Being the owner or manager of a dispensary comes with a lot of big decisions. Which software to use, how to find honest and hard working employees, and which brands to stock are all important decisions that keep Cannabis retailers up at night. In addition to those very important decisions, one that needs equal consideration is which keywords your dispensary’s website should be ranking for.

Below you will find the three keywords that dispensaries should be ranking for, but before we get into that let’s back up a second and start from the beginning. We all know that Google is the most popular website in the world, right? And how do people find things on Google? They enter in search terms, called keywords.

Once a user enters a keyword they are then shown a list of relevant results based on the keyword they entered. The entire goal of SEO is to help determine which keywords a business should be ranking for, and then to implement a strategy that improves their visibility in search results provided for that keyword. This post will cover the first part of that equation (which keywords your dispensary should be ranking for) and our Free Cannabis SEO Evaluation can help you with the second.

So without further delay, here are the 3 keywords every cannabis dispensary should be ranking for:

1. “Your City Name Dispensary”
2. “Your City Name Cannabis”
3. “Your City Name Marijuana”

1. “Your City Name Dispensary”

This is the single most important keyword that dispensaries should focus on. It may seem a bit obvious on the surface, but you would be surprised how many dispensary websites do not contain a single instance of this important keyword. While often times the two other suggestions below may have higher volume in a certain region, the click through rate and conversion to store visit or online order is significantly higher with this keyword as it is the most relevant search someone would use if they are actually looking for a dispensary. Consider it lower on the funnel than the broader searches below.

2. “Your City Name Cannabis”

This particular term is trending up in most regions currently, as more and more people put aside the somewhat outdated term “marijuana”. Typically this term has a larger monthly search volume, but you have to consider that not everyone who searches using this term is actually looking to make a purchase. Someone might use this to term to look up local licensing regulations, for example. That being said can, and does, drive tons of traffic to dispensaries, and serves as a great branding tool, putting your business in front of hundreds if not thousands of cannabis consumers every month if your website ranks well for it.

3. “Your City Name Marijuana”

While we personally encourage everyone to stop using this outdated, and some say even racist, term there is no doubt that it is still being used by many people to look for dispensaries. While we are seeing a very slow and gradual decline in the monthly search volumes for this term it is still typically one of the most frequently used search terms in most areas.

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