SEO and local SEO literature at large is meant primarily for beginners, and it takes a while – no matter how close you follow – to learn important SEO insights for your market. In this blog post, I want to divulge 3 important insights you’ll need to win at local SEO for dispensaries.
Let’s get right to it!
Build Local Pages for Strains You Routinely Have
In my experience, there are two types of questioning-behavior that could be happening when people type in the name of a Strain into the search bar.
- They want to learn about strain – whether it is sativa, inidica, or hybrid, what it feels when smoked, what it does medically — all those I count under the banner or a learning intent.
- They want to find a strain at a nearby dispensary for purchase – a purchase intent.
In the former – number 1 – that is one of the most obvious SEO things about the cannabis industry. Think about all of the websites that outline the characteristics of the strains–Leafly, Medical Jane, Wikileaf, etc. That’s not what I want to focus on here; it’s number 2 that I want to make a point about.
As for when people are looking for a strain nearby, you can imagine the scenario. They, for example, are in the mood for a particular strain, say Jack Herer, and they type into Google “jack herer near me” (with a Moz keyword difficulty rating of 32, a monthly traffic volume of 51-100) or “jack herer denver” (or whatever city they are located in).
At the top of the search for “jack herer near me,” you’ll find Leafly and Weedmaps, so make sure to leverage those services if you can. However, those services tend to be expensive, and, if you’re not in a large metropolitan area, the rate on return may be unfavorable, so don’t think it’s mandatory. Unfortunately, it is the best way for those just starting out to take advantage of the “near me” queries.
In terms of the queries that use geo-specific terminology – which is to say, use a city or area name in their target keywords – the competition or difficulty score is generally lower. With the “jack herer near me” vs. “jack herer denver,” the difficulty scores differ by 10 points.
Versus
Don’t get it wrong. Leafly shows up on both SERPs, but you can see more local businesses in the one that uses “denver.” This is where the opportunity is.
Although the monthly volume is not as appetizing, don’t underestimate the potential of people that search for these terms, the 0-10. If you get one as a loyal customer every month, there is no way of calculating what that profit can be over a lifetime with those 12 customers. SEO should never cancel out your responsibility as a business owner to build relationships. Noone is dispensable.
Besides, technically you want to go after what you can rank for, otherwise you’re wasting your energy.
Use Geo-Specific Keywords for Your Website’s Main Pages
Ok, this is really really important.
One of the biggest issues I see on dispensary websites are that they – whether intentionally or not – go after keywords that are just too competitive for them to rank for. For example, your domain authority could be 6, and you’re going after “Colorado Cannabis Dispensary” which has a difficulty rating of 39. You can’t possibly compete, so going after this term is a waste because you get no exposure.
However, if you go after a hyper-local term, like “Dispensary Westminster” — “Westminster” being a district within the Denver metropolitan area, you can do far better. Just remember: some exposure is better than no exposure.
And, as you grow your website’s reach and domain authority, you can abandon the hyperlocal terms for more competitive terms as you become more able to rank for them.
Build Links, especially from Local Sources
Though it is not the only thing upon which your domain authority is built, inbound backlinks remain a cornerstone in the factors that go into ranking. But that’s not what I want to go into.
What I really want to stress is that links from local sources – like other businesses located near you – are a great source of links while also building relevancy signals toward your business’s locality.
In other words, local links don’t only help your overall ranking efforts by contributing to your domain and page authority, but you are also better off ranking for local terms – i.e. ones that use geo-specific keywords, like I said above.
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