Local SEO can be an effective way to get more foot traffic to your dispensary – but only if you use the right strategy.
A good local SEO strategy helps your cannabis dispensary be more visible to people who want to visit a business like yours, and this increased visibility can result in significant gains in foot traffic.
In this article, I’m going to lay out a local SEO strategy that will help your dispensary be more visible for lucrative search terms. I’ll also be answering questions dispensaries have about the ROI of local SEO and how long it usually takes. Let’s go.
What is Local SEO & How Does It Help Dispensaries?
Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps businesses improve their visibility on Google for local search terms.
Local search terms are those that indicate someone is looking for something specific to a geographic location (usually their location). An example of a local search is if you’re looking for a coffee place near you, so you type in “coffee near me” to see results tailored to your location.
Therefore, local SEO can be a beneficial part of your dispensary’s marketing strategy if your goal is to become more visible to people who are looking for nearby dispensaries, and therefore be the dispensary they choose to visit.
Local SEO Strategy for Cannabis Dispensaries: The Strategic Framework
Decent SEO strategies drive traffic. Great SEO strategies drive revenue.
Therefore, the goal of any local SEO strategy should be to drive foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar locations.
To do this, you need to rank for cannabis keywords that have visiting intent, or the intent to visit a dispensary.
Visiting intent is a type of search intent. Search intent refers to the intention someone has when performing a search. Only by understanding search intent will you be able to make smart SEO decisions that drive revenue.
We use a six-pillar local SEO framework to help our dispensary clients rank for visiting-intent keywords and increase their foot traffic:
- Google Business Profile(s)
- NAP citations
- Location pages
- Blog content
- Link building
- Technical SEO
To be clear, this is a strategic framework, NOT a strategy. Your strategy should be unique to your target customer, the problems you solve for your target audience, and the way you solve those problems (practically speaking, your product line).
That being said, most successful dispensary local SEO strategies will include some or all of these tactics put together.
Most Common Local SEO Mistakes Cannabis Dispensaries Make
There are a few common local SEO mistakes that I see dispensaries and other cannabis retail stores make on a regular basis. These are things that, if fixed, can render outsized returns.
I’m calling them out because, if you’re auditing a local SEO strategy that currently isn’t working, chances are high one of these things is the culprit.
Not optimizing their Google Business Profile
Many dispensaries rank well in the regular blue-link Google results for local keywords, but they don’t rank in the Google Map Pack, which is the module in the search results that contains recommendations for local brick-and-mortar locations.
Google triggers the Map Pack on nearly all keywords that have visiting intent. This is because the Map Pack is designed to provide an interactive way for people to discover and choose nearby destinations.
The Map Pack typically shows the top three recommended destinations. To see more destinations, users have to click. Because of this, a top three ranking in this feature will bring you far more visibility than anything four or below.
As I mentioned earlier, keywords with visiting intent are the most vital for dispensaries to rank for. This means you’ll want to secure a spot in the Map Pack and in the blue-link results. Not doing so has two consequences for dispensaries:
- Because Google shows the Map Pack at the top of the search results, not securing a top-3 ranking in the Map Pack means your business won’t have visibility at the top of the results, even if you have the #1 “regular” blue-link organic ranking.
- If your dispensary isn’t highly visible in the Map Pack, there’s a much lower chance that a potential customer will visit you compared to a competitor who is. This is because the Map Pack draws far more clicks and attention than the rest of the results. This is due in part to the fact that it’s at the top, but it’s also because most people will need to quickly view the address and hours, and will want to look at reviews and images, before choosing a spot.
All this to say: if you have a regular ranking for a high value local term but aren’t in the top three in the Map Pack, you’re at a huge disadvantage compared to dispensaries that are.
Not writing blog content
Dispensaries that don’t consistently publish high-quality blog content about cannabis-related topics will have a harder time ranking for lucrative cannabis-related queries than those that do.
This is because Google prefers to rank pages for a topic that come from websites that are authorities on that topic. Or, in other words, Google prefers websites with high amounts of topical authority.
The easiest way to build topical authority is to publish high-quality SEO-focused blog content.
Publishing cannabis-related blog content on your website helps Google see your business as an authority on cannabis, so you’ll have an easier time ranking for lucrative search terms that drive foot traffic.
But many dispensaries don’t invest in cannabis content writing because:
- At first blush, topical authority is a hazy concept.
- Blog posts don’t drive many direct conversions for local businesses because most of the traffic they receive won’t be from people in their local area.
As a result, they have a hard time outranking dispensaries that do regularly publish high-quality, topically relevant blog content.
Ignoring backlinks
Like high-quality blog content, backlinks (links from other websites to your website) signal to Google that your business is authoritative, which makes it easier to rank for keywords within topics that you’re an authority on.
This means that generally, dispensaries with more relevant backlinks will rank better than dispensaries with fewer relevant backlinks, all else being equal.
Link building alone won’t move the needle for your dispensary, but it can put the fuel on the fire once your SEO foundation (Google Business Profile, location pages, technical SEO) is strong and you’re consistently publishing blog posts.
Like blogging, link building is generally neglected due to a lack of understanding. But dispensaries that ignore this tactic will have a more difficult time ranking for valuable, visiting-intent keywords.
Pillar 1: Google Business Profile
Business Profiles are a feature that Google displays in their search results when someone searches with the intent of finding a nearby business (visiting intent).
Business Profiles contain information about a business like their address, phone numbers, hours, website, and more. They also give people a place to leave reviews of the business.
Google automatically creates these profiles when they learn of the existence of a business. However, these profiles can be claimed by the businesses themselves, or created by a business if Google hasn’t created one for them.
How it works
Through their Map Pack search feature, Google displays Business Profiles that are the best matches when people search visiting-intent keywords, which, as we discussed, are the most valuable type of local keyword for dispensaries.
If your dispensary’s Google Business Profile (GBP) is well-optimized, it has a better chance of being shown at the top of the Map Pack feature. This allows your business to be visible at the top of the search engine result page (SERP) for lucrative visiting-intent search terms, such as “dispensary boston ma.”
Because of this, ranking your GBP should be your #1 focus when doing local SEO.
How to do it
Google considers the following when deciding what order to rank profiles in for a given search query:
- Relevance: Refers to how well a local Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.
- Distance: Considers how far each potential search result is from the location term used in a search.
- Prominence: Refers to how well known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business, from across the web, like links, articles, and directories. Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking. More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business’ local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so search engine optimization (SEO) best practices apply.
As you can see, some part of all three of these factors can be controlled just by optimizing your GBP correctly (much of the prominence factor will be controlled through the other tactics, though).
I’m not going to give you an exhaustive step-by-step guide to completing your GBP, as much of it is common-sense (see this article from Mailchimp for more).
But some of it isn’t, and there are a few critical things you’ll want to ensure you do to have the best chance of ranking well in the Map Pack:
- List a local phone number. If you use a different number for call tracking, set that number as the primary number and put your local number in the secondary number slot.
- Upload plenty of high-resolution photos. You’ll want images of your business’ exterior, interior, and products. Preferably, your images have people in them (this is more about appealing to humans than optimizing for Google).
- Focus on obtaining good reviews. Make an effort to get reviews on your Google Business Profile from your customers. This will increase your visibility and increase the chance that someone who sees your profile will end up visiting your location. Also, be sure to respond to reviews to demonstrate that you value your customers and their feedback.
- Link to corresponding location pages. If you have multiple locations and you’ve built search-optimized location pages (see pillar 3) for each, set these URLs, instead of your homepage URL, as the website for each of your locations. This will also improve the ranking of your GBPs.
- Fill out the questions and answers section. GBPs offer a place to address common questions people have about your business. This reduces the uncertainty people have about visiting your store and gets rid of some of the need to call or message your business. This will keep people from visiting another business because they’re unsure whether your business has what they need.
- Post content on your GBPs. Google allows you to post on your GBP, and these posts show up at the bottom of your full profile in search (which usually shows when someone types your brand name) or when someone clicks your profile in the Map Pack. In this section, you’ll want to post about sales and promotions as people will see these posts before ever reaching your site or visiting your store. More generally, posting helps you expand the amount of real estate your dispensary occupies on SERPs.
Pillar 2: NAP Citations
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. A NAP citation is a listing of your NAP on another website.
How it works
When other sites list your NAP and it matches the NAP on your Google Business Profile, it sends a signal to Google that your business is legitimate and your GBP is up to date.
This is a part of the prominence factor that Google uses when ranking GBPs. Therefore, ensuring that any current NAP citations you have are up-to-date, and you take advantage of easy opportunities for additional NAP citations, can help you improve your local visibility.
Based on what I’ve seen, there isn’t much value in NAP citation building as an ongoing activity (we find ongoing link-building is a more impactful use of resources).
However, auditing your existing citations and acquiring easy additional citations helps to lay a good foundation for efforts that should be done on an ongoing basis, like blogging and link building.
How to do it
There are two things you’ll want do pertaining to NAP citations:
- Audit existing citations and request corrections as needed
- Get new citations from key websites
You’ll want to do both of these steps for each of your locations.
To do the first step, you can simply input your name, address, and phone number into Google search and manually check all of the listings you find to ensure they match what’s on your GBP.
For step two, you’ll want to submit your citations to data aggregators, major directory sites, and industry and local sites. Some of these sites allow you to sign up and input your NAP on your own, while for others, you’ll need to get in touch to have your NAP added or changed.
Below is a brief description of each type of site, as well as key sites to pay attention to:
- Data aggregators: These sites collect and distribute information to sites.
- Express Update
- Neustar localeze
- Factual
- Major directory sites: These sites contain certain types of information about businesses and are visited by many people; you’ll want to ensure the information on them is correct.
- Apple Maps
- Yelp
- Bing Places
- YellowPages
- Better Business Bureau
- Foursquare
- Local sites: These are sites in your industry or locality that list businesses like yours.
- Your local chamber of commerce
- Your local business directory or directories
- Cannabis industry sites
Again, NAP citation building isn’t as crucial as blog content or link building.
However, the consistency of existing NAP citations with your GBP is important, so you’ll want to conduct a sweep of these as you begin to do local SEO for your dispensary.
Pillar 3: Location Pages
Location pages are pages you build for each of your dispensary’s brick-and-mortar locations. They contain information about your locations that are relevant to people who are considering visiting your location(s).
How it works
The purpose of building location pages is to rank for queries that indicate someone wants to visit a dispensary in the area where your location is (visiting intent queries).
By securing a ranking for these terms in the regular results with your location page, while also ranking your GBP, you’re able to occupy more space on the SERP and increase the chance that someone chooses your dispensary over a competitor.
On these pages, you want to show off each of your dispensary locations – give people a reason to visit you. If these pages rank well and make a great first impression on people, chances are high that they’ll drive foot traffic to your store.
How to do it
There are two primary steps to creating your location pages: choosing keywords and building the pages.
1. Choose keywords
You’ll want to create a location page for each one of your brick-and-mortar locations.
The keywords you’ll target for these pages typically follow this pattern:
- “dispensary [location of your store]”
- Example: “dispensary boston ma”
However, this is just a starting point. You’ll want to manually check keyword ideas to ensure the results they return are mostly dispensary location pages or dispensary home pages. If this isn’t the case, it will be nearly impossible for your location page to rank for that term.
That being said, here’s the process I use to find the best-fit keyword for each location page:
- Input different variations of your keyword into a keyword research tool like SEMrush
- Filter by lowest competition/difficulty score
- Put keyword ideas into your spreadsheet
- Checking the results for each keyword and throw away that ones that don’t return dispensary location pages or home pages
- Of the remaining keywords, choose the one with the best balance of high volume and low competition
2. Build your pages
With keywords in mind, it’s time to build your location pages.
If you have many locations, to save time, I recommend creating a page template which you can then customize for each location.
Generally speaking, each location page should have:
- Contact information (NAP + website)
- Products and store features available at the location
- Map and directions
- Parking information
- Plenty of images, preferably with people
- Hours of operation
- Reviews
- Frequently asked questions
To ensure your page is optimized for SEO, do the following:
- Add your keyword to the page’s SEO title and meta description (which display in the search results). Besides including your keyword, use the title and meta to convey the key benefits of each dispensary location.
- Make the H1 heading on the page your keyword (preferably) or a close match.
- Include your keyword and related keywords throughout your page, naturally.
- Answer the questions that appear in the people also ask box for your target keyword.
Pillar 4: Blog Content
Writing helpful SEO-focused blog content helps your dispensary grow its topical authority, which improves the ranking of your GBP and allows you to rank for more competitive search terms.
How it works
The main benefit of writing blog content for local businesses, including dispensaries, is that it increases your site’s topical authority.
Google prefers to rank sites for a given keyword that are an authority on the topic of the keyword. By writing about cannabis, your site will be seen as an authority on cannabis and will therefore rank higher and more quickly for lucrative local cannabis keywords.
Normally, a secondary benefit of blog content for cannabis companies is that it drives traffic from potential customers who aren’t yet ready to buy. This traffic can then be converted into email signups, which can be converted into paying customers.
However, this benefit doesn’t so much apply to businesses that only sell locally or within a very small geographic area, because most of the visitors you’ll get to your blog content won’t be in your area, but instead will be spread throughout the US or Canada (depending on where you’re located).
That being said, if you sell online in addition to selling locally (e.g. if your products are legal nationwide), blogging has this additional benefit.
How to do it
Using blog content to build topical authority entails two main things: choosing the right keywords and creating good content.
1. Choose keywords
While there are quite a few factors you’ll want to consider when choosing blog topics, at a basic level, any head keyword should meet three criteria:
- Maps to the products you sell (so you’ll build useful topical authority).
- Has decent monthly search volume – to start, I recommend keywords with 50-100 searches per month starting out (so you’ll get traffic if you rank).
- Has reasonably low competition – to start, I recommend a difficulty score (via an SEO tool) of 30 or under to start (so you can rank in a reasonable time frame).
Start by thinking about your product line. Let’s say you sell pre-rolls, vapes, and concentrates.
From there, think about the main subtopics under each of these head topics. For pre-rolls, these might be:
- What is a pre roll
- How much do pre rolls cost
- How to light a pre roll
In the beginning, some of these topics might be difficult. In our example, “what is a pre roll” will take a while to rank for and might not give you the most valuable traffic.
If this is the case for a keyword, think about sub-sub-topics:
- What is a pre roll
- What is an infused pre roll
- Pre roll vs joint
- How much do pre rolls cost
- How to light a pre roll
Thinking hierarchically, you can uncover topics that are easy to rank for and will help your site build authority.
As you go, you’ll want to run these topics through a keyword research tool so you can prioritize them correctly. Using a tool can also help you find additional topic ideas, some of which may be better than the ones you think of.
2. Write content
The content writing process has many steps. Instead of listing them all out, I’ll focus on three key pieces of advice that will help your content outperform 90% of what’s put out by other cannabis companies.
- Do a SERP analysis. The easiest way to write content that ranks is to reverse-engineer what’s already ranking for your target keyword. This will tell you which subtopics people typically want to read about when they search for your keyword – in other words, exactly what you need to discuss to rank. Use this information to build a skeleton outline for your article, then, improve the structure and add unique insights. That’s how you not only rank, but rank #1.
- Research your article thoroughly. Most brands regurgitate information from existing articles instead of bringing unique insights to the table. This presents you an easy opportunity to outdo them. Interview subject-matter-experts from within your company (or maybe you’re a subject-matter-expert), incorporate scientific research, and incorporate anecdotal insights from your customers and platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Twitter. Do this, and your content will be more informative and interesting than most existing content.
- Embellish your article. After you’ve written an article that’s better-optimized and more informative than most other brands’, take it a step further by adding custom images and graphics, as well as YouTube videos. Apart from the brand-affinity benefits it brings, this will increase the amount of time people stay on your site, which contributes to your ranking.
Pillar 5: Link Building
Building backlinks to your site on a regular basis helps you increase your authority over time, which gives you a better shot at ranking your GBP in the top three and ranking in the normal results for valuable keywords.
How it works
Google perceives backlinks as votes of confidence. The more links you have from sites relevant to yours, the more trustworthy you’re perceived to be. And the more trustworthy you are, the more willing Google is to rank your site for lucrative, highly competitive queries.
How to do it
Building backlinks requires two basic steps: choosing a method(s) and performing the necessary outreach to make that method(s) work.
1. Choose a method
When it comes to building links in the cannabis industry, you have three main options:
- PR. Using platforms like Source of Sources, Qwoted, and SourceBottle, you can respond to journalists and bloggers seeking sources with information they need. This offers you an opportunity to respond to these requests with a pitch and some information. If they accept your pitch, you might get a backlink.
- Bloggers. Reaching out to cannabis-focused bloggers and offering something in exchange for a backlink (e.g. a guest post) is an effective way to get relevant backlinks.
- Partnerships. Offering something to a company in the cannabis niche that isn’t a direct competitor is another way to get highly-relevant and valuable backlinks.
2. Perform outreach
Once you select a method, you’ll need to perform outreach using that method on a regular basis.
If you’re using PR platforms, which usually send journalist requests on a daily basis, you’ll need to monitor your inbox and respond to pitches as they come.
If you go the blogger or partnership route, set a schedule for reaching out to eligible sites.
Pillar 6: Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of improving your website’s architecture to help Google find, crawl, and index your pages.
The architecture of your website is the foundation of everything you do in SEO, so getting it right is important before you begin building lots of pages and scaling up the size of your site.
How it works
Having a clean website architecture allows Google’s robots to easily find, crawl, and index all the pages on your site. A page can only rank if it’s first been indexed.
Generally, most website platforms and builders create technically sound sites out-of-the-box, so technical SEO isn’t a big problem for most dispensaries.
That being said, if you’re kicking off an organized SEO effort, you’ll want to check for and fix major issues if they do exist so that the investments you make can pay off.
How to do it
There’s a seemingly endless list of technical SEO fixes you can make, and many of the things that SEO tools identify as “errors” don’t impact search performance in any meaningful way.
Because of this, I’m only going to cover the issues that have the biggest implications from an SEO standpoint. For a more comprehensive list, I recommend this article from SEOClarity.
You can use an SEO tool to find and fix:
- Broken links. Not only are they unhelpful to users; if you’re linking to pages that no longer exist or have had their URL changed, the performance of the page that links out can be negatively impacted. This is because Google will see the page as being poorly maintained.
- Redirect chains. These offer a poor user experience and are easy to fix; simply cut out the “middleman” URLs and redirect the original broken URL directly to the final page.
You can use Google Search Console to find and fix:
- Pages that are discovered, but not indexed. Check this section for URLs that should be indexed. If Google has crawled and discovered your page but isn’t indexing it, chances are, it’s because the content is thin and unhelpful. Fixing or deleting these pages is important because bad pages lower your site’s overall quality as judged by Google and hold back good pages from ranking.
- Duplicate pages without a user-selected canonical. Canonical means original or preferred. Pages in this section are those that Google thinks are duplicates of other pages on your site. When this happens, Google chooses which page is the original and often redirects the non-canonical to the “original” URL. What you’ll need to do here is differentiate the pages enough so Google no longer views them as duplicates. Again, this issue can cause content to effectively be blocked from ranking and driving results until you fix it.
What Local SEO KPIs Should Cannabis Dispensaries Focus On?
The goal of any SEO campaign is to drive business results, and the main reason dispensaries invest in local SEO is to increase their foot traffic.
Unfortunately, it’s basically impossible to directly measure the amount of people who visit your dispensary from Google.
This can pose a problem for in-house marketers – and for SEO agencies like ours – because we need to prove the value of our work.
So what you’ll need to do instead is measure metrics that are leading indicators of foot traffic:
- GBP “action” metrics: Google enables you to track actions that happen through your Google Business Profile. These actions include clicking on your website, requesting directions, calling your business, and more. Engagement with your GBP is a proxy for the amount of interest your business is receiving from searchers.
- GBP views: The number of views your Google Business Profile gets is a reflection of how visible you are in the local market, which is a loose proxy for the amount of foot traffic you’ll receive.
- Local search rankings: Your Google Business Profile ranking for local dispensary keywords (e.g. “dispensary boston ma”), as well as your location page rankings for these terms, are lead indicators for the number of views your business will receive from search.
- Organic traffic: Like GBP metrics, your website’s organic traffic is a measure of how much interest your business is receiving.
What is the ROI of Local SEO for Cannabis Dispensaries?
Our clients typically see payback in 3-4 months (i.e. we’re making as much for them as they’re paying us), and a 3-4x ROI within 6-8 months of working together.
Your local SEO ROI will vary based on:
- The size of your total addressable market (TAM)
- The quality of your SEO strategy
- The quality and quantity of your SEO efforts
I know that isn’t a satisfying answer, so I’ll give some anecdotal evidence and an equation you can use to estimate your local SEO ROI before you ever begin.
Local SEO ROI benchmarks for dispensaries
Our estimates are based on the following benchmarks, which you can use to estimate your ROI”
- ~75% of local searches result in store visits
- ~23% of these store visits will be to your store if you rank #1 in the GBP and top three in the organic results (extrapolated from % of clicks)
- ~25% of people who visit your dispensary will buy something
- The average purchase value for dispensaries is $70 (conservative estimate)
As an example, let’s say you’re ranking #1 in the GBP and top three in the organic results for visit-intent keywords with a total search volume of 2,000 per month.
- 1,500 people will visit a dispensary from search
- 345 of these people will visit YOUR dispensary
- 86 people will place orders of $70 = $6,020 in monthly revenue
- 10% of people will come back again and make two more $70 purchases each = $1,120
- $6,020 + $1,120 = $7,140 in revenue from search each month
Depending on your brand, achieving a #1 ranking in the Map Pack and top-three ranking in the organic results for visit-intent keywords is completely possible in 6-8 months.
If you’re paying $2,000 for local SEO services each month, this would represent a better-than-3x ROI.
Additionally, given that the customer lifetime value (LTV) for returning dispensary customers has been found to be in excess of $1,000, the ROI I measured here is completely possible for many dispensaries even if they were playing with a smaller total addressable market or couldn’t rank well in both the Map Pack and organic results.
Benchmarks provide a starting point, not a definitive answer
Now, when making any sort of calculation based on existing data, we have to be skeptical of the result. That data isn’t your data, and all of it is predicated on the assumption that you can achieve the rankings mentioned above.
You should run this analysis using your dispensary’s total addressable market, conversion rate, AOV, retention rate, and LTV numbers before doing local SEO.
That being said, I hope you can see from this data why it is that so many top dispensaries invest in local SEO: it can drive serious ROI.
How Long Does It Take to See Foot Traffic from Local SEO?
If you focus on optimizing your Google Business Profile(s) and building key location pages, you can begin seeing an uptick in foot traffic from search in just 1-2 months. Sometimes you can even see early results in a matter of weeks.
However, you’ll need to wait at least 3-4 months to begin seeing a significant ROI on local SEO, whether you’re paying for services or putting in the hours yourself.
Takeaway: How to Commandeer Local Search & Drive More Foot Traffic for Your Dispensary
SEO requires some specialized knowledge, but honestly, most of what goes into improving your presence on local searches is simply providing experiences to people that are helpful and logical.
Make sure your Google Business Profiles are up-to-date and show people exactly what they’re getting; build website pages that show people what to expect of your dispensary locations; write helpful content that answers people’s questions. Get the basics right.
When you focus on serving people online the same way you do in your dispensaries, local SEO becomes a lot easier. The work you do will be more impactful, and you’ll spend less energy sweating the small stuff.
How to Learn More or Work With Our Cannabis SEO Agency
- Book a call. If you want to work with a revenue-focused SEO agency that helps cannabis dispensaries drive foot traffic, book a call with us. We’ll discuss your needs and see if we can help your business bring new customers in the door profitably.
- Our services. We offer revenue-focused dispensary SEO services, cannabis SEO services, and cannabis content writing services to businesses looking to grow their top line revenue and improve their profit margins.
- Our blog. A collection of articles that will help you grow your cannabis or CBD business with SEO.
- Our YouTube channel. Videos detailing SEO strategies and tactics to help cannabis and CBD businesses grow.
- Our LinkedIn. SEO and marketing insights for cannabis brands six times a week, straight Wells, our founder (that’s me).