As the legal market continues to grow and evolve, more and more cannabis ancillary businesses are popping up to serve its needs. With so much saturation, that means there’s simply no more time to waste when it comes to developing your digital presence.
Whether you’re a national nutrient company trying to target large MSOs or a mom-and-pop packaging company wanting to work with local cultivators, SEO is the key to ensuring your content is connected to the right people. However, it can be difficult to execute an effective digital marketing strategy in this competitive landscape alone.
As a cannabis-focused marketing agency that’s worked with hundreds of ancillary businesses, we’ve gathered some tips from the success stories we’ve been a part of to help your brand get found online. Pro tip: You can find even more in our free eBook, Cannabis Ancillary Marketing Playbook: A Guide to B2B Success.
Why is SEO important for cannabis ancillary businesses?
SEO (search engine optimization) means optimizing your ancillary brand’s website in order to rank higher on search engines like Google and Yelp. This helps people find your business when they search for things such as “cannabis product packaging in California” or “compliance consultants for hemp brands.”
While many advertising and social channels like Google Ads and Instagram have strict rules about cannabis content, SEO provides a way around these restrictions. On your brand’s website, you’ve got full control over your own content and can speak freely about the products and services you provide. Yes…all without having to blur out the THC warning on your product photography or avoid the word “terpenes” in your copy.
Recently launched in a new state and looking to build local awareness? Already established as a brand and want to continue to stay on the cutting edge of the market? No matter what your business goals are, investing in your SEO strategy (or partnering with cannabis SEO experts) can be a valuable competitive advantage for your ancillary business.
10 Crucial SEO Tips for Cannabis Ancillary Businesses
1. Prioritize page load speed
You’d be surprised at how much your website’s load time can affect your SEO rankings. Ultimately, load speed is an indication of a page’s quality and user-friendliness to search engines. People want to find the answer to their search query quickly rather than waiting around for a page to load, and Google knows that.
So, you should know that prioritizing a fast page load speed is crucial as a cannabis ancillary business. Some quick tips here include compressing image sizes, using the right file types, and removing any unnecessary code to avoid slowdowns.
2. Optimize your website for mobile
For search engines, user experience includes how your site performs on both desktop and mobile devices. Seeing as mobile traffic now makes up more than 60% of all website traffic and over 70% of eCommerce traffic, modern websites must be optimized for mobile scrolling.
Mobile website friendliness is a huge part of Google’s search algorithm, so make sure you’re always reviewing how web content and designs look on mobile devices as well as desktop versions. For example, make sure CTA buttons can be tapped easily and that your navigation menu is easy to read on a smaller screen.
3. Focus on relevant, engaging content
When creating content for your website, whether it’s a service page, a landing page for an eBook, or a blog post, the goal isn’t just to include as many keywords as possible. It’s to genuinely answer the questions or solve the problems of someone searching for that topic. The truth is, not every blog post needs to be 5,000 words, and not every page needs to be packed with keywords to rank well.
What matters most is providing thorough, helpful information. Search engine algorithms are smart enough to recognize fluff, so focus on covering the topic clearly and comprehensively to see your rankings improve naturally.
4. Have a link-building strategy
When there are links to your website on other authoritative sites, search engines will view your site as more authoritative, too. The most important part of an effective link-building strategy is focusing on quality backlinks, so never buy them or suddenly get tons of backlinks from sites with low reputations. This will tip search engines off that you’re trying to play the system and do more harm than good. As a cannabis ancillary business, you can build links by collaborating with cannabis publications, listing your business in reputable industry directories, and contributing guest posts to related blogs. Partnering with dispensaries, cultivators, or other brands you work with for mutual promotion is another effective strategy for boosting your SEO.
5. Place keywords strategically to avoid “keyword stuffing”
Remember that search engines are looking to rank more valuable content the highest. While it may be an assumption that having as many relevant keywords as possible on a page makes it valuable, that’s far from the case.
The trick is to use strategic keywords in the right places to get the most SEO impact without coming off as spammy. This means including keywords in the page title, in at least one H2 heading, in the intro content, and then naturally throughout the page. Use synonyms and other naturally related terms to catch other potential search queries as well. For example, some brands will use both “hemp” and “CBD” terms in their content interchangeably to get in front of people searching for both terms.
6. Promote your website content on social media, too
Yes, social SEO is a real thing. This relatively new marketing buzzword means adding keywords to things like social captions and image alt-text to help people find your content while browsing on social. After you create useful content on your website designed to attract users organically through SEO, you can also push it out on your social media channels. This can engage existing followers and attract new ones to your brand when you’re using social SEO in your posts. Plus, why not double-dip and get the most usage out of the content you’ve created?
7. Consider local keywords
Depending on how your cannabis ancillary business operates, leveraging local SEO can be an incredibly valuable way to reach your audience. If you have a physical store location, it can help you drive traffic into your brick-and-mortar store. If you only operate in certain local markets or geographic locations, it can help people looking for your services in your area find you online. Creating and maintaining an updated Google Business Profile is another one of the most effective ways to take advantage of local SEO, next to having a great website with relevant keywords.
8. Format your website for search engines
The more signals you can give to a search engine bot, the easier it can fully crawl your web pages and actually understand your content. Make sure you’re always using the H1 header tag for your page title as well as H2 and H3 tags for subheadings throughout your website content.
Always have descriptive alt-text on images using relevant keywords, plus title tags and meta descriptions on every website page. You also want to include relevant keywords in page URLs, and ensure they have a short structure that is easy to understand without unnecessary terms.
9. Regularly update website content
Many brands think the more content on their site, the better. However, if you have old or irrelevant content on your website, it can actually end up hurting your SEO rankings. Plus, old content is likely to have broken links, low-quality imagery, outdated stats, and more that can negatively impact the user experience.
Regularly go through your website to make sure that content on high-traffic pages is current and relevant, old blogs have been removed from the site or optimized, and that everything is looking modern and fresh.
10. Track KPIs and adjust strategy as needed
It’s important to set KPIs that are important to your SEO goals and regularly check in on your progress, whether it’s driving more users to a contact form, getting more eyes on a new blog post, or nurturing leads to eventually make an online purchase.
You’ll want to leverage analytics tools to track the effectiveness of your SEO strategy by monitoring key metrics such as website traffic, traffic sources, bounce rates, and conversion rates to gain insights and make strategy adjustments. For example, if you have a page with really high traffic but also a really high bounce rate, that indicates the page is being found…but once users land on it, they’re clicking out quickly because they aren’t finding the info they’re looking for.
Bonus tip: always keep the user experience in mind
Even though you want to rank well, remember you’re creating your website for real people and potential customers at the end of the day…not search engines. As we’ve covered throughout this blog, remember to make sure website pages load quickly, are easy to view and navigate across devices (especially mobile), and provide relevant content that truly solves the problems of your target audience.
By combining strategic SEO with a thoughtful user experience, you can allow customers to find you…then meet them right where they are by providing the content they’re actively looking for. Not quite sure how to strike the balance? Working with a cannabis-focused marketing agency that specializes in SEO can make the process a lot less overwhelming.
Get your cannabis ancillary business discovered online with Cannabis Creative
From SEO to website design to social media marketing, branding services, and more, Cannabis Creative is an award-winning team offering full-service solutions to cannabis ancillary businesses. We’re passionate about helping you grow your digital presence so you achieve your business goals, whether that’s expanding into a new market, driving more leads, or building your brand awareness.
Contact us to get started today, and check out more of our helpful marketing resources in the meantime.