The Secret To Success With Cannabis SEO

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization And How Your Cannabis Company Can Benefit

SEO is a buzzword that gets thrown around without a real understanding of what it is, or how to use it effectively. This is definitely true in the cannabis industry, where there's a huge need to generate organic traffic (since paid ads are usually off limits) and a lot of bad actors promising the world and failing to follow through once they get paid.

With cannabis markets siloed into individual states, it's easy to think of the industry as relatively small and intimate. But that illusion is about to fall apart in the very near future. In 2020, the U.S.’s legal cannabis industry had an estimated value of $61 billion, with forecasts that it will reach $100 billion by 2030. And while each individual market is relatively protected for the time being, (though states like Oregon are suffering a glut of product as a result) federal legalization is inevitable, and with it will come increased pressure and competition.

In order to survive in such an atmosphere, cannabis companies need to focus on creating successful marketing and brand approaches that will make it easier to attract new customers and stand out from the crowd. One of the best ways to accomplish this is with a mature SEO strategy that will generate high-value, organic traffic and a healthy (and measurable) ROI.

So let’s consider some ways your cannabis business can successfully implement an SEO strategy.

The Dirty Truth About SEO

Let me start by pointing out what should be an obvious fact: Search Engine Optimization is hard. Dozens, if not hundreds of companies, are competing with you to gain first page traction in Google search results. And the stakes are high, since the difference between showing up on the first page and the second page couldn’t be more stark. There’s a reason that SEO experts joke that the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search results.

Studies show that sites ranking on the first page of Google results account for 95% of search traffic, leaving the remaining 5% for all the other websites. So it may seem like you’re killing it if you’re ranking 12 or 15 out several thousand companies competing for SEO real estate, the reality is that 11th place is only marginally better than being absolutely last. This is why the struggle for a good SERP (search engine results page) ranking can be so cutthroat.

Remember how challenging SEO really is the next time you’re consulting with an SEO marketer. It’s mind boggling how many marketing companies offer SEO services but really don’t know the first thing about how to succeed at SEO. They typically provide only the bare minimum, with service offerings like optimizing your web page structure and filling out page descriptions and metadata. Yes, this is helpful, but it truly is only scratching the surface of what a real SEO strategy entails.

What is cannabis SEO?

Let’s take a moment to explain exactly what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it involves optimizing your website so that you maximize your search rankings on Google and other search engines. These rankings are created using highly complex (and highly secret) algorithms that keep track of all of the web pages in existence. When you type something into a search engine, the algorithm does its best to determine which of the billions of possible results are most relevant to what you are looking for.

Search Engine Optimization tries to game the system. SEO experts spend their time attempting to parse how the algorithms come up with its rankings by assessing what elements of a webpage matter most to it. The following is a partial list of the factors that are important to search engines:

• Relevance of the web page to the search criteria

• Authority of the web site

• Freshness of the web site

• Health of the web site (how fast it loads, any broken links, etc)

That may seem simple enough, but that's just scratching the surface. By some estimates, the Google algorithm will consider 200 or more unique factors when formulating its results. This includes how many times the search terms (your keywords) appear on the web page and where they are located on the page. Another important consideration is the links going out from the web page, and even more crucially, the links pointing to your web page. While the metadata and page description are among the items considered, it plays a minuscule role compared to other more important factors.

The bottom line is that SEO is a brute force problem that requires consistent work over a significant period of time to see real results. The more quality content you create for your website, the kind of content that will resonate with your visitors, the greater the chance you will move up in the search rankings. A comprehensive SEO strategy involves creating specific content, whether it’s videos, blogs, white papers, photographs, charts, or infographics, that is tailored for the keywords you have identified as being most relevant to your business.

But I can summarize what really matters like this:

Successful SEO will likely revolve around regularly posting highly relevant content to your website, and generating as many links back to your website as possible, preferably from sites that cover the same topics and concepts as yours.

Tips For Improving Your Cannabis Website’s SEO

So what can you do to ensure your website ranks highly on Google? Yes, you should start by fixing your page descriptions, site structure, and metadata to be keyword rich and attractive to search enginges. This is how you let the web crawlers know what your site (and therefore your business) is all about. This should be done when first building your website, preferably by a designer that understands SEO. This will save you time and money down the line.

But this is literally the bare minimum. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of good SEO, as mentioned above, is regularly updated content that relevant to your business and your customers. You should always be adding new pages to your website. This can include a well-maintained blog with high value content for your customers. But it might also include new, more thorough web pages. Every product category you offer should have its own web page. For example, if you're a law firm, you shouldn't have one service page with brief descriptions of all the types of law you cover. Each individual category should have it's own page, like Cannabis Business Licensing, Cannabis Copyright Law, Cannabis Compliance, Personal Injury Law, and every other conceivable type of law you might be practicing.

The other indispensable aspect of SEO is known as linkbacks. One way that Google determines if your web page is an authority on a topic is based on how many other websites are linking to your site. But beyond just the sheer number of links, it also matters that those links are coming from websites on relevant topics. Your cannabis company’s SEO won’t benefit very much from a thousand links from websites about garden gnomes. Of course, if you ever decide to sell garden gnomes, this will really be useful.

In order to generate linkbacks, many companies will do blog exchanges or link exchanges with peer companies. If you have a dispensary, try and get every farm you buy from to link to your website. Likewise, If you have a cannabis grow, ask all the dispensaries you sell to for link exchanges. This is a great way to create valuable links to your website when you are just starting out.

How To Tell If Your SEO Company Knows What They Are Doing

Hopefully I've been able to impress upon you both how hard SEO is, and how necessary it is. If you decide you want to hire someone to help you rocket up the Google rankings, make sure you do your homework first. Read their service offerings very carefully. If the focus is entirely on page descriptions, web site structure, and metadata, then this will be of minimal value. Hopefully, this was handled by your web designer when they built your website, but even if it wasn’t, this kind of service should only be paid for as part of a much larger, more comprehensive SEO package.

Many cannabis SEO companies will offer services such as link back packages, where they promise links pointed at your website from reputable cannabis websites. There is a lot of debate within the SEO industry whether such techniques are effective, but the easiest way to tell if these links are actually ‘reputable’ is by asking to see a list of sites they are posting to. If you’ve never heard of any of them, then it’s likely they won’t benefit you, and at worst might harm your rankings if Google views them as spam. More germanely, even if they provide a temporary boost to your SEO, over time Google will figure it out and marginalize their effects, making your investment worthless. Google always figures out spam tactics given enough time.

The first thing a good SEO company will offer you is a very detailed report of how your site’s SEO compares with your competitors and a comprehensive list of keywords to target. This will give you insight into what people are actually searching for, where you are currently ranking, and advice on how to move up. The second thing they will provide is actual content. Whether that’s original blog posts, customized SEO videos, or authoritative white papers, generating this kind of content is the only way you can ensure that you will achieve meaningful and sustainable web traffic in the long run.

It won’t be easy, but then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it (meaning it wouldn't be easy. Remember only ten websites get listed on the first page of search returns). The good news is that because the cannabis industry is relatively young, there's plenty of opportunity for companies to find success by leveraging effective SEO practices.

Partner With The Hood Collective

The Hood Collective specializes in one half of the SEO formula, producing premium cannabis content that will resonate both with search engines, and (most importantly) your customers. Get in touch for professional cannabis marketing at an affordable price point.