Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a helpful marketing strategy, but as with most marketing strategies, it’s only effective if you know what you’re looking for and what to do with it. Cannabis brands can benefit from SEO by understanding how people are finding their sites, and how they can use this information to grow their online traffic. 

So, how does that work exactly? Here are three ways dispensaries can use SEO to increase their sales.

Study the Keywords

The keywords that lead people to your site can teach you a lot, but not all keywords are the same. You can use a tool specifically designed for keyword research (my personal favorite is SEMRush) to get a more in-depth look at what’s happening behind the scenes, but Google’s suggested search feature can give you a lot of information too. While all kinds of keywords have value and a role to play in an SEO strategy, we’re going to focus on geographic and informational keywords and how they can impact your cannabis sales.

For a dispensary, geographic keywords such as “dispensary near (city),” or “best cannabis strains in (city)” are a natural fit because they’re less competitive than broader keywords like “best cannabis strains” that have more search volume and are subsequently way more competitive and difficult to rank for. What’s the point of this? It helps you figure out what terms to put in your title tags, H1s, and other website content, which will in turn help connect your website with the customers who are searching for it. 

On the other hand, informational keywords don’t have as much direct purchase intent, and are instead being used for research purposes. They’re still valuable though! Some examples of these might include “what is cannabis” or “what’s the difference between indica and sativa.” That’s right, the same questions you probably get asked a million times per day by your customers are the same ones they’re looking up online. Identifying those questions, answering them in a genuinely helpful way, and optimizing the pages people are landing on can help increase the traffic coming to your site. If you have a blog, these queries can make excellent topics for blog posts, which will in turn increase traffic. Answering user questions also helps establish your business as a trusted authority, which is a factor in SEO success. 

Gather Competitive Research

You can gain a lot of useful information from researching your competitors. The more similar their business is to yours, the more useful the information will be. Everything from the keywords they’re ranking for to the way they structure their products and content on their websites can offer useful insights into what works well in your industry and your area. Research and take note of things that are working well, and things you could potentially experiment with on your own website. 

Know Your Local SEO

Getting local SEO dialed in is key to successful marketing for cannabis businesses, especially with all of the legalities surrounding cannabis sales. Local SEO, as the name implies, is a search confined to a specific local area. The first step to getting local SEO right is to claim your business profiles on Google My Business and Apple Maps. These profiles have all of your business information such as your hours of operation, your contact information, your address, and your website. While local search is an art form in and of itself, your website needs to have your local information included, especially if you have multiple locations. 

Why does all of this matter? Because search engines index local listings too, so when people are searching for cannabis retailers in your area, you’re much more likely to show up if your local listings are dialed in. 

Melissa Messer is the Content Marketing Manager for MyAdvice.

Originally from Ventura County, Calif., Jason Evans spent his summers working on his family's roughly 1,000-acre farm.

They grew various crops such as tomatoes, lima beans, peppers, jalapenos and more. "Basically, stuff that goes into salsa," Evans says with a laugh.

Evans explains that after seeing his family's stressors on the farm, he decided to go to college to study finance instead of taking over the family farm. 

Upon graduating, he spent about 20 years in San Francisco in institutional fixed income, he says. He retired from that in 2012 and moved on to own two brick-and-mortar "soda pop and candy shop" retail stores. He had one location in Portland, Ore., and another in Palm Springs, Calif., he says.

"I was traveling between the two and not really enjoying it," he adds.

In late 2015—following the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill—he decided to go back to his roots and co-founded Tweedle Farms with James Green.

Tweedle Farms, a cannabinoid hemp farm in Jewell, Ore., “has about 10 acres of outdoor production, 6,000 square feet of greenhouse production and 1,000 square feet of greenhouse propagation,” Cannabis Business Times previously reported.

Despite Evan’s background in agriculture, he still faced challenges during his early years of cultivation. Here, he shares his top insights and lessons learned to help cultivators increase their chances of success when they first get into the business.

 1. Start Small.

Evans suggests starting small and producing minimal crop acres in your first year of cultivation to limit potential oversupply, which can lead to unsold products and unexpected expenses.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got four acres, 40 acres or 400 acres; you can always produce more next year,” he says. “But if you overproduce, you’re going to create waste and endure [expenses]. A lot of people went through this in 2016, ‘17 and ‘18."

As more farmers entered the industry in 2018 following the passage of the Farm Bill, oversaturation–especially in the CBD market—became a widespread issue in the industry.

RELATED: 6 Strategies Hemp Industry Members Are Pushing to Overcome Oversupply

"That year, there started to be a lot more farmers, and that put us into a glut because people overproduced, which also, in turn, kind of caused this delta-8 [THC] phenomenon because you had millions of pounds of unused biomass and millions of kilos of unused CBD isolate that needed to be monetized," he says. "In year two, we overproduced, and we learned from that.  

© Courtesy of Tweedle Farms

2. Know your climate, soil, water needs and genetics.

Evans says it's essential to grow according to your location's climate.

"Every area will have its own kind of unique climate, soil and access to water," he says. 

He uses the water drought in Oregon and California as an example. Where Tweedle Farms is located in Northwest Oregon, it gets its water from spring-fed ponds and has not been affected by the water drought; however, Evans says the farm still "takes steps to do water collection off of the roofs of the greenhouses and off of our utility sheds to have as little impact as possible."

Evans says genetic selection is also hugely important, as a cultivar that performs well in one state may not in another. He also adds that knowing who you're buying genetics from is crucial.

"You don't want to buy seed from unknown, untested or untried breeders," he says. "There's a myriad of problems that pop up with seeds that produce flower that has too much THC, and it tests hot. [Or] if it's listed as feminized, but then there's an overabundance of males, and the crop gets pollinated and seeded, which completely kills your economic viability in the cannabinoid market."

He also suggests diversifying your genetics, as it helps give species a better chance for survival.

"Never throw all your eggs in one basket," he says. "Even if you only have a small patch to land, spread it out a little bit between a couple of breeders, a couple of strains, because you never know what's going to work and what isn't and if you throw it all into one basket, you may have a banner year, but you could also just have nothing."

3. Know your laws, but also engage with your legislators.

Engage with your department of agriculture and state regulators, as they can be a valuable resource and help you meet your needs, Evans says.

"I think people have a kind of a misconception with local state and federal departments, and it's almost an adversarial relationship, but they're there to help," he says. "I know that sounds kind of funny, like, 'Hey, I'm here from the government. I'm here to help.' But, in my experience dealing with whether it's the ODA, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, or even the OLCC, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, I've had nothing but great responses."

4. Engage with other farmers, trade associations and farm associations.

Evans says one of the most beneficial things he's done for his farm is build relationships with other farmers in the industry. Whether it's planting season or the middle of harvest, he says he is always traveling to different farms throughout Oregon or making an effort to call them.

"Build relationships with other farmers by calling them and saying, 'Hey, what are you growing this year?' or telling them, 'Hey, here's what I'm growing this year.' So that you end up building a network and a framework on which you can all build off of each other, and then also use each other as support," he says.

He adds that connecting with local trade or farm associations can also help connect you with other farmers in the industry.

5. Have a plan, but be flexible.

Regardless of what you're growing for or where you're growing, it's always essential to have a backup plan, Evans says.

"There's that old saying that 'People don't plan to fail, but they fail to plan.' This is mother nature, and the market changes and the seasons change. So you have to have a framework in place," he says.

"You can't just go random and think you're going to make money," he adds. "You have to be adaptable, and you have to be able to improvise and be flexible with changing legislations, changing climate, any number of changes and not be so rigid that you stick to a plan to your detriment."

Two years into Apothio LLC’s lawsuit against Kern County, Calif., and others—relating to local and state government officials’ alleged destruction of roughly 500 acres of hemp—the company is bringing forth new allegations.

On May 25, Apothio filed an amended complaint against various defendants previously named in case filings, including representatives from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). It also added another name on the defendant list: Andrew Halverson of the CDFW, who was not mentioned in the original April 2020 complaint but has been mentioned in subsequent case filings.

In the case playing out in the U.S. District Court’s Eastern District of California, the amended complaint alleges, among other things, that “Halverson intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly misrepresented Apothio’s terminated processing agreement with [a company called] ProCann … in the Halverson Warrant and Affidavit to manufacture a narrative that Apothio intended to sell hot hemp rather than legal hemp below the 0.3% THC threshold.”

The complaint continues: “In the Halverson Warrant and Affidavit, Halverson stated (1) that Apothio cannot sell hemp with over ‘0.3% THC content,’ (2) that a contract between Apothio LLC and ProCann states that Apothio will send biomass to ProCann, and (3) that Apothio is ‘planning on selling the hemp that it is [sic] over 0.3%.’”

However, the language in the since-terminated contract allegedly stated, per the May 25 complaint, that “the biomass extract to be sold is to be ‘less than 0.3% THC,’ showing that Apothio possessed the opposite intent of what Halverson falsely attributed to Apothio.”

Another allegation in the complaint centers around an interview that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents supposedly had with Kern County Agricultural Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser and Deputy Director Cerise Montanio about a week prior to the crop’s destruction in October 2019. The complaint cites a four-page FBI report of that interview that stated that Apothio CEO Dr. Trent Jones was working to be compliant with laws and hemp industry regulations, didn’t appear to have criminal intent, and provided documentation about Apothio’s legal hemp research with Cerro Coso Community College.

However, Halverson, who was not in the interview but had been in contact with Montanio and the agents, didn’t share his knowledge about the agent’s findings, the complaint alleges.

According to the May 25 complaint, defendant KCSO Sheriff’s Sergeant Joshua Nicholson had “intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly, misrepresented” a proposed settlement agreement that Apothio had with another company, vendor Newbridge Global Ventures.

At least a couple of Newbridge employees, per the complaint, had “demonstrated to Apothio that they were willing to break the law and violate the parties’ agreement.” Months after Jones allegedly wrote to a Newbridge executive “summarizing Newbridge’s illegal conduct” in July 2019, Newbridge sued Apothio in September of that year, “then began a smear campaign to bring law enforcement and negative publicity down on Apothio based on false claims.”

Nicholson’s affidavit for the search and seizure of Apothio’s hemp crop cites one of the Newbridge employees whom Jones had accused of misconduct (outside of court) months prior.

But not all government officials in the county were apparently on board with destroying Apothio’s crops. In a meeting among local government officials prior to the crops’ destruction, “Fankhauser and at least one other person in attendance” warned KCSO Sheriff and defendant Donny Youngblood that Apothio’s crops were legal because the company was conducting research, according to the complaint.

“Youngblood responded by screaming and swearing at Fankhauser, claiming that he did not care and that he was destroying the crops to prevent a crime,” the complaint states.

Later, following the crops’ destruction, Nicholson and Halverson interviewed Jones and tape-recorded at least part of the conversation, according to the May complaint.

Addressing that interview, the amended complaint reads: “Nicholson admitted that he was destroying the crops without determining whether Apothio’s conduct was criminal. In explaining his investigation, Nicholson said he takes ‘all that I’ve learned’ to the district attorney ‘and then it’s up to them to decide whether what you have done was criminal, non-criminal, or it could go either way, so we’re not going to deal with it.’”

As with previous case filings by Apothio, the amended complaint highlights 2015 reporting by The Guardian about Kern County having “the largest number of people killed by police per capita in the entire country” and alleged police misconduct by KCSO involving aggressive baton use, placing threatening decals on their patrol cars, witness intimidation and more.

The complaint also notes a damning ACLU investigation into the KCSO and that it “entered into a settlement with the California Department of Justice regarding its pattern and practice of unconstitutional behavior.”

Read more about this case:

Apothio Sues Kern County, Calif., for Alleged Government Destruction of 500 Acres of Hemp

Following Nearby Destruction of 500-Acre Hemp Crop, Arvin, Calif., Moves to Regulate Industry

A Criminal Case Against Apothio's Founder is Playing Into Company’s Lawsuit Against California Entities

The Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) is working together to remind Tennessee hemp producers of important deadlines for the 2022 growing season. 

In a recent press release, TDA’s Hemp Coordinator Denise Woods said, “It’s imperative that current producers complete their applications now to ensure no lapse in licensure. Producers can easily complete their application online, and we also have a Hemp Grower Application Checklist at the bottom of the application to help them make sure they have all requirements submitted.”

All hemp producers must be licensed by the TDA and are required to set up a Farm Record with the FSA and report their hemp crop acreage yearly by the July 31 annual deadline, according to the release.

In addition, already licensed producers must reapply through the TDA by 4:30 p.m. CDT June 30; however, new producer applications will be accepted all year and expire June 30 annually. If the producer does not submit their application, license fees and required documentation by 4:30 p.m. CDT June 30, the producer's license will expire, the release states. 

“We want to see this evolving agricultural sector progress in Tennessee,” Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher said. “We both play a part in the successful implementation of the state’s hemp program by working together to support growers and providing resources for them.”