Some questions and answers for SEO interview

QUESTIONS:
1) Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
2) Do you currently do SEO on your own sites and give me some examples. Do you operate any blogs? Do you currently do any freelance work and do you plan on continuing it?
3) Where do you think the SEO industry is headed?
4) What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?
5) Have you attended any search related conferences?
6) What SEO tools do you regularly use?
7) What SEO areas are you weak and strong in, and give examples of both.
8) What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
9) Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
10) What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks? What do you think about link buying, link bait, and other specific backlink strategies?
11) What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?
12) Are you familiar with any blackhat SEO techniques, search arbitrage, and affiliate marketing?
13) Are you familiar with enterprise web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
14) Are you familiar with A/B testing and multivariate testing?
15) Do you have experience in email marketing, banner advertising, other types of media buys and other forms of online advertising?
16) Are you experienced in managing PPC campaigns? To what extent and on what platforms?
17) Do you have experience in bid management tools, API tools, and click fraud issues?
18) Do you have experience in extensive competitive analysis and what techniques do you use?
19) What technologies are you familiar with? (We primarily use HTML, CSS, ASP, .net, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript)
20) Why are you moving from your current position and/or leaving any current projects?
21) Do you know who Matt Cutts is?
22) What is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
Thanks to Rand at SEOmoz.org for this post on SEO hiring. It helped quite a bit in assembling this list. Any additional questions anyone can think of?
22) What is page segmentation? (ever heard of VIPS?)
23) What’s the difference bewtween PageRank and ToolBar PageRank?
24) What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI - Indexing)?
25) What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
26) In Google Lore - what are ‘Hilltop’ Florida’ and ‘Big Daddy’?

Recommended answers:

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1) Give me a description of your general SEO experience.

I have been working on SEO for 12 years and its been my full time job for just over five years. In the past I have lead a few SEO chats with the 'big' boys and I have gained a lot of knowledge through doing so.
I recently started a network of sites which are earning through adsense

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2) Do you currently do SEO on your own sites and give me some examples. Do you operate any blogs? Do you currently do any freelance work and do you plan on continuing it?

I have a few blogs up and running at the moment as well as a few forums to. I no longer do as much freelance work as I used to but I do a bit and I plan on doing this for the next 6-12 months

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3) Where do you think the SEO industry is headed?

PPA will become the norm. Finally MSN will become big with cleaver marketing but Google will still be king

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4) What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you regularly read?

Webmaster-talk.com. I also read a lot of blogs and forums related to my sites

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5) Have you attended any search related conferences?

Yep. In the past I have lead conferences like this

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6) What SEO tools do you regularly use?

tools.SEOBook.com and SEOElite

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7) What SEO areas are you weak and strong in, and give examples of both.

Link bait is my strong point while boring jobs such as writing content and directory submission are a weak point for me

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8) What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?

Links Links Links. Link bait is very important to get your site to success with the SE's

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9) Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?

I try to outsource jobs like this

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10) What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks? What do you think about link buying, link bait, and other specific backlink strategies?

I love link bait but try contacting webmasters for a link exchange. Many will be happy to do so.

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11) What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?

Dunno. SEO is my thing. Not designing ect

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12) Are you familiar with any blackhat SEO techniques, search arbitrage, and affiliate marketing?

Yep but I don't use blackhat ever

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14) Are you familiar with A/B testing and multivariate testing?

I split test and compare Google AdWords advertising occasionally on new sites

15) Do you have experience in email marketing, banner advertising, other types of media buys and other forms of online advertising?

Again I believe this can be interlinked well with SEO and SEO techniques

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16) Are you experienced in managing PPC campaigns? To what extent and on what platforms?

Google Adwords professional even though I don't use my status.

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17) Do you have experience in bid management tools, API tools, and click fraud issues?

Try to keep away from anything other than manual stuff. Bid management is done manually and I have had no real click fraud problems

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19) What technologies are you familiar with? (We primarily use HTML, CSS, ASP, .net, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript)

HTML, CSS and PHP

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20) Why are you moving from your current position and/or leaving any current projects?

I'm not

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21) Do you know who Matt Cutts is?

He's a Google Geek. No but really he is the most influential of the Google team

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22) What is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Dunno

Another answers:

1.) I SEO 3 sites in my experience, the first site goes at the top of SERPs as well as the second site.
2.) Yes, I SEO my new site but it still below the top 100 SERPs because the site is new and the keywords
are competitive. I operate 5 blogs, but I haven't done any freelance work for now.
3.) It grows bigger and bigger because majority of websites today offer e-commerce.
4.) SEO updates, web design tutorials, web development tutorials, w3schools, w3c, etc.
5.) Not yet.
6.) Search engines itself, info.vilesilencer's directories, overture keyword checker, livepr checker,
submitexpress linkpop checker, statcounter, Google analytics, etc.
7.) I am strong in terms of traffic, but weak in patience because I want faster money from search
engines.
8.) SERP ranking, once you achieve that, you can make bigger money from your site.
9.) Yes.
10.) Link exchanges, article submission, press release submission, forum signature, directory
submission, link baiting techniques, links on comments.
11.) Web 2.0 for SEO is good because you get additional traffic from that.
12.) Yes, I have done a site with a hidden text that ranked high in SERPs using the main keyword.
13.) Google Analytics, webalizer, and statcounter.
14.) Not exactly, but I am familiar with the word.
15.) Yes, Groups marketing and from ads.
16.) Adwords, overture, etc.
17.) Basic tools using Google Maps, Adsense click checker, etc.
18.) In checking keywords, yes.
19.) PHP, Ruby, CSS, ASP, JSP, Cold fusion, Perl, HTML, XHTML, XML, Javascript, VBscript.
20.) I master all fields to extend my knowledge.
21.) He is one good SEO Gadgets Guy from Google, and he's cool.
22.) Not a sure answer but peace.
23.) Pagerank views different results from different pagerank, toolbar pagerank views from a current
datacenter only.
24.) Understanding proper keyphrasing, that is all I know. It is derived from the natural language
processing which involves proper sentence pattern.
25.) Black hat key phrasing, a method where you spam keywords in a form of a phrase or paragraph.
26.) Big Daddy is not a lore, it really exists, they are one of the big datacenters used by Google