Search · Question research
Researching the questions your buyers actually ask
Start with the inbox, not the tool
Researching buyer questions means collecting the real questions people ask before they buy, from your own sales emails, calls, site search and reviews, then checking them against Search Console, Google suggestions and AI assistants. For Danish and Nordic businesses this matters more than search volume, because most specific questions in Danish show little or no volume in keyword tools.
How to do it
Why questions beat keyword lists
A keyword list tells you which words people type. A question tells you what they are trying to decide. “Bryllupsfotograf København” and “how much does a wedding photographer cost in Copenhagen” may lead to the same service, but the second reveals a buyer comparing prices and probably close to booking.
Questions also match the way search has changed. People type longer queries into Google, ask full sentences to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, and get composed answers that draw on pages which answer a question clearly. A page built around the questions buyers really ask has a better chance of being used in those answers, which is the core idea behind answer engine optimisation.
There is a practical reason too. Danish is a small language market. Keyword tools estimate volumes from limited data, and many specific Danish phrases show as zero or “under 10” even when real people search them every month. If you only write for terms with a visible volume, you miss most of the long, specific questions that come from serious buyers.
Start with what you already have
The best sources are inside the business, and they cost nothing but time. Spend an afternoon going through them before opening any tool.
- Sales and enquiry emails: read the first message from the last fifty or so enquiries. Copy out every question, in the customer’s own words.
- Calls and meetings: ask whoever answers the phone to keep a simple list of questions for two weeks. The same five will appear again and again.
- Support tickets and chat logs: post-purchase questions show what the website failed to explain before the sale.
- Site search: if your site has a search box, its log shows exactly what visitors looked for and did not find in the menu. In GA4 this needs site search tracking switched on in enhanced measurement.
- Reviews: on Google and Trustpilot, customers often mention what worried them before buying. Reviews of competitors are just as useful.
- Lost deals: the reasons people give for choosing someone else are questions you did not answer well enough.
Keep the original wording, including spelling mistakes and mixed Danish and English. That wording is how the next buyer will search.
Mining Search Console and Google itself
Google Search Console holds the queries that already bring people to your site, including many that keyword tools never show. In the Performance report, add a query filter with the “custom (regex)” option and paste a pattern of question words, for example:
^(hvad|hvordan|hvor|hvorfor|hvornår|hvem|kan|skal|er|what|how|why|when|where|who|can|should|is|does)b
Sort the results by impressions. Questions with impressions but few clicks are often ones where you rank without really answering. Questions you get impressions for on the wrong page show where a dedicated page is missing.
Then look at Google itself, searching in a private window with the language and region set to Denmark:
- Autocomplete: type the start of a question about your service and note the suggestions. Try both “hvordan” and “how”.
- People also ask: open the boxes, since each one you open loads more related questions.
- Related searches: at the bottom of the results page, often revealing comparisons and alternatives.
- AI Overviews: where they appear, note which sub-questions the overview covers and which sources it links to.
Forums, assistants and tools, with their limits
Outside your own data, a few more sources fill gaps. Each has a bias, so it helps to know what it can and cannot tell you.
| Source | What it is good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Your inbox and calls | Real wording from real buyers | Only covers people who already found you |
| Search Console | Questions you already have impressions for | Hides rare queries and only shows your own site |
| Keyword tools | Relative volume and related terms | Weak data for Danish, many zero volumes |
| Reddit, Facebook groups, Trustpilot | Worries, objections and honest comparisons | Loud minorities, often consumer rather than business buyers |
| AI assistants | Quick brainstorms and how a topic is framed | Plausible questions nobody actually asks |
Danish buyers discuss purchases in Facebook groups, on Reddit communities such as r/Denmark and r/copenhagen, and in trade forums for their industry. Expats in Copenhagen ask many questions in English that local buyers never would, about Danish rules, contracts and language.
Asking ChatGPT or Perplexity “what do people ask before hiring an event DJ in Copenhagen” is a fast way to get a first draft of a list. Treat the result as a hypothesis, then keep only questions you can confirm in your own data or in search results.
Grouping questions by the decision behind them
A raw list of two hundred questions is not a plan. The next step is to group them by what the buyer is trying to work out at that moment. A simple set of stages works for most service businesses:
- Understanding the problem: “why is my website not showing on Google”, “do I need a DJ or a band”.
- Choosing an approach: “SEO or Google Ads first”, “civil wedding or church wedding in Denmark”.
- Comparing suppliers: “what to ask a photographer before booking”, “agency versus freelancer”.
- Checking the details: price, timing, contracts, what is included, what happens if something goes wrong.
Within each stage, merge questions that would have the same answer. “How much does it cost”, “what is the price” and “hvad koster det” are one question. Keep a note of the variants, because they make good headings and FAQ wording later. This kind of grouping is the main output of our keyword, question and intent research, and it usually changes which pages a site needs.
Keeping the list in one place
A shared spreadsheet is enough. Give each question its own row, with columns for the exact wording, the language, where you found it, how often it came up, the stage it belongs to and the page that answers it today, if any. Add a column for the person who raised it internally, so you can go back and ask for context. Sort by frequency within each stage and the gaps become obvious: the questions asked most often with an empty “answered on” column are your writing plan for the next quarter. Sales and support staff should be able to add rows themselves, because they hear new questions long before anyone in marketing does.
Turning the research into pages people use
Once questions are grouped, decide where each group belongs. Broad, high-stakes questions deserve their own page or article. Narrow, factual ones work as FAQs on the relevant service page. Post-purchase questions belong in onboarding emails or a help section.
- Open each answer with one or two sentences that answer the question directly, then add the detail. Readers and answer engines both use the opening.
- Use the buyer’s wording in headings, not your internal service names.
- Answer price questions honestly, even if the honest answer is a range and an explanation of what moves it.
- Write separate Danish and English versions where both audiences exist, instead of translating word for word. The questions themselves often differ.
Pages written this way also tend to be easier for AI assistants to quote, because each section stands on its own and answers one thing. If you want an existing page reshaped around the questions you found, our work on citation-ready pages starts from exactly this kind of list, and keeps the facts, the prices and the tone consistent with the rest of the site.
Repeat the research every six to twelve months. New questions appear as markets, rules and tools change, and the ones your sales team hears this month are the ones next year’s buyers will type.
Research questions
Common doubts about
question research
There is no magic number, but most small service businesses find that 50 to 150 collected questions collapse into 10 to 25 distinct topics once duplicates are merged. That is usually enough to plan a solid set of service pages, FAQs and a few articles.
The point where you can stop is when new sources mostly repeat what you already have. If the last thirty enquiry emails added nothing new, the list is saturated for now. Do not wait for a perfect list before writing; start with the questions that come up most often in sales conversations and those closest to a purchase decision, such as price, timing and what is included. You can add the rest in later rounds as you see which pages attract visitors and enquiries.
Mostly because the data behind them is thin for small languages and long phrases. Keyword tools estimate volumes from samples, clickstream panels and Google Ads data that is rounded or grouped, and a market of around six million people produces few data points for any specific Danish question.
Many tools also hide or round down terms below a threshold, so “0” or “under 10” often means “too few to measure”, not “nobody searches this”. Search Console is the better check, since it records real impressions for your own site, even if it also hides some rare queries for privacy. A question that shows up in your enquiry emails every month is worth answering whatever a tool reports, because the people asking it are buyers rather than browsers.
You can use it to brainstorm, but not as evidence. An assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude will produce a long, plausible list of questions on almost any topic in seconds, which is a useful starting point when you have no data at all.
The risk is that the list reflects general patterns in the model’s training data rather than your market. It may miss the questions specific to Danish buyers, such as rules, VAT, contracts or local habits, and it may include questions that sound sensible but that nobody types. Treat each suggestion as something to verify against your own inbox, Search Console, autocomplete and People also ask. Keep the ones that show up in at least one real source, and drop the rest without regret.
Yes, if you have real buyers in both languages, and the pages should be written for each audience rather than translated line by line. Danish and international buyers in Copenhagen often ask different things: locals tend to compare suppliers and prices, while expats and foreign companies ask more about rules, process and whether they can work in English.
Research each language separately using the same sources, then compare the lists. Questions that overlap can share a structure, with each version phrased the way that audience searches. Questions that only appear in one language belong only on that version. Link the pages to each other with hreflang tags so search engines show the right one, and keep facts such as prices and contact details identical in both.