Marketing a CBD brand is like playing 3D chess when your counterparts in other industries are playing checkers! The task is incredibly complicated since CBD as a product is strictly regulated across jurisdictions and faces high competition in the market.
If you’re looking for a marketing agency for your CBD brand, it’s best to rely on pros like us and secure a cannabis SEO service that not only optimizes your CBD site for better online visibility but also delivers tangible results, such as high-traffic volume, increased keyword rankings, and a spike in domain authority.
Here’s a case study depicting how we raised our CBD client’s site traffic by 220% in 2 months and gave them an unbeatable brand exposure for long-term financial growth.
Challenges
Our journey to meet our goals wasn’t smooth, as we were dealing with a CBD site that lacked optimization on multiple levels. Our client had initially started as a CBD retail store in Texas and was looking to expand after achieving local success. The only affordable way to do that was by going online, so they built a new website and launched it a few months ago.
However, since its launch, the client has never hired a marketing agency to promote it, which has caused its search engine visibility to never gain traction. Besides, the content on the site was limited to a few landing pages only, and the backlink profile was practically absent.
The results were poor traffic, extremely low SERP rankings, and a domain rating that never caught up! To fix these issues, we started from scratch and implemented our tried and tested 5-step SEO strategy consistently for two months.
SEO Strategy Implemented
Our SEO strategy was comprehensive and encompassed every traditional SEO technique known to deliver instant results. However, since we were dealing with the CBD industry, we had to incorporate certain out-of-the-box elements to override the competition. Let’s take a quick peek into the steps we had planned!
Keyword Research
Keywords were the foundation on which we built our CBD SEO empire! We consulted our client to understand their products, brand, and USP so we could pick out keywords not only with high search volume but also ones that were relevant and could help us build a niche.
For this, we used several keyword research tools, such as Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and Moz. Our emphasis was to strike a balance between long-tail and short-tail keywords so we could rank our client’s site for diverse high and low-competition search terms.
On-Page Optimization
Once we had our keyword list handy, we started optimizing the site with their inclusions. It already had a home page and a few relevant product category pages ready with content. We revised them by optimally placing the relevant keywords in the headings, meta tags, and content body.
Besides, we also enhanced their readability by shortening the paragraphs, inserting tables, pointers, and charts, as well as a few media elements. We ensured adequate interlinking on keyword-rich anchor texts to improve traffic and added alt texts to product images for clarity of search engine crawl bots and visually impaired users.
Technical SEO
Next, we shifted our focus towards technical aspects of the site to ensure high-grade performance. A few pages were loading slowly and had low responsiveness. Besides, some links were broken and gave 404 errors upon clicking.
To fix these issues, we collaborated with the technical team, reduced large media files that took time to load, optimized the backend JS and CSS codes, and cleared caches. The broken links were redirected to relevant internal pages.
Additionally, we altered a few design elements to make the site more mobile-friendly, and with all the changes done, we updated the sitemap and robot.txt files for quick and accurate search engine crawling.
Content Creation
To maintain consistent traffic and rankings, we built new blog and newsletter sections. Our goal was to publish 3 to 4 blogs and 1 newsletter every week on the site. To ensure high quality, our content curators wrote well-researched content, inserted relevant keywords, and structured each content piece properly.
Besides, we wanted to explore the audio-visual dimension of content as well. So, we curated many explainer videos, relevant featured images, and infographics that enhanced their reading experience and led to increased engagement by users, reducing the bounce rates to a minimum.
Backlink Building
While we had put our best efforts into getting direct search traffic on the client’s website, it was time to secure referral search traffic as well. For this, we did CBD link building.
Our approach was to first identify high-ranking, niche-specific articles published by authoritative CBD sites and then reach out to their authors to negotiate our link placement terms through niche edits. Besides we also submitted several articles and press releases to guest posts and CBD review sites that were influential to our target audience.
Finally, since CBD advertisements were prohibited on digital platforms, we approached several media outlets and news websites to publish our CBD ads, which not only brought referral traffic but also drove conversions.
Results Achieved
Our approach, planning, and execution together led us to achieve groundbreaking SEO results for the client’s CBD site in just 2 months. Here’s a few of them!
- Organic traffic increased by 220%, bringing monthly visitors from under 500 to over 1,600.
- Referral traffic improved by 150%, driven by strategic CBD link building and media placements.
- SERP rankings for top 3 target keywords - improved by 15 positions on Google
- The average page loading speed increased by 40% on desktop and 50% on mobile devices.
- The average session duration for landing pages improved by 35%, indicating user engagement.
- Site domain authority was raised by 12 points
- Conversion rates increased by 30%
Key Takeaways
Cannabis, specifically CBD, is an evolving industry across the globe. Several of the legal challenges it faced earlier are now being overridden by new regulations regarding its production, usage, and possession by the general public. Long story short, its popularity in major markets like the US is spreading like wildfire!
In such a situation, as a CBD brand owner, you need a marketing partner who not only lends you an optimized site at the end of the day but actually understands the ins and outs of your market to place you at the top of the competition! We at 747 Media House have been doing exactly that for our numerous CBD clients for decades.
