Advanced SEO Quiz

39 questions on the advanced level, each with an explanation. Free, no signup.

About the advanced questions

The harder half of the bank: second-order concepts and the details that separate someone who has read about SEO from someone who has fixed it. Crawl budget, hreflang, soft 404s, faceted navigation, JavaScript rendering, INP versus FID, priority hints, lazy hydration, and how the third-party authority metrics are calculated.

If you score gold here, you know your craft.

This track has 39 questions. Learning mode asks 10 at a time with the explanation after every answer; the timed challenge asks 20 in 100 seconds. Free, no signup, and a different draw every time you retake it.

Sample questions from this track

8 of the 39, with the answer and the explanation hidden until you open each one.

What affects LCP the most?Core Web Vitals · Advanced
  1. A JavaScript execution time and file size
  2. B CSS file size and loading order
  3. C Number of HTTP requests made
  4. D Server response time and large images

Answer: D. LCP is most affected by slow server response times, render-blocking resources, and large images or videos. Optimizing these elements significantly improves LCP.

What is the difference between crawling and indexing?Technical SEO · Advanced
  1. A There is no difference between them
  2. B Crawling is for mobile, indexing for desktop
  3. C Crawling is automatic, indexing requires payment
  4. D Crawling discovers, indexing adds to results

Answer: D. Crawling is when search engines discover and scan pages. Indexing is when they analyze and store the content in their database for potential display in search results.

What is dwell time?On-Page SEO · Advanced
  1. A Time it takes for a page to load completely
  2. B Time a website has been online in total
  3. C Time between publishing content updates regularly
  4. D Time user spends on page before returning

Answer: D. Dwell time is the amount of time a user spends on a page after clicking from search results before returning to the SERP. Longer dwell time often indicates quality content.

What is a soft 404 error?Technical SEO · Advanced
  1. A A temporary 404 error for maintenance periods
  2. B A 404 error that redirects somewhere else
  3. C A warning displayed before a 404 error occurs
  4. D A page returning 200 OK showing 'not found'

Answer: D. A soft 404 occurs when a server returns a 200 OK status for a non-existent page instead of a proper 404. This confuses search engines and should be fixed to return proper 404 codes.

What is preloading in web performance?Performance · Advanced
  1. A Loading pages before users actually visit them
  2. B Downloading the entire website at once completely
  3. C A type of caching strategy for assets
  4. D Declaring critical resources to fetch early

Answer: D. Preloading uses <link rel='preload'> to tell the browser to fetch critical resources early in the page load process, improving performance by loading key assets sooner.

What is edge SEO?Technical SEO · Advanced
  1. A SEO for Microsoft Edge browser only users
  2. B Cutting-edge SEO techniques for the year 2025
  3. C SEO for website borders and page edges
  4. D Implementing SEO at CDN/edge before delivery

Answer: D. Edge SEO involves implementing SEO modifications at the CDN/edge layer, allowing changes without altering the origin server. It's useful for dynamic redirects, A/B testing, and headers.

What is Time to Interactive (TTI)?Core Web Vitals · Advanced
  1. A How long users spend on the site
  2. B The time between page loads when navigating
  3. C Session duration for tracking all users
  4. D Time for page to become fully interactive

Answer: D. TTI measures how long it takes for a page to become fully interactive and reliably respond to user input. Good TTI is under 3.8 seconds. Long JavaScript tasks can delay TTI.

How is Domain Authority (DA) calculated?Technical SEO · Advanced
  1. A Based on website traffic volume only
  2. B Using Google's official PageRank data
  3. C By combining multiple factors including links
  4. D Measuring server response time only

Answer: C. DA is calculated by Moz using multiple factors including linking root domains, total number of links, and other proprietary metrics. It uses machine learning to find the algorithm that best correlates with search rankings.

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