CBD SEO for brands that
can’t just
buy their way in.
I’m Randi Bagley. 11 years in SEO, the last four focused on cannabis and CBD. Google Ads rejects you. Meta suspends you. Organic search is the one acquisition channel nobody can shut off, and it is the only thing I do. No agency bloat, no account manager who learned about your industry last Tuesday.
Why CBD SEO is not regular SEO
I have watched CBD brands hand over $8,000 a month to a general digital marketing agency and get back a keyword list that reads like it was written for a pet supply store. Then the agency quietly gives up when it discovers what paid actually costs in this space.
CBD and cannabis SEO comes with restrictions no other industry deals with at the same time. Payment processors, ad platforms, affiliate networks, and email providers all treat you differently. Search engines do not, and that is the whole opportunity.
Search engine optimization is the one channel in the CBD industry that rewards you for doing the work instead of penalizing you for what you sell. Google and Bing index a CBD website the same way they index anything else. Nobody at the search engines is going to email you on a Friday and say your account has been restricted.
Paid ads are a compliance project
Running paid for a CBD business is possible, but it takes serious legal review, restricted landing pages, and constant account babysitting on both sides. Most brands cannot sustain it as their primary channel.
Content has legal limits
You cannot make health claims. That kills the easy content strategy most agencies default to, and it means your CBD content has to earn rankings on depth and usefulness instead.
Two businesses in one site
Most CBD brands sell online and in person. That means ecommerce SEO and local SEO running at the same time, on the same domain, without stepping on each other.
AI answers already replaced page one
People ask ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews what CBD product to buy. If your CBD business is not the source those answers pull from, you are invisible at the exact moment of research.
Four years in cannabis. Eleven in search.
I was a tow truck dispatcher in 2013. I taught myself SEO because I needed out, and I have been doing it ever since. No degree, no agency pedigree, just a decade of watching what actually moves rankings while everyone else argued about it on Twitter.
For the last four years my focus has been cannabis and CBD. Dispensary clients, online CBD store owners, and cannabis brands trying to build search traffic in a market where you cannot simply outspend the competition. I know which keyword targets convert and which ones just look impressive in a report.
That is the part most people get wrong. A CBD SEO agency will show you blog traffic because blog traffic is easy to grow. I care about traffic to your product pages, your store locator, and your contact form. Real leads and real transactions, in that order.
You do not need a CBD marketing generalist. You need an SEO expert who understands the compliance walls, the user experience problems age gates create, and where the actual ROI lives in a CBD funnel.
I work alongside Brady Madden at Evergreen Digital Services in Traverse City, which means small-operator attention with a full team behind it when a project needs more hands.
CBD SEO services, start to finish
Every engagement starts with what your specific CBD business needs, not a retainer package built for someone else. Most clients need some mix of these five.
CBD Keyword Research & Strategy
Search intent mapping for a market where the highest-volume terms are usually the least profitable ones.
- Commercial intent CBD keywords
- Competitor keyword gap analysis
- Product and category term mapping
- Long-tail question targeting
- Search volume vs. conversion scoring
Technical SEO
The foundation your organic visibility sits on. Broken sites do not rank, no matter how good the content is.
- Core Web Vitals and site speed
- Crawl and indexation audit
- Age gate and interstitial handling
- Faceted navigation cleanup
- Product and organization schema
CBD Ecommerce SEO
Optimize the pages that make money. Category and product templates built so search engines can actually read and rank them.
- Category page optimization
- Product page content and title tags
- Internal linking architecture
- Compliant, claim-free copy
- Customer reviews and UGC strategy
Local SEO for Retail & Dispensary
If you have a storefront, local search is usually the fastest revenue in the entire strategy. Search engines treat proximity as a ranking factor and that works in your favor.
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Local citation building and cleanup
- Near-me and city page targeting
- Review acquisition system
- Multi-location dispensary management
AI Search Visibility (AEO)
Getting your brand cited inside AI-generated answers, not just listed in the traditional results.
- Answer-formatted content structure
- Entity and brand mention building
- AI Overview presence tracking
- ChatGPT and Perplexity citation audits
- Structured data for machine reading
Reporting & Direct Access
Monthly reporting tied to revenue, plus my actual phone number.
- Ranking and organic traffic reports
- Revenue page performance tracking
- Competitor monitoring
- AI citation reporting
- No account managers in between
Audit first. Opinions second.
Full CBD SEO Audit
I go through your site, your rankings, your Google Business Profile, and your top three competitors before I suggest a single thing.
Priority Roadmap
You get a ranked list of what to fix, in order of revenue impact. Quick wins first, structural work second.
I Do the Work
Technical fixes, content, on-page SEO, GBP, and link building. Executed by me, not passed to a junior who has never worked in this industry.
Measure, Adjust, Repeat
Monthly reporting and continuous optimization. Search engines change constantly and this market moves faster than most.
CBD SEO questions I get every week
How long does CBD SEO take to work?
Local SEO and technical fixes can move rankings inside 30 to 90 days. Competitive ecommerce terms take six to twelve months of consistent work. Any CBD SEO company promising page one in 30 days is selling you something else.
Can I run Google Ads for CBD products instead?
You can, and some brands do it well. It requires legal review, restricted product handling, dedicated landing pages, and someone watching the account daily. It is a real compliance burden on both the client side and the agency side, which is why organic search usually carries the load.
Do you work with dispensaries as well as CBD companies?
Yes. Licensed dispensary work is a big part of what I do, including local SEO, city pages, and menu visibility. My dispensary SEO services page covers that side in more detail.
What does CBD SEO cost?
It depends on your site size, your market, and how much technical debt is sitting in the way. I quote after the audit, never before. No packages, no annual contracts you cannot get out of.
Does AI search really matter for a CBD brand yet?
It already does. AI assistants pull product recommendations from a small set of trusted sources, and brands getting cited now are building an advantage that gets harder to catch every month.
Find out what your competitors rank for that you don’t.
Free 15-minute call. I look at your site, your rankings, and your local presence, tell you exactly what I see, and we figure out if we are a fit. No pitch deck.