Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a great tool to help grow your company and get noticed by potential customers, investors and fellow businesses. However, it can be easy to make mistakes if you lack the experience or knowledge concerning employing SEO successfully. If you are just starting to use SEO for your cannabis or CBD company, be sure to peek at this Beginner guide to cannabis SEO keyword and search phrase research or the corresponding YouTube video to gain a general understanding of where to begin.
If you have been using SEO, but aren’t getting the hoped-for results, ensure you aren’t falling prey to common mistakes. Here at NisonCo, we offer an effective SEO program to our clients to aid in implementing an SEO strategy that works for their business. We asked our team of SEO experts about the most common optimization errors, and how to fix them. Our SEO agency professionals had the following five common errors and their simple solutions to share.
1. Index Your Site if You Want it Found by Customers
The first common error is a simple mistake with an easy fix. This error is having no site index, no listing on Google my Business, and having none of the NAP (Number, Address, Phone) data or standard information listed.
According to Kelly Ebbert — our resident SEO content writing expert — it is important to take the time to index your website so that users will be able to find you. If you’re a retail business, be sure to list yourself on Google My Business to both put yourself on the map and have appropriate info listed. Go more in-depth on this topic in our blog and YouTube video, Dispensary SEO for Beginners 2021.
2. Know your SEO Target Audience; Be Accessible
Our next common error is not knowing or having a good understanding of who your audience is.
To know your audience better, you must put in the ground research. Begin with preliminary demographic research, and then further research into the needs and wants of your audience. Having a better understanding of who your target audience is will help you create content that will be better tailored to your audience.
Be kind and respectful to customers and have the review function on. This will allow you to know your audience better, and respond accordingly by creating more content geared towards them and their wants/needs. This also provides you an opportunity to fix problems or address critiques. If you’d like to read more about driving repeat traffic to your site, read 4 Tactics to Increase Repeat Visitor Traffic to Your Blog.
3. Do Your Keyword Research: Analyze Competitors
Related to knowing your audience is knowing your competition. If you wish to create the right kind of content you must have a sense of both. If you’re not keeping up with what your competitors are doing or what the needs of your audience are, you run the risk of creating irrelevant or ineffective content. Needless to say, it is a missed opportunity, and a common error many fall victim to.
To know your industry and competition better, do keyword research and build out a competitive analysis. This will help you begin to understand where your competitors stand and function within the industry compared to your own business. Do not neglect keyword research, and if you have a keyword you’re seeking to rank for, put it on a relevant page.
4. Make Alt Image Text do Double Duty for SEO & Accessibility
Multiple SEO team members brought up this common error: Neglecting to include alt (short for “alternative”) image text. The alt text describes what’s on the image and what the function of the image is on the page.
This is an easy fix. For each image add in the alt text. This is important for SEO purposes of course, but also for accessibility for individuals that are visually impaired. Get in the habit of incorporating alt image texts for as many communications as possible for optimal user experience (UX), as outlined in this piece about boosting email marketing success.
5. Don’t Get Bogged Down by Subpar Site Speed
Every SEO team member brought up slow website speed as one of the most common SEO issues they see. According to Kelly, “Some people will bog their site down with a lot of stuff that isn’t user friendly, and is also not friendly for the machines that crawl their site.”
According to SEO Account Manager Colten Koch, to fix site speed you can do things like image compression, caching and setting up a CDN (content delivery network), or upgrading your hosting server.
Are you seeking more content about SEO best practices? Be sure to read 4 SEO Tips for Cannabis Companies.
If you have any questions about NisonCo’s SEO services, learn more about how we can help you and check out some of our SEO successes here. When you work with a cannabis SEO agency that collaborates with you, you’re already on a path to success. Get started with us and get your SEO where you want it to be by contacting us today!
