Technical SEO Quiz

Question 1

A page carries both a robots.txt disallow and a noindex meta tag. What actually happens?

Accepted Answer

The noindex is never seen, because the crawler is forbidden from fetching the page that carries it

Answer

The page is removed from the index immediately

Answer

The noindex wins because meta tags outrank robots.txt

Answer

Google averages the two signals

Question 2

When does a 302 genuinely belong instead of a 301?

Accepted Answer

When the move really is temporary and the original URL will return

Answer

Never — 301 is always better

Answer

When you want to pass more signals

Answer

When redirecting to the homepage

Question 3

Google chose a different canonical than the one you declared. What does that tell you?

Accepted Answer

Your other signals — internal links, redirects, sitemap — disagree with your canonical tag

Answer

The canonical tag has a syntax error

Answer

The page is penalised

Answer

Nothing; it is random

Question 4

Which pages belong in your XML sitemap?

Accepted Answer

Canonical, indexable URLs you want found — nothing redirected, blocked or noindexed

Answer

Every URL that returns 200

Answer

Only pages published in the last year

Answer

Everything, including parameter variants

Question 5

A redirect chain runs A → B → C → D. What is the right fix?

Accepted Answer

Point A, B and C each directly at D

Answer

Leave it — Google follows unlimited hops

Answer

Delete B and C

Answer

Convert them all to 302s

Question 6

What is a soft 404?

Accepted Answer

A page that returns 200 but has no real content, which Google treats as an error

Answer

A 404 with a custom design

Answer

A 404 that redirects after five seconds

Answer

A server timeout

Question 7

Your content renders only after JavaScript runs. What is the honest risk?

Accepted Answer

Rendering is deferred and not guaranteed — content can be indexed late, partially, or not at all

Answer

None — Google executes all JS perfectly

Answer

The site is automatically penalised

Answer

Only images are affected

Question 8

Which measurement should decide whether your Core Web Vitals are actually fine?

Accepted Answer

Field data from real users (CrUX), not a lab run on your own machine

Answer

A Lighthouse run on your laptop

Answer

Your hosting provider's uptime stats

Answer

Time-to-first-byte alone

Question 9

What does a 410 say that a 404 does not?

Accepted Answer

Gone deliberately and permanently — a slightly stronger removal hint

Answer

The server is overloaded

Answer

The page moved

Answer

Nothing; they are identical in every way

Question 10

Faceted navigation is generating millions of parameter URLs. What is the first structural fix?

Accepted Answer

Decide which facet combinations deserve to exist as crawlable URLs, and block or noindex the rest

Answer

Buy more crawl budget

Answer

Add all combinations to the sitemap

Answer

Canonical everything to the homepage

Technical SEO Quiz

The technical SEO quiz

Common questions