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Cannabidiol (CBD) has long been recognized for its therapeutic benefits. CBD accounts for much of the healing effects found within cannabis, making up much of its market share.
This post will highlight effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices for CBD businesses.
What is CBD?
Cannabidiol (CBD), commonly referred to as an extract derived from cannabis search engine marketing, does not possess psychoactive effects like its counterpart, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
As such, CBD has proven highly effective at treating various health conditions, such as chronic pain, nausea from chemotherapy treatments, loss of appetite due to chemotherapy treatments, anxiety disorders, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.
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CBD SEO Criteria for Websites
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and ensures a website is search engine-friendly, creates a positive user experience and ranks higher than millions of competitors.
In cannabis marketing SEO, three essential aspects are required.
Keyword Research: Conducting effective industry-specific content research requires identifying the most useful industry-related articles, extracting keywords, content lengths and other essential variables, such as search queries for each keyword and financial prospects associated with its usage.
Effective keyword research helps understand search volumes for each term while simultaneously understanding any associated complications or financial implications.
Once your keywords have been chosen, create engaging and informative content for readers. Make sure it includes thorough details without appearing superficial - that way, your reader will gain something out of reading it while having access to accurate keyword density that supports business goals.
Backlinks: Backlinks are links from outside your website that point back to its content, giving it an advantage over its competitors.
Achieve backlinks by guest posting on high-domain authority sites and promoting content through popular forums or social media.
Learn More About CBD and SEO
Cannabidiol (CBD), the main non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis, accounts for 40 - 50% of plant extracts.
This explains why THC may be used recreationally while CBD should be seen as more of a health supplement than a recreational drug.
CBD is a whole cannabis extract, so it may be seen with suspicion by all jurisdictions where legal marijuana is available.
Cannabis users may find it difficult to order CBD products in physical shops without becoming aware of stigmata attached; many CBDistillery traders prefer operating online instead.
Starting a CBD business online offers many advantages, including utilizing various digital marketing techniques like search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO aims to increase visibility for websites and ecommerce stores by ranking them on search engine results pages organically or through sponsored campaigns.
Also Read: Seo-optimized web design: what? Why? How?
These are the 5 Best SEO Strategies for Cannabis Industry
Use industry-Specific Keywords
SEO campaigns rely heavily on their keywords, as these determine their success. Since CBD is an extract from cannabis, any keywords used for ranking should also relate to this sector of cannabis.
Experts advise avoiding broad terms like 'cannabis edibles' or marijuana edibles due to stiff competition for these terms - when users search, they could mean that your site does not appear on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Consider more specific keywords when selecting keywords to boost the visibility of your CBD business, such as fast-acting CBD oil or sleep oil.
These parameters must be considered when choosing keywords that will bring success to your CBD business.
Relevance: How relevant are your keywords to your products or services?
Search volume: How many people have searched for this term already?
Difficulty Level: How difficult can your potential clients and search engines comprehend the keywords?
Domain authority: What other websites have ranked this keyword?
Long-Tail and Geo Specific Keywords
Not only should you select unique, industry-specific keywords, but long-tail and geo-specific ones should also be considered.
Longer tail keywords contain more letters; thus, your e-commerce website could rank higher in SERPs if its key phrase includes phrases such as 'CBD infused THC-free candy' rather than just 'CBD infused candy.
To avoid keyword stuffing, when selecting long-tail keywords, you must be wary. As the frequency of each long tail phrase decreases as its length does, so should its frequency in search results.
Geo-specific keywords refer specifically to geographic locations; by listing CBD businesses at or including names of your location on search engine result pages (SERPS), geo-specific keywords help your CBD business rank higher on SERPs of searchers looking for information from there or about it. Instead of searching for "the best CBD vape oils supplier," why not search for "the best CBD vape oils provider in Manhattan?"
Create Original Content
Content remains king when it comes to digital marketing campaigns, and this holds in the CBD industry as well. Although its growth has been astounding, many misconceptions still surround its usage; therefore, regularly sharing informative and educational pieces will only help change people's perspectives.
Your readers should have access to information on CBD's health benefits, potential side effects, dosing information and delivery methods through a blog you create that informs them on all these subjects.
Your backlinks should connect your blogs directly to your ecommerce store so potential clients may contact you and want more details on your products.
Use CBD-Friendly Search Engines
Google and Bing do not permit advertisements related to cannabis companies on their platforms; however, there is an easy way around these restrictions by posting informational material related to your CBD business with keywords similar to what it ranks for on search engines like Google and Bing.
You could also add backlinks creatively linking back to its website.
Cannabis users may prefer using specific search engines that cater specifically to cannabis traders and their trade.
With their faster crawlers sifting process, marijuana-friendly search engines offer better rankings on searches than regular search engines.
Hire an SEO Specialist
An SEO specialist might be more suitable than an agency when hiring their first CBD company due to the higher fees charged by most SEO services.
While initial costs for engaging an SEO specialist might seem high, over time, they often become much more manageable - and worth every penny once results begin showing.
Finding an SEO company to assist with your CBD business should start by searching specifically for cannabis SEO specialists.
Once found, check their SERP rankings as they may only be suitable if they feature highly on them; such a provider would be like seeking treatment from someone familiar.
Keyword Research for Cannabis Websites
It forms an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO), helping determine the most pertinent keywords to include in website content, meta tags, and other SEO elements.
Effective keyword research can increase website visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) while driving more visitors towards its content.
Searching for "what is cannabis" might not produce as many results as another generic phrase. To identify websites offering CBD chewy candies, CBD oil tinctures and other products online more quickly, one needs to combine search results.
Reasons behind this may include Google's stringent policies against the cannabis industry and restrictions on paid marketing channels - making keyword extraction a difficult endeavor.
To successfully address such obstacles, one should conduct a comprehensive keyword analysis using tools such as SEMRush, WordTracker, Google Autocomplete, Ahrefs or Google Trends.
Carefully examine each keyword selection until finding ones that align with your cannabis store needs.
How to Rank Your Cannabis Business with SEO for CBD Businesses
CBD sales increase 55% each year, which represents an enormous opportunity for businesses in this field. Estimations show that Cannabis businesses could reach over 1.5 billion U.S.
dollars , with projected profits estimated to exceed 1.5 billion USD profit margins. One of our CBD clients achieved $300k in revenue within 90 days with only organic traffic. Online platforms are an effective means for marketing products like CBD.
At present, researchers are still investigating the full potential of CBD products; however, many people have experienced numerous benefits from using them and can attest to their superiority over pharmaceutical drugs.
Importance of SEO for CBD Brands
Establishing an online Cannabis business begins with having a strategic CBD SEO plan in place. You will only increase product visibility, generate sales, and rank higher on search engines like Google.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for any website hoping to generate direct online traffic. SEO tools assist with keyword research to understand your target audience and their preferences in digital marketing.
CBD SEO Tips
Target Non-Competitive Keywords
Non-competitive keywords can rank with little link-building efforts and minimal domain authority requirements. Long-tail keywords often have low search volumes but are highly specific, making it possible to target topics of particular relevance to your target audience.Implemented correctly into your website content, non-competitive keywords can increase traffic and help rank more quickly.
Speed Up Your Website
The speed of a website can have an enormous effect on user experience and conversion rates.Maintaining optimal website speed is necessary to draw visitors in and keep them engaged on your website.Here are a few strategies to ensure that your website stays on track.
Regularly testing the speed of your website will give you an idea of its performance. A website speed test allows developers to quickly identify areas for improvement and get them resolved for optimal user experiences.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) can dramatically accelerate your website by caching content and significantly decreasing page load time.
Image optimization can significantly decrease image loading time on websites. By decreasing their file sizes and decreasing dimensions or resolutions, you can decrease their loading times significantly.
Minifying CSS and JavaScript files can improve website loading speeds while taking up less bandwidth. Reduce the number of HTTP requests: One effective way to speed up a website is by limiting its reliance on HTTP requests.
Each one involves round trips between your server and that hosting resource, adding time and load delays for your webpage.
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Make Sure Your Content is EAT Ready
SEO stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EAT). Google's Search Quality Rater guidelines feature this concept as one of their factors to evaluate the overall quality of a web page.
So why does Google determine the Effective Content Assessment (ECTA) score for a page? Google uses the Accuracy, Trustworthiness, and Usage (EAT) framework to ensure the search query results it returns are reliable, truthful and useful.
Since any individual or group can publish any piece of information online without verification by third parties. Google measures all content by its EATF score because people may make important life decisions based on it. Therefore, when measuring medical or financial content, Google measures it based on EATF.
Conduct Technical SEO Audit
An SEO audit of your website at regular intervals is important to maintaining optimal website performance and increasing traffic flow to the site.
With regular technical SEO audits, your website can avoid appearing in SERPs despite all your best efforts to meet its on-page and off-page SEO requirements.
Identification and correction of technical errors on both the backend and front of your site - such as broken links, site crawling issues, duplicate content duplication issues, poor site structure issues and slow website speeds - are vital to keeping the performance of your website intact and meeting performance goals.
There are many free and premium technical SEO audit tools that you can use to detect technical errors on your website and fix them quickly and effectively.
Interlink Your Pages & Posts Internally
Internal links provide users with easy ways to discover new content within their website. Users use internal links as gateways between pages on a similar domain.
Internal links within content, known as contextual links, direct users to more related pieces of information. Links enable search engines to comprehend your content better, establishing its value. With an effective internal linking strategy, you can help direct users towards the most critical pages on your site.
Google indexes websites by following links, both internal and external.
Your homepage is the gateway for users to the various posts, pages and other content on your website. When visitors follow links from there to other pages or posts within it, this establishes connections among various posts, pages and other materials on your website.
Make the most of your internal linking strategy by targeting important pages on your website with keyword-rich anchor text that doesn't use duplicated anchor texts across links, placing links near the top of each page, and using do follow links when possible.
Write Meta Tags For All Your Pages
Page-level meta tags help search engines better comprehend a website. Meta tags are added to the HTML of a web page in two separate parts; meta title and meta description.
Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content refers to any educational and engaging text that remains relevant over time - regardless of year or season; evergreen posts drive traffic.
If you still need convincing about its importance, here are more reasons:
Boosts search rankings
Most people only scroll past the first page, digital marketing services meaning your content will only reach your target audience if it cuts Google.
But creating evergreen pieces of content will boost your EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) score; having higher EAT ratings will improve SEO rankings.
Draws in organic traffic
Organic traffic refers to visitors coming directly through search results pages without paying for ads, rather than by paid advertisement.
Evergreen content that answers a question increases people's interest and the chances of them revisiting your content later.
Keeps your business relevant
Evergreen content provides relevant and valuable content to readers while increasing retention on your page and decreasing bounce rates, making the search engines aware that your readers find your work beneficial, resulting in higher rankings.
Even though evergreen content is important, not every piece you write must fall under its purview. But writing timeless pieces that stand the test of time may help set your business apart from competitors.
Generate Backlinks to Your Website
Backlinks refer to any websites that link back to yours. While any link can help drive more visitors and rankings for your site, authoritative sites will provide greater benefits when it comes to traffic and rankings.
Google uses certain criteria when judging the quality of a backlink. Establishing quality backlinks can take time and effort. Here are a few suggestions to assist in this regard:
Broken-link building
As part of this step, it is necessary to inform a web admin about a broken link on their site and suggest alternate websites as replacements.
You should find websites within your niche with resource pages searching for broken links.
Infographics
Infographics can be an effective way to build backlinks and drive traffic to your website, as their visual data makes them easy for readers to comprehend.
When choosing your infographics, be cautious. Take care in conducting your research and gathering information before selecting one.
Guest Posting
By publishing guest posts on prominent websites, guest posting can help you reach new readers and expand your audience.
Beyond just backlinks alone, guest blogging helps establish professional relationships, which may prove instrumental in expanding it further.
Internal links
Internal links are an integral component of any successful blog, helping your audience navigate easily throughout your site and improving user experience.
While there are tools that automatically generate internal links, for maximum effect, they should be created manually.
Blogger Outreach
If you want backlinks, reaching out to bloggers within your niche can be challenging but will pay dividends in terms of backlinks.
The result will certainly make the effort worthwhile. Establishing quality backlinks from authoritative websites can be challenging. Still, by using effective strategies, you can quickly locate link-building opportunities.
Create & Submit a Sitemap
Sitemaps provide search engines with information about all of your website files that search engines can use to intelligently crawl it.
They come in multiple formats - Text, XML, and RSS are among them - which makes determining their relevance much simpler than trying to find individual URLs on an individual website. With thousands of URLs on one domain alone, sitemaps become invaluable assets.
Use Google Search Console & The URL Inspection Feature
Google Search Console's URL Inspection feature makes it easier than ever before to detect SEO issues on websites, providing insights into their indexability and accessibility from within Google itself.
Also Read: The Complete Guide to Importance of SEO
Optimize Your Local Presence to Generate Quality Leads
No matter the size of your local business, generating quality leads is one of the key elements of its success. You can do this by optimizing local SEO to generate quality leads for your business.
Here are a few tips for optimizing content and website for local searches:
Listings In Local Online Directories
Establishing an effective online presence is vital. One effective way to do this is through online directories. They will market your business and improve rankings and drive organic traffic - remember, Google Business Pages that can open doors to countless new people.
Optimized Content With Local Keywords
Your business should communicate its precise location. In your content, use relevant keywords that will draw high-quality leads while increasing SERP rankings.
However, avoid overusing too many keywords. Otherwise, your website could appear spammy.
Positive Online Reviews
Positive reviews can build trust with potential customers and build your business's credibility online. Provide high-quality service so consumers are pleased to leave positive reviews for you on other platforms.
Generating leads as a local business can be even more challenging. Still, taking the right steps will establish an online and offline presence that stands out.
Put Yourself in the Userβs Shoes
Step one in marketing your CBD product should be to put yourself in the shoes of its users; this serves as an essential precursor for an effective SEO campaign.By employing your keyword research tool, you'll gain an understanding of user intent and what CBD visitors are searching for on websites.
This will give you a good understanding of which keywords and products to include on your website and sell.
If you need more assurance, hear what our webinar speakers who helped a CBD website earn 300K in organic traffic organically have to say about conducting effective keyword research.
Do Keyword Planning Tools and their implementation alone suffice in propelling websites forward? Unlikely.Compare your Google Keyword Planner research results with those from Search Console and Analytics before making decisions on keywords for implementation.
Check Your Competitors
Are there any Cannabis businesses doing well online? Explore them and observe the strategies they employ to increase sales.
Your competitors' keywords can help inform your CBD SEO strategy. With so much competition in an emerging market, new companies might try to enter and take their share of what could become an extremely lucrative marketplace.
So your CBD SEO plan must set you apart.
If your competitor has been operating successfully in the market for some time now, take a close look at their business techniques for some lessons that could benefit your operations.
Use these tips as you embark on your online cannabis ventures, including improving SEO for CBD blogs for greater organic revenue streams.
Given the nature of CBD products, they come with their fair share of controversy and difficulties. Your website traffic will depend on which CBD product you select; developing an organic SEO strategy with expert assistance would likely be most successful at ranking up.
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Conclusion
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be difficult for businesses, particularly CBD ones.
SEO requires experience, and there are some basic strategies you can employ to use its power for digital marketing purposes effectively. Otherwise, consider consulting a cannabis SEO firm instead.
