Build a Traction Engine With SEO + SEA: Complete 2025 Guide
Search Marketing
Bastiaan van Mastrigt
12 mins
November 13, 2025
You built something people need. You know it. Your early users love it. But here's the problem. Nobody else knows you exist.
You post on LinkedIn. Crickets. You try Facebook ads. Burned through €2,000 in a week. Got three signups. You write blog posts. Google ignores them. You're shouting into the void.
And meanwhile, your competitors, some with worse products, are growing. They're getting traffic. Customers. Momentum. What do they have that you don't?
I'm going to show you how to build yours. This guide is about combining two powerful forces: SEO and SEA for startups. Search engine optimization for the long game.
No fluff. No theory. Just a complete, actionable customer acquisition strategy you can start this week. Let's go.
What Is a Traction Engine? (And Why You Don't Have One Yet)
A traction engine is simple. It's a system that brings you customers on repeat. Not random spikes. Not viral lottery tickets. Predictable growth.
Every week, you know roughly how many people will discover you. Visit your site. Sign up. Buy. You can forecast it. Budget for it. Scale it.
Most startups don't have this. They chase shiny tactics. They jump from channel to channel. They hope something sticks. That's not a traction engine. That's chaos.
Growth = Traction + Retention (But Traction Comes First)
Here's a truth most growth gurus won't tell you. Retention means nothing if nobody shows up in the first place.
You can have the stickiest product in the world. The best onboarding. Perfect customer success. But if you can't get people through the door, you're dead.
Traction is the spark plug. Retention is the fuel efficiency. Both matter. But traction comes first.
Early-stage founders obsess over product. Over features. Over retention metrics before they have enough users to retain. That's backwards.
You need people flowing into your funnel before you can optimize what happens inside it. And that's where startup growth marketing starts: with traction. With getting seen. Getting clicks. Getting signups.
Once you have flow, you can optimize. You can improve conversion rates. You can increase lifetime value. But flow comes first. And search marketing, SEO plus SEA, gives you flow.
Let me show you why.
Why Search Marketing for Startups Beats Almost Everything Else
Search is intent. Someone types "project management tool for remote teams" into Google. They're not scrolling mindlessly. They're not there for cat videos. They have a problem. Right now. And they're looking for a solution.
That's gold. Compare that to social media ads. You interrupt someone's feed. You hope they care. Most don't. They scroll past. They never even read your headline.
But search is different. People come to Google to find answers. To solve problems. To buy things. They're already in the mindset. Already looking. You just need to show up.
And here's the beautiful part. Search marketing for startups works at every stage. Whether you have €500 or €50,000 to spend. Whether you're pre-revenue or scaling fast.
SEO builds compounding value over time. Every article you publish. Every page you optimize. Every backlink you earn. They stack. They compound. Six months from now, that work is still bringing you traffic. Still bringing you customers.
SEA gives you immediate feedback. You launch a campaign today. You get clicks today. You learn what messages work. What keywords convert. What landing pages resonate. Then you feed that intelligence back into your SEO strategy.
The Rocket Fuel Combination: SEO + SEA Work Better Together
Think of SEO as the foundation. The compound interest of traffic. You invest time upfront. You create content. You optimize pages. You build authority. And then, month after month, year after year, Google sends you traffic. For free.
But SEO takes time. Three months minimum before you see real results. Six months to really gain momentum. If you're a startup burning cash, that timeline can be terrifying.
That's where SEA comes in. Search engine advertising, Google Ads, Bing Ads, gives you instant visibility. You bid on keywords. You show up at the top of search results. You start getting clicks today. Not next quarter. Today.
But SEA costs money. Every click. Every visitor. And the second you stop paying, the traffic stops. It's not sustainable on its own for most early-stage startups.
Here's the magic. When you combine them, you get the best of both worlds. Speed plus sustainability. Immediate feedback plus long-term compounding. Yin and yang.
The Bullseye Framework: How to Test Traction Channels Without Wasting Time
Most startups approach marketing like throwing spaghetti at the wall. They try everything. Nothing sticks. They give up. Gabriel Weinberg created a better way. He calls it the Bullseye Framework. It's dead simple. And it works.
Here's how it works. You map out all possible traction channels. Weinberg identified 19 of them. Search marketing is just one. Then you run cheap tests on the most promising channels. You measure results. And you double down on what works.
The framework has three rings, like a target. The outer ring is "possible" channels. The middle ring is "probable" channels worth testing. The inner ring, the bullseye, is your core channel. The one that actually drives growth.
For most B2B startups, search marketing lands in the bullseye. For SaaS companies selling to businesses. For agencies. For tools. For platforms. Search works.
But don't take my word for it. Test it. Run small experiments. Compare it to content marketing, partnerships, or sales outreach. Measure cost per acquisition. Time to first customer. Scalability.
And if you want to explore all 19 traction channels and learn which ones to test first, check out our complete guide to the Bullseye Framework. It walks through the exact testing process, step by step.
Build Your Traction Engine Now (Before Your Competitors Do)
Here's what I know. Traction isn't found. It's built. One keyword at a time. One experiment at a time. One customer at a time.
Your competitors aren't smarter than you. They're not luckier. They just have a system. They have a traction engine that works while they sleep. That brings customers every day. That turns marketing spend into predictable revenue.
You can build the same thing. Starting today. With SEO and SEA working together. With the Bullseye Framework guiding your tests. With real metrics keeping you honest.
Want help building your traction engine? Book your free 30-minute traction audit. We'll analyze your current visibility, identify your best keyword opportunities, and create a custom 90-day roadmap for predictable growth.
Because traction doesn't happen by accident. It happens by design. And your design starts now.
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