SEO · Search engine optimization

SEO that shows up
on the bottom line

Search engine optimization is about being found by the right people, on Google and in the AI answers, without paying per click. I treat it as an investment in visibility, measured on revenue rather than rankings.

Experience
10+ years
Focus
Bottom line
Go-to tool
Ahrefs
Read the guide
Illustration of a glowing magnifying glass above a structure with root-like lines, symbolizing SEO

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the work of making a website easy enough to understand and trustworthy enough that the search engines show it at the top when someone searches for what you sell. That traffic is free in the sense that you do not pay per click, and that is why SEO is one of the most durable investments in digital marketing.

I always break SEO into three pillars, and a site needs all three in order:

  • Technical. Can Google even find, understand and load your pages fast enough?
  • Content. Do your pages answer precisely what people are actually searching for?
  • Authority. Do other places on the web point to you as a source worth trusting?

The key concepts along the way: organic traffic is the visits you get without paying for ads. SERP is the results page you land on after a search. Keywords are the words people search with. Title tag and meta description are the headline and text shown in the search result. Backlinks are links from other sites to yours. And E-E-A-T is Google's way of assessing experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. The rest of this page explains how I work with all of it in practice.

SEO as a discipline has changed

SEO is not the same discipline today as it was ten years ago. Back then you could get far with plenty of links and keyword-stuffed pages. Then came a series of Google updates that rewarded genuine content and penalized tricks. The direction has been the same ever since. Away from outsmarting the search engine, toward being the most helpful and trustworthy source on your subject.

The new layer is that answers are increasingly read aloud by an AI assistant instead of being clicked on. It sounds like a break, but the foundation is the same as it has always been. Understand the person behind the search, and be the best answer.

I have worked deeply with the discipline for over ten years and today run the webshops Maxis.dk and Billigtraening.dk myself. Owning a real bottom line every month shapes the way I approach SEO. Rankings are not the goal in themselves, they are the means to the revenue they can turn into.

Technical SEO: the foundation under everything

Technical SEO is dull to most people and loved by me. It is the foundation, and if it is not in order, all the other work is wasted. Google needs to be able to crawl your pages, understand their structure and load them fast, even on a phone on a mediocre network.

What I look at first:

  • Crawlability and indexing. Can the pages be found, and do they actually end up in Google's index? Here Search Console and a full crawl in Screaming Frog are my first two stops.
  • Core Web Vitals and speed. Google measures how fast and stable the page loads. Lighthouse in Chrome gives me the numbers in black and white.
  • Structure and internal navigation. A logical build makes it easy for both robots and people to find their way around.
  • Schema markup. Structured data that tells the search engine exactly what a page is about. It is also the key to being shown correctly in AI answers.

On WordPress I handle the on-page technical work with Yoast or Rank Math configured properly, not just installed. On Shopify I work directly in the theme. And this page, the one you are reading right now, is built in Astro precisely to be as light and fast as technically possible. Practicing what I preach.

michaelkirkegaard.com Lighthouse
Lighthouse report for michaelkirkegaard.com/seo/ scoring 91 Performance, 94 Accessibility, and 100 Best Practices and SEO
Core Web Vitals for this page. Speed is not a detail, it is a ranking factor.

Numbers change over time. Test your own site on PageSpeed Insights.

Content and keywords: what moves rankings

Once the technical side is in place, the rest is about answering the right thing. Keyword research is where I find out what your customers are actually searching for and how large the demand is. Ahrefs is my preferred tool for it, with Semrush and Search Console as strong second sources.

But keywords are only half of it. What matters is search intent: what does the person behind the search actually want to achieve? Do they want to buy, compare or simply understand? A page that hits the intent precisely always beats a page that just repeats the keyword many times.

Title tags and meta descriptions are the first thing a searcher sees. They need to be sharp, honest and worth clicking. Here AI has become a powerful tool. I use Claude to research and draft title tags and briefs at scale, but the human is always in control. A machine can write fast. Only someone who knows the business knows what is worth writing about.

ahrefs.com Ahrefs
Ahrefs Site Explorer overview for maxis.dk showing a Domain Rating of 46, 575 organic keywords, and a clear organic traffic growth curve from 2023 to 2026
Keyword and backlink data from Ahrefs, my go-to tool since 2016.

Two pages can have equally good technical work and equally good content. The one that wins is usually the one that the most other trustworthy sites link to. Backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking factors, because they act as recommendations. But it is quality over quantity. A single link from a relevant, respected media outlet is worth more than a hundred links from irrelevant pages.

Internal link building is the overlooked twin. By linking wisely between your own pages, you distribute authority to where it is needed, and you help both Google and the reader understand what belongs together. It is some of the cheapest and most effective SEO work there is, and most sites do far too little of it.

This is where it gets interesting, because SEO does not live in its own corner. The demand I uncover with keyword research makes your Google Ads cheaper, because we bid on the right things. The content I build gives your email marketing something to link to. And a strong brand lifts the click-through rate on everything you do. That is the omnichannel mindset I build all of my work on.

SEO in the AI era: from Google to ChatGPT

One of the biggest shifts in the discipline is happening right now. More and more people ask ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or Claude instead of googling, and those assistants answer by citing sources. Becoming that source is a discipline in itself. It is called GEO, Generative Engine Optimization.

The mechanism is worth understanding. The AI assistants pull their answers from many of the same pages that rank high in organic search, and they tend to cite sources that are well structured and appear trustworthy. A solid SEO foundation is therefore also the foundation for being mentioned in an AI answer.

The foundation is the classic SEO work of clear structure, trustworthy content and schema markup. A solid foundation makes a site easy for the AI assistants to cite, and the AI layer sits on top. You can read the full approach on the page about GEO.

My tech stack for SEO

Tools do not do the work, but the right ones make it faster and sharper. This is what I use, and what each tool is best at.

Ahrefs

My preferred tool for keywords, backlinks and competitor analysis.

Search Console

Google's own data on impressions, clicks and indexing.

Screaming Frog

A technical crawl of the entire site, error by error.

Semrush

A second source for keywords and visibility over time.

Morning Score

Measures visibility in AI answers and across search.

Lighthouse

Core Web Vitals and speed, straight from Chrome.

Yoast / Rank Math

On-page SEO in WordPress, configured properly.

Claude

Research, briefs and title tags at scale. The human stays in control.

Results and cases

Theory is easy. What counts is whether the numbers move. Here are three examples of sites where I have led the SEO work, each with its own challenge.

search.google.com Search Console
Google Search Console for maxis.dk showing 28,600 clicks and 2.77 million impressions over the past 12 months
Clicks and impressions over time. The green curve is the whole point of organic SEO.

FAQ

SEO, in brief

What does SEO cost?
It depends on where you start and where you want to go. Some projects are a one-off cleanup of the technical setup and structure. Others are an ongoing collaboration on content and links every month. I always set the price against the expected return, not against a number of hours. Book a meeting and I will give you a concrete proposal.
How long does SEO take before it works?
The first technical gains can show within weeks. Real growth in organic traffic and rankings typically takes three to six months, depending on the competition and the site's history. SEO compounds. It builds over time and keeps working long after the work itself is done.
Who is the best at SEO?
The honest answer is that it depends on the task. There are many skilled SEO people out there, both agencies and independents, and the best person for a technical migration is rarely the best for local service SEO. My own background sits at the intersection of SEO and business. I am CEO of two webshops myself, so I think in terms of the bottom line rather than rankings alone. If you need someone who understands both the search engine and the P&L, that is where I add value.
Is SEO still relevant when people ask ChatGPT instead of googling?
Yes, more than ever. The AI assistants pull their answers from the same sources that rank on Google, and they cite the pages that are well structured and trustworthy. A strong SEO foundation is the same foundation that gets you mentioned in ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Claude. I work with both as one, and you can read more on my page about GEO.
Do you work with both WordPress and Shopify?
Yes. I run webshops on Shopify myself and have built a long list of sites in WordPress and Elementor. The SEO principles are the same across platforms. The difference lies in how you handle the technical side, and I know both from the inside.
Can you help connect SEO with Google Ads and email?
That is the whole point. SEO delivers data and demand that make your Google Ads cheaper and your email marketing sharper. I work omnichannel, so the channels pull in the same direction instead of competing for the credit.

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