A Guide To Choosing the Best Cannabis SEO Keywords For Your Marijuana Brand

This article was originally published on NisonCo, and appears here with permission.

Everyone wants to increase their web traffic for myriad reasons, but you have to ensure you’re aiming at the right targets. That’s why choosing the right SEO keywords is essential for your cannabis brand. It doesn’t seem like it’s that hard, right? Actually, cannabis SEO can be tricky to navigate, which is why working with an exceptional cannabis SEO agency such as NisonCo PR is the best move you can make. In any case, let’s help you with what you came here for today: how to identify the right cannabis SEO keywords for your brand. 

Know Your Cannabis Brand 

When it comes to coming up with keywords, first you have to know your brand. If you’re going to expect your audience to know your brand, you have to ensure that you understand it yourself. Start by considering what your brand is about, and what your goals are. Are you into classic cannabis products like bongs or are you all about new wave products like Delta-8 THC? Knowing this is a great starting point that can help you and your SEO team identify which targets to hit. 

If you’re very familiar with your brand, you’re more likely to know what your audience is looking for in terms of content, which can often dictate your direction of SEO keywords. SEO keywords can’t do much if you can’t keep users engaged with your content. If your users are word-oriented, saturate your keywords in long text format. If, however, your brand is more visual, go beyond written form. Dive into other types of media such as videos and imagery. Cannabis SEO can be implemented in other media, such as Youtube, so don’t be afraid to get into shooting clips about your products and include a short description to boost SEO. Ultimately, SEO strategy needs to be a long-term investment, so think about what your customers will want to come back to every time they visit your site.

Search Intent and Cannabis SEO

Once you’ve established brand awareness, it’s time to think about relevance. Brainstorm a list of questions that people might be searching for relevant to your cannabis business. Think about your product line, if you have one. If not, think about your service offerings. Which are your most popular products or areas of service? Why do your customers come to you? Which products could use a boost in awareness? Establish these key indicators to understand which products your customers are searching for, or which ones you want to draw them towards. This is fundamental to your cannabis SEO strategy according to an idea called “search intent.” Essentially, search intent is the “Why?” Why are people looking for solutions, and how might those solutions cause them to find your products and services? There are five common types of search intent, and each of them is fairly crucial to your overall SEO strategy:

1) Informational Intent

Informational intent stays true to what it says. This type of search intent is when consumers are looking for information about a certain subject.

2) Navigational Intent 

Navigational intent occurs when people are looking to navigate to something particular. If they’re searching for your brand, most likely, they’ll punch in your name. With this type of intent, it’s imperative to maintain the top result position for your own searchable name, but this isn’t as relevant when it comes to competitors. 

3) & 4) Transactional Intent & Commercial Investigation 

Technically two types of search intent, go hand in hand. Transactional intent centers on searching for something to buy, while commercial investigation focuses on customers’ preliminary research about what to buy. As a cannabis product or service, this is something you’ll surely be looking to rank for! Indeed, having high value in SEO doesn’t just boost visibility, it can boost consumers’ trust in your services. 

5) Local Queries 

Much like informational intent, local queries are fairly self-explanatory; however, they are still quite necessary. Your local community is one of your key layers of support, so you’ll want to make sure you rank locally to have customers from your area coming to shop. 

Location is Key

In addition to search intent, it’s fundamental to learn where to put these select keywords and phrases to best serve your business and make the most out of your cannabis SEO. Different resources will have different uses for keywords. For example, you wouldn’t include a keyword about vaporizers on a product page related to water pipes. Location is critical to your cannabis SEO strategy. 

Location is also important in a couple of other ways. For instance, certain keywords are pay-to-play. It may be worthwhile to consider paying for ad space on Google, rather than ranking organically. Your keyword placement is also vital in terms of where they show up on your web pages. Once you’ve figured out your list of keywords, revisit your webpages with your cannabis SEO agency and think about how you can recreate headings and meta tags to further highlight your brand across your site and Google.

Furthermore, vie for rank placement with keywords that have to do with your target audience, even if they’re not necessarily a product or service you offer. For instance, if you’re a cannabis SEO brand, discover keywords that can allow you to rank for phrases like cannabis marketing firm or cannabis SEO. Regardless of how you choose to go about this, make sure it’s as close to relevant as possible. 

Research Your Brand & Competitors

When it comes to being strategic within our brands, there are certain things we just don’t know. We can’t be sure of everything that’s thought of about our brand, or how people recognize us. That’s why we must research ourselves. What are people saying about your brand? How are they searching for you? If you’re ever in need of a quick check-up, search your brand on Google. You’ll see related keywords at the bottom of the page that can give you an idea of what your audience is searching for, and these can help you further your scope and develop a key strategy of effective keyword research. This can also help you understand who your competitors are, and allow you to develop a strategy about honing your keywords to take on your brand’s competitors. Some companies, for instance, prefer to check out ways to rank for competitors’ top keywords.

Make Your Cannabis Keywords Relevant

Much like the concept of brand relevance, you need to ensure that your desired cannabis keywords are trending. If you stay ahead of the curve and pick out keywords that are seeing an increase in searches, your performance will see directly beneficial effects. Keep on top of keyword relevance by knowing what’s happening in your industry and predictions for the future. You can also check in on keywords to make sure that they’re relevant to your brand and the industry by utilizing Google Trends. Google Trends keeps up with who’s searching what and where. Maybe the keyword you’re ranking for is relevant to your particular region, but in the case that it’s not, Google Trends can let you know and keep you in the game.

Let’s Narrow Those Cannabis SEO Keywords 

When it comes time to select your cannabis SEO keywords, be sure to work with SEO specialists to choose keywords that color your brand. You want your brand to pop out at consumers browsing the web for products and services just like yours. The best way to go about this is by selecting relevant eye-catching keywords — but avoid picking keywords that are impossible to rank for. For example, everyone wants to be the number one search for “cannabis,” but that’s not specific enough for your brand. Keep your eyes peeled for the long-tail keywords. According to MOZ, you should never underestimate long-tail keywords. These are commonly less-searched keywords, but they’re more specific and appropriate to your audience.  

If you’re a business like Lifted Made, you’ll want to be at the top of your game for keywords surrounding products like Delta-8 THC, but if you’re a business centered on selling top-of-the-line smart dab rigs like Dr. Dabber, you’ll want to rank for those keywords instead. Research tools like SEMRush or Ubersuggest can be incredibly beneficial for these reasons. They can help you to learn more about which keywords enable people to find your brand, and they can further help as organizational tools. Of course, if you need ideas of where to start your keyword hunt, check out our blog on SEO keywords for smoke and vape shops.  

No matter how you decide to further your keyword research, working with a team of cannabis SEO professionals that love what they do will make your life a whole lot easier and can push your brand to the next level.