
Google’s updates kick in every month or two to refine search results for netizens, especially regarding quality, credibility, and engagement. Conversely, the search engine thoroughly assesses brand websites' compliance with updated terms and only ranks the most relevant ones.
In this cat-and-mouse race, many websites risk losing their online rankings. This is precisely what happened with one of our US-based CBD clients after Google’s March core update. Here’s a case study to explain how we brought their rankings back on track with our efficient and clever SEO tactics.
The Problem
Prior to the November core update, Google came up with an “Update to Dangerous Products and Services and Healthcare and Medicines” on January 20th, 2023, declaring that CBD was being removed from the Unapproved Pharmaceuticals and Supplements list in Google’s ad policies.
Essentially, Google allowed previously prohibited CBD ads only for products with up to 0.3% THC content (the legal limit in the United States), verified and tested by third-party labs. Besides, it also introduced a self-certification system, which was essential for every CBD advertising brand.
Our client was unaware of this policy, and since most of their website ranking was coming from ads, their online visibility drastically declined within weeks of the core update's rollout.
As soon as we took up the project, we realized that the site needed to comply with the CBD advertising policies to shoot its paid traffic and pair it with substantial organic traffic to avoid this situation in the future.
Our Strategy
We devised a comprehensive CBD SEO strategy to boost paid and organic traffic on the website. Our plan included content optimization, technical SEO improvements, and building a quality and persistent backlink profile for the site. Here are the highlights of our decision!
Comprehensive Site Audit
We began by conducting a full site audit that involved a detailed analysis of the content, ads, previously ranking keywords, core web vitals, loading speed, and backlink profile. Besides a few technical issues that needed our attention, we identified several content pieces, keywords, and backlinks that required a massive overhaul to comply with Google’s new CBD policies.
Content Optimization
Our first priority was the website’s content, which comprised published ads, landing pages, product descriptions, and blogs. We changed their headings, meta tags, keywords, and body to prominently highlight the THC content and lab test mechanisms. Additionally, we created a brand new page describing the client’s lab testing process and included the links to recent COAs for clarity. This page was interlinked with all the relevant internal pages to boost organic traffic.
Technical SEO Improvements
While the Google core update mainly focussed on the CBD content, we could not neglect the technical issues the client’s site was grappling with. The pages were loading slowly, had several broken links, and their layouts were not mobile-friendly. Since these were significant factors in Google’s choice to index CBD pages, we asked the technical team to fix the issues immediately.
Link Building
Backlink building was a necessary part of our strategy to increase the website's organic traffic. We submitted relevant guest posts, press releases, and niche edit placement requests to Google-compliant CBD sites and built cannabis backlinks for all the new and revised content. Additionally, we ensured the links placed were relevant and contextual to the host content so that they seemed authoritative to viewers and Google’s crawl bots.
Results
After six weeks of consistent hard work and keeping our fingers crossed, we achieved phenomenal traffic, rankings, and business impact results.
Traffic Recovery: Compared to the metrics just a week after the updates were rolled out, the site's traffic increased by 40%.
Ranking Improvements: The website’s top 5 target keywords, which declined 20 points in rankings a few weeks before, landed on Google’s 1st page. Moreover, the site’s overall rankings also improved by 10 points.
Backlink Growth: By the end of the project, we had achieved 250+ credible backlinks for the site, which accounted for a 20% share of its organic traffic boost.
Business Impact: Since ads were now running and ranking, the conversion rates spiked by 10%. This had a positive impact on the client’s business growth.
Key Takeaways
From our perspective, Google’s core update is the perfect way to understand the market pulse and what your target audience has been looking for lately. Our advice is not to panic when your rankings decline. Instead, take it as an opportunity to update your site and cater to the evolving needs of your key viewers.
Most search engines, including Google, deliver SERP results using a “people-first” approach. So, if your site ranks after the updates come into force, rest assured that its authoritativeness and credibility cannot be challenged by any contemporary.