Luke Douglas is a fitness and health blogger at Ripped.me and a great fan of the gym and a healthy diet. He follows the trends in fitness, gym and healthy life and loves to share his knowledge through useful and informative articles.

The cannabis industry might be flourishing more and more with each passing year, but that doesn’t mean that success in this field is a guarantee. Now that governments around the world are increasingly legalizing the use of cannabis and that more and more retailers are entering this competitive market, it becomes imperative for retailers and aspiring shop owners to take digital marketing seriously, and focus on the most promising tactics that will help them boost brand visibility, recognition, and trust. Of course, one of the most important methods you need to focus on to achieve this goal is SEO.

Meticulous search engine optimization is becoming imperative nowadays, as you need a concrete way to put your business on the online map, make your brand visible in all relevant search results, and drive traffic to your site to boost your Ecommerce – even if you might be operating primarily out of your physical store. With all of that in mind, here are the best SEO tactics that will take your cannabis business forward.

Start by choosing your domain name

First things first, let’s start by addressing a common problem business owners face – choosing the right domain name for your shop. The domain name is still an important ranking factor for Google, so it’s important to choose yours carefully, and to consider all of the elements that go into a well-crafted domain. Provided that you have research the most relevant keywords for your business, you can get cracking. Begin by trying to weave your brand’s name into the domain if possible.

People love branded domains because they are memorable, and it makes searching a breeze. Next, try to weave your top-priority keyword into the domain, as this will help Google figure out what your business specializes in, and tailor the search results. And of course, it’s best that you choose one of the TLDs (top-level domains) such as .com, .org, .net, .gov, .biz and .edu in order to improve your trust factor.

Create a simple website structure

Ecommerce websites can be notoriously difficult for search engines to crawl and index properly, simply due to the sheer amount of content and different categories, subcategories, product pages, and more. All of this can be a confusing mess for the search engines and your customers alike, so not only is it important to tidy up every URL and create SEO-friendly content (more on that in a bit), but it’s also important to build a simple and straightforward website structure.

In a nutshell, your website structure should be as simple as having a home page, relevant main categories, and as few subcategories as possible to make navigation more intuitive for the customer. Be sure to add a search box, and integrate an XML sitemap to make it easier for search engines and customers to navigate your website. Finally, don’t let broken links and outdated pages lower your SEO score, so always test your pages, and fix them promptly.

Create SEO-friendly content

Content creation is the cornerstone of SEO, and should therefore be one of your top priorities. Now, creating content doesn’t just mean publishing amazing articles on your blog page regularly (although it does mean that as well), it also means optimizing all of the content on your website to make it easy for search engines to crawl, understand, and properly index every page. This requires research and a lot of work on a continuous basis but is nonetheless essential if you want to rank high in the SERPs.

This is also why leaders in the industry are increasingly leveraging white label SEO service companies to handle the workload and optimize every part of the website for the first page on Google, whether you’re trying to rank higher locally or globally. This is especially beneficial to small local retailers that need to emphasize local SEO in their marketing strategies.

Build a backlink portfolio

SEO is not just about creating amazing content on your own website; it’s also publishing amazing content on other authority websites in the cannabis industry and generating organic backlinks that will transfer some of that much-needed SEO juice over to your site. Be sure to get in touch with prominent bloggers in your niche, and see if they are willing to let you guest post on their blog. If you write a truly compelling piece, you can ask for a mention and a link that will lead traffic directly to your website. In turn, Google will recognize the authority and relevance of your site as well, and push you up the search results.

Optimize your site for mobile

Finally, one of your top priorities should be to optimize the performance of your site across the board, which also means optimizing it for the mobile audience. Now that people are shopping and consuming content via smartphones and handheld devices, it’s imperative that you leverage AMPs (accelerated mobile pages) to make mobile browsing a breeze, and incentivize people to either get in touch or buy your products. Besides, Google puts mobile-friendly websites first, so all the more reason to go mobile as quickly as possible.

Wrapping up

With the cannabis industry becoming more competitive every year, retailers have to start implementing digital marketing tactics that will set them apart on the local and global scene. Use these SEO tips to build brand exposure and visibility, and of course, trust and loyalty with your customers.