- Apr 1, 2023
13 Ways to Get Backlinks for Cannabis Businesses
- Daniela Furtado
- 0 comments
This is how we get cannabis backlinks for retailers, cultivators and everyone in between the supply chain.
When another website links to yours, that’s validation. Not just by your own community and industry, but also to search engines.
In SEO, we call them backlinks and they are the highest weighted ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. However, getting unpaid links and mentions to your website is no easy feat. Especially for young and small businesses. And even more so for canna-businesses.
In this post, we’ve picked 13 of our favourite backlink tricks and we’ve tweaked them specifically for the cannabis industry.
Before you put any of them into practice, here are some things to keep in mind:
Backlink building takes time.
Be patient with the process and make it a habit to work on it little by little.Do-follow cannabis backlinks are favourable.
No-follow links aren’t useless. They do pass on traffic but they tell search engines to not recognize it. Do-follow links are preferred for SEO.Make sure your website is ready for the spotlight.
Check your technical SEO, mobile-friendliness, website design and copy. Give people a website worth talking about.
If you have any suggestions for cannabis backlink building, email us. We’ll include your tip and a do-follow link to your website in this blog post.
1. Write guest blog posts for cannabis publications.
Guest blogging is a classic backlink trick. You can write for a blog, online magazine or newspaper. However, a common mistake is guest blogging for the wrong website. Nobody wants a poorly written or duplicated article on their website, which makes putting together a quality guest blog post a very time-consuming task.
What’s more is that cannabis industry has a high failure rate because of its high regulation. This means you want to write for a website that will be around for awhile.
Choose the website carefully.
We recommend you look for websites that check these 3 boxes:
Have exactly the audience you’re trying to reach,
Have a domain authority score between 30 to 60, and
Have been around for at least 2 years.
Need suggestions for who to write for?
Canna Business Now, CBD Health and Wellness, High Times and Cannabis Industry Journal are some publications that regularly take submissions.
Otherwise, simply search:
write for us + cannabis + niche
submit blog post + cannabis + niche
2. Get on a cannabis podcast.
Landing a guest podcasting is the 2020 version of guest blogging. Most podcasts have their own websites to publish show notes and link back to their guests.
Research podcasts your target audience is listening to and pitch yourself to speak as an industry expert. The key is to find a podcast that your target audience is already listening to but to pitch a topic that the podcast host hasn’t already covered.
3. Submit your company to cannabis directories.
Directories used to be the thing in the early SEO days. Over time, they’ve lost their value but they aren’t meaningless as long as the directory is still reputable and relevant to your target audience.
Start with local directories like Google My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp and Yellow Pages. Then, branch out and search for specific directories to the industry or your niche.
Foot Traffik has a complete list of cannabis directories but here are some to get you started:
Otherwise, try searching these terms to find a directory near you:
medical + cannabis directory
recreational + cannabis directory
cannabis directory + region
cannabis directory + demographic
cannabis directory + niche
Now, there are some red flags you should look out for. The cannabis industry is littered with directories and many of them charge a premium to list your business with them.
If you choose to invest and pay your way to a directory, we recommend you look for a directory that meets this criteria:
Either has a large amount of traffic or has a hyper-targeted and hyper-engaged audience.
Has been around for at least 2 years.
Has a public directory – it’s not closed off for members-only.
4. Use the broken link method.
People have been jumping off the cannabis bandwagon just as fast they’ve been jumping on it. That means a lot of websites have been left abandoned. Next time you’re on a cannabis-related website, look out for broken or outdated external link.
Email the website owner, explain that you spotted a broken or outdated link on their website and kindly suggest one of your pages as a replacement.
Alternatively, use scanners like Dr. Link Checker to proactively look for broken links on a website you’d like a backlink from.
5. Organize and promote a cannabis event.
The cannabis industry is no stranger to events. Hosting conferences, trade shows and meetups are great to build a network...and build backlinks. Publish your event on an event calendar or platform and include links back to your website.
Here are some event websites:
With the exception of EventBrite, all these website provide do-follow links.
As you organize more events and grow your community, word will spread and people will link back to you without your asking.
6. Speak at cannabis events.
Finding experienced and specialized experts in the young cannabis industry is no easy-feat. Offer yourself to speak at local cannabis events, training programs, business centres and co-working spaces. If organizers take you up on your offer, they’ll most likely promote your talk before and after on their website.
Be sure to include your website and social media links in your biography for the organizer to include in the promotional material.
7. Create cannabis infographics.
We don’t read anymore, we scan. Visual content, like infographics, make it easy to scan. Which makes it more shareable. Take a look at your blog posts and look for opportunities to turn the written content into a table, graph or flow chart. With well-optimized metadata, it’s also an opportunity to rank on Google Images or Pinterest.
Add and optimize the image to the matching blog post. Then, push it on social media and submit it to infographic websites for backlinks. With enough social shares, your infographic will eventual be featured and linked to on other websites.
8. Build a survey, quiz or test.
There’s something about online quizzes that make them so compelling to do and share.
I mean, who hasn’t done a Cannabis IQ quiz at one point?
Use a tool like Interact or hire a developer to make one for your website.
9. Publish your own research study.
Everyone quotes a good research study. It’s easy. But creating one isn’t. A great way to build your credibility in the industry and get people talking about you is to publish your own study.
Earlier this year, we surveyed 52 SEO agencies across the country to figure out how much SEO costs in Canada and turned the research into a blog post. The information we collected directly helped our business but the blog post has driven traffic, social shares, new email subscribers backlinks and even leads.
As we write this blog post, we’re currently interviewing canna-businesses to understand their website marketing challenges.
No need to hire a research team. Start small and start with a topic that you and your audience would be most interested in.
10. Create a free resource.
Like online quizzes and surveys, we like to use and share free tools.
Need some ideas?
Here are some examples of how resources can make your website stand out.
Build a tool or buy one, and make it available on your website. This could be a calculator or generator.
Whether you use a third-party platform or make it available on your own website, create a course and teach your audience something they’re hungry to learn.
Don’t just use your downloadable lead magnets for online – use it for organic traffic too. Create its own landing page and optimize it for search engines.
11. Put up a posting on cannabis job boards.
Whether or not you’re hiring, create a company profile on job boards.
Big-name job boards like Indeed definitely get more traffic but they set links to no-follow by default. Small and niche job boards, however, are a landmine of do-follow backlinks.
Here are some examples of cannabis job boards:
Keep a log of all the boards that you are on and actually put up job postings on all those boards when you do hire.
Going the extra mile to promote a job posting can help you attract as much talent from different and diverse communities.
It also increases the chances of the posting from being shared – which can increase the chances of getting backlinks from beyond the job board.
12. Join HARO.
Help a Report Out, or HARO, is an email newsletter that matches journalists with experts.
Three times a day, an email goes out listing requests for quotes from journalists.
There’s a wide variety of industries and journalists are looking for all kinds of experts. Every once in awhile, we see requests for experts in cannabis, CBD and hemp.
Sign up for the HARO emails and submit a quote when you find a request that fits your expertise.
13. Do something cool.
Naturally, we talk about and share interesting things. (And journalists are no exception).
The best way to get people talking about you, by far, is doing something that is worth talking about. Whether or not it gets you sales, start a project for the love of it.
It could be a company-wide passion project or philanthropic initiative. Or it could be a story straight out of your portfolio.
Cool projects make good stories, and good stories always spread.
Written by Daniela Furtado.
Daniela is Cannabis Marketing School's founder and lead instructor. She is also the managing director and founder of our parent agency, Findable Digital Marketing.