Since maintaining and sustaining cannabis businesses online have become significantly challenging, resorting to specific alterations in strategies such as cannabis SEO, is the need of the hour. With recreational and medical cannabis expanding nationwide, the number of competitors has also seen a rise in the marketplace.
From cities to neighborhoods, numbers of such competitors have only witnessed growth, which, in turn, poses a challenging situation for both web-based marijuana businesses and storefronts. Another possible halt for cannabis businesses is the online visibility that 80% of consumers face while purchasing cannabis-infused products from online stores.
When it comes to cannabis SEO, it allows you to drive quality results, expanding from reaching the local audience to a specified group of people near you. Such a strategy enables people to visit your business’ website and converts them into potential clients and customers.
Furthermore, you need to understand the limitations of promoting cannabis products on Google and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. However, if you are looking to implement cannabis SEO strategies, here is a rundown of half a dozen tips to improve your search rankings.
1. Understand how cannabis users search on the web.
Understanding how a user searches for cannabis products on the web is one of the foremost things. Under cannabis search engine optimization, there are several high-ranking keywords that an SEO professional can include to boost a website’s reach. This helps the website get more traffic and places it quite high on the Google search pages. Even though SEO can help a cannabis business significantly, it is essential to learn about a user’s search intent. For such a situation, keyword research is vital. However, you require a list of local and effective cannabis-related keywords that will help drive traffic.
These days, people search by typing long-tail and dynamic keywords and phrases on search engines with voice search’s introduction on smartphones. As a result, you need to observe the searched results before incorporating any SEO strategy.
2. Adhere to Mobile Optimization.
Your cannabis SEO should be mobile adaptive, mobile responsive, and mobile-optimized websites. With an increasing number of users operating through their smartphones, your SEO strategy should adhere to mobile optimization. Before moving ahead, understand users’ time on their smartphones and how their searches differ from that of desktop/laptop searches. It is essential to know that smartphone users are all over the platforms like Bing and Google. Since most people are actively searching on their respective smartphones now, adhering to mobile optimization is a must.
3. Use Social Media.
Actively participating on social media platforms helps boost your SEO strategies if performed in the right manner and improves the relationship between you and potential clientele. It is essential to know that a specific social media strategy depends on the platform you are utilizing. However, every cannabis business should at least have a Google+ and Facebook page. Facebook is one of the most used social media platforms, an ideal way to reach more people and divert the traffic back to your cannabis website.
On the other hand, Google+ is not as popular as Facebook. But, adhering to Google indexing can do wonders for your business. Every post that you publish on Google+ gets indexed under search rankings.
4. Make use of directory listings.
Websites like YellowPages, Local, and Yelp boost the chances of a user locating your business and provide quality links directing to your website. Several directories like Weedmaps, THCBiz, and Leafly exist under the cannabis bracket. So, whenever you start with the listing journey, make use of reputable and quality directory links.
5. Use Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is an ideal way to quickly track your cannabis conversions, behavior, traffic, and several other statistics. If you are operating a cannabis business, it is essential to have Google Analytics to track the business’ progress. Optimizing the website for ideal results is a profound way to increase the number of inbound online visibility and sales.
6. Optimize Page Load Time and Site Speed.
Mobile page load time and site speed are two connected factors that you tend to ignore regarding website optimization and cannabis SEO. A report suggests that an average landing page takes around 22 seconds to load fully. Furthermore, some of the easy ways to optimize site speed are:
- Minimize the server response time
- Implement the asynchronous loading of JavaScript and CSS
- Optimize every image to a maximum of 160kb-200kb
What You Need To Know
For any cannabis business, thriving in an online or offline market is no less than a necessity. Moreover, the limitations laid down by specific social media platforms and Google concerning paid advertisements add to cannabis promotions’ downfall. That’s where cannabis SEO can significantly help. However, it would be ideal for you to consider these options before beginning to take on the industry by storm.
Featured Image Credits: Pixabay
