Freelance Cannabis Writer & Cannabis Copywriter

Factors For A Successful Cannabis SEO Strategy

The hard truth about cannabis SEO is that nobody really knows what it’s all about. Google is notoriously secretive about their algorithm and the updates it releases every now and then don’t exactly help eliminate the confusion.

One thing that’s for sure though is that the days of stuffing keywords in a page and hoping to rank are over for good. Weed SEO has become much more technical, sophisticated, and heavily focused on the user experience. Google loves websites that provide great content and do so flawlessly. A seasoned web developer will help you immensely at the technical side of things, but that’s not all there’s to it.

A good cannabis SEO strategy should also incorporate factors such as:

• Keyword research: building your content on the most competitive keywords for your niche is a practice that’ll never go out of style. The underlying philosophy here is to resonate with your audience and tell them what they want to know. See how I can help you with that!
• Meta optimization: your website’s content is not only made to be seen by human eyes. Google also needs to know what’s in there and meta tags are a great way of telling its crawlers what your website is all about.
• Alt tags: much like it can’t read text like a human, Google also cannot see images. Alt tags essentially tell Google what an image is all about. Although it is not as important, it is still a part of a SEO effort.
• Interlinked and structured content: user experience matters. A lot. Your content should be laid out in an easy to understand manner and your resources should link out to each other. That’s an easy -but often overlooked- way of making Google understand how your website is laid out.
• Content outreach and link building: there is no use having awesome content on your website if no one is ever going to see it! Also, getting links back to your resources is one of the most important criteria that Google uses to decide whether or not your content is good.

How Can A Cannabis Content Writer Help?

Unique and factual content is one of the best ways to achieve long-term success in both fields. My writing process is built on three main pillars: Honesty, Education and diligent Research.

Content is anything that can be hosted on a website and adds value to the visitor experience. It could be an ebook, an infographic or a funny cat video. When your audience receives value from you, they are much more likely to build trust with your brand and, therefore, buy from you or mention you.

There is a lot of demand for content, and even more so in the nascent cannabis industry. People looking for reliable information about the benefits and responsible use of marijuana are more than ever. That’s why there is an abundance of people out there willing to throw 500 words together and call it an “SEO-optimized article”. However, the reality is a little bit more complicated.

What Is Good Cannabis Content Marketing?

In an age when attention spans shorten, and impatience grows, it is vital for a cannabis writer to create something that is interesting, factual and linkable. In other words, you can no longer get away with shallow dives. Your cannabis content must be in-depth, researched and useful.

The key to great content as an overarching strategy of any weed SEO campaign is originality. Repurposing of raw data into text, infographics or videos is an ideal scenario, as it is more likely to be used as a resource and get picked up by the press and other websites, raising your domain authority.

Keyword research should be an essential part of your cannabis SEO strategy, but it should not be limited to that. The key is to solve a problem and be useful to humans rather than the Google algorithm.

A professional cannabis copywriter can help you with:

• Developing a structure for your on-site copy
• Optimize each page for specific keywords
• Transforming data into actionable articles

The Importance Of Cannabis SEO Strategy For Industry Brands

Marketing for maximum exposure on the Web is important in any industry. However, cannabis SEO contnt strategy features some distinctions that business owners and marketers need to be aware of to optimize their marketing efforts.

If you’re looking to maximize the potentials of your cannabis content marketing efforts, it’s important to realize how crucial search engine exposure is for the cannabis industry.

Limitations in digitally marketing a cannabis brand online

In order to formulate your digital marketing regime, you need to understand what’s different about marketing cannabis products online. The biggest thing to be aware of is that, because of the varying legality use in the United States across the country, some popular channels do not allow for online advertisement of cannabis products.

For example, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) through sites like Facebook and AdWords is not yet permissible. Large companies generally try to stay out of the political debate around marijuana. In addition to the lack of PPC advertising capabilities, a lot of SEO marketing agencies are also reluctant to take on cannabis companies as clients.

A change is unlikely to be seen regarding the relatively limited opportunities available to cannabis producers and sellers until cannabis is legalized on the federal level. This makes it more important for cannabis companies to do their own online marketing or be creative in finding weed SEO marketing solutions that they can take advantage of.

Internet use is directed and organized by search engines like Google and Yahoo. A consumer looking for a cannabis product supplier in your area is likely to look to a search engine to do some online shopping to learn what brands are around and check out prices before making purchases.

SEO-optimized content is one of the best ways to reach new customers. Fortunately, optimizing a website for cannabis content marketing might be made easier thanks to the fact that the cannabis industry is new and just now becoming open in many states across the country. This can make it so that there is a relative dearth in competition and the market is now open to only a relatively small group of companies.

Cannabis Content Marketing Strategy

If you want to get started using cannabis SEO to market your cannabis brand and company website online, you need to do some research and familiarize yourself with the workings of search engines. SEO is a constantly changing field, and keeping up with the changes requires great effort and vigilance.

Many people falsely believe that SEO is as easy as including a few keywords on your blog and watch the rankings skyrocket. However, in our days, things have gotten quite more technical. The Google algorithm actively punishes mediocre content in favor of reliable, informative resources.

A good cannabis writer can complement your overarching SEO content marketing efforts by offering high-quality content in your niche. The following are five important steps to keep in mind when you’re creating a thorough SEO strategy for a cannabis brand:

Creating an optimized website

The first step to using SEO to market your brand is developing a site. Your website should, first of all, represent your company and its offerings well. You should include multiple pages and make sure you list your location and cannabis products. You also should have a call-to-action option on your website that will make it easy for prospective customers to get in touch with you or ask questions about your brand.

You then will need to complete some on-page optimization basics. This includes making sure that the keywords you want to rank for are included in the content on your landing pages.

You also need to manage website factors such as title tags, meta descriptions, page copy, and image alt tags to rank well in search engines.

Offering valuable content

To be fully functional from an SEO standpoint, a website should have a blog and optimized landing pages that offer useful content. When it comes to blog content, you should make sure that you carefully research the cannabis industry and keep up on any important news. Then, you should produce blog posts that give your company’s take on all the relevant news in your industry or showcase your company’s unique products.

Offering quality content is not just important when it comes to on-site optimization through your blog, but also when it comes to link building. Websites that can give you good exposure and offer you high quality backlinks may publish guest articles from your company that link back to your site to improve your search rank standing. For cannabis brands, a wide variety of different authority sites could be helpful for backlinks, including those related to lifestyle, health, and entertainment news.

Submitting your website to all the major search engines

You can submit your website to all the major search engines so that you can make sure they index your site. This means that search engines are aware of your site so that they can begin analyzing it and including it in results.

While your website will naturally become indexed over time, it will happen more quickly if you specifically submit your site to search engines. It can take even weeks or months for a website to become indexed by the major search engines without the Webmaster submitting it.

Submitting a website go Google or another search engine is a relatively easy SEO task that can offer big results, so definitely make sure you go through this step.

Keeping content updated over time

Simply posting landing page content and a few blog articles is not enough. Content needs to be regularly updated over time to remain relevant and show that the website and company are both active. When new cannabis products become available or new developments arise on the local cannabis scene, it’s important to share the news on your site.

Updating content and posting new blog articles is a must if you want to improve your ranking and maintain it one your site starts to rank well.

Tracking rankings and changes in rankings

The best way to ensure optimal performance of your SEO regime is to regularly track how well your site is ranking in various search engines for key terms like cannabis supplier or cannabis brand with the help of a search engine ranking tool. These tools can tell you where your site is ranking for various keywords on one or several search engines.

It’s best to use a search engine ranking tool in combination with a backlink analysis tool to see how your ranking changes depending on the mix of backlinks you have for your site.

Conducting relevant cannabis keyword research

Despite hemp being legalized at a federal level with the 2018 Farm Bill, Google is still not very friendly toward cannabis ads. Therefore, businesses in the cannabis industry will have to try harder to gain visibility. Proper cannabis keyword research is an excellent way to reach organic prospects without having to deal with unnecessary restrictions. By using specialized tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush, it is possible to extract and analyze relevant keyword data that you can realistically rank for, while simultaneously answering to your audience’s questions (user intent).

Cannabis link building

Getting links to your website is one of the most surefire ways to climb the search engine rankings and bring organic traffic to your website. However, this is also an aspect of content marketing that needs a lot of work. Broadly speaking, you can get backlinks (links pointing back to your website) by creating awesome original content that people will naturally link to or by manual outreach.

The first option is the best, but it works best if you are already an authority. That’s why link building relies heavily on creating content for other websites (guest posting) and sharing your expertise with the press. Digital PR is a huge aspect of a proper cannabis content marketing strategy.

Cannabis link building

Getting links to your website is one of the most surefire ways to climb the search engine rankings and bring organic traffic to your website. However, this is also an aspect of content marketing that needs a lot of work. Broadly speaking, you can get backlinks (links pointing back to your website) by creating awesome original content that people will naturally link to or by manual outreach.

The first option is the best, but it works best if you are already an authority. That’s why link building relies heavily on creating content for other websites (guest posting) and sharing your expertise with the press. Digital PR is a huge aspect of a proper cannabis content marketing strategy.