SEO: what is it? Search engine optimisation in 2026

There's no answer key for SEO

The points in this guide are based on my own experience with search engine optimisation. See them as real-world examples of how different measures affect Google's algorithm. Your SEO strategy should always suit your own website.

I've worked with SEO since 2015, first as a freelance copywriter and later as an SEO specialist at Amplify. I have a background in communication and rhetoric and a strong interest in content optimisation and semantic SEO. In recent years, analysis, strategy and technical SEO have been added to that.

I've tried and tested the points in this guide for many years, and they work.

I hope you'll feel encouraged to dive into search engine optimisation and gain your own experience.

Does it seem like too much? Then you're always welcome to get hold of me or one of my colleagues. As an SEO agency, we follow developments closely and turn them into concrete measures.

The guide was updated in November 2026. It now also covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, AEO and GEO.

In this guide, you can read about, among other things:

• What is SEO?
• SEO, AEO and GEO
• SEO in 2026
• How SEO has changed
• How do you do SEO?

→ Scroll down to: How do you do SEO?

SEO for beginners: get started with search engine optimisation

Have you decided to get started with SEO? Great!

The first time you take on SEO, it can seem like a long and overwhelming process. But don't worry: once you've been at it for a while, it gets (a bit) easier. In this article, you get all my insider tips for getting started with search engine optimisation.

Click through the table of contents on the left (or at the top if you're on a mobile), or read the whole thing from start to finish.

Enjoy!

What is SEO, and what is its purpose?

SEO, search engine optimisation, Search Engine Optimization and even SEO optimisation.

A well-loved child has many names, and that's certainly true of SEO.
SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization, known in Danish as søgemaskineoptimering.

Confusion over terms aside, the goal is the same: in short, search engine optimisation is about optimising your website's content and technical set-up so that it ranks for valuable keywords and appears at the top of Google's search results.

And there's good reason to be visible on Google in particular. In Denmark, Google had almost 90% of all searches in 2025. It's no coincidence that the verb "google" has become synonymous with searching the web.

Search has also become more than Google. Many people now put their questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI assistants, and these build their answers on the same websites that Google shows. Good SEO is therefore also the way into AI answers.

Search engine optimisation gives you the best conditions for becoming visible when potential customers search for your services or products.

Most used search engines in Denmark in 2025 (per cent)

Search engine	January to December 2025
Google	89.83%
Bing	5.51%
Yandex	1.60%
Yahoo!	1.27%
DuckDuckGo	1.27%
Other	0.52%

Source: StatCounter Global Stats, Search Engine Market Share Denmark

Get visible on Google with Search Engine Optimization

So why should you work with search engine optimisation?

Quite simply because it can be your shortcut to success on Google, and with it, success in your business. Having a website is one thing. Getting it seen by your target audience is another.

And that's where SEO comes in. Sure, you can get to the top of Google through Google's paid search results, Google Ads. But since the vast majority of users searching for information click on the so-called organic search results rather than ads, it's essential to be visible where users click.

Without a targeted SEO effort, however, your website will most likely live a lonely life in the darkest corners of Google, far from the attention of your potential customers. That's why SEO is an indispensable part of your marketing strategy if you want traffic to your website.

With a targeted and structured SEO strategy, you can gain the following benefits:

• Gain visibility in the search engines
• Be seen by potential customers at every stage of their buying journey
• Receive relevant traffic to your website
• Get more enquiries

Ultimately, search engine optimisation can help generate more revenue for your business. In other words, it can be a valuable investment for your company.

SEO, SEA and SEM: what's the difference?

The acronyms SEO, SEA and SEM can easily cause confusion, even for more experienced marketers.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and, simply put, covers all the marketing activities you can carry out in the search engines, both paid and organic.

The organic activity, SEO, stands for Search Engine Optimization, as mentioned, while SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising. With SEA, we're talking about advertising in the search engines, for example text ads in the search results, Google Shopping and Performance Max. So we're now in the paid part of SEM.

Google Ads is often treated as synonymous with SEA because Google holds such a large share of the market, in much the same way that search engine optimisation is often implicitly used as a synonym for Google optimisation.

But you can easily do both SEO and SEA on other search engines, for example Bing, YouTube, Pinterest etc.

So, to sum up, SEM is an umbrella term, and SEO and SEA sit under that umbrella. To make it extra confusing, in recent years it has become more common to use SEM as a synonym for SEA, and thus as the opposite of SEO. Likewise, SEA as a term isn't used so often any more.

But let me put it this way: all SEO is SEM, but not all SEM is SEO. In the same way, all SEA is SEM, but not all SEM is SEA. And that's enough rants about marketing acronyms for now.

SEO, AEO and GEO: what's the difference?

SEO is about being found in the search results. AEO is about being the answer. GEO is about being mentioned and cited when ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot or Google's AI Mode answers.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): your pages rank for the searches your customers make.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): your content provides the short, precise answer that Google, voice search and AI assistants lift out. Featured snippets belong here.
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): your brand and your pages are mentioned and linked in generative AI answers.

Our view is simple: GEO is just SEO. AI assistants build their answers on the same websites and the same signals as classic SEO. We use the term GEO because a lot of people search for it, and the groundwork is the same.

My colleague Jens Kjær Riis has written a thorough article on AEO, and you can read how we work with it on our page about GEO.

How to get your content cited

1. Answer first. Start each section with a clear answer of one or two sentences that can stand alone.
2. Use questions as headings where people search with a question.
3. Show something others don't have. Your own figures, case studies and experience give you a better chance of being cited than what everyone else is writing too.
4. Write with a name and experience. An author with an author page strengthens your E-E-A-T.
5. Get mentioned elsewhere. AI assistants use what other trustworthy sites write about your brand, even without a link.
6. Keep your content up to date. Correct figures and dates when they change.
7. Give access. Check that robots.txt doesn't block the AI search engines' crawlers, e.g. OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
8. Use structured data, so the machines understand what the page is about.

Google itself says that no special optimisation is required for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that the SEO fundamentals still apply (Google). You may also come across llms.txt, a proposed file for language models. It's disputed, and its effect hasn't been documented.

How to measure AI search

Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in Search Console under the search type "Web" in the Performance report (Google). You can see visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants as referrals in GA4. Whether you're mentioned in the answers requires separate measurement of the questions your customers ask.

No one can guarantee mentions in AI answers, and neither do we. You can make it easy for the assistants to choose you.

SEO in 2026: what you need to know

You have to keep up to succeed with SEO. Algorithms, ranking factors and best practices change all the time. The biggest shift in recent years is that Google and AI assistants answer many questions themselves.

The advice in the rest of the guide still applies. Here's what you also need to know in 2026:

• AI Overviews and AI Mode
• Fewer clicks and more answers directly in the search results
• Featured snippets
• E-E-A-T, the extra E
• Topic clusters
• Google's rules against mass-produced content
• Programmatic SEO
• AI-generated content
• Helpful content aimed at users rather than rankings
• AI in SEO work

Would you rather get started on the general advice? Then go to the section "How do you do SEO?".

AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google now answers many searches itself. AI Overviews is an AI-written answer at the top of the search results with links to the sources. The feature was called Search Generative Experience (SGE) while Google tested it in 2023, and it was rolled out in the US in May 2024 under the name AI Overviews. In May 2025 it came to over 200 countries and more than 40 languages (Google), and it also appears on Danish searches.

AI Mode goes a step further. Here, the whole page is an AI answer, and you can ask follow-up questions as in a conversation. Google expanded AI Mode to more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries in October 2025 (Google), and the feature arrived in Denmark the same month.

So it's no longer enough to be on page 1. You also need to be one of the sources the AI answer is based on. Read how to get cited in the section on SEO, AEO and GEO.

Fewer clicks and more answers directly in the search results

When users get the answer directly on Google, fewer click through. In December 2025, Ahrefs found that the top position got 58% fewer clicks when there was an AI Overview on the search (Ahrefs).

That changes what you need to measure. Impressions in Search Console, visibility in AI answers and enquiries from the visitors who do click say more than traffic alone.

Featured snippets

Featured snippets have been part of Google for many years. Today, the AI answer often sits above them, and they're still worth going after.

Featured snippets are selected passages from landing pages that are shown directly in the search results. These results are sometimes also known as ‘position 0’, because visually they sit above position 1 in Google's organic search results.

These results earn this prominent position because (according to Google) they contain exactly the information the user is looking for. In other words, they're results for helpful content aimed at users rather than rankings. You can read more about that in the section on helpful content. Below, for example, you can see Amplify's result for the search ‘de fire p'er’ (the four Ps), which according to Ahrefs had around 800 searches a month when we took the screenshot.

Many SEO specialists probably have an ambivalent relationship with featured snippets. That's because, for some results, featured snippets can lead to a lower click-through rate, as users get the answer directly in the SERP and so don't click on the result: the so-called zero-click searches. And that, of course, means less traffic.

On the other hand, it also means more relevant traffic and a higher conversion rate, because in many cases those who actually click will be more relevant customers. So there's also good reason to go after featured snippets.

So how do you get featured snippets?

Among other things, by focusing on your target audience and their search intent. Focus on good content, and write for users, not bots.

You can also work in a more data-driven way with featured snippets. In SEO tools such as Ahrefs, for example, you can see which of your keywords typically trigger featured snippets.

Click the ‘Organic keywords’ report and filter by ‘SERP features’ → ‘Featured snippets’. Click ‘Apply’ → ‘Show results’. You'll then get a list of all the keywords on your website that have featured snippets. Is your website not number 1 under ‘Position’? Then it's time to get optimising your content and go after the featured snippet. The same filter can also show which of your keywords trigger an AI Overview.

E-E-A-T, the extra E

E-E-A-T comes from Google's guidelines for the people who assess the quality of the search results. When Google added an extra “E” at the end of 2022, E-A-T became E-E-A-T. Google itself says that E-E-A-T isn't a ranking factor in its own right. Its systems look for signals that match content with good E-E-A-T (Google).

E-E-A-T is an abbreviation of ‘experience’, ‘expertise’, ‘authoritativeness’ and ‘trustworthiness’, and it essentially consists of signals to Google and to users that a website demonstrates exactly these 4 qualities.

In other words, the content on your website needs to reflect your experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness in your field or industry if you want to rank highly in Google's search results.

On amplify.dk, for example, all our content is written by experienced marketing specialists who have the expertise and hands-on experience to communicate topics within digital marketing. Our authority comes from, among other things, our case studies and customer reviews.

Our authority also comes from links and references from other websites with authority in our industry. Finally, we demonstrate trustworthiness by having a website that is safe for our users to navigate, for example thanks to our SSL certificate.

SEMrush has written a very informative article on E-E-A-T if you'd like to read more examples of the 4 qualities in E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T is especially important for so-called YMYL websites (Your Money or Your Life), i.e. websites that deal with either health or financial stability. A dentist, a private hospital or an equity fund are examples of businesses with YMYL websites.

E-E-A-T becomes even more important the more AI-generated content there is. AI can analyse large data sets but lacks human experience. The best solution is therefore usually AI-produced content that has been reviewed and corrected by a person with experience.

E-E-A-T is closely linked to Google's assessment of helpful content. Google expects a page both to answer the user's question and to add to the user's knowledge.

That's why the E-E-A-T principles should be crystal clear to anyone working in digital marketing, in 2026 too.

→ Read my article on E-E-A-T here

Topic clusters

Topic clusters are one of the best ways to show expertise, both to Google and to AI assistants. Also read our article on topic clusters.

Topic clusters are an approach to SEO that focuses more on topics than on keywords. It's a concept based on organising your website's content into topic clusters to help search engines navigate it better and increase your visibility.

At the heart of a topic cluster is a 'pillar page' that covers a broad topic and is supported by several 'supporting pages' covering related subtopics. This structure creates comprehensive coverage of a topic and increases the user-friendliness and legitimacy of your brand.

To build an effective topic cluster, start by choosing a main topic for your pillar page and identifying related subtopics for your supporting pages. Remember to include internal links between the pages to strengthen the connection. The ideal size of a topic cluster varies, but the most important thing is to maintain focus and depth in the topic.

Topic clusters offer several benefits: they increase the chance of ranking for more keywords, improve user-friendliness and build authority. By grouping content around topics rather than keywords, you create a more coherent and user-friendly structure.

Not least, topic clusters can be part of your AEO strategy (read more about AEO and GEO further up).

Google's rules against mass-produced content

In March 2024, Google introduced three new spam policies (Google):

• Scaled content: lots of pages made to rank without helping the user.
• Expired domains: old domains bought to exploit their authority for something completely different.
• Site reputation abuse: third-party content placed on a well-known site to exploit its rankings.

The rules apply to both AI content and content written by people. Write for the reader, and you're on the safe side.

Programmatic SEO: lots of pages from data

Programmatic SEO is a method where you build lots of landing pages from one template and a data set. That could be a page per city, per product variant or per combination of service and industry.

AI can help with copy and variations, and the method doesn't require AI. What matters is that each page gives the reader something the other pages don't: your own data, prices, examples or answers to that exact search.

This is where you need to know Google's rules. Since March 2024, the scaled content rule has targeted pages produced in large volumes without helping the user (Google). Programmatic SEO works when each page has its own value for the reader.

→ Read more about programmatic SEO

AI-generated content

There's also no getting around the fact that AI is, and will remain, a central part of copywriting and SEO in general. The copywriting of the future will probably be more of a collaboration between human and machine. AI bots such as ChatGPT will act as a kind of digital assistant that helps the copywriter with everything from generating ideas to polishing structure and language.

If you work with SEO copy, AI is therefore a really useful tool, if used correctly. But it's also important to stress that it is exactly that, a tool, and not a replacement for a person.

I'd strongly recommend getting a pair of human eyes on your robot content if you want to make sure it's both factually correct and lives up to Google's E-E-A-T guidelines.

That said, ChatGPT is uncannily good at writing user-oriented, helpful content. See, for example, the screenshot below, where I asked the bot to write a collection text about green tea for a fictional webshop.

Examples of AI prompts

The output of ChatGPT and similar language models depends on the input: the so-called prompts. The better you prompt the model, the higher the quality you get out of it.

ChatGPT can, for example, help you develop topic clusters. It can also present the result in a table.

Try this prompt, for example:

Give me 30 semantically relevant but unique topics under the main category (your topic), and for each, give me 10 different variations of the topic, each addressing a different search intent. Present it in table format with the following columns: column 1: the unique semantically related topic, column 2: its different variations, column 3: a comprehensive, engaging and enticing title.

Then choose and adapt the title you want, and you can now prompt it to execute your topic cluster:

Now create an outline for an article titled "(your title)". Write it as a professional expert in (your field), and write it for (your target audience) aged between (age) and (age).

That way, the bot can help you with both content ideas and producing the content itself, even based on E-E-A-T and Google's guidelines for helpful content (see the section on helpful content).

You can also use AI to optimise existing content, for example this SEO guide, or a blog post or landing page on your own website.

Here you can use the following prompt:

Analyse this article using Google's helpful content standards on expertise, accuracy, transparency, understanding and value to the reader.

Highlight areas that meet or fail to meet the guidelines.

Give specific, constructive suggestions for improving depth, quality of citations, clarity and usefulness to readers.

Use the analysis to improve the article's shortcomings.

You'll then get concrete suggestions for improving your content.

→ Want more input on prompts? Read on here

Helpful content aimed at users rather than rankings

Back in the wild 2010s, SEO was about spamming your website with landing pages targeting different keyword combinations, landing pages that in turn were stuffed with the keyword you wanted to rank for.

Thankfully, Google blacklisted that method long ago. In its own words, Google's mission is to “deliver the most relevant and reliable information available” for a given search, and a landing page that exists solely to rank for a given keyword is hardly intended to deliver relevant and reliable information.

That's why Google keeps tightening its content requirements, for example with the helpful content update from August 2022, which has been part of Google's core algorithm since March 2024. The aim is for users to be satisfied with the content they're served in the search results. In other words, the content has to be helpful.

So what, in Google's view, is helpful content? Well, helpful content is:

• Created for people, not (search) machines
• Tailored to the primary target audience
• Relevant to the topic and the general content of the website
• Produced by experienced authors (the extra E in E-E-A-T) with authority in the field.

For SEO specialists, this means they need to consider (even more) how they approach keyword research and strategy, but also how they produce content.

There's no point trying to rank for as many keywords as possible if the search results aren't relevant to the recipient. Likewise, it's not about bombarding the web with content, but about selecting relevant content and, not least, tailoring it to the search intent in question.

That's why it's also worth looking at your competitors when you're developing your content strategy: what makes them rank highly? For example, you can look at:

• What types of content rank for specific search terms? Is it informative? Sales-oriented?
• How long is your competitors' content?
• What questions are typically asked about the topic?
• Are there subtopics within the areas?
• What does the content link to?
• Who is behind the content, and what is their experience?

AI in SEO work

AI has become a permanent part of SEO work. We use it to analyse data, find gaps in content, suggest structures and write drafts. A specialist always checks and corrects before anything is published.

AI handles the routine. People make the decisions. That applies especially to facts, figures and tone, where language models still get things wrong.

How SEO has changed

Much of what was good SEO just a few years ago no longer applies. Here's what people used to do, and what they do today.

Before	Today
Copy was stuffed with the keyword a set number of times.	You write about the topic and answer what the user is searching for.
People wrote as many words as their competitors.	Google has no preferred word count (Google). Length follows what the reader needs.
People talked about E-A-T: expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.	Since December 2022 it's been E-E-A-T, with experience as the extra E.
The Helpful Content Update was a standalone update from August 2022.	Since March 2024, the assessment of helpful content has been part of Google's core algorithm (Google).
Google tested AI answers under the name Search Generative Experience (SGE) in 2023.	AI Overviews and AI Mode are a permanent part of Google, in Denmark too.
People chased featured snippets, "position 0".	Featured snippets still exist, and the AI answer often sits above them. Both are part of AEO.
The business profile was called Google My Business.	It's now called Google Business Profile.
Speed was measured with, among other things, First Input Delay (FID).	INP replaced FID in March 2024 (web.dev). Core Web Vitals are now LCP, INP and CLS.
Search Console had a mobile usability report.	Mobile is measured with Core Web Vitals and Lighthouse.
People used small GPTs such as "Helpful Content Checker" to check copy.	AI is an assistant across all SEO work, and a person checks the result.
In 2022, word from Google was that it would crawl less often to save energy.	That was an announcement, not a rule. What matters is still that Google can easily find your most important pages through a good internal link structure.
People bought links from link networks and link directories.	That's link spam under Google's rules. Paid links must be marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (Google).

How do you do SEO?

Search engine optimisation is about optimising a range of factors that, in Google's view, equal quality for users, and which can therefore push a website higher up the search results.

In fact, Google has hundreds of factors in the equation. Factors that together determine what position a website gets for specific keywords in the search results. You can think of it as one big sum, where each individual factor affects how visible your website becomes. That's also why there's no set recipe for getting to the top of Google, and results don't come overnight.

Overall, though, there are 3 main elements that can set you well on your way: content, technical set-up and authority.

Semantic SEO: good content rather than SEO copy

In the past, SEO was essentially about stuffing your landing pages with the keywords you wanted to be found for. I have a background as an external freelance copywriter at a marketing agency myself, where my job was to write meaningless SEO copy for clients' websites, and where there were fixed rules for how many times a keyword had to appear in each text.

Thankfully, that's no longer the case. Today, the search engine prioritises first and foremost that content has value for users. In recent years, Google has rolled out several updates to ensure this.

The quality requirements for content mean that semantic SEO is an important third leg of the SEO stool. The search engine strongly prioritises quality content that meets users' expectations. Conversely, landing pages with thin, duplicate or worthless content very rarely get good rankings.

For the same reason, it's essential to write good, user-friendly content for your website if you want to reach the top of Google. But that's easier said than done. It requires an interplay between rhetorical tools, an understanding of users' search intent and the ability to use the right keywords in the right context. So you're badly mistaken if you think it's about dropping the most important keywords into a generic text a set number of times.

With Google's algorithm updates, the search engine has become incredibly good at understanding users' search intent and showing search results based on it. So if you prioritise original content made for people rather than robots, you're well on your way to the top of Google's coveted peak.

Rules of thumb for semantic SEO:

• Avoid putting all your focus on the chosen keyword.
• Make sure your copy is easy to read.
• Think in topics rather than keywords.
• Write naturally, and avoid using too many difficult technical terms.
• Use sentences that engage the reader.

Interested in learning more about semantic SEO and how to write good SEO copy? Read much more about what we focus on at Amplify when it comes to search-engine-friendly content.

Technical SEO: make your content accessible

The content on your website is important. But if the technical side isn't working, Google won't find the site readable, and the site won't be user-friendly for your potential customers either. That's why optimising the technical factors, technical SEO, is also a vital part of optimising a website for search engines.

Technical SEO is the slightly more nerdy side of search engine optimisation. It requires a good understanding of everything going on in your website's engine room.
In practice, technical SEO involves analysing things such as:

• The quality of the website's source code
• Whether the site is indexed correctly
• Whether it's mobile-friendly
• Whether there's duplicate content
• Whether there are heavy images or other elements on the site that slow it down.

Technical SEO also includes analysing and redirecting dead links, search-engine-friendly naming of URLs, optimising ALT and H tags, page titles and meta descriptions, and setting up structured data that helps Google understand the content on the website.

And that's just a small selection of the many tasks within technical SEO. Long story short, the purpose of technical SEO is to make a website perform optimally from a technical point of view. Partly to give users the best experience, but also to make the site more readable for Google and so increase the chance of reaching the top of Google.

In 2026, three things are also part of it:

• Core Web Vitals: LCP (how quickly the largest element is displayed), INP (how quickly the page responds) and CLS (whether the content jumps around). INP replaced FID in March 2024.
• JavaScript: content that only appears once JavaScript has run is harder for search engines and AI crawlers to read.
• AI crawlers: check in robots.txt that you're not unintentionally blocking the AI search engines' crawlers.

→ Read more about technical SEO here

Link building: make your website trustworthy

SEO isn't just what happens on the website itself. Your website also needs to gain authority, and it does so through link building.

Link building is essentially about getting other websites to link to your website: so-called backlinks. Roughly speaking, the more websites that link to yours, the more authority your website gains. However, the quality of backlinks carries more weight than the quantity. 100 links from sites unrelated to your industry aren't an authority signal. On the contrary, they're a spam signal, and they can have a very negative impact on your organic visibility in the search engines.

Conversely, having lots of links from lots of industry-relevant domains with high domain authority is an authority signal, for example if a dentist's website has lots of links from health blogs, trade associations etc.

The graph below is a cautionary example of the consequences of spam links. It shows the average Google ranking for a big keyword, and as you can see, it collapses completely and even drops out of the index altogether on some days.

The website's webmaster had the best of intentions and diligently set about redirecting countless subpages from other domains they managed, domains that, mind you, were in no way relevant to the industry and also had low domain authority. Google therefore saw it as an attempt to manipulate rankings via spam links, and several months of SEO were undermined in a few days.

Here's the opposite example: a steadily growing backlink profile with links from relevant and authoritative domains has given a subpage good Google rankings for a big keyword.

Further down, you can read how to work with links in practice in the section Build authority on Google with link building.

→ Read more about link building

Google's algorithm updates

It's Google's algorithms that determine where your website is shown. Google rolls out several core updates a year and separate updates targeting spam. Since March 2024, the assessment of helpful content has been part of the core updates.

An update can move rankings a lot in a few days. There's rarely reason to panic, as long as you put your users first. Google always tries to show the content that best matches the user's search.

No one knows the algorithms in detail. Experience shows that these factors matter a lot for where your page is shown:

• The user's specific search
• The user's geographical location
• The website's trustworthiness
• The website's user-friendliness
• The website's relevance

Read more in our article on the Helpful Content Update and what applies today.

How do you get started with search engine optimisation?

You're welcome to use the image above, as long as you link to: https://amplify.dk/viden/seo-guide/

For example:

<a href="https://amplify.dk/viden/seo-guide/">Amplify: The complete SEO guide</a>

SEO is long-term, continuous work that never really ends. Google's algorithms are complex and change all the time, and the competition for top spots on Google can be fierce.

If you've tried your hand at search engine optimisation, you'll know it can be hard to make head or tail of an SEO strategy. But you have to start somewhere.

What an SEO strategy can look like

1. Technical SEO

If it's an older website, it can be a good idea to start by prioritising the technical side of SEO. It's incredibly important that your website works properly, as otherwise it can hurt your search engine optimisation, and then sadly your hard work won't do much good.

That's another reason why it makes sense to consider having an agency handle your SEO: it takes technical know-how.

Get a quick overview with Screaming Frog
There are several programs that can give you an overview of the technical quality of your website. One of them is Screaming Frog, which quickly finds and visualises technical issues.

Areas worth looking into first:

• HTTP URLs
• 4xx errors
• Content: duplicate and missing content
• Missing and duplicate H1s
• Missing and duplicate SEO titles

• Images over 100 KB
• Pagespeed
• Missing canonical tags
• Missing and duplicate meta descriptions

In short, you can get a complete overview of technical SEO pitfalls that can stand in the way of better organic keyword rankings in the search engines.

There are of course many other areas you can look into, but some things are more urgent than others. Remember, it's about getting an overview from the start, so you know what needs most of your attention.

You can read more about the screaming frog in our post ‘Seven tips for improving your SEO with Screaming Frog’.

2. Keyword research

In your keyword research, go all out. See it as a data-driven brainstorm where you find all the keyword combinations that could relate to your business. It's a good idea to consider the following questions when you take on an exciting piece of keyword research.

1. What products/services do we offer?
2. Which products/services matter most to us?
3. Which products/services are most in demand?

While it's good to include as many keyword combinations as possible in your keyword research, that doesn't mean you should immediately try to optimise for all of them at once. It's hard to say how many is right to start with, as it depends on how competitive the keywords are, but most people will start by focusing on around 5-10 keyword combinations.

3. Brainstorm or data-driven keyword research?

Keyword research can be based on something as simple as a brainstorm and your knowledge of your own industry and how your target audience searches. If, for example, you're a dentist with a clinic in Østerbro in Copenhagen, keywords such as ‘dentist’, ‘dental clinic’, ‘root canal treatment’, ‘toothache’, ‘dental crown’ etc. will be relevant to look into. Since you run a clinic that is typically interested in local customers, you'll also focus on the locations Østerbro and Copenhagen rather than a nationwide search.

A brainstorm can be a good place to start. However, we'll always recommend taking a more data-driven approach.

Tools such as Ahrefs and Google Search Console have everything you need to do good keyword research.

In Ahrefs, for example, you can export the keywords your website already ranks for and at the same time see the estimated monthly search volume and your ranking for them. That way, you can get an overview of where there's room for improvement. You can also do competitor analysis with the ‘Content gap’ feature. Here you can enter your own domain, compare it with one or more competitors' domains and get an overview of relevant keywords they rank for but you don't.

4. Content plan and content production

If you have a website with lots of landing pages containing well-written, descriptive content for all your services and/or products, well, then you can start on SEO straight away. Very few people have that, though.

There's one kind of stealing that's allowed, and that's learning by looking. Explore the websites on the first page for the keyword you want, and see how comprehensive their copy is. Cover the questions they answer, and do it better. Google has no preferred word count, so the length should follow what your reader needs.

It's also important to optimise keywords on the pages where it makes most sense, and it's rarely a good tactic to mix too many topics and keywords. Let's use the dentist example again. Google cares about user-friendliness, and it's not easy for users if they have to read about orthodontics on the same page as information about tooth extraction.

Always keep in mind that if YOU are unsure whether it makes sense, Google will certainly be unsure too. Read more about how to write good SEO copy.

5. Setting up tracking of key metrics

The goal of search engine optimisation is visibility, which should ultimately lead to more sales or enquiries via your website. That's why it's a really good idea to set up proper tracking of visitors, enquiries, sales, newsletter sign-ups and other key metrics that can tell you something about the return on your SEO effort.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager are indispensable tools here. GA4 shows what visitors do on your website, and Tag Manager makes sure you're measuring the right actions. Search Console shows how you're performing in Google's search results, including in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

6. Ongoing link building

The quantity and quality of links from other sites pointing to your site have a big impact on your website's authority, and therefore your rankings on Google. That's why it's important to work continuously on getting relevant links to your site. This discipline is known as ‘link building’. That is, links from sites that are thematically similar to yours.

Links from link networks and from sites unrelated to your industry aren't relevant links. Links from trade associations, suppliers, partners, bloggers, sponsors, press releases and reviews, on the other hand, are.

So while the quantity of links does count for something, quality is what matters most. Better one relevant link than 10 irrelevant ones.

7. Ongoing optimisation and evaluation

There's no resting on your laurels when it comes to SEO. Google's algorithm is complex, and the competition for certain keywords can be high. That's why it's important to evaluate the return on your effort on an ongoing basis.

Are you ranking poorly for certain keywords, for example? Is your website not generating enough enquiries? Or are your users otherwise not engaging with your content as you'd like?

These are questions you need to ask yourself regularly, and they form the basis for any optimisation.

SEO help from Amplify

Amplify is an ambitious SEO agency ready to increase your business's presence on Google. Shall we help you?

→ SEO agency

→ See case studies

On-page and off-page

Although there are several hundred internal and external factors that can affect your SEO strategy, the optimisation process is often described in terms of two main categories: on-page and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO

The overview below highlights some of the most important areas when it comes to on-page SEO.

• Choosing relevant keywords and terms
• Valuable copy about your services and/or products
• Implementing and optimising images
• Speed optimisation
• User-friendliness on desktop, mobile and tablet
• Correct set-up of body text, headings and subheadings
• Internal linking that creates structure on the website.

Read more about on-page SEO.

Off-page SEO

Can you get good rankings without focusing on off-page SEO? You may well be able to, but in the vast majority of cases, it will only be possible to rank highly for keywords where there isn't much competition, and therefore fewer potential customers.

The most important part of off-page SEO is links from other websites. You can read about that in the section Build authority on Google with link building.

Google Business Profile: your online business card

Google Business Profile is a free business profile that works as an online business card for your company. Local searches make up a large share, and the profile is often the first thing a customer sees. If you don't have a profile yet, create one.

Create a profile on Google Business Profile.

Add the most important information:

• Opening hours
• Service areas
• Industry
• Business description
• Link to your website
• Link to your website's contact page (appointment links)
• Services (if you offer a service)
• Products
• Photos.

You can also create posts on your profile about offers, news, events and products. That way, you keep your customers updated while driving relevant traffic to your website.

At Amplify, we know the profile matters a lot for local SEO, which is why it's a fixed part of the optimisation process. Shall we help you? Let's have a no-obligation chat.

Read much more about off-page SEO here.

Build authority on Google with link building

Link building is links between pages. Links between your own subpages are called internal link building. Links from other websites to yours are called external link building, and they work as a recommendation to Google: others think your page is worth a visit.

The section Link building: make your website trustworthy shows what good and bad links can do to your rankings. Here, we look at how to work with it. You can also read our blog post about link building.

Internal link building

Internal link building is links from one page on your website to another. You can place them in the body text, in the menu, on images and on the logo. Do it well, and Google's crawlers find their way around more easily, and your visitors find what they're looking for faster.

Internal links help you:

• pass link value to the pages you link to
• show what the page you're linking to is about
• show which pages matter most
• give the website a structure that both visitors and Google understand
• get new pages found and indexed faster

Outbound links

Outbound links are links from your website to other sites. Link to sources and pages that help your reader further. This guide, for example, links to Google's own guidelines where we refer to them.

How to get links from other websites

There's no shortcut to good links. Start with the analysis: which pages do you want links to, and which websites in your industry does it make sense to be mentioned on?

• Outreach: Ask customers, partners and trade associations to link to you where it makes sense for their readers.
• Guest posts: Write an expert post for a relevant publication. Google counts links with optimised anchor text in guest posts and press releases as link spam (Google), so write for the readers and not for the link.
• Content people want to link to: Your own figures, studies, tools and guides earn links when they're seen. Share them on social media and in newsletters. Also read "Why your business should write blog posts".

Outreach can land a link in a day, or it can take months. Keep an eye on whether the effort is worth the result.

Paid link building

Paid link building is the quick route to backlinks. You pay for column space with a link on a digital publication, in other words sponsored content.

Google has a clear rule here. Buying and selling links intended to influence rankings is link spam. A paid link must be marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (Google's spam policies). If you break the rule, you risk the page being ranked lower or disappearing from the search results.

It's important that you understand what you're dealing with if you take on paid link building. We therefore don't recommend buying links from websites that exist solely to sell links. These sites are also known as PBNs (Private Blog Networks) or splogs (spam + blog).

You can usually recognise them by the lack of a common thread in their articles. Here you might see "articles" about dental treatments placed right next to "articles" about payday loans and gambling.

So-called PBN links are unnatural links that come from domains whose only purpose is to link back and forth to various sites. So choose your domains carefully if you want to buy backlinks via sponsored content. In other words, there needs to be a common thread between the content on your website and the website linking to it.

Read Google's rules on links and link spam

Check the domain: is it valuable?

Found a website worth getting a link from? Check the quality first:

• Authority: How high is, for example, its DR (Domain Rating) in Ahrefs?
• Content: Do the website's topics match yours?
• Trustworthiness: Does the site have real readers and a common thread in its articles?

At Amplify, we mainly use Ahrefs to look at a domain's links, traffic and authority. Here's an example with google.dk, which naturally has a very high DR, lots of links and lots of organic traffic:

Avoid being penalised by Google

Familiarise yourself with Google's rules on link spam before you start. In the worst case, the page will be ranked lower or removed from the search results altogether. If you're unsure, get help from an SEO agency that works with link building every day.

Useful SEO tools

Are you completely new to SEO, or do you just want to find out whether there are tools you don't know about yet? Don't worry. Here's an insight into the SEO tools our SEO specialists use every day.

Why is it important to use the right tools?

If you want a good result, it's important to use the right tools. Just as some people prefer gin to vodka, there are of course differing opinions on the various SEO tools.

Our specialists have years of experience in search engine optimisation, and here's your chance to get an insight into their tools.

Ahrefs

If you're looking for a complete tool for analysis and optimisation, your prayers have been answered! There's almost nothing you can't do with Ahrefs. Not least, you can dig into your own website's rankings, find new keywords, explore your backlinks and more, and at the same time compare your website with your competitors'! What’s not to like?

Screaming Frog

Your website's functionality is crucial if your website is to claim one of the good positions on Google. That's why it's important to have access to a tool that gives you an insight into the technical challenges on the website. With Screaming Frog, you can analyse websites with up to 500 pages completely free of charge, which is often more than enough.

Google Search Console

If you need a tool that can deliver unique data from your website, exploring Google Search Console is a must. With this tool, you can get an insight into user and search behaviour as well as the indexing of your website. Clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode are also counted here.

This tool is especially brilliant for measuring and analysing SEO performance, as you can look into specific landing pages and filter by geography, keyword and device, among other things. If you haven't set up Google Search Console on your website yet, there's no time to lose.

Google Analytics

Data, data and more data! Say website tracking, and most people will say Google Analytics. In SEO and other digital marketing activities, you need to collect data; otherwise, how will you see the effect of your hard work? Most people track their website with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and as soon as you've learned to find your way around it, it'll undoubtedly become your new best friend.

It seems Google understands that its programs aren't always straightforward to work in, so it developed Skillshop! Here you can develop your skills in Google Analytics.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is Google's free tool for measuring how quickly a page loads and how it performs on Core Web Vitals. You get both data from real users and a test result with concrete suggestions. Read more in the section on pagespeed below.

Optimise your website's pagespeed

Few people have the patience for a page that loads slowly. It feels a bit like standing in a long queue at the supermarket. A fast page gets more visitors to stay, and it can also help your rankings.

Google rewards good pagespeed

In 2021, Google made page experience part of its assessment with an algorithm update. Today, Google's ranking systems use Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP and CLS. Google still shows the most relevant content, even when the page experience is poor (Google). Speed helps, but it doesn't replace good content.

Choose your preferred tool

There are lots of tools that measure speed and show what needs fixing:

• PageSpeed Insights
• Pingdom
• Lighthouse in Chrome's developer tools

Our specialists each have their favourite. Try a few, and find your own.

Here are the five areas to look at first when you get started with speed optimisation:

1. Images

Your website's media gallery has a big impact on loading speed, as it takes up more space than anything else, so it's the obvious place to start.

There are various options for compressing the file size of your images. If you use WordPress, for example, you can download Imagify through WP Rocket, which can do the job for you. Alternatively, you can compress your images in tools such as Photoshop. Save images in AVIF or WebP, and ideally keep them under 100 KB.

2. Redirects

There are countless tools and plugins that can handle redirection on your website, but did you know that too many redirects can slow your website down?

Every time a page redirects to another, it affects speed. Imagine you've had a website with 200+ pages for many years, and your go-to solution has always been to create redirects rather than make the change directly on the page. How many cups of coffee could you make before the page loaded?

3. Web host

When you chose your web hosting back in the day, were you looking at it with a critical eye? If you've done everything to improve your pagespeed and still haven't succeeded, the answer is most likely no.

There's often a link between cheap web hosting and poor pagespeed, because there are too many domains on the same server. You get what you pay for, so find out whether you can upgrade your current hosting plan.

4. Loading files

If all the files on your website load at the same time, that can also slow it down. Instead, it's recommended to use a technique called lazy loading, which makes the content on the website load gradually rather than all at once. Never lazy-load the top image on the page. It needs to be loaded first, or the page will be slower to display.

5. Code

If there's unstructured or unnecessary code on your website, that can also affect your website's load time. The solution is to start minifying CSS, JavaScript and HTML.

YouTube SEO: SEO is more than Google

In Denmark, we often treat search engine optimisation as synonymous with Google optimisation. But YouTube is also a search engine, often described as the world's second largest, so it can also pay to optimise YouTube videos for search if you have a YouTube channel to complement your website.

YouTube SEO can benefit your rankings both in the video giant's own search results and in Google's results, in the regular search results as well as the video results. Google owns YouTube, so its search engine also gives YouTube videos relatively high priority.

How to do SEO on YouTube

Just as there are best practices for SEO on websites, there's also a series of checkpoints you should be able to tick off if you want higher rankings for your YouTube videos.

We went through all the points ourselves when we published the explainer video at the top of the guide. It was in the top 10 of Google's video results for the search 'seo' and in YouTube's top 10 for 'hvad er seo' (what is SEO) when we measured it.

And don't worry, what we did isn't a trade secret. Here's the list.

• Include keywords in the title
• Include keywords in the video file
• Optimise the video description
• Use keywords in your tags
• Categorise the video

• Use a custom thumbnail for the video.
• Use SRT files (subtitles).
• Use YouTube Cards + End Screens
• Create a playlist with the channel's topics
• Create a pinned comment that includes keywords

An example of search engine optimisation on YouTube

In the video at the top of this article, I give a short introduction to the 3 elements of SEO. The video is on YouTube, and in the spirit of "practice what you preach", my colleagues and I have of course been through the list above.

YouTube has rewarded us with good rankings, including for the broad keyword 'søgemaskineoptimering'. Also try searching for 'SEO' and 'hvad er SEO' on YouTube. Does our video show up in your search?

Also try searching for the same words in Google's video results.

→ Read our 12 tips for YouTube SEO

SEO vs. Google Ads

Which marketing strategy is right for your business? It's one of the most common questions in digital marketing, and with so many options, it's understandable that people are unsure!

It's ALWAYS a good idea to invest in your online presence; we can safely vouch for that as an SEO and Google Ads agency.

Advantages of SEO

The upside

• You get stable, lasting traffic
• You don't pay for every click
• There's greater trust in organic results

Disadvantages of SEO

The downside

• It's a time-consuming process
• You need to master many different techniques
• It's hard to track the short-term results

The long-term investment

SEO is a long-term marketing strategy that's definitely worth the time if you know what you're doing. The optimisation process is time-consuming, and you need to master everything from copywriting and link building to the technical optimisation of the website.

Countless studies have shown that people are more likely to click on an organic search result than an ad. Organic search results are more closely associated with credibility. Do you scroll past the paid ads yourself?

Advantages of Google Ads

The upside

• You can get a page 1 position straight away.
• You have full control over your ads.
• It's suitable for all industries.

Disadvantages of Google Ads

The downside

• It can quickly get expensive if you're inexperienced.
• You have to spend money to make money.
• You need to master Google Ads.

The good investment, if you're an expert
Advertising on Google is often described as a short-term marketing strategy compared with SEO. That isn't the case, though, if, like our Google Ads specialists, you put blood, sweat and tears into every ad you create.

If you want a well-functioning Ads account and a Google Ads strategy that delivers a positive ROI, don't hesitate to contact a marketing agency.

SEO and Google Ads: the perfect match

You can't go wrong investing in both SEO and Google Ads, but it does require the time and budget for it. They're two of the really big areas in digital marketing, and if you manage to make the most of both, you'll definitely feel the difference.

When does SEO benefit from Google Ads?

SEO can benefit greatly from the large amount of data you can find in Google Ads. Since search engine optimisation is a solution where you sometimes have to arm yourself with patience, this can give you a better and faster overview of which keywords are worth investing in.

Buying ads doesn't give you better organic rankings. Google itself says that ads don't affect the organic AI answers either (Google Ads Help). The gain lies in the data: Google Ads quickly shows which keywords lead to sales, and you can prioritise those in your SEO.

When does Google Ads benefit from SEO?

Google Ads works in the same way as an auction house, but price isn't the only deciding factor at Google.

Google prioritises user-friendliness, the so-called Quality Score, and that also applies to paid ads. So you can't be sure of winning a page 1 position, even if you bid the most money. This is where SEO plays a central role, as it involves working with pagespeed, landing pages, copywriting, titles and meta descriptions, among other things.

An American marketing agency took a closer look at the interplay between SEO and Google Ads, and the study showed that a better Quality Score (thanks to SEO) resulted in lower cost-per-click and more traffic to both the organic results and the paid ads. Read more about the study here.

Convinced that your business should be visible in both the paid and the organic search results? At Amplify, we're ready to take your marketing strategy to new heights!

Can an agency improve your SEO?

It's not impossible to succeed with SEO on your own, but it's a time-consuming process where you need to keep your wits about you. There are many different areas you need to master, including copywriting, communication and the ability to find and fix technical errors on a website.

There are many advantages to using a marketing agency if you want to drive growth and make the most of your business's potential.

1. Most marketing agencies can handle ALL your marketing activities.
2. You save the cost of a permanent marketing employee.
3. You avoid the costs of training a new employee.
4. You can get specialist advice and help identifying business opportunities.
5. You don't need to spend money on every SEO program under the sun.
6. You get an SEO strategy that suits your business.
7. You get a dedicated specialist with years of SEO experience who knows which measures work.
8. You can focus on your core competencies.
9. An agency specialising in SEO keeps up with Google's many updates.

SEO: how do I choose the right agency?

There are loads of marketing agencies offering the same services, so it's understandable that it can be hard to decide which one to choose.

Choose an agency where…

• You have a good working relationship with the consultant.
• There's an understanding of your business's vision and mission.
• You have a good gut feeling from the start.
• Price isn't the most important selling point.

Want help with SEO, or would you like to hear more about digital marketing in the form of SEO or one of our other services? You're welcome to contact us for a no-obligation chat. We can also highly recommend reading Google's SEO Starter Guide.

Does SEO work?

It does, when you do it right. When my colleagues and I worked purposefully on SEO for amplify.dk for a year and a half, we increased the organic traffic almost sixfold. The graph below shows the development.

It took time and effort. If you need results here and now, Google Ads is the right tool. With the right effort, SEO is one of the most important sources of long-term growth.

Get help with search engine optimisation

Does taking on SEO seem like an overwhelming task? Don't know where to start? Or are you stuck in the work you've started?

Then contact Amplify. Our SEO specialists are ready to give your SEO strategy a boost, from initial analysis to strategy, implementation and ongoing monitoring and optimisation.

As an SEO agency, we always keep our eyes on current best practices in our field, and we love turning our knowledge into concrete measures for our clients.

→ Contact us for help with SEO

Common questions about SEO

What is SEO?

SEO is search engine optimisation, which aims to make it possible for you to be found for your services or products in Google's search results. The optimisation covers on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO, among other things.

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is translated into Danish as søgemaskineoptimering. Some also call it Google optimisation or SEO optimisation.

What's the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO is being found in the search results, AEO is giving the answer, and GEO is being mentioned in AI answers from e.g. ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode. The groundwork is the same: good, trustworthy content on a technically sound website.

Do AI Overviews affect my traffic?

Yes, often. In December 2025, Ahrefs found that the top position got 58% fewer clicks when there was an AI Overview on the search. Visibility as a source in the AI answer has therefore become part of the goal of SEO.

Why is SEO important?

Because it's your shortcut to higher rankings in the organic search results. That's why it pays to get to grips with best practices in search engine optimisation.

Can you do SEO yourself?

Yes, if you have the basic knowledge in place and access to a small handful of tools, you can easily have a go at optimising for search engines yourself. With the advice in this guide, you should be well equipped to start optimising your SEO on your own.

Does SEO pay off?

SEO is a long-term investment that pays off over time if you play your cards right. But it's also important to understand that SEO is sometimes just one part of the channel mix. For example, very few webshops could survive on SEO alone. Here, competition from Google Ads and Google Shopping is fierce, so SEO will be more of a support for paid search engine marketing.

How much does SEO cost?

If you want to get started with SEO yourself, you can easily do so without a big investment, and there are also lots of good, free SEO tools. If you choose an agency, the price, like everything else, depends on the effort and the return you want. Do you want sparring, or hands-on execution of everything from analysis to implementation? A cautious estimate of a monthly SEO budget for a medium-sized business would be DKK 5,000 to 30,000.