With the legal cannabis industry continuing its rapid expansion across North America, competition for online visibility is heating up. Having an effective SEO strategy is critical for cannabis brands, dispensaries, and companies to drive organic traffic and stand out in crowded markets.
However, SEO for cannabis sites comes with some unique challenges that companies need to grapple with. From restrictions on paid advertising to the legal gray areas around the marijuana industry itself, optimizing for search engines requires nuance and adherence to best practices.
Building Topical Authority and Relevance
A foundational principle of SEO is establishing your website as a trusted, authoritative source on a core topic. For cannabis sites, this means creating comprehensive content that covers key areas like strains, products, regulation, laws, growing and so on. Informational pages, blogs, guides and other resources help build keyword relevance.
It’s also critical for on-site content to be frequently updated and refreshed. The cannabis landscape shifts quickly as laws and public perception evolves. Stale or outdated information will undermine authority signals.
Optimizing for Local Search
With cannabis still being heavily restricted at the federal level in the U.S., most business activity occurs at the state level. This makes optimizing for local search a must for dispensaries, retailers and any business with physical locations.
Claiming and optimizing Google Business profiles is table stakes, as is ensuring NAP (name, address, phone) consistency across directories and citations. Beyond that, earning positive reviews and developing localized content optimized for cities and neighborhoods can pay huge dividends.
Backlink Acquisition Challenges
While high-quality backlinks remain one of the most important ranking factors, cannabis sites face hurdles in acquiring authoritative links that most other industries don’t.
Many mainstream publications and websites prohibit linking out to cannabis content due to prevailing laws and advertiser policies. This shrinks the pool of prospects for earning links through tactics like guest posting, PR, and digital marketing campaigns.
To overcome this obstacle, cannabis marketers must get creative in finding relevant link targets. This could include industry blogs and publications, enthusiast sites, Cannabis SEOs and businesses who share content, and local sponsorships or community engagements that can yield links.
Technical SEO Complexities
From a technical standpoint, cannabis websites often require more rigid security protocols and age gates to verify users are of legal age. If not implemented thoughtfully, these same safeguards could create impediments for search engines in accessing and rendering content.
Frequent uptime monitoring, optimized site architectures, fast page speeds and following security best practices are crucial for avoiding technical hiccups. Cannabis sites also need to be diligent about quickly fixing crawl errors reported in GSC.
Content Marketing and Social Restrictions
Another foundational aspect of SEO is creating resonant content that earns engagement and amplification. But cannabis brands face major restrictions on most mainstream social and digital advertising platforms.
This makes it all the more important to build engaged, proprietary audiences through channels like email marketing, apps, loyalty programs and fostering in-person community connections. Capitalizing on platforms like Reddit that are open to cannabis discussion is also key.
While the cannabis space comes with its fair share of complexities for SEOs, it also represents an immense opportunity. Those brands able to overcome obstacles and execute an intelligent SEO strategy still have a chance to capture market share through organic search as the industry matures. Prioritizing authority, technical excellence, and community engagement will be fundamental to success.
If you need help optimizing your cannabis website for search, contact the SEO experts at Conversion Monks. Our experienced team understands the unique challenges facing this industry and can devise a customized strategy to increase your organic visibility and drive more customers.