100+ Cannabis Marketing Conversations

The lessons, mistakes, and growth strategies behind the industry’s most recognizable brands.

How to Do SEO for Marijuana Dispensary MSOs

Multi-state operators face a unique set of SEO challenges — from managing search presence across multiple locations and markets to maintaining brand consistency while meeting local search intent. This webinar, featuring Eduardo Silva, breaks down an MSO-specific SEO framework that drives results across markets simultaneously.The session covers the fundamentals of SEO as they apply to cannabis MSOs, how to structure your approach for multi-location growth, and what it takes to rank competitively in each market you operate in. MSO marketing teams and regional marketing managers will find this a practical and directly applicable guide.

Watch Now

Key Insights

MSO location pages require both consistent brand structure and locally specific content to rank well in each market - templated pages with no local differentiation typically underperform in local search.
State-by-state keyword strategy is essential because cannabis search terminology and regulations vary significantly across markets, and a one-size-fits-all approach misses the local intent signals that drive rankings.
Google Business Profile management at scale requires a systematic process for maintaining accurate information, generating reviews, and posting activity across all locations simultaneously.
Internal linking between an MSO's location pages and its main brand site distributes link authority across locations while reinforcing the brand's overall domain strength.
Technical SEO for MSOs must address multi-location site architecture, including URL structure, schema markup, and canonicalization strategy that supports both brand authority and local relevance.

Expert Answers

[{What is SEO for multi-state cannabis operators?}

SEO for multi-state cannabis operators (MSOs) is the practice of optimizing organic search presence across multiple dispensary locations in different states. It requires balancing a consistent brand-level SEO strategy with locally specific content and optimization that makes each location visible for searches in its own market. Effective MSO SEO requires coordination across content strategy, Google Business Profile management, technical site architecture, and state-specific keyword research.

{How should MSOs structure their dispensary location pages for SEO?}

Each dispensary location should have its own dedicated page on your website that is optimized for local searches in that market. These pages should include the location's name, address, hours, phone number, and locally specific content about the neighborhood, nearby landmarks, and state-specific product information. Avoid identical templated content across all location pages - Google's local algorithm rewards genuine local relevance, and pages that differ only in city name and address typically underperform.

{How do MSOs manage Google Business Profile at scale?}

MSOs should use Google Business Profile Manager (formerly Google My Business) to manage all locations from a single account. Assign location-specific managers for each market who are responsible for local review management and content updates, while maintaining centralized oversight for brand consistency. Create a standardized posting calendar and template that can be customized with local details. Establish a review response process that ensures every review across all locations gets a timely, appropriate response.]

Webinar Highlights

00:00 - The MSO SEO Challenge: Scale Without Losing Local Relevance

The session opens with an explanation of why multi-state operators face distinct SEO challenges and how the most common mistakes MSOs make in their SEO strategy limit their performance at the location level.

12:00 - Location Page Architecture and Content Strategy

This section covers how to structure dispensary location pages across a large portfolio, balancing brand consistency with the local specificity that drives local search rankings.

22:00 - State-Specific Keyword Research and Content Approach

The webinar covers how cannabis search terminology varies across states and how MSOs should adapt their keyword strategy and regulatory content approach to each market.

32:00 - Scaling Google Business Profile Management

The session closes with a practical framework for managing dozens of Google Business Profiles simultaneously, including review management, posting cadence, and quality control processes.

Frequently Asked Questions

[ {What SEO challenges are unique to multi-state cannabis operators?}

MSOs face three primary SEO challenges that single-location dispensaries do not: managing consistent brand signals while maintaining local relevance across dozens of locations, adapting content to different state regulatory frameworks and terminology, and maintaining Google Business Profile quality at scale across multiple markets. Successfully navigating all three requires a structured approach that balances centralized strategy with local execution.

{How many dispensary location pages should an MSO website have?}

Every dispensary location should have its own dedicated page. For MSOs operating in multiple states, the site architecture should include both state-level hub pages and individual location pages, connected through clear internal linking. State pages capture broader regional search intent while location pages capture local searches. This structure also strengthens the overall site's topical authority for cannabis retail in each market.

{How does state cannabis regulation affect MSO SEO strategy?}

State regulations affect MSO SEO in several ways. Product terminology, medical versus adult-use framing, and legal disclaimers vary by state, and content that is appropriate in one market may not be compliant in another. Keyword research should be conducted separately for each state market because consumer search behavior, product naming, and legal terminology differ significantly. MSO content teams need a state-specific content review process to ensure compliance across all markets.

{How do backlinks work differently for MSOs than for single-location dispensaries?}

For MSOs, link building strategy needs to work at two levels: building domain authority for the brand overall, and building local authority for each individual market. Brand-level links from cannabis industry publications, national media, and industry organizations strengthen the entire domain. Local links from market-specific directories, local news sites, and community organizations strengthen individual location pages. A balanced link building approach at both levels produces the strongest overall SEO performance.

{What tools do MSOs use to manage SEO across multiple dispensary locations?}

MSOs typically use a combination of Google Business Profile Manager for local listings, an enterprise SEO platform like SEMrush or Ahrefs for keyword tracking and site auditing across all locations, a review management tool for monitoring and responding to reviews at scale, and a content management system that supports location-specific content variations. MediaJel's platform also includes cannabis-specific local SEO tools designed for multi-location operators. ]

Cannabis Podcast Full Transcript

[ {How to Do SEO for MSOS}

good morning everyone if you're joining us from the west coast good afternoon if you're joining us from the east coast we'll be getting started here in just a couple minutes allow a couple more minutes here just for the other attendees to join us and we'll be setting it off thank you so much for your time we'll be right with you wonderful if you're just joining us today's webinar we will be discussing how to do seo for msos if you're not familiar with the term mso that stands for multi-state operators so dispensaries that have multi-state reach so we'll be covering this topic in just a moment here allowing a few more moments for some of the attendees to join us thank you so much for your time wonderful so we'll get started thank you so much once again for taking the time out of your day to join us here at foot traffic today's webinar will be focused on how to do seo for msos and if you're just joining us msos multi-state operators so those dispensaries that either have or are plenty multi-state um dispensary stores right there's a key way to really create a strategy that can take you across borders and really execute it effectively and so today we're going to be discussing how to create that strategy and how does that work for all of your stores across multiple states so the agenda for today the top seo strategies to implement helpful tools for a successful strategy across multi-state and how to evaluate performance which is beyond important if you are planning a strategy for your marketing initiative and uh so really happy to have everybody on board here today thank you so much once again for taking the time out of your day to join us we're going to be moving through a lot of content today my name is eduardo silva i will be your host for this webinar today and i've been with foot traffic here since january really excited to to be part of the team and be helping the industry move in a growth direction i have with me around 18 years in sales and marketing experience so really excited to be um part of the team

{Eduardo Silva}

but also part of the industry as a whole a little bit about foot traffic so we've been around for over four and a half years now going on five years we focus on dispensary digital marketing across the north american plane so that is the united states and canada and we've been doing uh very successfully uh digital marketing strategies for all of our clients across all of these different states taking a lot of the compliance into consideration but really our key focus is attracting new customers and so really happy to be talking about seo seo is one of the top drivers for every single one of our customers some of our customers experience north of 50 of their e-commerce revenue through seo so very very excited to be talking to you about this concept today before we get started let's talk a little bit about these housekeeping items here we are going to be following pretty fast as we normally do we only have 30 minutes for our content today so do take your cell phones we love those cell phones right they're very important for the marketer but let's mute them let's put them face down just to make sure that we

{Get ready}

do not get too distracted as we're going through this content and then also familiarize yourself with the zoom interface there was a recent update so even if you wore a zoom pro there is some new features in the interface itself do find a q a button it should be on the top of your screen the q a is where you can go to ask any questions while we're flowing through this content we do have moderators here with us today who are going to be answering questions as we move through the content okay so once again the q a button is where you want to be inputting any of those questions while we're flowing through the content we do have a q a section as well towards the end but if you do have some questions throughout that way you don't forget what the question is we can address them towards the end and make sure you stick around we do have a special offer for those attending today uh and we'll be sharing that towards the end of the webinar as well okay once again thank you so much for your time really really excited to have you here so before we get started let's uh dive into the vital strategy that you need to be using which is seo and before we jump into that let's talk a little bit about what seo is just a quick recap so seo stands for search engine optimization which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website

{What is SEO?}

through organic search engine results organic search engine traffic is unpaid traffic that comes from google yahoo bing okay mainly google right because google makes up 93 of north american search okay internet search so when customers want to find a dispensary near them they turn to search and google in particular as we mentioned and if you want to show up in those search results then it's crucial that you have a robust seo strategy and a team to implement it for you otherwise searchers will go right to your competition okay search engine optimization shows that your page is relevant for particular keywords so for example in our business that may mean san diego dispensary the term dispensary right detroit provisioning center or santa rosa marijuana delivery so optimizing your site around these keywords will make it more likely that people who are looking for your services can actually find you and that's very very important when you have a good seo strategy two things will happen one you will show up higher in the search results and two you will get more organic traffic when you rank better on google it helps create brand trust and authority it shows searchers that your site is relevant and that it may be useful information for them so they automatically equate high rankings with quality plus because searchers will rely uh rarely look past excuse me rarely look past the first page of results your higher ranking will lead to more organic traffic okay so in fact the top three results of a search tend to get 75 of all of the organic traffic the lower you are on the search results the less traffic you will get this is simple math okay so organic traffic is one of the most dependable sources of traffic and revenue for many businesses according to a research conducted by hubspot organic search is responsible for 94 percent of all web traffic and it's not just any web traffic thanks to your optimization it will be relevant high quality traffic what does this mean this means that these people who are finding you are already looking for you they're already interested in what you're selling so with seo you are ensuring that your website is always working for you and your website is always active as neil patel the popular seo expert says your website is your 24 hour sales man right talk about automation potential here so let's dive into one case study here this is the revenue attribution data for one of our clients over six months from december to may okay this client has 10 conversion rate on visitors that purchase on their website with an average order of 100 the client inc invested 12 000 on their seo strategy with us across 16 different locations so let's talk about these findings here right first and foremost twelve thousand dollars per month across sixteen locations yielding a revenue of 6.35 million dollars in six months okay so this is an investment of seventy two thousand dollars with an roi of eighty eight dollars for every dollar spent this is remarkable right but this is the power of seo and this is the power of a well-crafted seo strategy that is quality content and several other strategic positioning of content and backlinking of your site to drive that authority right online so really really great results for this one client but we have some more to share with you as well when it comes to seo the first thing you need to focus on is your website your website should load very very quickly you can check how quickly your website is loading on google's page speed insights okay this is part of creating a good user experience which google now prioritizes so if you're not creating a good user experience guess what google dings you right so your website should also look great on mobile google is also prioritizing mobile more and more as searchers are increasingly using their smartphones to search browse and even shop so you also need to consider the url structure and your site architecture this means that any pages in addition to your home page need to be organized in a way that makes sense to google and your web visitors so for example your location pages should use your dispensary page as a parent page okay the urls you use also matter as well so they should clearly identify what's on the page let's say we're doing a location pages for your dispensaries in massachusetts we would use the city name as the url so for example yourdispensary.com dispensaries forward slash austin so once again we actually type this in into the chat window here so you guys can see so yourdispensary.com forward slash dispensaries forward slash boston this is a sample of how your url structure should be built okay when creating pages you will also want to use appropriate keywords in your metadata like your title tags and your alt text okay another crucial tool especially right now is your online menu to be able to measure the success of your seo strategy you need to use a menu like ola woocommerce or duchy that allows you to track the revenue attribution okay all of these efforts in the digital marketing realm are only as good as your ability to measure your results i think every single person on this attending this webinar can agree right it is very important to be able to have quantifiable data that backs up each and every single one of your campaigns and strategies so let's talk a little bit more about location pages as i mentioned dispensary location pages and we're going to go into that a little deeper now because these are crucial for reaching local audiences in search of your markets okay to properly optimize your dispensary location pages you need to have a keyword for each of

{Location Pages}

your pages and use the keyword within your title tag your alt image text and the content of your page when we create a location page for our clients we also include directions to the dispensary from nearby locations a list of amenities a little in local attractions and an embedded google maps in addition we include schema which is a vocabulary of tags that can be added to your html code schema provides google with more informative and more information about your website so you can index it properly and fast and efficiently because we're spelling out everything for google and showing how relevant your website is for local queries google will automatically start seeing your website as a much more efficient tool for google's searchers right and that's very important your website content is vital for getting people to your site and keeping them there creating quality content can help boost your google ranking and help you convert more visitors into customers so when creating content make sure you include blog posts and showcase local events on

{Content}

places or places this helps increase your local seo for these locations so for example you want to highlight the best best food trucks in your city or the most beautiful places to hike while high which is a great one for clients right educational content can also help you showcase your authority and cement your brand this is specifically useful for medical dispensaries no need to make medical claims just provide information about cannabinoids terpenes cultivars and current research on or even news around cannabis content about your product selection or vendors can help you showcase the search results when potential customers try to search for them so this is also a great way right to link right back to your menu so they can actually find you your content should use relevant keywords and be written for the audience not for the search engine old strategies like keyword stuffing will actually hurt your search rankings because google wants to provide users the best experience possible google won't send users to a site that looks spammy so you want to make sure your content is working for you use strong calls to action and make sure to have email and text opt-ins on your page and blog posts right self-explanatory to a certain degree seo isn't just about your website there are off-site factors that can impact the rankings as well we're going to jump into these now the first one of your is your google my business profile okay the state of local seo reported that was released by the maz web presence shows that your google my business and your gmb profile is the most important local ranking factor to actually drive up your seo authority it's free to create a profile and if you haven't already you should actually claim each of your locations very important when creating a gmb profile make sure that you use actual name of your dispensary okay and then follow it by the word dispensary for example rise would be rise dispensary do not add in the name of your city or try to stuff your name within keywords that's just not going to really amount to a really great result you should create a description of your location that includes relevant keywords the types of products you carry and anything that helps set your dispensary apart make sure that your name address and phone number are also correct and that they are the same as they appear on your website or any other directory okay that is actually one of the services that we provide as part of our seo strategy for our clients is syndicating your business information accurately across all relevant websites we're talking about 50 plus sometimes anywhere from 70 to 100 locations where your business should be syndicated to you properly in order for google to really create that authority around your brand the second most important off-site local ranking factor according to recent mods report is reviews google wants to send people to websites that best match their search part of this is ensuring that they have a positive experience there

{Reputation & reviews}

right as in google's searchers right to do this they rely on what others have been saying about your business to rank well you will want to get at least one new review a day and a score of 4.7 star average fewer stars will result in fewer searches customers take reviews into account when making a purchase so this isn't just about seo it helps you on the on two fronts right building that loyalty with customers but also building your seo because we're talking about seo google reveals are the most valuable while other reviews are helpful when customers are shopping around when it comes to seo google is king to get reviews you will want to make sure your blood tenders are asking your customers for them for them after a positive experience so you can also create flyers with a qr code to place in bags or re-engage customers with sms to ask for a google review in terms of reputation management you should check your reviews regularly and respond to both positive as well as negative reviews and then for negative reviews try to take the customer offline by offering your phone number if you're able to address the reviewers concerns they may be willing to update their review and leave a positive feedback instead our last off-site ranking factor is link building creating a link building strategy will help you showcase the relevance and authority of your website link signals account for around 28 of organic rank factors and 17 of google's local pack ranking factors and so you want you do not want to ignore this right and just so i reiterate right the google's local pack is the businesses that show up when a customer is searching right in that little business window right keep that in mind that's where 75 of the business or the traffic if you will is actually getting flow to once a user is using google and searching for a dispensary when people link to your site they're essentially endorsing you those links help you build site authority they tell google that people like you and your content and that's and and how relevant you are the best way to get backlinks is to create good content that people want to share via social or on their own blog post by showcasing your knowledge of the industry and of cannabis in general you can create content that people want to link to you can also do guest posts on relevant sites to help build your link as well another way to get links to your site is by ensuring you're listed in directories like yelp weed maps and leafly and by speaking or presenting at cannabis events and conferences the quality of the link matters of course while you want many links they should be front from a relevant site or individuals as their domain authority help increase the value of the link plus the text that they use to link to you uh known as the anchor text should also be very much relevant to the content that's being linked to to create your seo strategy and to measure its success you need to make sure that you have the right tools there are plenty of options out there are sem rush can help you do keyword search in seo audits you can also track your

{Tools}

website to see how your ranking changes over time this is something we do for every single one of our clients to track and monitor the effectiveness of your seo strategy you need to ensure you have google analytics set up properly too many dispensaries think they have google analytics set up correctly but we've often found ourselves fixing this for our clients so make sure that you've set it up properly and you are getting all of the benefits that you can from google analytics and google search consoles should also be enabled of course to create the pages and content on your site and optimize them you also need a team of people dedicated to your seo efforts including a web developer a web designer a copywriter a blogger and an seo spell a specialist at minimum the simplest way is to hire all of these professionals without crushing your budget is to actually work with established agency like foot traffic now that you have the tools you need to start tracking saving your site in a refs will allow you to monitor how you're ranking for particular keywords and what your domain authority is and the number of backlinks you actually have being able to monitor these changes means that you can test out different

{Tracking}

strategies and see which ones of them are actually working best for your business once you have the google analytics setup you should use it to track your organic traffic month over month and your e-commerce revenue using your google search console you can find new keywords to rank for as well you can use your gmb profile to get more information as well using insights you can actually see what people are doing when they view your profile are you are they actually asking for directions are they calling you this is information that you actually need to make seo strategies more effective and reach your goals let's talk about another case study here so here's another one from a seo excuse me an mso client of ours out of the east coast so for the last six months they generated 1.1 million dollars in revenue from seo uh strategy here

{Revenue}

with an investment of thirty thousand dollars across five locations okay so thirty thousand dollars a return on investment here of 37 to every dollar spent this particular customers um e-commerce revenue is broken out where seo is actually making up over 50 right so 1.1 million dollars in revenue steady business once again the website's really working for them and it's a great way to really understand the power of seo we invested heavily in the link building and the on-page optimization for this client this was one of the main strategies plus we also implemented the strategy to increase google reviews this had a tremendous impact as you can see here and we wrote around 10 new articles per month for their blog right so content with king in this case so everyone wants to get to the top of google it's a valuable piece of real estate those top three results as i mentioned before get 75 percent of the clicks we created a robust strategy for dispensaries and you can start moving your website up the rankings and get more customers

{What's your plan?}

to your site fairly fast here fairly quickly at foot traffic seo is our is running in our blood it's the first service we offered when we first launched foot traffic and it's one that continuously drive sales for our clients in fact our seo provides our customers with the greatest return on investment in comparison to all of the other digital marketing strategies so let's talk about that seo deal that we mentioned so first and foremost for those of you attending today we're offering a free onboarding so onboarding is usually a complete business online audit but also a competitor audit that we do as well as a strategy builder so we're including that at no cost which is normally a thousand dollar fee

{MSO SEO Package $999 per location}

and then a 999 per location per month package that will include every single one of the seo strategies that have been proven successful to all of our other customers so with that being said please do reach out to us if you are interested in getting started and or learning more about how we can potentially help you let's turn to questions here um to address any questions that are that have come through wonderful how long does it take to see results great question so when it comes to seo seo is certainly a strategy that is not a short term one

{Questions?}

it's and the reason is right it takes a lot of energy on the front end so normally we see some results as in directly measurable to revenue generation within the first three months but after the three months is when you start seeing the picking up speed right between that six month and nine month mark is when you can really start seeing the value right a lot of revenue starting to be generated a lot more organic coming across and if you have questions once again just type them in here to the q a window on the top of the of the zoom panel okay how do you track results so i did touch on this uh a little bit during the um beginning phase i think was like middle of the webinar here today so tracking results is beyond important right to measure how the different strategies when it comes to seo are working right one first and foremost you got to set a clear goal right do we want to generate revenue is that how we're going to track the effectiveness right do we want to just track the amount of organic traffic how many users we're driving to our web uh website do we want to track conversion so with that being said unparalleled that you select the correct e-commerce platform to go into your website because outside of our industry this is common practice in our industry which is still maturing there's still some room for some technologies to really kind of make that change right and allow for tracking for traffic can track just about anything but some technologies do pose a little bit of a limitation so feel free to reach out to us we can certainly point you in the right direction however having proper e-commerce right that your customers can come to with high conversion but also tracking capability is unparalleled what is the first step great question here first step is really we made it as easy as possible just get in touch with us i think ultimately we have to get an understanding of where you are today with your online presence so what is your website looking like how is google viewing you right we need to do that audit we need to have that onboarding conversation to really understand how much energy do you need to invest in the front end to correct course correct a lot of those changes right that is necessary for google to really start looking at you as a trusted advisor okay and then one more question here so we um the question is pertaining to the 999 per month is is that applicable for a single location and yes it is applicable for a single location so if you're not an mso but you still would like to take advantage of seo highly encouraged as well right um absolutely get in touch with us we can certainly help you there on that note i certainly appreciate everybody's time and uh also the great questions here is a link um to get in touch with us foot traffic dot me forward slash call we'll also put that in the chat window here so you have a hyperlink but get in touch with us let's go ahead and get started you know let's get this conversation going um if anything you could just amount as a good planning exercise for you

{Thank You}

so you can budget plan and or at least point your business in the right direction as you plan on growth right have a wonderful day everyone thank you so much for joining us and i look forward to speaking with you at a later time you ]