Digital marketing platforms can be hostile to the cannabis industry. Due to nationwide discrepancies in legality, a majority of social media and paid media platforms censor ads related to CBD, marijuana, and dispensaries. For CBD businesses like Plain Jane, this means that traffic must be earned organically, a daunting task with the recent explosion of marijuana websites. Due to the competitive digital landscape of the cannabis industry, Plain Jane needed to upgrade its search engine optimization strategy. That’s where LinkGraph came in.
When Plain Jane approached LinkGraph, their cannabis website struggled to rank in several key areas. Despite their years of experience as purveyors of CBD, queries for CBD flower and associated terms failed to bring prospective customers to their homepage. LinkGraph also determined that Plain Jane would benefit from strategic changes to their website design and functionality, all of which would contribute to improved online visibility and keyword rankings.
LinkGraph knew that the best way for Plain Jane to boost their traffic was through a careful understanding of their target audience. Our team identified the high-value keyword opportunities in the CBD vertical, studied user journeys on their website, then developed an aggressive on-page and off-site strategy that would appeal to their customer base and improve their overall visibility in search.
LinkGraph started with a backlink audit of Plain Jane’s website to evaluate the quality and diversity of their backlink profile. We found their web presence was being dragged down by toxic backlinks on spam websites. As part of our SEO package, we divorced Plain Jane from these links, restoring the rightful authority of their online web presence, paving the way for our on-page optimizations and cannabis website design to function as planned.
With paid media off the table, LinkGraph knew our search engine optimization strategy had to center on contextual, industry-specific link building. Through targeted outreach to publications focused on medical marijuana, CBD, and general wellness, LinkGraph acquired over 200 links to Plain Jane’s site, boosting their reputation as a leader in the CBD field and improving their overall site authority and web presence.
LinkGraph identified relevant, high-value keywords that could drive organic traffic and potential customers from organic search. Using our proprietary software, we implemented a wide array of onsite changes to improve the topical depth and relevance of Plain Jane’s content. We incorporated these on-page optimizations into blog posts, product descriptions, and landing pages, refining all of Plain Jane’s web pages for search engine crawlers and users.
When it came to web design, our UI/UX experts pinpointed several design areas in which Plain Jane could improve ease of use across their online store. With the help of our professional website designers, we set out to craft them the perfect website in terms of brand strategy, conversion optimization, and technical performance.
Our cannabis website design strategy began with their homepage, to which we added a hero image, crisp sales copy, logo design, and a highlighted call to action. We also optimized their storefront for easy viewing on both smartphones and mobile devices. Central to our marketing strategy was creating a professional website that worked for potential customers as well as search engines. Each piece of original LinkGraph copy not only targeted keywords, but also streamlined navigation for users.
LinkGraph’s high-authority link acquisition, coupled with our cannabis website design, brought long term results to Plain Jane’s online store. Since the beginning of their SEO campaign, traffic has more than doubled on their domain, and their homepage consistently ranks in the top five search results for multiple high-value keywords.
Their new cannabis website has also benefited their bottom line. LinkGraph’s on-page revisions led to improvements across all key performance indicators — from improved sessions, page views, and PageSpeed Insights scores. Plain Jane now ranks on the first page for several competitive keywords with high costs-per-click: CBD flower, CBD hemp flower, hemp flower, and CBD cigarettes.