Local SEO for dispensaries

Does your dispensary use local SEO?

You’ve got a location, but how does it tie into your neighborhood, your city, and your state? Local SEO operates on multiple levels, and helps to geographically relate your dispensary and website to the customer’s location.

Google MAP Rankings are independent from Organic Rankings

While there is some crossover between rankings statistics, some factors have a much bigger influence when it comes to dispensary SEO and MAP Rankings. Google says that:

Relevances influence on local dispensary rankings

When Google uses the word relevance, they use it to describe the relationship between a local listing and a user’s search query.

Let’s look at a couple examples:

Search query:  Dispensary near me

Relevance factors Google might consider include how close your dispensary is to the user’s physical location. Additional considerations include:

• Has the user searched for “cheapest” “best” “highest THC” or other modified search queries in the past?
• Does your dispensary website contain any signals that would indicate it has products that match these modifying words?
• Does the user more often use Google maps for driving or walking directions?

Search query: best concentrates in Portland

Relevance factors Google might consider include how many “best of” lists the concentrates you carry are on. Additional considerations include:

• Does your dispensary carry the “best” concentrates out of the dispensaries that are closest to the searcher?
• Is your dispensary listed on any websites as being “the best of Portland” or other similar accolades?
• How much additional content do you have that focuses on concentrates? Are there on-site indications your dispensary knows this product better than others?

How does SEO increase dispensary local relevance signals?

Search engine optimization does a lot to increase local relevance signals and boost dispensary profits. Methods include:

• Building out backlink portfolios in local city and neighborhood directories
• Creating content about local happenings related to your dispensary
• Adding in Schema to make it easy for Google to understand where you are

A 2014 Google study showed: 72 percent of consumers making a local search query (like “nearest dispensary”) visited a location within 5 miles.

When it comes to the MAP Pack, that’s your local radius, and that’s why you need to nail it.

Increasing cannabis dispensary prominence with SEO

Let’s look at a Google search for a dispensary in a major city.

Notice anything? That’s right, the planet 13 dispensary is auto-filling in the search results. If you look through local search results history in Vegas, it’s not the only dispensary name you’ll see come up.

A large part of this has to do with prominence; and when a dispensary is so well known, a trending topic, or a destination in its own right, it can get added into the autofill list or show up as a monitored keyterm. Breaking into the autofill can help your dispensary market itself.

Google looks at links, mentions, and article history for a dispensary across the web, review score and rankings, and where your website is positioned in organic search results.

SEO can help push local prominence

We’ve partnered with a PR firm for a reason, it isn’t our focus as a company. While PR and positive reviews are the best ways to push up your dispensary’s local prominence, SEO can help as well.

Adding a press page to your website that links to all of your notable mentions across the web can create a cyclical effect. User’s who would never know about your press links are visiting them through your website, increasing that presses relevance and its impact on your own site.

Adding in original testimonials that mention the area can be a great way to increase user confidence and site relevance. Adding Schema to testimonials makes them easily understood by Google, and customers mentioning local proximity is always a stronger signal than one made by the dispensary. These also increase niche category relevancy and SEO when they mention something like “quality medical marijuana” for instance.

Adding your site to relevant directories including cannabis-specific and local directories can provide a boost to your search results. Local directories are especially helpful for increasing MAP Rankings, typically more so than for organic rankings.