SEO by Industry
How to Improve SEO for CBD Companies
By: Shreoshe Ghosh
Updated On: March 10, 2023
Are you planning to run your CBD business online? Well, we have good news for you.
Currently, the sale of CBD is growing by 55% every year, which means there is a massive potential for CBD business opportunities in the coming years.
This calls for proper SEO for CBD websites to rank well and drive more sales.
It’s expected that the CBD profit margin will reach more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2022.
Talking about online growth, one of our CBD clients generated $300k in revenue over a span of 90 days through organic traffic alone! Online platforms are an excellent choice when it comes to promoting products like CBD.
There is still ongoing research to discover the full potential of CBD products; however, there are many people who have received numerous benefits from CBD and can vouch for it over pharmaceutical drugs.
Importance of SEO for CBD Brands
The first step to establishing a CBD business online is to have a good CBD SEO strategy. Only then can you increase your product visibility, generate sales, and rank higher on the search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for any website looking to generate direct online traffic. SEO tools help in keyword research, which is necessary to understand the pulse of your target audience.
However, how do you choose the right keywords and products to rank on Google for your CBD website?
Here are a few cannabis SEO tips to keep you going.
13 CBD SEO Tips
1. Target Non-Competitive Keywords
Non-competitive keywords are those that can rank with little to no link-building efforts and little to no domain authority.
Long-tail keywords generally have low search volume but are very specific in nature. This allows you to target topics that are highly relevant to your target audience.
When appropriately implemented within your web content, these non-competitive keywords can bring in quick traffic and help rank easily.
2. Speed Up Your Website
Website speed can have a huge impact on the user experience and website conversions.
Maintaining an optimum website speed is necessary to draw users to your website and keep them engaged.
Here are some ways to ensure that your website is not slowing down.
- Testing your website speed regularly will give you an idea about its performance. A website speed test will help developers identify the areas of improvement and get it fixed at the earliest for a smooth user experience.
- Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can boost the speed of your website by caching content and drastically reducing the page load time.
- Images take the longest time to load on a website. By optimizing your website images by compressing the file size and reducing their dimensions or resolutions, you can improve the image loading time on your website.
- Minifying CSS and JavaScript files can improve the website loading speed and take up less bandwidth.
- Another way to improve website speed is to reduce the number of HTTP requests. Each request results in a round trip to and from the server hosting the resource, which can add to the overall load time for your webpage.
3. Make Sure Your Content is EAT Ready
In SEO, EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
This concept originated from Google’s Search Quality Rater guidelines. It is one of the important factors that Google considers while evaluating the overall quality of a web page.
So, why does Google determines the EAT of a page?
EAT is a way for Google to ensure that the content it returns for any search query is accurate, truthful, and useful.
Since anybody can create any content and put it up on the web, it is hard to determine the authenticity of the information shared.
This is especially true for medical or financial content where people are likely to make important life decisions based on them. Hence, Google measures every content based on its EAT.
Expertise
Google acknowledges the fact that content written by someone is authentic only when the person is verified to have formal training on the subject matter.
That being said, EAT is really crucial for YMYL sites. YMYL stands for “Your Money, Your Life.” These sites impact your finances, health, safety, and/or happiness.
Therefore, for Google, medical content is more trustworthy when it is written by a verified doctor instead of any random author.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness means having generally recognized authority on the subject.
When people know you as an author, know your background, recognize you as a thought leader in the industry and accept you as a good source of information, it proves your authoritativeness.
Trustworthiness
Being trustworthy means you’re are believed by the people to be a true and honest source of information.
4. Conduct Technical SEO Audit
A technical SEO audit of your website from time to time is important to keep up the website performance and ensure a positive traffic flow to the site.
In the absence of a regular technical SEO audit, your website runs the risk of not showing up in the SERPs, no matter how much effort you put into its on-page and off-page requirements.
Identifying the technical errors in the backend and frontend of your site, such as broken links, site crawling issues, duplicate content, poor site structure, and slow website speed, can help fix them on time and keep up the website performance.
There are several free and premium technical SEO audit tools that you can use to detect technical errors on your website and fix them.
5. Add Internal Links Between Your Pages & Posts
An internal link is any link that goes from one page to another on the same website. Users use links to discover new content.
When you add internal links within your content, they are known as contextual links since they point users to more related content.
Links help search engines to understand your content better and determine its value. With the right internal linking strategy, you can guide users to the most critical pages on your site.
Google crawls websites through links, both internal and external.
When it comes to the homepage on your site and then follows the link on the homepage to other pages or posts on the site, it establishes the connection between different posts, pages, and other content on your website.
To make the most out of your internal linking strategy, try linking to important pages on your website, use keyword-rich anchor text, avoid using identical anchor text for two different links, place links high up on the page and use dofollow links whenever possible.
6. Write Meta Tags For All Your Pages
Page-level meta tags are helpful for search engines to understand a site better.
Meta tags are added at the <head> section of the HTML of a web page. It consists of two main components, the meta title, and meta description.
Meta Title
The meta title is the page’s title as chosen by the author. The search engines show the title within its search pages.
Users can see the page title in the search results and determine whether it satisfies their search query or not.
The page title should be kept short and must accurately describe the page’s contents.
Meta Description
A meta description is the description summary of a web page.
If a page is missing meta description, Google may use text it has found on the page, which may be random and not make sense.
This is why you must add meta descriptions to your web pages and keep them short and simple.
7. Create Evergreen Content
In simple terms, evergreen content is the one that educates and engages your readers for a long time. If you can master writing this content, you will ensure that your content is relevant for years to come. It doesn’t matter what year or season it is; it will drive traffic. If you are still unsure about the importance of evergreen content, here are a few more reasons:
1.Boosts search rankings
Most people don’t scroll beyond the first page. So, if you cannot get on the first page, your content won’t be able to reach your target audience. But, if you manage to create evergreen content, it will boost your EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) score on Google. Having a higher EAT score will help improve your SEO rankings.
2. Draws in organic traffic
Organic traffic is people visiting your website through the search results page instead of a paid ad. Since evergreen content answers a question, it increases people’s interest, and they are more likely to find your content again.
3. Keeps your business relevant
Evergreen content helps provide relevant and valuable content to the readers. Also, since people will be staying on the page for longer, it will lead to lower bounce rates. The search engine will know that your content is useful to the readers resulting in boosted search rankings.
Even though evergreen content is significant, not every single piece of content you write needs to be it. However, writing enduring, timeless content can set you apart from your competitors. Check out these tips that will help you write evergreen content:
- Find the topics that have persistent traffic potential. You can use Google Analytics for that. Make sure that you know the difference between evergreen and trending topics.
- Ensure that you use the right keyword that helps your posts get on the search results.
- Try to avoid adding specific dates and events to your content, or it won’t be evergreen.
- Focus on case studies. Even though they don’t work for everyone, having analytical, in-depth content can boost your credibility.
- Write in-depth tutorials and guides that are comprehensive. This way, your audience will have answers to all their questions.
With the above-mentioned techniques, you will be able to repurpose your content and maximize your chances of having a first-page ranking.
8. Generate Backlinks to Your Website
Backlinks refer to the websites that link to your website. However, this doesn’t mean that you should get backlinks from wherever you can. If the website is authoritative, you will get better traffic and rankings. Google uses certain factors to determine the quality of a backlink.
Getting a quality backlink is difficult. However, there are some smart ways of getting authoritative websites to link to your website. Here are a few tips that will help you with this:
1. Broken-link building
In this, you have to contact a webmaster about a broken link on their website and recommend other websites as a replacement. What you have to do is find websites in your niche with resources pages and look for a broken link.
2. Infographics
Infographics can help gain valuable backlinks and bring traffic to the website. Since this is visual data, they are easy to understand. But, while choosing your infographics, you have to be careful. Make sure that you research and collect data.
3. Guest Posting
This is the best way to reach a new audience. If you publish guest post on popular websites, you get more exposure and get new readers. Because it’s not about just backlinks but also improving your online reputation, you can leverage your professional relationships to expand your audience.
4. Internal links
If you want to have a successful blog, internal links are a crucial factor. It will help your audience navigate easily through your website and improve the user experience. Even though they are tools to create internal links automatically, it is recommended that you do it manually.
5. Blogger Outreach
If you want backlinks, you should reach out to bloggers related to your niche. It is a bit challenging, but the end result will be worth it.
Earning quality backlinks from authoritative websites can be challenging. However, if you use the right methods, you can find link-building opportunities easily.
9. Create & Submit a Sitemap
A sitemap is a file with information about the files on your website. Search engines use this file to crawl through your website intelligently. Sitemaps can be in multiple formats, including Text, XML, and RSS. Now, if you have a small website where all URLs are internally linked, you might not need a sitemap. But, if your website has thousands of URLs, a sitemap will greatly benefit you.
Creating a sitemap
Here is how you can create an XML sitemap from scratch:
- Collect all the URLs on your website
Apart from using a crawler to get a list of URLs, here are possible alternatives that you can try:
- Look at your website manually and collect the URLs.
- Use Google to perform a site search and identify the URLs that are indexed by Google.
- Check the landing page report from Google Analytics to find the URL.
2. Code the URLs
After you have collected all the URLs that you want to be included in the sitemap, you have to move on to coding the URL in XML format. You should use a text editor to ensure that the coded URL is in the right format.
Submitting a sitemap
Now that you have created the sitemap, you have to submit it to the Google Search Console. Follow the below-mentioned steps to do it:
- Log into your Google Search Console account.
- Check the left sidebar and click on ‘Sitemaps’.
- At the top, you will find ‘Add a new sitemap’. Add your sitemap’s URL to it.
- Hit ‘Submit’.
Once you have done this, Google will start crawling through your XML sitemap. This will ensure that your website’s valuable content is found by search engines.
10. Use Google Search Console & The URL Inspection Feature
The URL Inspection feature the Google Search Console offers helps you diagnose any SEO issues present on your website. This way, you will be able to get information Google has on your URL’s indexability and accessibility. Here is how you can use it:
- Sign in to Search Console and select the ‘Property’ option present on the top left side.
- Next, select the website on which you want to use the URL inspection tool.
- Visit the search box and add the URL you want to be inspected.
- In the search results, you will get the information of the page along with the crawl index. It will tell you whether the page is indexed or not and whether it has AMP support or not.
The URL inspection tool offers a multitude of features. Read on to learn more about them:
1. URL is at Google
This detail shows whether or not Google has indexed the page. It will also show other details like if the page isn’t indexed, where no manual action has been taken.
2. Index Coverage
This option will show the complete details of the page. Here are the options you should know about:
- Sitemaps – The sitemap in which the page is indexed.
- Referring Page – The referral page.
- Last Crawl Date – The last time Google crawled this page.
- Crawl Allow – Whether or not Google can crawl the page or not.
- Indexing Allow – Whether or not indexing is allowed on the page or not.
- Page Fetch – Whether or not the page fetch was successful.
- Google Selected Canonical – Whether or not the canonical URLs were authorized by Google.
- User-declared canonical – What is the URL’s canonical URL?
3. Enhancements
This section will give you Amp and Non-Amp details.
You can check these details and fix any search issue on your blog or website.
11. Optimize Your Local Presence to Generate Quality Leads
Regardless of how small your local business is, generating quality leads is one of the most important aspects of running it. What you can do is optimize your local SEO in order to build quality leads. Here are a few tips to optimize your content and website for local searches:
1. Listings in local online directories
Having a strong online presence is crucial. And to do this, you have to leverage online directories. Not only will it market your business, but also boost your rankings and drive organic traffic. Through Google Business Pages, you will be able to access a lot of new people.
2. Optimized content with local keywords
You have to share your business’s exact location. To describe your location in your content, you have to use the relevant keywords. It will help you get high-quality leads and improve your rankings in the SERPs. However, remember that you shouldn’t be using too many keywords, or else your website will look spammy.
3. Positive online reviews
You need positive reviews to make people trust your business. This includes customers’ testimonials on their website and reviews on other websites. Try providing high-quality service so that consumers are happy to leave a positive review.
Generating leads as a local business is even more difficult. But, by doing it the right way, you will be able to create a strong online as well as offline presence.
12. Put Yourself in the User’s Shoes
The first thing that you should do to market your CBD product is to put yourself in the user’s shoes. This is more like a precursor to an effective SEO strategy.
By using your keyword research tool, you’ll be able to understand the user intent and what most users are looking for in a CBD website.
This will give you an idea about the kind of keywords to be implemented on your website and the type of CBD products you should be selling.
If you are still unsure, learn what our webinar speakers, who have successfully helped a CBD website earn $300k traffic organically have to say about doing the right keyword research.
Moreover, is getting a list of keywords through the Keyword Planning Tool and implementing them enough to push your website to the top? Maybe not.
This is why you should go for a second opinion. Compare your Google Keyword Planner research with the Google Search Console and Analytics results and then decide on the possible keywords to be implemented.
13. Check Your Competitors
Are there any CBD businesses that are doing well online? Well, check them out and see what strategy they are following to increase sales.
You can see which keywords your competitors are targeting and build your SEO strategy accordingly.
As the market is still young and growing rapidly, new companies might try to get into it to grab a share of the lucrative market. So, you need to make yourself stand out from the rest.
If your competitor has been in the market for quite some time now, you might want to look at the business techniques closely for some valuable lessons that you can implement in your own business.
The above mentioned tips will help you begin your online journey in the CBD business and move towards improving SEO for CBD blogs for better organic revenue.
Considering the nature of the products you’re dealing with, it’s a no-brainer that it comes with many controversies and bottlenecks.
Your website traffic will also depend on the kind of CBD product you choose. In addition to developing a robust strategy to rank your CBD website on Google organically, expert guidance would be the most effective way of achieving that.
The next time somebody tells you that you cannot generate good revenue for CBD products, tell them the case of the CBD website that generated $300k revenue in a span of 90 days through organic traffic alone.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a great list of tips for a CBD business. The information provided will be very useful. Also very encouraging to know the projected growth potential. All the best.