What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization Guide 2024

Have you decided to get started with SEO? Great!

When you first start using SEO, it can seem like a long and confusing process. But don't worry, once you've been at it for a while, it gets (a little) easier. In this article, you'll find all our insider tips on how to get started with search engine optimization.

Click through the table of contents on the left (or above if you're on a mobile) - or read the whole thing from cover to cover.

Have a great time!

Search engine optimisation can therefore ultimately help to create more turnover in your business. In other words, it can be a valuable investment for your business.

The acronyms SEO, SEA and SEM can be confusing - even for more experienced marketers.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and is basically all the marketing activities you can do in search engines - paid and organic.

As mentioned, the organic activity SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, where SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising. With SEA, we are talking about advertising in search engines - for example, text ads in search results, Google Shopping and Performance Max. This is the paid part of SEM.

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

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

So, to summarize, SEM is an umbrella term, and SEO and SEA fall under this umbrella. To make it even more confusing, in recent years it has become more common to use SEM as a synonym for SEA - and thus as a counterpoint to SEO. Similarly, SEA as a term is not used as often anymore.

But let me make it clear: All SEO is SEM, but not all SEM is SEO. In the same way that all SEA is SEM, but not all SEM is SEA. And no more tirades about marketing acronyms for now.

The SEM hierarchy: SEO and SEA are two different activities within SEM

In May 2023, Google announced that they would develop their search function so that in the future you will also get an AI-generated answer to your search query. It will be presented in a so-called "AI snapshot" over the traditional search results, giving users a more personalized response that fits their search intent.

The new AI integration will be a great help when you want to do more complex searches. Instead of having to split up your searches and pull all the threads together yourself, with SGE you will be able to ask more complicated questions or in-depth queries and actually receive in-depth answers that match your search intent.

An important piece of information for website owners and SEO-interested parties is that SGE will highlight the sources used to generate the AI response. This means that your website could potentially be highlighted both as a source in the AI response and as a standalone search result.

While we don't know the exact launch date for the SGE, there is no doubt that the future of SEO will likely focus even more on creating high-value content for users. Therefore, Google's E-E-A-T guidelines will also become even more prominent, as Google will probably prioritize trustworthy and quality-oriented content even more with the rise of AI.

A demonstration of the Google Search Generative Experience

The so-called E-E-A-T guidelines have been a ranking factor in Google's search engine since 2018, and when Google added an extra "E" to their E-A-T guidelines in late 2022, now called E-E-A-T (or 'Double E-A-T'), the principles became even more relevant.

E-E-A-T is an abbreviation for 'experience', 'expertise', 'authoritativeness' and 'trustworthiness' and are essentially signals to Google - and not least Google users! - that a website demonstrates these 4 characteristics.

In other words, the content on your website must reflect your experience, expertise, authority and credibility in your field or industry if you want to rank high in Google search results.

At webamp.dk, for example, all of our content is written by experienced marketing specialists who, due to their knowledge of digital marketing, have the expertise and concrete experience to communicate topics in the field. Our authority comes from our reputation - for example, through customer testimonials on our reference page and reviews on Trustpilot and Google.

Furthermore, authority comes from links and referrals from other websites with authority in our industry. Finally, we demonstrate credibility by having a website that is safe to navigate for our users - for example, through our SSL certificate.

SEMrush has written a very informative article on E-E-A-T if you want to read more examples of the 4 characteristics of E-E-A-T.

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

As mentioned, the E-E-A-T guidelines will become even more relevant as more AI-generated content emerges. While AI can analyze large data sets, the robots lack human experience, which can limit their expertise, authority and sometimes credibility. Therefore, the combination of AI-generated content that is audited (and not necessarily created by humans) is usually the best solution for the most useful content.

E-E-A-T is inextricably linked to the Google Helpful Content Update (I'll get into that in the next section), as Google now expects websites to not only answer users' questions, but actually enrich their knowledge and experience.

That's why the E-E-A-T principles must be clear to anyone working in digital marketing - even in 2024.

Knowledge of the E-E-A-T principles is a must for SEO people in 2024

Google'sHelpful Content Updateis a crucial update for anyone targeting SEO as a marketing activity. Launched in August and September 2023, the update is sure to be a game-changer for SEO in 2024.

With Google's "Helpful Content Update", content that is created for users, rather than the search engine, will be prioritized even more. With the aim of ensuring that users receive relevant and trustworthy information, Google will reward sites with genuine experience and expertise, while downgrading those that lack substance.

The update particularly affects websites with over-optimized "SEO content" and a lack of in-depth, original content. To avoid a drop in search rankings, websites need to demonstrate true expertise and offer unique value.

With Google focusing on quality over quantity, the update may particularly affect sites in shopping, online education, tech and entertainment, which have previously focused more on search engines than users.

As this update also acts as a 'sitewide algorithm', this means that bad content on individual pages can affect the entire website. In other words, one weak link can break the whole chain. To avoid this, in 2024 you need to ensure consistently high quality in all your content so that one weak link doesn't affect your entire domain.

Because the E-E-A-T principles are such important components of Google's guidelines and will probably only become even more important in 2024, it pays to invest time in buildingtopic clustersin the new year.

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

Central to the topic cluster is a 'pillar page' that covers a broad topic and is supported by several 'supporting pages' that address related sub-topics. This structure creates comprehensive coverage of a topic, increasing usability and brand legitimacy.

To build an effective topic cluster, start by selecting a main topic for your pillar page and identify related sub-topics for your supporting pages. Remember to include internal links between pages to strengthen cohesion. The ideal size of a topic cluster varies, but the most important thing is to maintain the focus and depth of the topic.

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

Not least, topic clusters can be part of your AEO strategy (read more about AEO below).

Just like in 2023, there's no doubt that in 2024 AI will take quantum leaps and revolutionize the world of SEO time and time again. That's why it's important to be ahead of the game to catch up with the explosive speed of the AI wave.

A term that will be important in 2024 is AEO, which is short for Answer Engine Optimization. AEO is a subcategory within SEO and is about optimizing content for AI engines, including Google SGE, ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing chatbot, Copy.ai and similar language models.

The discipline will therefore be to create content that is both useful to the user, the search engine and can be easily incorporated into responses from SGE and other forms of artificial intelligence. This can be a difficult intersection to navigate, but nonetheless necessary to perform highly on SEO parameters in 2024.

There's also no getting away from the fact that AI is and will continue to be a central part of copywriting and SEO in general. The future of copywriting is more likely to be a collaboration between man and machine. AI robots like ChatGPT will act as a kind of digital assistant, helping the copywriter - from idea generation to fine-tuning structure and language.

If you work with SEO texts, AI is therefore a very useful tool if used correctly. But it's also important to emphasize that it is a tool and not a replacement for a human.

Read our post on how to write with ChatGPT.

I would highly recommend getting a pair of human eyes on your robot content if you want to ensure that it is both factually correct and meets Google's E-A-A-T guidelines.

However, ChatGPT is scary good at writing user-oriented, useful content - see for example the screenshot below, where I've asked the robot to write a collection text about green tea for a fictional webshop.

I then ran the text through the Helpful Content Checker GPT to ensure that it meets Google's guidelines for useful content.

With useful, user-centric content, you're well on your way to ranking high in the 202.

Featured snippets - also known as featured snippets - are nothing new to Google, but they're only becoming more relevant over time. Indeed, my colleague Andreas pointed them out as a 2022 trend in his article on SEO factors in 2022 - and the trend looks set to continue in 2023. 

Featured snippets are selected passages from landing pages that appear directly in search results. These results are sometimes referred to as 'location 0' because they are visually higher than location 1 in Google's organic search results. 

These results get this prominent ranking because(according to Google) they contain exactly the information the user is looking for. In other words, they are results on useful content, targeted at users rather than rankings - see the section above. Below, for example, you can see Webamp's result for the search 'shopify webshop', which is even higher than Shopify's own result.

Many SEO specialists probably have an ambivalent relationship featured snippets. This is because featured snippets on certain results may result in a lower click-through rate because users get answers directly in the SERP and thus do not click on the result - the so-called zero click searches. And that, of course, means less traffic. 

Conversely, it also means more relevant traffic and higher conversion rates, because those who actually click will in many cases be more relevant customers. Therefore, there is also a good reason to go for featured snippets.

One way to do this is to focus on your target audience and their search intent. Focus on good content - write for users, not for bots.

You can also work more data-oriented with featured snippets. For example, in SEO tools like Ahrefs, you can see which of your keywords typically trigger featured snippets.

Click on the report 'Organic keywords', sort by 'SERP features' → 'Featured snippets. Click 'Apply' → 'Show results'. Then you will get a list of all keywords on your website that have featured snippets. Is your website not number 1 under 'Position'? Then just start content optimization and go for the featured snippet.

Featured snippets will only get bigger in 2024

Instant search engine data has become so taken for granted that few people think about the machinery behind the seemingly endless flow of information. But keeping a search engine as big as Google Search up to date requires considerable resources. 

Because even though we think of Google's search engine as "a thing in the cloud", the "cloud" is actually a physical entity, consisting of countless servers in data centers around the world - data centers that need to communicate with each other across countries and continents. And that stuff consumes power - a lot of it!

This kind of resource consumption doesn't sit well with Google's goal of becoming CO2-free by 2030. That's why Google is continuously implementing measures to reduce their annual CO2 emissions.

One of them is reportedly to limit the number of crawler requests (crawlers are essentially bots that scour the web for URLs and then detect and index them). 

Fewer crawler requests obviously also means fewer updates in the search results, as updates in the search results are directly related to crawler behavior - if your website has not been visited by a crawler since your last update, you will not see changes until you are visited again by the GoogleBot, which is called Google's crawlers. It is for the same reason that optimizing internal link structure is the alpha and omega of technical SEO, because GoogleBot finds its way around the internet by following links on the pages it crawls. 

In short, this means that in the long run, it will pay off to optimize landing pages from the start instead of doing it on an ongoing basis. So if you have your keyword and content strategy in place, you can implement changes right away rather than updating on an ongoing basis, as Bot visits will also become less frequent.

This will increase the chances of your changes being indexed faster by GoogleBot - and therefore included in the SERP.

Although as an AI model I don't actively participate in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the same way as a human SEO specialist, I can still play a useful role in the SEO process. Here are some ways you as a SEO specialist can benefit from my knowledge to streamline your work:

Keyword optimization: I can help you identify relevant keywords and key phrases that are important to your target audience. You can ask me questions like "Which keywords are popular within my niche?" or "How can I optimize my content to rank better for specific keywords?".

Content planning: You can use me to generate content ideas. For example, you can ask me, "What topics are trending in my industry?" or "Can you help me brainstorm blog post ideas?".

Technical SEO: I can provide advice on technical SEO by answering questions about website speed optimization, structured data, meta tags and other technical aspects of SEO.

Competitive analysis: I can help you analyze your competitors' SEO strategies by identifying their most popular keywords, backlinks and content to use as a reference.

SEO-Search engine friendly content: I can help you optimize your content by generating meta descriptions, titles and headlines that are optimized for search engines.

Here's an example:

Q: "What are the most popular keywords in the fitness industry right now?"

Answer: "The most popular keywords within the fitness industry include 'weight loss training', 'healthy eating', 'fitness equipment', and 'workout plans'. You may want to create content on these topics to appeal to your target audience."

Remember, while I can provide information and help with analytics, human expertise is still needed to make decisions, execute implementation and understand the context needed to run a successful SEO campaign. 

However, the interplay between AI and human judgment can be a powerful combination to streamline the SEO process and achieve better results.

In addition, the launch of GPTs - customized versions of ChatGPT - in November 20223 made ChatGPT's toolbox even deeper. 

For example, the GPT's Helpful Content Checker lets you check if your content meets Google's requirements for useful content, and the Seer's Screaming Frog & Technical SEO Companion gives you expert knowledge about the website crawler Screaming Frog - even with the option to upload your crawls directly in the chat.

Last but not least, you can also create your own GPTs tailored to specific needs - for example, writing texts for organizations with their own unique tone of voice. 

In other words, the language model can help you with everything from strategy and analysis to content optimization and technical SEO.

Language models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can be valuable SEO sparring partners

SEO is not only what happens on the website itself. Your website also needs to gain authority - and link building gives it that.

Link building is basically about getting other websites to link to your website - the so-called backlinks. Roughly speaking: The more websites that link to yours, the more authority your website gains. However, the quality outweighs the quantity of backlinks. It is not a signal of authority to have 100 spam links from casino sites, Indian link directories and Russian porn sites. On the contrary, it is a spam signal and it can have a very negative impact on your organic visibility in search engines.

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

The graph below is a horrifying example of the impact of spam links. It shows the average Google ranking for a major keyword, and as you can see, it completely cracks and even falls out of the index on certain days.

The webmaster of the website had the best of intentions and therefore diligently started redirecting countless subpages from other domains he managed - domains that were in no way relevant to the industry and had a low domain authority. Google therefore perceived it as an attempt to manipulate rankings via spam links, and several months of SEO was undermined in a few days.

Here's the reverse example: a steadily growing backlink profile with links from relevant and authoritative domains has given a subpage decent Google rankings on a major keyword.

In short, link building is about building links between pages - this can be across sub-pages on one domain(internal link building) as well as across domains(external link building). The latter in particular is an important focus for SEO specialists, as links from other websites can be seen as a kind of recommendation to Google and other search engines that a website is worth a visit. 

In other words, links from other websites are a signal of authority to Google and other search engines - and are therefore an important part of search engine optimisation. You can read more about this in our blog post on link building.

Please look at domain authority when looking for backlinks

In Denmark, we often equate search engine optimisation with Google optimisation. But Youtube is also a search engine - according to some sources the world's second largest - and therefore it can also pay to search engine optimise Youtube videos if you have a Yotube channel to complement your website.

Youtube-SEO can partly benefit your rankings in the video giant's own search results, but also in Google's results - both in the regular search results and in the video results. Google owns Youtube, and therefore their search engine also gives a relatively high priority to Youtube videos. 

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 according to the motto "practice what you preach", my colleagues and I have of course been through the list above.

And Youtube has also rewarded with good rankings - here on the broad keyword 'search engine optimization' - try searching for 'SEO' and 'what is SEO' on Youtube. Does our video show up in your search?

Also, try searching for the different keyword combinations in Google video results. Do we show up there?

You can also search engine optimize your Youtube videos

It really does if you do it the right way. Together with my colleagues, I have been working with SEO on webamp.dk for the past year, and the development in our organic traffic speaks for itself.

We've almost quintupled our SEO-generated traffic in one year. But it's also taken time and effort. In other words, you can't expect here-and-now results with SEO - Google Ads is your go-to tool. But with the right effort, SEO can be an extremely important source of long-term online success.

Does it seem like a daunting task to get started with SEO? Don't know where to start? Or are you stuck in the work you've started?

Then contact Webamp. Our SEO specialists are ready to kick-start your SEO strategy - from initial analysis to strategy, implementation and ongoing monitoring and optimization. 

As a SEO agency, we always have our eyes on current best practices in our field, and we love to translate our knowledge into concrete actions that create value for our customers.