Dispensary SEO Tips

8 Professional SEO Tips for Marijuana Dispensaries and Cannabis Businesses

 

Medical and recreational marijuana use is expanding throughout the nation, causing an exponential rise in demand for weed. Likewise, competition in the cannabis industry is developing quickly between dispensaries in each major city, creating opportunities for certain dispensaries to take over regions.

The main concern for cannabis dispensaries is their ability to be visible online since around eighty percent of consumers conduct online research before purchasing a product. Of those 30% were voice searches with local intent or for directions on maps nearest the shopper.

Increasing your brand’s visibility on Google rank is directly correlated to increases in sales. Our simple step by step guide will help you grow your online visibility quickly and efficiently, so you show up for customers that are shopping on Search Engines, searching for the best dispensary near me on maps and the local 3 pack that most brick and mortar organizations covet.

1. Create a Local Online Presence

It’s a fact that local search is the here and now future.  The first thing you want to do is get your locations listed in Google My Business.  This will allow customers searching for your services or your dispensary to find your address, get your phone number and read/leave reviews for your business online on Google.

To create a profile for your cannabis business, go to Google My Business. Once you are registered, your general business information (known as NAP in local citation circles) will be visible online. So, when people want to find what you sell, see a strain menu or get details about you… they will be able to easily seek out your dispensary locations, pot shop or website.

2. Leverage Popular Social Media Platforms

To enhance your online visibility, you will need to focus on boosting your dispensary SEO and connections with current and potential customers. Staying active on social media will help you reach out to your audiences, allowing more online touch points for patients and customers to find your business.

To have optimal profit growth, you should use the most popular social media platforms such as Google+, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Facebook:
Facebook helps increase your marijuana revenues when you use it effectively for your business. The social media platform enables you to reach a lot of potential customers directly and efficiently. Facebook is also beneficial for your company because you can personalize it to suit your needs and it can help target specific audiences.

Google+:
Google+ helps your business show up in online search rankings; when you accurately use social media keywords and titles, you increase your visibility and ability to connect with customers.

3. Button up your branding and Website Conversion Experience

You will need to create a website to advocate and promote your cannabis business; you should spend time on the design, branding logo, colors and creation of your content to make your business look professional and high quality while talking top your customer’s interests throughout the inbound marketing funnel.

 

Make sure your email newsletter signup is prevalent and offers an incentive to capture prospective customers email addresses.

4. Submit to local Directories to Increase Visibility

Reputable directories and other regional or cannabis related sites will help search engine spiders find your webpages to crawl and support your local and maps positions in rankings.

Generic but Strong Business Directories

Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Local are useful sites for you since they help direct people interested in cannabis to your website. Leafly, Weedmaps, and THCBiz are marijuana-related directories that can help people discover your brand.

However, make sure you allow reliable, distinguished sites your information while also starting with two or three directories. If you associate with too many sites at once or are found on untrustworthy lists, you can potentially damage your SEO and your profit.

Marijuana Industry Menu Submission and Directory Examples

  • Leafly
  • Weedmaps
  • Marijuana Doctors
  • Leaf Buyer
  1. Increase Your Online Reviews
    You can also increase your business’s revenue and search positions if you encourage customers who buy from your store or visit your website to write positive reviews about your cannabis flowers, edibles, tinctures, glass wear, THC oils or their experience at your dispensary. So, when people are inquiring about your cannabis dispensary services and menus, they will be influenced by positive reviews; and, it will indicate to Google that your business is worth sharing and promoting to interested online viewers.

 

  • Yelp
  • Google Reviews

 

  1. Publish Thoughtful content to your Blog regularly
    Utilizing a blog actively for your business is one of the best ways to at increase your long-tail keyword SEO rankings and drive new website traffic growth. You can write articles for your upcoming events, promotions, products, and more or you can hire a copyrighting service to research, write and publish to your marijuana blog for you. The important thing to remember is stay consistent. Rather it be once a week or once a month, stick to a regular publishing calendar to allow the greatest traction to be gain via this inbound marketing strategy.
  2. Seek Out A Professional Website Developer
    Essentially, finding a professional marijuana SEO website designer or developer will help you optimize your ability to compete online; they can help choose the social media platforms and design styles that will benefit your business the most. Also, the professional developers will make your business look professional and high quality, and they will give you the opportunity to focus on other important factors of your business.A professional dispensary SEO strategy that will help drive visibility, traffic and increases in revenue will combine several factors:Keyword strategy: Use keywords that are popular in the marijuana business and highly represent your company’s offerings.Title tags: Make sure you appropriately title items so your customers will stay connected.Header tags: Use headers to make reading your content more digestible.Image alt/title tags: Make sure your images contain context. Do not leave anything out like captions, Alt Tags and image descriptions

 

Make sure to avoid these often-encountered marijuana dispensary SEO mistakes.

Content structure: Structure your content and build links so Google can find all your content.

URLs: Ensure you have correctly named links to your content, so Google can easily decipher them.

301 Redirects: Forward links that are no longer in service to keep your website free of dead-end URLs.

Quality Web Development: Develop a well-designed website to make sure you are ranked highly by Google. The coding of your site must pass tests and meet specific criteria to be accepted.

Use Google Analytics
Employ Google Analytics to keep up with the performance of your website so you can decide whether the strategies you use are benefiting your business.

Increasing your online presence is acquired by optimizing your business’s performance on social media and other sites. So, when potential customers search for your cannabis brand, they will be able to find all your information.

Our step by step guide will help your business grow and compete with the rising demand and competition of marijuana in the industry. Once your online status is optimal, your company will have high rankings with Google.

Are You Interested in Professional Help with Your Dispensary Website or Marijuana Dispensary SEO?

Give your cannabis company or dispensary the performance it deserves by contacting us today.

 

We are trained online medical marijuana marketing experts that drive some of the largest brands in cannabis.