The Comprehensive Guide to Cannabis SEO

COVID-19 caused havoc in a number of industries. Fortunately, cannabis wasn't one of them: the industry grew at a record rate. Still, if you're one of the 28,000 or so cannabis businesses in the US, you know how hard it can be to stand out. After sales went up in March 2020, dispensaries were deemed essential businesses. Despite a slight decline in April, sales have remained strong and have settled at a rate that is 40% higher than in 2019.

CBD SEO is very important for cannabis brands because it's hard to promote a marijuana business online. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google have prohibitive restrictions on cannabis advertising and pay-per-click. CBD SEO is the most complete solution because it brings your customers directly to your website, which is your most important marketing channel.

So how do you use this power to your advantage? With the right CBD SEO strategy, your business will be able to take advantage of market growth and get the online visibility it needs.

SEO 101

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of SEO for CBD, it's important to understand the basics. Customers don't just stumble upon your website; they find it through a search engine, usually Google. The main goal of a search engine is to help people find what they are looking for, so it gives more weight to sites that seem to meet people's needs. This is partly based on how often people click on your search listing and how long they stay.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique used to get your website to the top of these search results and increase traffic to it. Most optimization projects focus on targeting the right keywords in order to achieve the highest rankings possible. These are the search terms that your target audience types into Google and other search engines. Optimization also makes sure that your site is structured so that Google's crawlers can easily read and understand the content.

When your site is optimized, it has the best chance of showing up at the top of the page, where curious people, potential partners, and qualified buyers will see it before the competition. The idea is that these people will then go to your website, buy your products, or come to your business, which will bring in money.

Any business that wants to succeed online needs a good CBD SEO strategy. It is also one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your brand's image and boost sales.

Cannabis SEO: Essential Techniques

SEO works for all businesses. It's even more important for new products in markets with a lot of different brands. There are so many players and so little historical data. Because there aren't any clear leaders in the industry, it's hard for Google to figure out who's the best. This indicates that the playing field is still fairly level. If you want to be the best in your market, now is the time to show that you are the best. But you need an SEO strategy.

On-page SEO

Choosing the Right Keywords

Because the cannabis industry is so highly regulated, it can be difficult to find keywords. Keep in mind that, in accordance with Google's rules, the old reliable Google Keyword Planner only returns terms that can be used in ad campaigns. Since it is against the law to advertise medical cannabis, there are no results when you type "medical marijuana" into the Planner. Of course, this doesn't mean that the term "medical marijuana" isn't a popular Google search term. But it makes it harder to find good keywords in the cannabis industry.

Finding good keywords is both an art and a science. A reputable agency will do extensive research using tools like Ahrefs to find the right ones for your business. Ideally, you'll be able to use manual research and keyword planning tools to conduct competitive analysis and figure out what "white space" your brand can fill. The more focused you can be, the less competition you'll have. Concentrate on your particular niche. What sets your company apart? What questions can you answer for the people you want to sell to?

With this method, you can use your site's copy and structure to rank for long-tail keywords with less competition. If your website has little authority, you'll need to build it over time. It can be hard to compete on the most competitive keywords until you do. Once Google recognizes your site as authoritative, you'll have a better chance of ranking for more popular keywords.

There are other ways to improve on-page SEO using these keywords in addition to choosing the right ones. They are:

Title tags are important for usability and SEO because they appear as clickable headlines on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Header tags tell Google and the visitor what the article is about and why it's important.

The meta description serves as a brief advertisement on the SERP, increasing the click-through rate.

Image ALT-text helps people who are blind and helps search engines rank your site.

Google can tell what your site is about and how the pages relate to one another based on the URL structure.

Yes, You Do Need a Blog

If you want to improve your website's search engine ranking, you need to blog. A blog can help you build trust for your website, putting it above other cannabis businesses in the search results. A blog is also the best way to try to rank for keywords with an educational search intent that your target audience may be looking for. For example, "will cannabis make you sleepy?" is probably easier to find than "cannabis for sleep." If you write a blog post that answers this question, you'll be able to rank for a relevant search term and introduce potential customers to your products in a way that puts value and information ahead of sales, which builds trust right away.

Also, because many cannabis brands only have a few products available online, blog posts are often the best way to build out the large number of content-rich pages your site will need to get to the top of the search results. By regularly publishing content and giving your audience useful information, you can get them to stay on your site longer, which will make Google boost your rankings.

Site Structure and Technical SEO

Make sure that, in addition to having great content, your site is easy for both people and crawler bots to use on computers and mobile devices. To meet the technical SEO requirements needed to be at the top of the rankings, your site must be...

Fast: The speed at which your pages load is an important factor that you shouldn't overlook. The user experience will be negatively impacted by a slow website. Studies show that people who visit your site won't wait around for it to load.

Mobile-ready: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. This is how many people access the internet, so your site must look good on a small screen.

No dead links: Visitors don't want to end up on pages that no longer exist. This annoys users and may indicate that your website is out of date.

No duplicates: When you show search engines the same content, they don't know how to rank them. As a result, they might rank the duplicate pages lower.

Secure: Implement HTTPS. This will give your visitors peace of mind that their information is safe and won't be stolen. Additionally, Google gives safe sites a higher ranking.

Crawlable: Google uses robots to find content on your website. When your site can be crawled, search engines can figure out what content is important and what isn't. This will raise your ranking.

Off-Page SEO: The SEO techniques we've talked about so far are only half of the story. One of the most important things that search engines like Google use to figure out how trustworthy a website is is how many other sites link to it. A strong off-page SEO strategy can help support the hard work you've put into your site and give you the best chance of getting the rankings you need to reach your target customers.

Backlinking and Link Building

Backlinking is like social proof for search engines. Google is more likely to put your blog posts or product pages ahead of others if they are linked to by a lot of other sites, especially reputable sites. So how do you get these connections?

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to yours, and there are many link-building strategies you can use to get the backlinks your site needs to be considered authoritative. Here are some of the most frequent:

Link exchanges: One of the simplest ways to get backlinks is to reach out to websites and blogs that cover similar topics to yours and offer link exchanges in which you link to their site if they link to yours. Keep in mind that the best backlinks will come from sites with a higher domain authority than yours. This is because the link will help the search engine give some of that site's credibility to your own.

Add your website to common directories: One of the simplest ways to get backlinks is to submit your business to reputable cannabis directories. These include Bing Places, Yelp, Yahoo Local, etc.

Backlinking services: You could hire a backlinking agency to steadily increase your backlinks. These companies work with freelance writers to create content for top websites that links back to your brand for your target keywords. Keep in mind that this content will likely be more educational than promotional, even though it will have a link to your brand.

Public Relations: Traditional PR efforts are probably your best option if you want to get backlinks from sites like Healthline or The New York Times that have a very high domain authority. To make the most of these efforts, give your PR partner a list of the keywords you want to target so that they can ask publications to include do-follow links within these words and phrases in their content.

Put Your SEO Strategy Together

The most effective cannabis SEO strategies are long-term and intentional. Don't expect to be successful overnight. Companies that are good at SEO have put in the time and money to get there. You won't see immediate results. But once you establish authority with search engines, you'll be unstoppable.

SEO is more than just throwing together a quick blog post. You must regularly publish high-quality SEO content and optimize it with the right keywords. That's a big ask for companies that grow cannabis. CBD Web Designing can assist you with your SEO strategy. We are experts at getting businesses like yours to the top of search engine results. To find out more, schedule a free consultation today.