If there is one thing you do not have in a start-up, it is enough money and time to simply try out a marketing channel and see what happens. So if you are considering investing in SEO, you need to understand exactly where you stand and how SEO can support you.
In this post, I will show you what role SEO — as well as GEO/AEO, meaning visibility in AI-generated answers such as those from ChatGPT — plays across the six typical stages of a start-up. This will help you assess where you are right now, what really makes sense at this stage and what you can safely leave for later.
The goal of SEO at each start-up stage
SEO can be much more than writing a few blog posts and trying to rank number one on Google. That is precisely why the role of SEO changes depending on the stage your start-up is currently in.
The table below gives you an overview of the key points. Further down, we will look at each stage in more detail. Simply find the problem you are currently facing and read about how SEO can support you at this stage — and where it would be a waste of money.
Table
| Stage | Biggest question | Main marketing goal | Role of SEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding the problem and target audience | Is the problem relevant — and for whom? | Understanding customers and establishing clear positioning | Understanding language, problems and demand |
| Validating the MVP and demand | Do people want to try the solution — and pay for it? | First qualified users, pilots and learning loops | Testing initial landing pages and purchase-oriented search intent |
| Finding product-market fit | Does the product repeatedly create real value? | Activation, usage, retention and referrals | Expanding use cases, comparison pages and solution pages |
| Building repeatable acquisition | Can we consistently attract the right customers? | Finding one or a few channels that work | Developing topic clusters, case studies and an organic pipeline |
| Scaling and expanding | How can growth be replicated efficiently? | Predictable growth with healthy economics | Content systems, technical optimisation, authority and international markets |
| Defending the brand and market position | How can growth become a sustainable business? | Brand, market leadership, efficiency and customer retention | Creating predictable organic demand and reducing channel dependence |
The individual start-up stages and SEO in detail
Stage 1: Finding the problem and target audience
At this stage, the goal is to understand which problem we are solving and for which target audience. SEO can be useful here — but not as a growth channel. Its main purpose is data analysis.
- Researching keywords and prompts: Tools and Google have access to large amounts of data, at least some of which we can analyse. This helps us understand what people are searching for online, how often they search for it — in other words, the level of demand — and which problems lie behind those searches.
- Competitor analysis: Which direct and indirect competitors exist, and which target audiences are they targeting?
- PR: Identifying potential cooperation partners at an early stage.
At its core, this stage is about conducting market research with SEO.
Useful for:
- Data that can be presented to investors
- Understanding the target audience
- Ideas and opportunities for reaching that audience
- Understanding the online competitive landscape
GEO/AEO: We are trying to understand the niche and the problems within it. This is also when we begin our first efforts to ensure that AI systems already know what we do when someone asks about our company. An important focus here is also the founders.
Stage 2: Validating the MVP and demand
In stage 1, we looked at demand passively. Now we can explore it in more depth using specific search queries and search volumes.
At this stage, the website often has one clear primary goal: requesting a demo, joining a waiting list or taking a similar action. The aim is to determine whether there is any demand at all.
SEO can support this in two ways:
- Using analytics data to understand how many people drop off and how many continue through the website
- Building the website thoughtfully from the very beginning — positioning it as the centre of our online ecosystem
GEO/AEO: This continues seamlessly from stage 1: Who are we? What does our start-up do? Who are the founders? At this point, the focus is primarily on direct questions about us and the first steps towards the product. Does the AI understand what we do, who the product is suitable for and what the next steps are for users?
Stage 3: Finding product-market fit
This is where the first real SEO optimisation begins, with a direct focus on our services and offering.
Important: A blog or purely informational content is not yet particularly useful at this stage. The focus should clearly be on transactions rather than information.
SEO starts to behave like a traditional marketing channel while continuing to provide valuable data for investors. We begin with use cases and specific pages for the industries or sectors we want to target.
GEO/AEO: AI should now understand more than just what our company does in general. It should also be able to assess our advantages and disadvantages, specific use cases, target audiences and relevant sectors — as well as the problems we solve. The first points of contact with alternative solutions also emerge: the relationship between our solution and what already exists on the market, even when our company is not mentioned directly.
One of the most important tactics at this stage is definitely PR: building the brand and making the founders known.
Main focus: Brand growth and PR.
Stage 4: Building repeatable acquisition
SEO now becomes a powerful channel. Thanks to the groundwork from the previous stages, we are not starting from scratch. The website continues to grow and is refined on an ongoing basis. CTAs are tested, and everything is geared towards conversion.
SEO can also work together with every other channel we choose, whether that is video, social media or advertising. This is the first point at which it makes sense to seriously consider creating a blog for SEO purposes.
GEO/AEO: This is where things get exciting: AI systems should start recommending us as a possible solution — as an alternative to whatever someone is currently using, even if that person has never heard of us before.
Main focus: The website.
Stage 5: Scaling and expanding
SEO is now used as a channel that generates compound interest. Specialisation and optimisation help us attract not only more leads, but also better-qualified ones — ideally automatically and without lengthy sales cycles.
A deep understanding of our own offering is crucial at this stage. We enter new industries and analyse competitors again.
GEO/AEO: Do we win the question of who the best provider is for a particular topic? Can we reach new industries and sectors and expand our offering accordingly?
Main focus: The website.
Stage 6: Defending the brand and market position
If we have done everything right so far, we should now be very well positioned. If not, this is the latest point at which to start investing in SEO — and to do so with full commitment. At this stage, SEO becomes a moat: a sustainable competitive advantage.
GEO/AEO: We are the number-one recommendation from ChatGPT and other AI systems when it comes to our offering. We keep track of which other providers appear and who we need to defend our position against.
Main focus: PR and further development of authority.
SEO terms for start-ups explained clearly
Like every other industry, ours has its own technical jargon. In this section, we translate the most important terms to make communication between SEO specialists and founders easier.
Make sure you look through this overview before meeting with an SEO consultant, SEO specialist or SEO agency — or when you are trying to understand a proposal.
Table
| SEO term | What it means for a start-up |
|---|---|
| Keywords / keyword research | How does the market describe its problem? Essentially, this is another form of market research: you learn what people are searching for and how often — in other words, what current demand looks like. |
| Search intent | What situation is a potential customer in? Depending on the terms someone enters, we can estimate how far they have progressed in the buying process or whether they are simply looking for information out of interest. |
| Search volume | Is there a visible pool of demand? This is the number of times a keyword is entered each month. It helps us compare demand for different offerings. |
| Ranking | Will we be found when people search for a relevant problem? This describes the position of a website in the search results. The higher you rank on Google, the more often your page will be clicked — it is as simple as that. |
| Organic traffic | How many relevant people are we reaching? This refers to all visitors who come to your website through SEO — not through ads, but exclusively through organic search. |
| Conversion | How many visitors become leads, users or customers? One of the most important metrics of all: a lot of traffic is useless if visitors do not take action and become customers. |
| Content cluster | Are we covering the important questions of a target audience? This is what a blog needs in order to be genuinely useful — not individual articles written in isolation by AI, but a well-thought-out structure behind them. |
| Internal linking | How do we guide users and search systems through our offering in a meaningful way? One of the most underestimated SEO measures: how someone moves from one page to the next and finds other relevant content on the website. |
| Backlinks and external mentions | Which independent sources strengthen our credibility? They are crucial for building authority — and the more authority we have, the better our rankings, conversion rates and brand awareness. I also like to use the term digital PR here. |
| Technical SEO | Are there any discoverability or accessibility problems? If a website has technical problems, Google or AI systems may not be able to read it properly. Factors such as loading speed can also have a direct impact on conversion. |
| SEO reporting and SEO KPIs | What contribution does organic demand make to the business model? A monthly or quarterly report showing how the measures implemented are performing — ideally measured directly against revenue or the company’s goals. |
Conclusion
SEO is not a switch you simply flip as soon as the budget becomes available. It is a tool that serves a different purpose at every stage of a start-up.
At the beginning, SEO primarily helps you understand the market and your target audience. In the middle stages, it becomes a conversion lever for initial use cases and offerings. And once you are consistently winning customers, SEO becomes one of the most stable and cost-effective growth channels a start-up can build — complemented by AEO, so that AI systems can recommend you at the right time.
The most important insight is this: before investing in SEO, always ask yourself which stage your start-up is currently in — not which trend happens to be popular right now.
