Do Ecommerce Websites Need SEO and PPC?

Most ecommerce owners eventually face the same question: should you invest in SEO, PPC, or both? It’s a fair question — especially when budgets are tight or you’re trying to scale efficiently. The good news is that SEO and PPC aren’t rivals.

Each channel a very different role in how ecommerce shoppers discover, evaluate, and ultimately purchase from your store.

Think of SEO as building a durable foundation and PPC as turning on the faucet. One creates long-term, compounding visibility. The other delivers immediate traffic you can scale up or down as needed. When you use both intentionally, you get consistent, predictable growth.

Below, we’ll walk through how SEO and PPC each support ecommerce growth, where they differ, and how to combine them in a way that supports both quick wins and sustainable results.

What SEO Means for Ecommerce Growth

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving your website so that it earns visibility in unpaid search results. For ecommerce stores, this usually means optimizing category pages, product pages, and supporting content so shoppers can find you when they’re researching or comparing products.

SEO builds long-term, compounding visibility

When shoppers search for products, they often begin with broad or exploratory queries. SEO helps you show up during this early research phase — long before a customer is ready to buy. By ranking well for these high-intent searches, you create a steady flow of traffic that compounds over time.

Unlike paid ads, organic clicks don’t cost anything. Once your pages rank, they can continue generating traffic and sales long after the initial optimization work is done. This reduces your dependency on ads and helps stabilize your acquisition cost over the long term.

SEO improves your site structure and overall shopping experience

Search engines reward websites that are easy to navigate, quick to load, and mobile-friendly. These improvements naturally enhance the shopping experience. Clean category architecture, helpful product descriptions, and smart internal linking make your site easier to browse — and the easier your site is to use, the more likely visitors are to convert.

A strong site structure also makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your catalog. The clearer your structure, the easier it becomes to rank hundreds or thousands of SKUs.

But SEO alone may not grow your store fast enough

SEO takes time. Some pages may take months before they rank well enough to drive consistent traffic. In competitive markets, organic rankings can take even longer to establish. That means relying solely on SEO can leave your store waiting too long for results, especially if you’re launching new products or need sales quickly.

Many ecommerce brands use PPC to fill this early gap while SEO builds momentum.

What PPC Brings to an Ecommerce Strategy

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) provides instant visibility by placing your products directly in front of potential customers — often with images, pricing, reviews, and promotions included in the ad.

PPC delivers fast, flexible, and highly targeted traffic

Unlike SEO, PPC allows you to turn traffic on immediately. You can launch a campaign today and start seeing visitors within hours. This is ideal for:

• New ecommerce stores with no organic traffic yet
• Product launches
• Limited-time promotions
• High-margin products
• Seasonal shopping periods

You control the budget, targeting, and bidding strategy, giving you real-time flexibility to scale up or throttle down based on performance.

PPC reaches shoppers who are ready to buy

PPC allows you to target bottom-funnel, high-intent search terms such as “buy waterproof hiking boots online” or “best price on noise-canceling headphones.” Shopping ads also surface your product image, price, and reviews directly in search results — often increasing click-through rates.

Retargeting brings shoppers back after they browse. Someone who viewed a product but didn’t purchase is far more likely to convert when shown the same product again with a reminder, discount, or free shipping offer.

But PPC traffic stops when the budget stops

The biggest drawback of PPC is that results disappear the moment you stop investing. Costs can rise over time, and competitive markets may require a larger budget to remain profitable. This makes PPC incredibly powerful — but not something most brands want to rely on as their only traffic source.

Why Ecommerce Stores Should Use SEO and PPC Together

SEO and PPC work best when they support each other. You don’t have to choose — in fact, choosing one often limits how effective the other can be. A combined strategy lets you use each channel for what it does best.

PPC fuels early growth while SEO builds organic momentum

New ecommerce stores don’t have months to wait for SEO to generate results. PPC fills the early traffic gap, allowing you to generate revenue while organic visibility develops.

Once your SEO foundation becomes stronger, you can gradually reduce PPC spend on evergreen keywords and shift those dollars toward new launches or seasonal promotions.

PPC performance insights improve your SEO targeting

PPC data is a goldmine for SEO. It tells you:

• Which keywords convert best
• Which product titles resonate with shoppers
• Which audiences respond to your messaging
• Which pages produce the strongest revenue

Instead of guessing what shoppers want, you can use PPC data to refine your product descriptions, meta titles, and content strategy — making SEO much more efficient and targeted.

SEO protects your margins, PPC scales what’s already working

As SEO improves, your store becomes less dependent on paid traffic. This lowers customer acquisition costs and improves profitability. PPC can then be used strategically to push high-margin products, defend branded searches, or quickly test new categories.

Showing up in both organic and paid positions increases visibility

When your store appears in both an ad and an organic result, you take up more real estate on the page. This often increases overall click-through rates and gives your brand more credibility, especially for competitive searches.

How to Combine SEO and PPC into a Practical Ecommerce Strategy

You don’t need a complicated media plan to see the benefits of using both channels together. Here’s a simple, effective framework most ecommerce brands can follow:

Start with SEO fundamentals

Ensure your site structure, product descriptions, images, and metadata are optimized. Clean navigation and fast load times help both users and search engines. SEO builds the foundation your long-term growth depends on.

Use PPC strategically instead of everywhere

Start by promoting products with the highest margins, strongest reviews, or highest demand. Use PPC for:

• Best sellers
• Seasonal promotions
• Product launches
• Limited-time offers
• Branded search protection

Build supporting content that helps both SEO and PPC

Buying guides, product comparisons, FAQ pages, and educational content can rank organically and also support PPC campaigns as landing pages. This multi-purpose content helps reduce costs and improves relevance across both channels.

Measure, adjust, and reinvest based on performance

Track your ROI from organic search, paid ads, and combined touchpoints. Use analytics to identify which keywords, pages, and products deserve more investment. Let PPC validate ideas that SEO can later scale.

Shift spend as SEO strengthens

As organic rankings improve, you can scale back PPC spend in those areas and reallocate your budget toward new opportunities. Over time, this creates a balanced, cost-efficient acquisition model.

Ecommerce stores don’t need to choose between SEO and PPC. Both channels serve different roles — and together, they create a flexible, resilient strategy that adapts to your goals, seasonality, and competitive landscape.

SEO provides the foundation, stability, and long-term visibility your store needs. PPC provides speed, testing power, and revenue during key moments. When you use both intentionally, you can grow faster, rank higher, and spend smarter — without becoming dependent on one channel alone.

If you want help shaping a combined SEO + PPC strategy for your store, you can build one around the frameworks in this guide or adapt the examples from the linked resources above.