SEO for marijuana dispensaries involves increasing the search engine ranking of marijuana-based websites. It helps your target audience find you each time they conduct a Google, Yahoo, or Bing search about similar products your business offers. SEO is the best marketing tool to drive organic traffic to your website.
With about 82% of shoppers running “near me” searches on their smartphones, tapping into the power of SEO for your dispensary has never been more important.
But can you DIY your own SEO plan? Does it bring any real results? What are the pros and cons of doing SEO yourself? Should you hire a dispensary SEO agency instead? What are the differences between DIY and professional SEO? Which one can truly take your marijuana business to the next level? Dive right in to understand!
How to Do SEO Yourself?
If you’re just starting out with your dispensary’s SEO efforts, here’s how to do the SEO yourself:
Perform Key Research
Keyword research forms the backbone of an effective SEO strategy. Find keywords that align with your content and match your target customers’ needs. You can find several keyword tools online to generate keywords that may have the potential to capture more search traffic.
Analyze Backlinks
You can see backlinks as a sort of “vote” on your content. They are a great way to make your content and website valuable to users. Having a backlink analysis tool can help you see how well your backlinks are working. This tool shares information like:
- Referring domains (or the websites that point to your site)
- Authority score
- Backlinks
Optimize Your Content
Once you have a list of valuable keywords, it’s time to create high-quality content using them. SEO content is content that includes primary and secondary keywords, and relevant images (or other graphics). Optimizing your content enables search engines to rank your content higher.
Create Meta Tags
Meta tags help Google in detecting your web pages. Two main types of meta tags include meta title and description. Your meta tags must contain ample keywords (not the same as keyword stuffing) and describe your web page accurately.
Create a Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a “free tool that allows you to take charge of the way your business appears on Google Search and Maps.” This profile can help you provide important details about your dispensary (like location and opening hours). A well-made Google Business Profile makes it easier for searchers to know what your business is all about!
The Pros and Cons of DIY and Professional SEO
Let’s look at the pros and cons of both DIY SEO and professional SEO.
Do It Yourself SEO
The pros of do-it-yourself SEO include:
- You learn about how search engine optimization works for your dispensary
- You save money
The cons of do-it-yourself SEO include:
- It takes a lot of time (and resources) to work on your SEO efforts. Handling your dispensary’s SEO journey is not a one-time task. The work of search engine optimization includes several elements and demands consistent work and assessments. For some, this could mean losing out on valuable time that could otherwise be used for running or scaling their brands.
- Lack of expertise. Keeping up with the latest SEO techniques can be a challenge unless you’re an SEO expert.
- Algorithms change constantly. Between the amount of time (and effort) it takes to create an SEO strategy and the highly volatile nature of algorithms, it can be disheartening to create a plan from scratch only to realize it may fail to bring results. Several businesses that opted for DIY SEO often try hard to recover from outdated SEO strategies. The wrong approach may even do more harm than good.
- SEO errors can cost your dispensary an arm and a leg. Most of the information about SEO on the internet is either outdated or flawed. Implementing the wrong steps can cause your site to get blacklisted.
Professional SEO
The pros of professional SEO include:
- Saves time. Keyword research, customized meta-data optimizations, content optimization, campaign data analysis, reporting, and monitoring SEO performance take time. With a professional dispensary SEO agency doing the SEO heavy lifting for you, you have more time to manage and grow your business.
- Access to industry expertise. Getting an SEO company on board unlocks valuable insights from experts who have years of experience in SEO. They are better equipped to manage new updates that search engines roll out constantly. They monitor your website’s health regularly, put you ahead of your competition, and fix issues at their early stages. They also have access to the latest technology and know how to use industry platforms well.
- Increased efficiency. A marijuana dispensary SEO agency comes with a package of experience, expertise, team, tools, and knowledge to take your business to the next level.
- Safety for your dispensary. SEO can be risky if done wrong. It can welcome spam, search penalties, and hacking. Your dispensary’s SEO agency will know what to look out for, and avoid risky strategies while keeping your rankings safe.
- They have experience with brands just like yours. A marijuana dispensary SEO company has tons of experience working with similar brands. This equips them with a solid knowledge of strategies that would work best for your business. They can refer to their SEO case studies to show proven strategies, pinpoint audiences and KPIs that would work for you, perform accurate competition analysis, and craft content that converts.
The cons of professional SEO include:
- Lack of complete control. With experienced professionals working on your SEO strategy, you will not have complete control over how it unfolds.
- Risks of poor service, if you fail to find the right agency.
Why Professional SEO is Crucial for Marijuana Dispensaries
Search engine optimization is the holy grail of digital marketing – but only when implemented correctly. Creating SEO strategies for your marijuana business demands thorough industry expertise, knowledge of the latest trends and techniques, and top-notch tools. While DIY SEO can be a good learning experience, it rarely takes a business beyond a certain point. To reap the full benefits of search engine optimization, it’s best to outsource this task to a dispensary SEO agency that knows the rules of the game.
Moreover, the cannabis industry is highly regulated and extremely competitive. Letting Dispensary Growth do the SEO heavy lifting for you can help you stay ahead of your competition and dominate Google rankings. Ready to scale your cannabis dispensary with SEO services that bring real results? Talk to us today!
