Technical SEO & Site Architecture Flashcards

What is the primary benefit of implementing HTTPS over HTTP for SEO?

Answer: It is a confirmed Google ranking signal and protects user data

Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014, and secure connections protect user privacy, building trust with both users and search engines.

Which Core Web Vital metric measures the time it takes for a page's main content to become fully interactive?

Answer: Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures responsiveness by assessing the delay between user interactions and the next visual update.

What does a hreflang attribute help search engines understand?

Answer: The target language and geographic region of a page

Hreflang tells search engines which language and region a page targets, helping serve the correct version to international users.

Which of the following is the most effective way to handle a large number of thin, low-quality pages on a website?

Answer: Consolidate, improve, or use noindex to remove them

Consolidating or noindexing thin pages reduces crawl waste, improves overall site quality signals, and focuses index equity on valuable content.

What is the purpose of the 'noindex' meta robots tag?

Answer: Instruct search engines not to include a page in search results

The noindex directive tells search engines to exclude a page from their index, meaning it will not appear in search results.

Which type of redirect passes the most link equity (PageRank) to the destination URL?

Answer: 301 redirect

A 301 permanent redirect passes nearly full link equity to the destination, whereas temporary redirects and JavaScript redirects may pass less or no equity.

What is 'faceted navigation' and why can it cause SEO problems?

Answer: URL variations created by filtering options that generate near-duplicate pages

Faceted navigation (e.g., filters for color, size, price) creates many URL combinations with duplicate or thin content, wasting crawl budget and diluting link equity.