Cannabis Writers are in continually high demand as more states and cities legalize cannabis every year. Successful cannabis writers understand and apply SEO best practices to every piece of content produced. Implementing the right SEO strategy is essential to ensuring that a cannabis website ranks well in search engines and thus more likely convert leads and increase sales.
Content is always valuable, but a truly effective SEO strategy requires careful planning. Rather than publishing random blog content without a clear game plan (or worse, not publishing at all!), take some time to consider the following SEO best practices to help your cannabis writers produce the best content for your website and SEO strategy.
Develop Focused Pillar Pages
Pillar pages help cannabis writers organize websites according to the SEO best practices. The best way to begin is to outline the core products and services a company will sell then create a separate pillar page related to each of these items these products. Pillar pages tend to be lengthy – Anywhere between 1500 to 3000 words – and include a breadth of information which will then link to other sub-categories related to the pillar topic.
Standard pillar pages often include titles like “Everything You Need to Know About…” or “The Complete Guide to…”. The idea is to draw searchers to a page by offering a full scope of information. Search engines love these pages because 1) they cover a lot of information, and 2) they have a lot of incoming links. To a search engine like Google, these pages are the most likely to match a search query and thus more likely to rank than a shorter, more focused page.
This is not to say that focused pages are not advantageous, though! On the contrary, focused blogs serve many vital roles in an SEO strategy. First, they help narrow searches with more specific keyword focuses, thereby attracting more focused web surfers and, thus, hotter leads. Targeted blog content also allows cannabis writers to publish more frequently and, thus, promote regular user interaction. Regular, short-form blogs (500-1000 words) share well via social media and email, which also increases web visits and helps a website look more credible to search engines. Lastly, short-form content easily links to relevant pillar content, which is an integral part of any link-building strategy.
Choose Keyword Wisely
A title entices clicks, but a keyword makes that title available to click in the first place. However, choosing the best keywords is not as simple as it may sound. One must choose keywords with high search volumes best suited to their brand and product/service offering. However, terms that are searched too frequently often have too much competition to rank. Thus a careful balance of both long- and short-tail keywords, and a firm understanding of business competitors and their keyword strategies is essential.
The first step in choosing the best keywords for cannabis writers is to determine the goal(s) of the content. Is it to sell? To entertain? To inform? After establishing a goal, the next step is to brainstorm possible keywords that will attract the perfect audience to reach this goal. For example, if a company’s content goal is to establish themselves as a leader in their niche, they might develop more educational keywords (“how to…” or “DIY…” for example). Conversely, if the goal is to sell, better keywords might include things like “buy…”.
The ellipsis in these examples represent keywords targeted toward the specific topic or item. These words should be as focused as possible, with variations used throughout the content, as well. Keyword search tools like Google Ads or SEM Rush list the most common search phrases related to a specific keyword, which helps companies plan their content strategies around the best around the hottest search terms related to their niche.
After brainstorming a list of the best, most relevant keywords for cannabis writers to use, it’s time to trim it down. Things to consider when choosing keywords include the competition score, average search volume, and relevance to the company. Use a combination of both long- and short-tail keywords and tailor them to the specific target audience.
Effective Formatting for Cannabis Writers
Search engines regularly scan web pages to determine which are the best, most relevant pages related to a given search term. Additionally, they give more weight to keywords in titles, subheaders, meta descriptions, and so on. However, they may also penalize websites for including too many keywords in response to an old SEO practice called “keyword stuffing.” Keywords should be well-placed to avoid the penalty, and rest at about 5 percent density throughout the piece.
The title is the most important place to include the keyword, followed by the first sentence of the first paragraph and at least once in the meta description. It should also appear in at least one subheader and sporadically throughout the piece. Variations of the keyword are also important as they increase impressions and (hopefully) website visits, as well.
The Yoast WordPress plugin offers an excellent, on-page SEO audit that can help webmasters determine the quality of each page’s SEO and learn the basics of on-page SEO strategy.
Final thoughts About SEO Best Practices for Cannabis Writers
There are millions of people searching for relevant information related to the cannabis industry. Cannabis business professionals are wise to hire cannabis writers who can apply their versatility and expertise to create SEO-optimized content.
Contact us to learn more about our team of experienced cannabis writers. We’d love to help you achieve your content goals through well-drafted, search engine optimized cannabis content.
What other SEO best practices do you recommend? We’d love to hear from you.
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Cannabis Content Writers Improve SEO – CannabisContent.net — 4 years ago,
[…] article breaks down the process of training cannabis content writers to take advantage of best SEO practices. Search engines should crawl a website whenever possible which requires basic search engine […]