A Look At our Top 6 Strategies for Cannabis focused SEO
Online cannabis sales are increasing on a daily basis — so it is a necessity to make sure that you hit the first page on Google!
Let us take you through some of our Cannabis culture focused SEO strategies that will ensure a great deal of organic traffic, increase in buyer engagement and an overall better user experience.
If you have never considered SEO as part of your marketing plan — we are here to change your mind! Our tips will help you better approach your cannabis product advertising, as well as the customer experience, and overall creating a better online experience.
Let’s take a look at 6 SEO strategies!
1. What does the Organic Search Traffic look like?
A deep dive into existing organic search traffic prior to SEO implementation.
One of the first things necessary to do is take a deep dive into your current organic search traffic — this will tell you what is working and not working on the site. By understanding your audience, your Cannabis SEO strategy will be more effective.
What should you be looking for?
- What keywords are cannabis consumers using to find your site?
- Which pages are top performing and why?
- How many unique users are visiting your site from an organic search?
Using Google analytics you will be able to gather and analyse the data. The data will help narrow down the top 10 competitors and understand what the next step will be.
Besides analysing the user focused data, evaluate the use of blog posts. Blog posts are an essential footprint of your website and also serve as another avenue to engage with your audience — take a look at the already created blog posts and analyse for length, content, images, structure and of course use of keywords.
Going forward, the data on the blog posts analysis will tell us how to tailor and create new articles or update old ones to improve traffic. Natural language on all your content is extremely important.
2. Understanding the User will help you Understand how to adapt your SEO
When you know who your customer is, you are able to tailor your cannabis products and services to the customer — and I don’t think we need to explain the benefit of this! What we pride ourselves in is understanding the mind of the cannabis customer and how they search for products.
Understanding how cannabis consumers search will allow you to tailor your website to be the website they habitually visit. We have focused our attention on understanding keywords being used and continuing to research the changing trends in the cannabis culture.
It is great to understand what a cannabis customer types into the Google search bar, but it is also (and possibly more) important to understand the intent of the search.
With changes to technology, the way we search for things has also changed. The way one looks up something on their phone is different from their laptop or tablet. By understanding the differences you will be able to tailor your SEO strategy to focus on the various platforms.
Through a great deal of testing we will make sure that your SEO strategy is working on all platforms!
3. Mobilize your Cannabis sales through Mobile focused SEO
No one leaves home without it — it is our grocery list, music player, GPS and online shopping. Our cellphone is one of the most used devices for online cannabis dispensary ordering.
What that means is — make sure your SEO mobile strategy is adaptable, responsive and optimized. It is important that we help you take advantage of the mobile user by setting them aside from the others and focusing our strategy to meet their needs.
Google has proven — that more research traffic takes place on one’s phone then a tablet, computer or laptop. So imagine the potential customers walking around town looking on their phone for a local dispensary or delivery — you want your site to come up first!
4. Social Media is a must!
While we are spending all this time on our phones, besides research — what else are people doing? Looking at social media of course! Social media traffic is constant and growing day to day.
The use of social media helps create credibility — and Google loves websites with credibility. You may be wondering, how does social media create credibility? Well, it is this simple — the more your posts are shared, the more credibility they have. Another term used is ‘social signals’ — Google is looking for and responding to the online social signals.
So by tying your social media posts to other content on your website this will help with your overall Google ranking. Now there is discussion and debate about this topic — and on the official channel social signals do not help with ranking, however it has been proven with more exposure comes more attention.
5. The Need for Speed — Why your website must be working at top speed.
Site speed and page load time are two things that have a deep impact on your website’s success. Let’s be honest, no one enjoys sitting around waiting for a site to load. Doesn’t load in the expected 1-3 seconds? You find a new site.
There have been studies done to prove that if a website does not load in 3 seconds, 53% of people will leave right away.
Make sure to analyse the following when its comes to page speed and SEO:
- Minimize server response time
- Implement asynchronous loading of CSS and Javascript
- Optimize all images (max 150kb – 200kb)
Your goal in the end should be to have your site load in 1-3 seconds!
6. Blog Posts Boost
Blogs continue to grow in popularity — and that can also be said for the cannabis community. Using blog posts to highlight your products, services, ideas or just sharing information will substantially increase customer traffic.
Using blog posts gives your website a voice — a voice that they can trust and learn from. Your blog posts will focus on relevant products or trending ideas/concepts to help improve organic traffic.
Authority, relevance and trust are what drive people to your website — and that is our goal in your SEO strategy. Using blog posts will help create these elements and help ensure the customer sticks around.
Final Thoughts
The online cannabis community is growing and we want to help make sure your website does not fall behind. By following the strategies we described above, you will be able to create a thorough plan that will focus on making sure that your website hits the 1st page on google.
Investing in SEO is an investment in your business’ future! – Let’s Grow Creatively!
Book a call with In/Bloom Digital for a free 1 hour SEO strategy session.
