5 Ways to Optimize SEO for Dispensaries
How to Generate Traffic With Dispensary SEO
Lately, it seems like every business is trying to break into the digital realm. While e-commerce was once the realm of vintage clothing sellers, jewelry makers, and other niche businesses, that just isn’t the case any longer. If you’re a legitimate business at this point, then not wanting to break into some sort of digital market is just foolish, as you’re cutting out an enormous swathe of the population — a swathe of the population that’s only growing with every passing month.
But what is the digital market, and why break into it? Going forward, let’s discuss what exactly it means to have a business that’s part of an online marketplace. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to sell products online. Heck, you might not even be able to, depending on the state you live in. However, maintaining an online presence and having a brand that permeates the online sphere is everything when it comes to establishing a strong, healthy company, no matter what kind of business you have. But this is especially the case for dispensaries and any business in the cannabis industry.
1. Content, Content, Content
The first part of establishing a brand online is putting yourself out there as a brand. Content is the primary element of search engine optimization. If your content is lackluster, then it doesn’t matter how high you rank on a search engine results page. That means regularly publishing content to let people know who you are, what you’re about, and what kind of things you have to say. As a cannabis brand, that means posting the type of stuff people want to know about cannabis and doing so in an informative, educational manner. However, this doesn’t mean you should simply recap every cannabis study that comes out in the hope that that’s what people are after.
A healthy website should have a varied content section with information-rich blog posts that are also A) easy to read and B) entertaining. If you can achieve this balance then you stand a good chance of establishing your online brand.
2. Keywords Are Massive in SEO for Dispensaries
You’ve probably heard of keywords, and honestly, at this point, you’re probably tired of hearing about them. Keywords are one way Google and other search engines track the relevance of certain terms and measure how valuable a blog post of a webpage is to a search engine user. Doing the appropriate research to find out what keywords are relevant can make a huge difference in how much traffic comes to your site. A keyword-rich article that uses terms effectively can bring in many more visitors. This is due to your webpage ranking higher in search engine results. Using a healthy mix of keyword types is also key. Having only long-tail keywords can make your text seem cumbersome, so remember that variety is key — pardon the pun.
3. A Mix of Images and Graphics
People, by default, are visual learners, which is why breaking up your content with different infographics and images can make a big difference in how readable your webpage is. Even if you write healthy content that’s easy to read and scans well while maintaining a good mix of information and entertainment value, people’s eyes are probably going to glaze over if they see nothing but paragraph after paragraph of text. To avoid this, sprinkling in a healthy mix of relevant images and infographics can make an enormous difference in how much people are going to want to revisit your page the next time they want to read about cannabis.
This is especially easy for cannabis sites and dispensaries, however, as most customers or interested parties might be clicking on a dispensary’s website to learn about specific strains and the differences between different types of cannabis. Since marijuana has made its way into the mainstream so easily over the last few years, there’s no shortage of quality images and studies to link in your articles. Additionally, finding royalty-free stock images to use in order to break up your paragraphs and bring a little color into your webpage is easier than ever thanks to royalty-free stock image sites. At this point, there’s no excuse for having a blog full of lifeless text!
4. Dispensary SEO Requires Lots of Linking
Link building adds instant legitimacy to your website. In order to help grow your website’s reputation, you want to provide people with quality information and relevant third parties. However, this also means you need to establish your own website as a relevant source of information with an established backlog of information for them to reference. So, if you have tons of posts on your site, then link them across your site in new articles and blog posts. Make sure that potential audiences coming into your site know that you’ve been in this for some time. Even if you haven’t, you want to build up the illusion that you have, as most consumers feel more comfortable with experienced businesses. This isn’t being disingenuous, it’s simply setting yourself aside from all the completion out there — and there’s a lot of that.
Backlinking isn’t the only kind of linking you need to do, however — you also need to link to relevant third parties. You never want to be making claims on your site that sound even the slightest bit questionable without backing them up. This means you should always cite your sources and never make unsubstantiated claims. This is especially important when talking about something that people regularly put into their bodies, like cannabis products.
5. Genuineness Makes a Big Difference
At the end of the day, no matter what you post on your site, as long as you believe what you’re saying and your content rings true, it can make a huge difference in how much people want to keep coming back to your site. The chances are if you’re actually passionate about what you’re writing, your titles will stand out from the competition and people will be interested in clicking on them.
Our Dispensary SEO Services
While there’s no guaranteed fool-proof way of getting people to visit your webpage, there are a few methods that have been proven to benefit businesses making their way online. Posting quality content on a consistent basis is key to establishing yourself as a legitimate online presence, and we can help with that! To learn about how we can optimize SEO for dispensaries, call us at 1-802-489-6850, or contact us here.
