7 SEO Tips For Cannabis
Businesses in 2022
By Liam Noonan
12/22/21
Maintaining your footing as a cannabis company takes time and commitment. Without any help from federal legislation, marketing resources are slim. SEO is often the first channel to face the chopping block.
We understand your budget may be tight, but understand that SEO is a valuable investment that pays off in the long run. Continue reading for our most helpful SEO tips for cannabis companies looking to boost their positions in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
1. Optimize for Local Search
If you own a dispensary or any cannabis-related business with a physical storefront, optimizing for local search is a must. What that said, businesses like software companies that operate solely online won’t need to pay as much attention to this.
The first step in optimizing for local search is to claim and update your Google My Business (GMB) listing. GMB is a kind of free listing from Google that allows businesses to manage and display their company name, contact information, address, phone number (NAP), and more. Updating this information is quick and straightforward, but it can make an almost immediate difference in your online visibility.
Another way to improve local search is to complete some keyword and competitive research to see what relevant terms people search for in your area. Once you have a list of keywords to target, you can find ways to create content around the queries in the form of blog posts, social content, web copy, and video.
2. Set Strategic Marketing Goals
Deciding on measurable goals for a campaign is an important initial step prior to budgeting out your marketing strategy. That’s because setting goals in writing helps you measure campaign success key performance indicators (KPI’s).
Examples of SEO Campaign Goals
- Boost website google rankings for a set amount of core keywords.
- Target Informational and location-based keywords (keep a list and track their search rankings).
- Optimize your website for local SEO (bring in X amount of customers, sales, store visits, site visits, etc…).
- Reach out and shoot for X number of new backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites.
- Develop a content strategy and set concrete goals for the amount of content to publish each month via a blog, resource page, video clip, etc…
3. Collect Customer Reviews
Legitimate customer reviews happen to be one of the ranking signals Google uses to determine the authority and trustworthiness of your website. You can’t just change or delete negative reviews, which means you simply need to collect as many positive reviews as possible.
You can even run promotional campaigns to help bring in more online reviews. This could entail a strategy like offering a small discount to everyone who leaves a review on Google. Just remember, cheating and writing fake reviews can lead to problems down the road like a penalization on your site from search engines.
4. Study Your Site Analytics
SEO is all about gathering data about how your site performs and what people are searching for. From there you can synthesize the data into insights that will help you make specific improvements to your website. For example, you may find your site has a high bounce rate meaning users leave the website quickly after clicking on it.
If certain pages tend to have higher bounce rates than others, it’s a good idea to start tweaking those pages and seeing if you notice a positive change.
5. Blog Regularly
Keeping your website up to date with quality SEO-researched blog content is one of the most underrated ways to bring in valuable organic traffic. Blogging improves key Google ranking factors like quality of content and relevance of the webpage for desired key phrases. It’s also thought that maintaining a consistent publishing schedule keeps your website fresh and signals Google to crawl your site more often.
Cannabis Industry Blog Examples
- Stoned Journal
- HerbCEO
- HerbCareer
- URSA Extracts
6. Invest In Social Media Marketing
Investing in a social media strategy benefits SEO goals by attracting organic website traffic, enhancing your local Google Search Listing, and creating a platform for content sharing.
Your social media metrics like shares and likes don’t directly affect the Google Search Algorithm. Not to mention your social profiles represent part of your online brand that potential customers keep in mind when considering handing you their business.
“I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper, and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” — Paul Barron, CEO, Foodable Network
7. Improve Website Speed
Improving your site speed as much as possible helps how users perceive the overall user experience (UX) of your site. Some of the tricks SEO’s use to drop load time include compressing images, allowing for lazy loads, reducing server response time, and limiting redirects. You can test your site’s speed with a Google Test here.
Resources
Rise in the Google Ranks With Managed SEO Blog Writing
Building your website is only the first step in cementing your online presence and growing your business. Stoned Root offers tailored content marketing and SEO services to help get your business ranked on Google and bring in high-quality organic traffic. We’ve got you covered with expert industry blog writing, email marketing, website copywriting, local SEO, case studies, business plans, and more.
You can also visit our cannabis industry blog for resources on cannabis marketing, culture, marketing tech reviews, and more.
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