The legalization of cannabis has opened many doors for businesses trying to enter the market. You can now legally set up a dispensary in the US, UK, Canada, and countless other countries to start selling cannabis and related paraphernalia and earn a profit. And a massive profit it can be.
Currently, the global cannabis market is valued at $20.5 billion, with projections that it will reach $90.4 billion by the end of 2026. So, if you’re thinking of joining the market, now’s the time. You need to be ready, however, to take on the fierce competition and find ways to get your brand noticed. That can be easier said than done due to the numerous cannabis digital marketing restrictions you’ll face.
So, how can you stand out from the competitors, expand your audiences, increase your reach, and spread brand awareness while respecting marketing limitations? The most effective way is through cannabis backlinks.
Backlinks are a critical factor that search engines like Google take into account when ranking your site. They help you improve your SEO result, increase your site’s visibility, and provide you with a competitive edge that can push your business forward.
Take a closer look at cannabis backlinks, see what they are precisely, and examine how they can help you. This ultimate cannabis backlinks guide for 2023 will tell you everything you need to know about boosting your organic marketing and outperforming the competition through the simple use of links. Let’s get started.
Index
- What Are Cannabis Backlinks?
- What Are Quality Cannabis Backlinks?
- Why Are Cannabis Backlinks So Important in 2023?
- How Are Cannabis Backlinks Earned?
- The broken link method
- Infographics
- Content promotion
- Testimonials
- Interviews and podcasts
- How Backlinks Help Cannabis Websites Rank Higher?
- Why Guest Post/Content Marketing Is the Right Strategy to Create Cannabis Backlinks in 2023?
- Why Is It Important to Finalize the Right Set of Targeted Keywords for Cannabis Backlinks?
- How to Finalize Anchor Text for Cannabis Backlinks?
- Keep it natural
- Use high-quality keywords
- Don’t over-optimize
- Keep it short
- Add some variation
- What Are Google Restrictions on Cannabis Ecommerce Websites in 2023?
- How Many Links Should You Build to Your Cannabis Website?
- How to Build Backlinks When You Have a Brand New Cannabis Site?
- 10 Things to Keep in Mind While Building Cannabis Backlinks
- Build cannabis backlinks only from reputable sites;
- Best backlinks come from relevant sites;
- Always use a cannabis backlink checker;
- Come up with a high-quality anchor text;
- Avoid keyword stuffing;
- Pay attention to the do-follow and no-follow cannabis backlinks;
- Diversify your cannabis links (not only to the homepage);
- Don’t forget interlinking;
- Focus on whitehat cannabis backlinks;
- Keep providing relevant content;
- Conclusion;
What Are Cannabis Backlinks?
Let’s start with the basics – what exactly are cannabis backlinks (also known as hyperlinks)? In essence, they’re links that lead from other sites and pages on the internet to your own. If a blogger working outside of your domain includes a link to one of your pages in their blog posts, you’ll receive a backlink from them. If you link to another site or page that’s not your own in your posts, they receive a backlink from you.
This practice of creating cannabis backlinks helps a website improve its search engine visibility, and in turn, helps improve audience visibility.
Along with mobile optimization, page speed, user experience, and others, top-quality cannabis backlinks are some of the most important ranking factors that search engines like Google take into consideration. They directly impact organic search traffic, helping you improve brand awareness with relative ease.
What Are Quality Cannabis Backlinks?
As much as cannabis SEO backlinks can help your ranking and visibility, they can also harm you if used correctly.
Cannabis link building basically works like word of mouth marketing – your site is mentioned, and therefore recommended, by another. If that other site enjoys an excellent reputation among its audiences and is regarded as a high-authority website by search engine crawlers, that good reputation will be transferred, to an extent, onto your site. You’ll appear more trustworthy and reliable, so search engines will want to present your site to their users to ensure a better experience.
But there’s another side to that cannabis link-building coin. If the site that links back to your own is just spam, if it has poor-quality content and doesn’t enjoy a great reputation among audiences and web crawlers alike, your ranking and traffic will suffer.
So, if you want to enjoy a better SERP ranking and more organic traffic, you need to make sure you’re getting high-quality cannabis backlinks. The best way to do it is with a cannabis link-building agency and a reliable cannabis backlink checker. They’ll help you keep an eye on all sites that mention yours, and they’ll ensure that you have a white label link-building strategy that drives results.
Why Are Cannabis Backlinks So Important in 2023?
Trusted cannabis backlinks are an essential part of any SEO strategy. They’re the first thing that the best cannabis marketing company will focus on when working on improving your rankings. But how does that work, and what makes cannabis links so critical in your digital marketing strategy?
Among other things, cannabis links are used by Google to determine what your site’s all about. The best backlinks, paired with relevant anchor text and keywords, help web crawlers pinpoint your niche and area of expertise. And after all, the more web crawlers know about your site, the easier it will be for search engines to rank you higher for related search queries.
By having your pages linked to, you’re also getting a vote of confidence from others. All the sites that give you free cannabis backlinks are essentially telling search engines that your site is valuable and credible and that your content is worth checking out. So, the more you build cannabis backlinks, the higher your ranking position will be.
How Are Cannabis Backlinks Earned?
If you want to build whitehat cannabis backlinks and avoid getting penalized by Google for manipulative link schemes, you need to be very careful about how you earn your links. Your cannabis link-building agency will help you design the best strategy that suits your needs. In the meantime, you can try and earn your links in one of the following ways.
The broken link method
The broken link method is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to get free cannabis backlinks without much effort.
You’ve likely found yourself in this situation – you’re reading an engaging post, and you want to get more information on the topic. Conveniently enough, the article you’re already on has several links that lead to further research and resources. You click on one of them hoping to learn more, only to encounter the annoying 404 error, page not found. It happens more often than you’d think, and you can take advantage of it to get cannabis backlinks without much fuss.
All you have to do is find articles in your niche and look for broken links. When you’ve found some, contact the webmaster to report all the broken links on their site and offer to replace them with your own high-quality cannabis backlinks. In most instances, since you’re doing the webmaster a favor, they’re likely to accept your backlink offer. Of course, this is not always a guarantee, but the odds are in your favor.
Infographics
Visual content is essential for grabbing the attention of the audiences and making your brand more noticeable. It’s excellent for breaking up long blocks of text, giving your website visitors a rest while they’re scrolling through your pages, and for creating cannabis backlinks, especially when it’s in the form of infographics.
Such visuals can increase readership by over 80%, so they’re exceptionally valuable for all digital marketers.
Infographics will make your content more shareable and will encourage other sites to link back to yours so they wouldn’t have to create brand new visuals from scratch.
The only problem is that developing valuable infographics can be time-consuming. You’ll have to gather and analyze relevant data and then transform it into small chunks of information that can fit the infographic. But that’s why many will opt to add links to such visual content instead of creating it themselves.
Content promotion
One of the most effective cannabis link-building strategies is creating valuable content, which we’ll discuss in more detail below. However, it’s not enough to simply create content. If you have a brand new site with only a few daily visitors (if any), no one will notice your content and link back to it, regardless of how amazing or insightful it is.
So, if you want to get cannabis backlinks through content, you need to make it clear to others that you have content worth linking back to. The only way to do that is by promoting it.
Primarily, you need to highlight new content on your site and share it on all social media platforms. Use popular hashtags in your social posts, add eye-catching visuals, and engage with readers in the comment section.
Then, you can make use of a blogger outreach service or perform email outreach on your own to notify relevant webmasters about your best content. Sites in your niche that post regular roundups or reviews are always on the lookout for new content, so you stand a good chance of being mentioned. Introduce your cannabis business and website, and promote the best articles you have. Don’t ask directly for cannabis SEO backlinks; just present your content – they’ll know what to do.
Testimonials
Testimonials, and better yet reviews, can be some of the easiest cannabis link-building strategies when done well. They can serve as social proof, encouraging indecisive consumers to give your products a try. They can help you establish an excellent reputation, spreading your brand awareness, and helping you reach a wider audience. Every business needs and appreciates them.
Allowing for user reviews and testimonials on your cannabis site is of the utmost importance, but it won’t help you get trusted cannabis backlinks. What could get you the best cannabis backlinks is leaving reviews on sites whose products or services you’re using.
A positive review of the brand’s products/services where you casually mention your site and link back to it can help you along. However, be careful here as overly promotional text can quickly get you banned and your comment deleted.
Another possibility is that you can earn a backlink from the site by just leaving a good review. It’s almost an exchange – the site gets your positive testimonial, and you get a cannabis backlink in return. It’s a win-win for all.
Interviews and podcasts
Online interviews and podcasts are exceptionally popular at the moment, and by the looks of it – they’ll only keep attracting wider audiences in the coming years. In the US alone, there are over 120 million podcast listeners in 2021. By 2023, the number is expected to exceed 164 million.
Number of monthly podcast listeners in the United States from 2014 to 2023 (in millions)
Source: Statista
Since cannabis legalization, use, and distribution are hot topics at the moment, any podcast creator or interviewer in the niche will jump at the opportunity to talk with an expert in the field. In all likelihood, as your brand becomes more and more recognizable, your interview invites will start piling up. But that doesn’t mean that you have to wait until you’ve reached that point.
Research relevant podcasts and interview sites that make sense for your cannabis business, and reach out to them. Introduce your business and explain what insights and information you have to share. Once your interviews are published, you’ll get the best cannabis backlinks and content that’ll help you establish yourself as an industry leader.
How Backlinks Help Cannabis Websites Rank Higher?
As previously mentioned, search engines take hundreds of things into consideration when ranking your site. Your backlinks are only one of the factors but still highly important for taking your site up the SERPs.
Cannabis backlinks help build credibility and reputation, add value to your content, and increase website traffic. However, they aren’t quite effective by themselves. You need to perfect your anchor text, the surrounding keywords, and content and find a good site to post your backlinks.
The anchor text is the phrase or part of a sentence that carries your cannabis backlink. For example, this anchor leads to the Google homepage. The anchor has to make sense for the ultimate link you’ll attach to it as it helps both web crawlers and readers understand where the link will lead them. If you use the anchor text “cannabis paraphernalia” and just add a link to the Google homepage, it would be nonsensical.
The anchor also has to be relevant to the overall content and vice versa. It wouldn’t make sense to include your cannabis backlink and its accompanying anchor text in a blog post on architectural visualization. It would confuse the readers, and search engines might flag the content and your backlink as spam, taking the SERP ranking down.
And as for finding an excellent site to post your backlinks, it’s essential as it affects your reputation. As a general rule of thumb, older domains hold higher authority and are considered more trustworthy by search engines, depending on the quality of the content and the overall user experience.
It’s in your best interest to find professional cannabis link-building services as you’ll get access to the highest quality domains for your cannabis links.
Why Guest Post/Content Marketing Is the Right Strategy to Create Cannabis Backlinks in 2023?
Content marketing is a critical aspect of white label link building and your overall SEO efforts. In the digital landscape, content is king. It boosts engagement, increases lead generation and conversion, improves your ranking, and so much more.
Now, there are all kinds of content you can use for your digital marketing strategy. You can create blogs for your own website, share valuable social media posts, create Facebook and Instagram Stories, post-Q&As, tutorials, guides, and more. The most practical strategy for link building, however, is creating cannabis guest posts.
A cannabis guest post involves creating a piece of content or writing a blog post and having it published on another site. It allows you to take charge of the context in which your backlinks will appear. If you want to highlight a specific product/service you have or include a link to one of your lesser-known pages instead of your homepage, you can do it.
The key is providing high-quality content and finding a site that fits your niche (it doesn’t really make sense to use cannabis link-building services on “mommy and me” types of websites).
The best cannabis marketing company will offer relevant blogger outreach services and create high-quality content that:
- Drives engagement
- Produces high-quality cannabis backlinks
- Improves exposure and visibility
- Boosts website traffic
- Enhances domain authority
- Improves SERP ranking
It’s generally a good idea to outreach link-building services and leave content creation to the professionals as you focus on the core of your business.
Why Is It Important to Finalize the Right Set of Targeted Keywords for Cannabis Backlinks?
We’ve previously discussed how it’s essential to have a sensical anchor text and relevant surrounding keywords throughout the marketing content you’re creating. After all, if your piece of content includes all the possible keywords and key phrases your potential customers might use, the higher your chances are of ranking better, right? Not quite.
Let’s say you want to create content up to 500 words long that invites potential customers to buy cannabis from you. You need to consider which phrases your prospects might use to find cannabis sellers like you on Google. Some of the possible key phrases they could use include “where to buy cannabis,” “where to get cannabis in California,” “buy cannabis California,” “cannabis dispensaries,” “weed in California,” “get marihuana,” “cannabis near me,” “weed stores,” “cannabis seller” – the list is endless, and spelling and grammar mistakes are more common than you’d think.
If you include all of them (together with their poor spelling and grammar) in a 500-word blog post, you’ll end up with an incomprehensible article that doesn’t help your audiences, doesn’t help search engines, and doesn’t help you.
This practice is known as keyword stuffing, and search engines will penalize you for it.
So, instead of trying to create content that’s nothing more than keyword next to keyword next to the keyword, choose just a few relevant phrases and build a high-quality article where you can naturally include them a couple of times. Then, add a top-quality cannabis backlink to one or two of them, and enjoy the benefits.
How to Finalize Anchor Text for Cannabis Backlinks?
Just as you should finalize the keyword count in your marketing content, you should narrow down your anchor text. You don’t want every other paragraph to have your backlinks and awkward anchor texts, as it will only hurt your ranking.
Fortunately, finalizing anchor text is quite easy.
Keep it natural
There’s no need to twist your content around somehow incorporating an anchor text that’s simply way too awkward for you to use. Rely on normal language and place your cannabis backlinks on anchors that come naturally.
Use high-quality keywords
One of the biggest mistakes most people make is including their backlinks on random text like “click here,” “this link,” “go there to find out more.” This type of text doesn’t say anything specific to the reader or to the web crawlers.
There are much better types of anchor text you can use – branded text, exact keyword match, partial keyword match, and more.
Don’t over-optimize
Over-optimization is closely linked to keyword stuffing. A spammy, keyword-rich anchor is never a good option as it raises red flags to search engines that you’re trying to scheme your way through link-building.
Keep it short
Your anchor should essentially be a very concise description of the link you’re attaching to it. While there isn’t a specific limit to how many words you can use as anchor text, you’ll want to keep it somewhere between two and eight words tops.
Instead of using:
Try this:
“Check out this anchor text guide that will tell you everything you need to know about creating the best anchors for your content.”
Add some variation
If you want to get several cannabis backlinks for a specific page that compares a few different cannabis strains, for example, you’ll want to add some variation to them. Avoid creating ten different posts which use “cannabis strain comparison” as the anchor every time. Add some variation, however slight it may be.
“Comparing cannabis strains,” “differences between cannabis strains,” “types of cannabis,” “looking into cannabis variations,” to name a few options for the same exact backlink. It will help you diversify your keywords and ultimately rank higher.
What Are Google Restrictions on Cannabis Ecommerce Websites in 2023?
You should focus your efforts on link-building, content creation, guest blogging, and other organic marketing strategies because Google doesn’t allow paid marketing and ads for cannabis.
Sure, since the Farm Bill’s introduction in 2018, medicinal cannabis has been legalized on a federal level in the US. It’s also legal in the UK, Canada, Australia, and many other countries worldwide. Still, it’s not legal everywhere. Even in the US, states and counties have their laws regarding cannabis, and many places have yet to legalize it.
Search engines like Google and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are currently playing it safe and preventing cannabis businesses from advertising their products. You cannot invest in paid ads for dangerous substances that alter the users’ mental state, facilitate recreational drug use, or contain instructional content about producing, purchasing, or using recreational drugs like cannabis.
However, you can still create your cannabis e-commerce site (if it’s legal in your area and jurisdiction), and you can make use of organic marketing tactics to boost brand awareness.
How Many Links Should You Build to Your Cannabis Website?
As a general rule of thumb, in the quality vs. quantity debate, quality wins. It’s better to earn average wages and have a job you love than to earn millions in a job you hate. It’s better to have one true friend than being surrounded by hundreds of people who don’t care about you. But when it comes to cannabis backlinks, both quality and quantity are equally important.
You should build as many backlinks as you can on websites with high authority. The more backlinks you have from different, high-authority domains, the more you’ll see an increase in your ranking.
One of the best indicators of how many backlinks you need is your chosen keyword’s difficulty rating. Most SEO tools you’ll use will show a rating between 1 and 100 for any given keyword. Keywords with a low rating don’t need as many backlinks as those with a high rating.
However, keep in mind that the number of backlinks you need to use goes up faster than the keyword’s difficulty rating. So, keywords with a rating of 10 will only need ten different backlinks, while keywords with a rating of 60 could use about twice as many backlinks.
How to Build Backlinks When You Have a Brand New Cannabis Site?
Link-building for an established cannabis site is relatively easy. You can reach out to high-quality domains and have your backlinks immediately accepted. In many cases, high-authority domains will even reach out to you, asking to feature your links on their site. But things are more difficult when you’re just starting out in the industry.
Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. You’ll need to create content that’s worth linking back to, offer high-value posts, continue reaching out to relevant bloggers and webmasters until your links get accepted. Most importantly, you’ll need to wait until you’ve already generated enough interest and readership.
The only way to expedite the process without losing sight of your business’s core is to outreach link-building services. You’ll have industry professionals at your side who can create high-quality content, reach out to relevant domains, negotiate backlinks on your behalf, and provide you with the desired results faster.
10 Things to Keep in Mind While Building Cannabis Backlinks
Building backlinks can be confusing and overwhelming for anyone who’s just starting, regardless of their industry and niche. So, to simplify the whole process, here are the key things you’ll need to keep in mind when building your cannabis backlinks.
- Build cannabis backlinks only from reputable sites
Since backlinking is somewhat similar to word-of-mouth marketing, you only want reputable, high-authority sites talking about you and recommending you. Otherwise, consumers and web crawlers will associate your brand with low-quality, spammy sites.
- Best backlinks come from relevant sites
Backlinks from finance or tech sites won’t help you rank any higher since there’s no logical connection between cannabis and these topics. Stay within your niche and place backlinks on relevant sites only.
- Always use a cannabis backlink checker!
A cannabis backlink checker can inform you if any low-quality sites that could harm your reputation are linking your pages. It will also notify you of any high-quality link-building opportunities you could take advantage of. It’s an indispensable tool for your cannabis link-building strategy.
- Come up with a high-quality anchor text!
Your anchor text needs to make sense for the page you’re linking to and needs to inform readers and web crawlers about the backlink content. Keep it relevant, concise, and natural.
- Avoid keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing will only lead to your site getting penalized by search engines. Finalize your keywords and only use a few at a time in your content.
- Pay attention to the do-follow and no-follow cannabis backlinks!
Do-follow (or simply follow) links tell web crawlers that they should examine the backlink and use it as a factor for ranking a web page. Those are the backlinks you want. No-follow links, on the other hand, tell web crawlers not to use the link as an SEO boost. They can still be very useful and improve your traffic, increase brand exposure, help you build trust with potential audiences. Nonetheless, search engines won’t consider them when ranking your page.
- Diversify your cannabis links
There’s no reason for all of your cannabis backlinks to lead to your homepage only. Your homepage already gets the most traffic, so it doesn’t need as much of a boost as some of your blog posts or product pages. So, diversify your links, and include other pages as well.
- Don’t forget interlinking!
Interlinking (or internal linking by connecting pages on the same site) won’t have quite the same effect as receiving backlinks from other domains. Still, it can help web crawlers better understand your site, and it can help keep your readers on your site longer. It’s a crucial link-building strategy, so don’t neglect it!
- Focus on whitehat cannabis backlinks
Blackhat cannabis link-building is only a recipe for disaster. Google algorithms are getting better at identifying malicious attempts to improve your ranking, and you’ll be penalized for it. Use whitehat cannabis backlinks only if you hope to succeed.
- Keep providing relevant content!
Finally, focus on high-quality content creation. If your site has unique, relevant content, it will receive backlinks more naturally and without much effort. It will also keep your audiences engaged and help you retain customers.
Conclusion
Cannabis backlinks are crucial for establishing yourself as an authority in your niche. They can be a bit overwhelming at first, but they’ll help push your business forward.
Link-building is an essential part of SEO and organic marketing, and it’s usually best left in the hands of professionals. Hire the best cannabis marketing company, and enjoy the benefits.