ExamopotamiaWhy test SEO skills before you hire?
Many applicants describe themselves as SEO experts, and the gap between them is wide. Some can explain search intent and fix a broken site migration; others mainly know how to add keywords to a page. The mistakes a weak hire makes, such as blocking the wrong URLs or forgetting redirects during a redesign, may not show up for weeks and can take months to recover from. A focused test helps you find the people who understand how search engines actually crawl and index a site.
What this template covers
- Technical basics: status codes, 301 redirects and canonical tags.
- Crawling and indexing: what robots.txt does, and why noindex is the reliable way to keep a page out of results.
- Content and intent: matching content to what the searcher wants, and avoiding keyword cannibalisation.
- Page experience: what Core Web Vitals such as CLS measure, and image good practice.
- Links and migrations: which links carry weight, and what to check when traffic falls after a redesign.
How to run it well
Give candidates 15 minutes for the twelve questions. Set the pass mark at 65% for a junior or content-focused role and 75% or more for a technical SEO lead. Shuffle questions and options, and tag questions by difficulty so you can build a shorter version for marketing generalists from the same bank.
In the results, the hard questions on noindex, cannibalisation and migrations are the clearest signal of real experience. Someone who answers them correctly has usually dealt with these problems in practice. Ask strong candidates in the interview how they would audit your own site in their first month.
Who this test is for
Use it for SEO specialists and executives, technical SEO roles, content marketers who own organic traffic, web editors, and agency staff who manage client sites. Developers who look after a company website can also take it to check their SEO basics before a relaunch.
Make it yours
Add questions about your platform, such as how your content management system handles redirects or structured data, and about the reporting tools your team uses. A company with several languages or regions might add questions on hreflang, and an online shop could add faceted navigation and duplicate product pages. Edit anything that does not match how your site works.