HubSpot SEO II Certification Exam Answers

Mariah is performing an SEO competitive analysis on her client’s website. She identifies that their backlink profile is relatively weak, primarily because her client believes backlinks are a trend and isn’t interested in investing in them. However, she notices that their top competitors have received backlinks from a few reputable news agencies and aggregator sites. As a result, they are outranking her client in the SERPs. How should Mariah approach this situation with her client?

• Mariah should educate her client on the value provided by high-quality backlinks, then suggest a strategy of approaching the same sites which link to their competitors and ask for a similar backlink to their website.
• Mariah should send her client information from popular SEO blogs about backlinks, then propose that she start a cold outreach campaign to 100 relevant websites to ask for links.
• Mariah should instead focus on content marketing and creating more high-quality blog posts.

Which of the following does Google consider a good CLS score?

• 0.1
• 0.5
• 1.0
• 2.5

Jeremiah is an in-house SEO specialist for a car rental company with locations across the U.S. He works closely with the firm’s web designer, Maria, who mentions to him that she’d like to contextualize the site’s homepage by displaying the nearest car rental pickup spot based on the user’s location. Jeremiah thinks this is a great idea, but has concerns about how it may slow down the site. What solution could Jeremiah employ to keep the functionality while maintaining the site speed?

• There is no solution to keep this functionality and avoid slowing down the page, resulting in decreased performance. Therefore, Jeremiah should recommend that Maria not use it.
• Use an open source web bundler to combine all the JavaScript on the homepage, placing it at the bottom of the page.
• Put the JavaScript that generates the site location in the HTML of the page where it’s needed, and keep non-essential JavaScript in the page footer.

What is minification?

• The process of reducing resource size by removing unnecessary comments and spacing in the source code
• The process of replacing repetitive pieces of code with markers directing to the first instance of that code
• The process of redirecting large groups of URLs in batches during a site move
• The process of moving large JavaScript files to the bottom of a page for all non-essential functions

Dana is an SEO freelancer working with a client who is redesigning their website. The client’s designer has come up with a design that uses four custom fonts, but Dana voices their concern that this could have a negative impact on the site’s performance. How can Dana explain this issue to their client, and what solution can they propose?

• Using custom fonts is looked up unfavorably by Google, as they prefer designers to use exclusively Google fonts to promote their brand. The designer should use Google fonts in order to comply with these guidelines.
• Using more than two fonts of any kind can confuse users, provide a poor user experience, and increase the page’s LCP. Instead, the designer should use just a single Google font across the entire site.
• Using more than two custom fonts can cause fonts to flicker on loading, showing a flash of unstyled text. This is a poor user experience and increases the CLS score. Instead, the designer should try to find comparable Google fonts to use.

Select all that apply. Which of the following can negatively impact your CLS score?

• Images and iframes without inline dimensions
• Large items like YouTube video embeds or image sliders
• Dynamically injected content
• Improperly loaded custom webfonts