Shopify SEO vs Paid Advertising: War and Peace: The Shopify Edition

August 29, 2026

Shopify store owner explaining the cost of Google advertising to his wife after spending the grocery money on ads

The daily battle to get visitors, make sales and keep the profit.

War: How the hell do I get people to my store?

War: Should I advertise? How much should I spend?

War: Why am I paying for visitors but not getting sales?

Peace: Visitors are finding my products through normal Google searches without me paying to bring them there.

The War

When you have a Shopify store, one of the most important questions you ask yourself is, ‘How do I get visitors to my store?’

Do a Google search and you will often be told the way to get visitors is by advertising.

There is nothing wrong with advertising. It can be a very useful way to bring additional visitors and sales to your store. But what happens when you spend your ad budget and there have been no real results?

This is the problem when advertising becomes the only way your store gets visitors.

By using advertising, every visitor has a cost attached to them. If you want more visitors, you have to spend more money. If advertising becomes more expensive, your costs increase. And if your store isn't set up to attract visitors through normal Google searches, when you stop paying for advertising, the visitors stop coming and your products can disappear into the Google quagmire.

You're Paying for the Visitor — Not the Sale

This is something that's very easy to overlook when you start advertising. When you pay Google to bring people to your store, you're paying for the visitor - not the sale.

If you pay for advertising that brings 200 people to your store, you've paid for all 200 visitors. It doesn't matter whether they buy something or leave after looking at one page. You still paid to get them there.

Let me show you. Let's say your store converts 1.5% of its visitors into customers. From those 200 visitors, you make three sales. Three sales sounds good. But how much did it cost you to get those 200 visitors to your store?

And how much profit did you make from those three sales?

The cost of bringing all 200 visitors to your store has to come out of the profit you made from the three customers who actually bought something. Depending on what you sell and the profit you make on each product, that advertising cost can take a substantial chunk out of your profit. Spend too much getting the sales and you can even end up losing money on it.

We've all heard the saying, ‘You have to spend money to make money.’

And sometimes that's true. Every business has expenses. But you don't necessarily have to pay for every person who visits your store.

When somebody finds one of your products in Google's normal search results and visits your store, you haven't paid Google one cent to send that person to you.

That completely changes the way you can look at your visitors.

With paid advertising, you pay for every visitor.

With normal Google searches, every visitor pays you.

Here's a real example.

Yesterday, one of my online stores had 339 visitors and US$262 in sales. I didn't pay for advertising to bring those visitors to the store.

Divide US$262 by 339 visitors and each visitor paid me an average of approximately US$0.77.

Obviously, every visitor didn't go through checkout and pay me US$0.77. Some bought products and others bought nothing. But when I look at all the visitors to the store and the sales they generated, each visitor was worth US$0.77 to me.

That's the difference.

Instead of asking:

‘How much did those visitors cost me?’

I can ask:

‘How much did those visitors pay me?’

Does This Mean You Shouldn't Advertise?

No. Advertising can be very successful. The results depend on what you're selling, your prices, your profit margins, your store, your conversion rate, the cost of the advertising and many other things.

But advertising shouldn't be the foundation of your Shopify store.

The Peace

There is another way.

When your Shopify store is set up so Google understands what you sell, your products can appear in Google's normal search results. People searching for products can find your store and visit it without you paying for every visitor.

And if your store is already established, you don't have to rebuild it.

Think of it more like giving your store a refit.

A bricks-and-mortar store is never really finished. It needs tidying, updating and improving. New products arrive, displays change and occasionally part of the shop gets a refit.

Your Shopify store is no different.

Your product titles, product descriptions, images, collections and other parts of your store can all be improved to help Google better understand what you sell.

It doesn't happen overnight. Creating a solid foundation for your store to get visitors through normal Google searches takes a little time. But once that work is done, it can continue helping people find your products for months or even years without you paying for every visitor.

Then, if you decide to advertise as well, advertising becomes another avenue for bringing visitors and sales to your store — not the only avenue.

That's why I believe your online store should have a solid foundation for attracting visitors through normal Google searches. Ideally, you start with it. But if you didn't, you can add it at any time.

And that brings us back to where we started.

With paid advertising, you pay for every visitor.

With normal Google searches, every visitor pays you.

There is a big difference between the two — especially when you look at your profit.

Want to discover how more people can find your Shopify store on Google?
Click here

Want to see how we actually created these articles using AI?

We're putting together a free book based on the real conversations behind our articles — including the ideas that worked, the ones that didn't, the disagreements, the changes of mind and the occasional trip completely off the rails.

It will show you how we used AI to: