How Do Keywords Help in Creating a Cannabis Brand?
Creating a cannabis brand is similar to starting any new brand, yet the negative connotations make it challenging to promote. You can overcome these challenges by using a strategic method like keyword research.
Keywords are the stepping stone of a marketing strategy. They strengthen SEO for your brand and help Google find your website easily. While this holds true for most industries and their brands, cannabis does not have the luxury of enjoying this freedom.
Social media sites and paid ad platforms, such as Google, have banned the promotion of several CBD products that are legal. Despite the development of the cannabis industry over the past decade or so, the resistance from online marketing platforms proves challenging. This affects keyword research and SEO while creating a cannabis brand.
Still, there are ways around this problem that many cannabis brands have incorporated that can be useful to you.
Keywords for Cannabis
If there weren’t many cannabis brands on the internet, it would be easy to rank on the first page of Google, but nothing comes that easy in the world of marketing.
Keyword research for a cannabis brand requires you to search for words and phrases with low competition on the internet. Common phrases such as CBD Oil or Dispensary near me won’t help your website’s SEO. You need unique phrases that target a specific audience while helping Google find your website.
There are many CBD keywords available with low search ranking and monthly volume. Although targeting location-relevant keywords would serve the purpose of optimizing your SEO, it's also beneficial to keep an eye on other interesting low-volume keywords. Some of these keywords are:
- cannabis vape pen
- cannabis candy
- cannabis cream
- cannabis extract
- cannabis gummies
- CBD pills
- CBD lotion
- CBD products
- CBD patches
There are many more keywords that can help you attract your target audience. Before using any of the keywords mentioned above or you find online, make sure to conduct keyword research. Once you have your primary keyword, you can use that in your content’s
- H1 heading or title
- URL
- First paragraph
- In a few H2s and H3s
- Image Alt tag and filename
- Meta title and description
- Throughout the page, where relevant
Challenges + Tips for Creating a Cannabis Brands
Online marketing is impossible without keywords for creating a cannabis brand. However, the ban from paid ads platforms and social media sites for certain cannabis-related words offers critical challenges that you'd have to overcome with a strategic marketing plan. Some of the problems and their solutions are listed below:
Problem with the Right Term
While cannabis is the official term for this brand industry, the negative terms associated with the products are more popular. Marijuana, weed, pot, and ganja are some of them. The association with these socially unacceptable words makes it difficult to use cannabis as a primary keyword for all web content.
The main competition is between cannabis and marijuana, and you will have to compromise on the former to gain more page visits. Marijuana is the term that will get you more visitors on the website as compared to cannabis.
Still, the industry is doing its best to popularize “cannabis” as the proper term, so feel free to participate in this transformation. Moreover, if “cannabis” is popularized in the next few years, you'll already have optimized content on your website.
Reverse Engineering Low DR Pages
If keyword research websites prove to be useless, you can use low DR sites to get your keywords. Finding cannabis keywords is not always easy, especially when you have a target audience in mind.
You know the kind of content your audience is looking for, so reverse engineer the keyword from low DR and high traffic websites. Once you have the website links, find their top pages and look for the keywords they are ranking for.
Take Advantage of Gap Analysis
If you have never used Ahrefs before, it’s time you start investing in it! Ahrefs has a keyword explorer that can help you with gap analysis. It shows the gap in your content where you can use a keyword that will rank.
By using the gap analysis, you can improve your content and website visibility. Remember to check your competitors’ low DR sites as well. It will help in finding the keywords they have ranked for.
The Strains Game
Indica, terpenes, and Sativa are the popular cannabis strains that can be used as keywords, but should you? Our advice is to avoid the terms altogether and focus on their benefits only. It's a key challenge for the SEO of cannabis brands, surfaced due to the lack of knowledge in most cannabis consumers.
The curiosity gets the best of cannabis users, and that's how such keywords are popularized. However, you should avoid any keyword that mentions a strain name so that your article does not get mixed with the million other blog posts that Google's bot is crawling through.
Also, using a keyword with low search volume is suitable for your website and brand. It will be easier for Google to check for SEO and consider it a useful page for the related keyword.
Google’s Role in Cannabis Marketing
While Google is the platform you want to target for SEO and organic traffic, it is not ideal for paid ads. Cannabis dispensaries are discouraged from using Google’s digital marketing platform for their products and content.
Organic traffic is the only way Google is willing to help in creating a cannabis brand. All those CBD keywords would be useless if you researched them for Google's marketing platform. While promotion through Google is not possible at the moment, your focus should be on the content. SEO is the best bet for cannabis brands right now!
Final Words
The world is ready to accept cannabis as a functional product, and now it's time to create brands that help customers meet their cannabis needs. Use keywords and SEO as your online marketing tools to reach as many people as you can. It won't only improve your website ranking and monthly traffic but will also recognize your cannabis brand as an essential industry asset in the coming years.
