CBD SEO – 5 Keyword Research Tips For Quick SEO Gains
CBD SEO is highly competitive and the market is fraught with legal complexities, so regular keyword searches won’t cut it.
If you want to generate high and steady traffic to your CBD website, then you must find the keywords that hit the target. If you can do this, you will succeed in generating a steady stream of organic traffic to your site, so in this article, we will look at the best five keyword research tactics that can help you rank well on search engines.
Keyword Research Tips for Quick SEO Gains
1. Begin with search intent
When a prospect navigates to Google search, he usually has a specific intent which could be a question he needs answers to or a product that he’s looking to buy, so if you want to draw these prospects to your corner, you must match their search intent.
Even if you create the best content in the history of CBD, if it does not match their search intent, they will leave your page faster than they enter when they realize that it does not contain the information that they are looking for.
This will be bad for your website since your bounce rate will increase, thereby causing Google to decrease the ranking of your page for not being able to provide ‘useful content’.
If you want to draw readers to your page, keep them there, and possibly convert them into buyers, then you must make sure to use the exact keywords that they are using to perform their search.
For example, someone who is looking to buy CBD oil will most like to use a phrase like “Best CBD oil”, and someone who doesn’t know a lot about CBD will probably type in “What is CBD oil?” on Google.
While you are doing this, you must be careful to distinguish between keywords to be used for informational and commercial content on your site. For example, a longtail keyword like “how long does marijuana stay in your system?“ would be ideal for informational content, whereas the one about the best CBD oil will be suited for commercial content.
Typically, your website should be a blend of informational and commercial pages. The information content you post will help you get juicy backlinks that will boost your domain rating, which will play a huge role in helping you rank on Google.
2. Seek out pages on high domain ranking that do not have backlinks
One of the best ways to get keywords is to use your competitors to do so and that is exactly what this tactic does.
In this case, we will be using high-domain ranking sites. Such sites are often able to rank for keywords without doing too much in some cases, they even have certain pages that rank high, but are of low quality and do not contain a single backlink. This is where CBD link building comes in.
You can take advantage of this opportunity to create a better version of the same content that is 100% original and use link building to surpass the high domain ranking page on search engines.
To do this, you can use a couple of SEO tools, but for the purpose of the article, we will be using Ahrefs.
Firstly, enter the domain of the high-ranking site into Ahrefs’ content explorer and you will get a list of all the pages on the website. Then filter this list based on ‘referring domain’ to get a smaller list.
Since we are looking for pages that possibly do not have any backlink on them, you can set your search to one referring domain and Ahrefs will give you pages that have one or no backlinks. If there are no such pages on the website, then you can set the filter to less than five links. While you are at it, also filter your search to give you pages that get organic traffic.
Once you have gotten these results, check the details to see the keywords that these pages rank for. You should be on the lookout for the ones with a good click rate and that get good traffic too. If you find out, then that’s surely the keyword that you want to develop into better content.
Rinse and repeat these steps as many times as possible and you will have as much content as possible.
3. Use Gap Analysis
Gap analysis is another function that you will find on Ahrefs. This feature will help you find the gaps in your content so that you will know how to fill them up. In other words, it will help you spot keywords that you can easily rank for, but have not yet targeted.
In this case, we will make use of low domain ranking sites that are your competitors. You will want to find the keywords that they rank for but you don’t, and since they are low domain ranking sites, you can rank for any keywords that they already rank for, but only if you do it right.
To find these competing sites, go to Ahrefs and enter your domain on the site explorer, then click on competing domains. This will give you a bunch of information, but only two of them will be important to you for this purpose: the domain ranking and their organic traffic.
Once you have this information, you can now use the content gap tool which is also on the site explorer. On the fields provided, input as many low domain ranking sites as you can to get a list of keywords that they rank for which you don’t.
To narrow down the search to get the best result, you can apply filters to target only keywords that at least two of your competitors rank for. You can also filter the list based on keyword density.
In my experience, I’ve found that even top-ranking websites do not target the keywords that you get using this tactic which makes it a goldmine.
You can create high-quality content based on the keywords and easily out-rank many of the sites that already rank for them.
4. Pay attention to search volume
Search volume is a powerful metric in keyword research. You will find it in almost any free or paid keyword research tool. It shows you the average number of monthly searches for a given keyword or phrase in a particular location (for example, a country, state, or county).
When you get a high search volume for a particular keyword, it means that there are a lot of people that are searching for that particular keyword or other related terms.
This does not always translate to the fact that the keyword is a good one and should be included as part of your target CBD SEO term, and I will tell you why.
The fact that there are so many people searching for the same keyword several times in a month means that the keyword will be super competitive too. This often indicates that you will face stiff competition from other brands that are also trying to rank fit the same search term since they are targeting the same audience as you are.
In some cases, these competitors may have an edge over you in the form of high domain authority and brand reputation, a much larger marketing budget, and more, which means you will stand little or no chance to outrank them so it will be futile to even attempt it.
The way to go is to carefully compare search volume against domain ranking. New websites often have lower domain ranking than older sites, but if you can find sites that rank for some relatively high search volume keywords, but your domain outranks theirs, then you can reverse engineer their process and use the same keywords.
5. Use long-tail keywords
When it comes to CBD SEO the length of keywords you use in your website will play a huge role in its visibility. This is because you will want your site to appear in front of searchers who are scouring Google for CBD products and these people are known to use specific and long keywords.
It is not very difficult to find the relevant terms that you need. You can use a keyword research tool to find them and there are several of them that you can get for free or for a token. I’m particularly familiar with KeywordsFX for this particular exercise.
I have used it to get dozens of keywords that have helped me rank in the past.
Since the aim is to get long-tail keywords, it is usually best practice to focus on key terms that contain at least three words. For example, “CBD topical cream”.
Long-tail keywords are usually how your target audience would likely type their search in Google, so your chances of driving more qualified leads to your site will be increased.
Once you get these keywords from whichever tool you use, integrate them into your content but be careful not to use them more than you are supposed to so as to avoid keyword stuffing.
Final Words
CBD SEO is not a walk in the park. It is unlike regular SEO and requires lots of time and research, and Google limitations don’t make it any easier.
Hopefully, these five tips can help improve how you do keyword research for your CBD business and boost your chances on search engines.
