If you’re new to the advertising world—and you probably are if you’re reading this blog—then learning to strategize your Cannabis SEO practices is your most important lesson. Every successful venture begins with a strategy: your creative brief, your branding voice, Napoleon Bonaparte’s strategic decision to invade Russia during the winter. However, a strategy is only as good as the information it is founded upon, as Monsieur Bonaparte learned the hard way. So, the right SEO keywords are going to make or break your campaign. But where do we begin? Okay, now open up your copy of Microsoft Excel. If you don’t have a copy, then here’s a link to buy it. I’ll wait. Is it open? Okay, good. Now close it, and uninstall that garbage. Who uses Excel anymore? Ditch that abandonware and use Google Sheets instead. Okay, now that you have a Google Sheets doc open, we can truly begin.
To begin, you want to pick seven strong keywords that relate to your subject. In this case, cannabis. Why seven? Well, you can do more keywords or fewer keywords, but I pick seven because it feels lucky. Sure, Google’s search engine probably does not give the slightest care about superstitions, but it certainly moves in mysterious ways. These seven keywords are your short-tail keywords. You want each one to be somewhat specific and comprised of, at most, three words. You can keep it to one word if you liked, but just know that it is significantly more challenging to rank for your industry’s most common keywords. As an example, these are seven short-tail keywords that I just made up:
Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. And I do. But regardless of whether you’re new to or familiar with the industry, you should probably use services like Spyfu or Wordstream to plan your strat. So now that you have your primary seven short-tail cannabis keywords, you can start forming your long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more or less something that a real human being would type into a search engine. Why did I bold the phrase “real human being?” Because when you’ve spent enough time in the industry, you start to lose track of how ordinary people think. Sure, we all know that people who retain some sort of will to live never use the term synergy or the phrase unique value proposition, but also what kind of consumer says the word “product?” I mean, yes, my roommate hates the fact that my skincare and hair products dominate the bathroom, but that’s industry-specific to the beauty industry. When you use the word product in regards to cannabis, it sounds like a sketchy drug deal. Which, and I hope you already know this, is precisely the image that you want to avoid.
Digressions aside, long-tail cannabis SEO keywords are the meat and potatoes of your content. You will layer your short-tail keywords into these longer phrases. As you build your long-tail phrase, your website content will start looking something like this:
But one thing that my list doesn’t account for is internal competition. You don’t want two pages on your website competing for the same keyword. So maybe instead of writing a blog post around, “Which is better for you? Smoking or Vaping?” you write three blog posts with the subjections:
That way, you achieve the same SEO keyword Smoking or Vaping, but it prevents your webpages from competing with each other. Also, open up your contact list and delete anyone who looks down on you for using click-bait titles. They’re going to be no fun at parties. If your brand utilizes cheesiness or camp, then your customer will eat it up.
Finally, one aspect of SEO that beginners fail to appreciate is backlinks. Your site gets indexed in the search algorithm based on your SEO score and your networking connections. Huh, I guess the internet is just like real life. It’s wildly important to have on-page hyperlinks between all of your web pages that share a short-tail keyword. I cannot stress this enough. Additionally, you want other websites in your industry to link back to your website. How do you accomplish that? It’s not easy, but our answer is that you have to bring something new to the table. Your content has to be significantly unique that other people take notice. You need strong branding.
We can certainly help with strengthening your brand. Check out our posts about the internal branding voice or contact us today for a consultation. Okay, students, class is now dismissed. Until next time, your homework is to figure out what your seven short-tail keywords are. All late assignments are automatically deducted 50% from your final score. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules.
