 2 of the chosen answers.
I confess that on some questions I just doozed off due to having to read too much in order to respond... (guilty as charged).
Great fun, 78% . I'd take issue with some of the answers, if I could be bothered and cared of course :D
Well done guys, great piece of viral linkbaiting fun!
I will agree that this is excellent link bait, but does it convert directly into money bait?
Scored 90% and for just an 1% I am not called a Dark Lord... damn'it!
Anyway, very though piece. Great job and great linkbait, which I'm pleased to link to.
Keep up the good work ;)
Nice Quiz but a bit long
Isn't it more better If the image got the name of the participant?
I got an 80%. Eh, I can live with that. My grades in college were better, but some of this stuff was a bit silly - like the origin of the name of PageRank. I don't see how that anecdotal info really proves your SEO ability. Anyway, fun quiz.
I think a few of those answers are based on your own opinion rather than a concrete answer that has been documented, but all in all a good test. I scored 78% although i really wouldn't consider my self particularly knowledgable.
good work on the quiz guys, that was an interesting way to start the morning! i think there were a few cases for disambiguation in there, but on the whole I was happy that most of the info covered here I had actually seen before, and most of the questions i got wrong were due to either not reading the question carefully enough or misinterpreting its intention.
regarding question 54 i would like to point out that yahoo does usually canonicalise search terms so that singular and plural are treated as the same term (at least in the paid results), although the aftermath of panama may still be throwing this out a bit in practise...
Very useful tool. Cheers.
Pleased to say that I got a 74% score, tripped up on some of the weirder questions and some that were confusingly phrased. All in all, I'm quite pleased with that result.
Felt like being back in school though.
Sorry for all the problems with #65 - I just fixed it up. Now to dash off to Montreal for the NumeriQC conference!
Rand,
You going to visit Guillaume while in Montreal? Drop by Acquisio if you got time!
Is it possible to go back to the results? I got 82% but left the page without seeing the correct answers :[
Uh. Oh. There goes some productive work time. Thanks guys! I'm trying to resist taking it until I have finished what I'm working on.... Grrrr.
OK. So I couldn't wait that long. Way to play to the ego, guys. You've got a link out of me for calling me a dark lord ;)
Very interesting SEO quiz! I scored 84% and am feeling good about IT! Thank you for making this SEO test! ;)
Agree that in general this was a really valuable quiz & should validate who knows their stuff. But there were definitely 3-4 "gray" answers and a couple of questions (the genesis of PageRank, in particular) that wouldn't make or break an SEO's reputation :) Fun stuff though!
David - yeah, we tried to weight those more "fluff" questions with a lot number of points, so they wouldn't have a big impact on the final score. Glad you liked it!
You have an error on the scoring of one of the questions, the correct answer is "False" which it confirms, but then tells you that you selected the wrong answer if you chose "False"
#65 Links from 'noindex, follow' pages are treated exactly the same as links from default ('index, follow') pages.Your Answer: FALSE
Correct Answer: TRUE
This is FALSE - the default for search engines is "index, follow" so "noindex, follow" would actually prevent all pages without explicit meta robots tags from being crawled.
Mont - actually, it's been noted by Matt Cutts that links from "noindex, follow" pages are treated exactly the same as links from "index, follow" pages, so the correct answer is FALSE. :)
Hey Rand - Yes, the correct answer is false for #65...yet we both chose false and were told the correct answer is true as I posted earlier.
This was an error on marking the correct answer, which is now fixed.
The question:Links from 'noindex, follow' pages are treated exactly the same as links from default ('index, follow') pages.
Matt Cutts comment which you linked to:
" "Does a link from a page with meta robots="noindex, follow" carry less weight? no weight? "
For Google, I believe such links would carry the same weight as normal links on regular pages."
It's early here and I've just woken up but shuouldn't the answer be TRUE?
Read the question. As it's phrased it is TRUE that 'noindex, follow' links are treated the same as default 'index, follow' links.
Jeff, if you changed the answer to FALSE, change it back, it was correct in the first place.
Nice to see thsi is getting so much feedback. Gotta head to the airport now!
Great fun, hard questions - Rand, please publish a kind of score-distribution statistics of the participants in a week or so!
80%
A pro! not bad for a non pro ;)
great quiz, thanks
Reading through my results it seems to be the easier questions that I got wrong...
I could have gotten master :(
Hmm, 74% score... Is nice, but still got some readin'to do to become a dark lord ;) btw, bundled the answer into a doc and emailed it to my colleagues. It's good knowledge all seo's should have and definately good for testing new colleagues :)
I scored 83% and I'm not an SEO. I guess that means I spend too much time here and other SEO sites.
On the ones I missed, the correct answer was usually the one I was debating over. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of percentages on each questions answer. i.e,, % that selected a vs b and so forth.
Most questions were about On-page and G figured little. Being a technical DUMB - I lost out on all questions technical.
So just 46%.
Very bad indeed. But I can't improve much with all those technial aspects as I can't even install simple easy to use scripts. Dang.
Awesome quiz. A great learning tool. 70%. Not bad for being a year into seo. I would suggest keeping track of your scores when you lo into the premium content page!
I don't know if I'm the only one with this error but the quiz didn't register a lot of my answers. In the result it said that I did not answer and then market it as wrong. I'm very sad about the whole situation give the final score. :(
Could it be a Safari issue?
I tested the quiz is Safari before we launched, along with right now, and it all worked just perfectly. Did you take a long break in the middle of taking the quiz by any chance?
Yes. I had to stop for a bit when the phone rang and a client needed to be talked to. Maybe that did it in. Many of my answers had no answer and were marked wrong. Oh well. I was going for Dark Lord status but now I'm just an amateur...
I scored a 75% on the test. I am happy with that initial score.
Wow. I scored lower than I thought I would, but there were several questions I realized a second after I hit the answer, that I had not clicked on what I meant to.
There were also a few that seemed like I could have answered a couple of different ways. I need to take the quiz again when I can focus a bit better, as I was doing in a meeting the first time.
It did point out a big whole in my knowledge base though, which is international. I definitely was guessing on some of those questions.
And great job on letting us see what we answered wrong. I chose not to look this time, because I actually do want to take it again with more focus.
For number 42 :Which of these factors is least likely to decrease the value of a link? I didn't choose :
The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)
Because you can robot.txt the page with external links to not be indexed, hence no reciprocal link detected...isn't that right Rand?? wink wink. ;)
I didn't do as well I would have hoped, but I am glad I didn't crash and burn miserably. I did get questions in varying degrees of toughness right so I was happy to see that I didn't get like all the easy ones right and none of the hard ones (or I suppose what I consider hard).
This was an wonderful learning experience and it goes to show that I need to read lots more, but that's ok, I enjoy learning and reading a lot.
Thanks SEOmoz team :)
Excellent quiz - 89% which surprised me as i thought i'd done rubbish... I must confess i googled the "make me think book".
Think that was an attempt to make me read it :-)
Great quiz, thoroughly enjoyed it. Some of the question were a bit hard with me being from the UK. Had no idea that Ask had the biggest market in USA behind Google with a measly 5%. The question about foriegn search engines and market share got me too. A couple fo questions i shoulda reread the question again as i knew the answer... Anyway, overall 76%, i am happy as what i need to know, it seems i actually do know :o)
81% for me! Makes me a SEO Master :)
I dropped a few percentage becuase I didn't read the question, duh, school boy error!
All the questions and Good and i Scored 59% though i would like to comment on few questions which i think i will write in details.
Question 3# the same problem.
I have 2 Sites and Site A Link out Site B with Specific Keyword and Site B Start Ranking for that Keyword without any link building for targeted Keyword.
I am thankful to Rand it clear few points that i have in my mind plus i have learned many things. It is nice to be a member of SEOmoz thanks for your time Mates for creating such a quiz.
What would be great is if you could tie the results to your use profile, just to show off what a SEO you (not) are.
What also would be cool is if this could lead to a SEO Certification :-)
Question 27 is broken. I got the correct answer and it didn't give it to me.
It's a great quiz, far better than any others that I have seen. I got 93%.
I got "newbie" and I'm bitter!
#66: which metric is not used = keyword density; your source is a Dr Garcia from Mar 05 - "Dr. Garcia explains why search engines don't use the metric here.".
In Feb 07 on this site you say "If the word or phrase is repeated too often, Google can place a filter to reduce the site's rankings or simply ban the site. Keyword density can be tricky but, as a general rule, Big Oak shoots for 3% to 12% of all text on a page to be our targeted keywords."
That sounds like use of keyword density to me.
Also #42 gave me a headache just trying to workout the logic "least likely to decrease value"?
Finally (until I take my bitterness elsewhere :0)> ) I found a few black hat tips, like 301 (but don't link as that passes PR) to a competitor to kill their pages. Scary.
> In Feb 07 on this site
That was from a YOUmoz (user-generated) entry, that is, it was written by a member of the SEOmoz community rather than a SEOmoz staff member. Still, that was a SEO agency using keyword density, not a search engine, so the answer to #66 would still be valid.
I'd be damn I got 74 right
I was really excited about doing this quiz when I saw it on my feed. Provides me with a nice break from work!! However theres just too many questions! I got bored half way through.
:(
I think this was a pretty nice little quiz for general consumption. In all honesty I recon it makes a great learning aid for newbies to learn the areas to research, but I don't think many of the Dark Lords out there are actually dark lords!!
Don't get me wrong but when it was billed as hard I was expecting some really really tough questions and it didn't really deliver.
May just be me but I was hoping for some implementation questions rather than just 'overview theory'. For example on the url canonicalization question I think any newb and his dog knows www vs non-www & index.html(.php / .asp / .whatever ) is a dupe content, I wanted to be tested on the correct syntax of a .htaccess mod_rewrite to solve the problem.
Anyways enough complaining because I genuinely did enjoy it. On the 'popular' subject of debateable q's, the only one I pondered on seriously was the subject of 'benefit of KW in KW list' - can't remember the #. Plumped for no benefit due to wording, but recently read a piece about Y! and MSN still utilizing the meta KW tag for reteival but not ranking and wonder if the q was trying to catch those cats that had read it. Again I can't remember the source (terrible I know but I read about 1000 SEO articles a day and don't have a social bookmarking service in my head!).
wow I ramble, maybe I should start a blog...! Anyway ta for quiz guys and girls, can't wait for #2 but please please make it really really hard and include a practical/implementation element as well as theory.
Oh and Rebecca:
"Yes, I scored a 4. I actually don't know anything about SEO. My presentations at conferences are actually sock puppet theater shows."
is it wrong I'm more up for coming and seeing you presentations now?? haha sorry couldn't resist!
Laters peeps - Dark Lord [100%] Spitman! X (no kiss, i'm a serious person...maybe thats a UK joke!)
You just NOW want to see my presentations? Wow, you're a hard sell. :P
Haha yeah too right I am!
It's a long journey from the UK to the US and without the sock puppet theatre my motivation just wasn't quite there!! :D