SEO Project for Canna Cabana

Canada’s best and largest retail chain for cannabis and accessories

Canna Cabana is based in Canada and is part of High Tide Inc., the world’s largest publicly traded cannabis retailer. When the partnership with SmartRanking began in May 2020, Canna Cabana had 32 stores. In recent years, Canna Cabana has grown to become the largest cannabis retailer with more than 160 locations, a number that is set to increase further in the coming years.

Canna Cabana operates in a unique and complex market, with extensive regulations and a wide range of stakeholders. Despite this complexity, we have a deep understanding of the company and are able to achieve sustained growth.

SEO Strategy for Canna Cabana

Starting in May 2020, SmartRanking has been Canna Cabana’s regular partner for improving its online visibility. The focus is on expanding its online visibility in Canada.

The goal set by Canna Cabana

From the very beginning of our collaboration, Canna Cabana expressed significant growth ambitions. At the start of the project, their search visibility was nonexistent, but their goal was to become the market leader in organic search in Canada within two years. This is measured in terms of search visibility.

Furthermore, the ROI on the SEO investment must be positive so that larger investments in expanding the SEO team are feasible. Acquiring Cabana Club and ELITE members is also crucial for growing the customer base.

The Approach for This Project

At SmartRanking, we believe that search engine optimization isn’t just about applying a few tricks. SEO is about improving websites to provide the target audience with the best answers to their questions and needs. In this process, the focus is on the website user.

At the start of our collaboration, Canna Cabana’s website was a headless WordPress site without e-commerce features. The recommendation was to set up an e-commerce platform to compete with other fast-growing retailers. Canna Cabana’s development team implemented a Shopify Plus environment in 2021, and we were responsible for the migration. All products and inventory match what’s available in the physical stores, allowing users to place an order online and then pick it up in-store (using Fastendr™).

The approach within the SEO project involves continuously improving and expanding product pages, analyzing data and creating new product groups, implementing content marketing, and continuously optimizing the store pages and Google My Business profiles.

To optimize and manage Google My Business profiles, an efficient process has been developed that monitors more than 160 stores and applies bulk optimizations to them. The results are measured and compared using an A/B test. The store pages are specified in the Google My Business profiles and are then optimized. Using programmatic SEO, all store pages are optimized with the most frequently searched local search terms, which in turn improves their visibility in local search results for queries such as “pre-rolls near me.”

Optimizing Google My Business profiles is also important for cracking down on illegal businesses, since many black-market sellers create Google My Business profiles to sell their products. Google takes action against this, but the illegal profiles sometimes remain online for weeks.

Another crucial feature designed to resolve a major crawl issue was built by Canna Cabana’s former CTO. Because category pages are populated based on the available inventory at the selected store, Google’s crawler normally cannot find all products through the category pages. Therefore, a feature was built that detects whether search engines are visiting the website. If so, all products are loaded onto category pages, and the crawler does not see a store selector. This eliminates crawl issues and allows search engines to find all products through the platform. The same feature is also applied to product pages, where a store selector is used by default to display prices and structured data.

In addition to our approach to SEO, we believe in close collaboration with clients and adapting to the needs of each project. When the partnership began, Canna Cabana’s online marketing team consisted of a single copywriter. Over the past few years, thanks to the company’s successful growth and SEO efforts, the team has expanded to include an SEO director, four SEO specialists, a team of copywriters, and a copy coordinator. This also means that our role has shifted from full-scale execution to analysis, strategy development, consulting, and support in implementing optimizations.

The result achieved

By closely monitoring growth, constantly seeking opportunities to improve discoverability, and putting the user first, we and the Canna Cabana team achieve steady growth year after year. SEO is a crucial channel, so strong search visibility is essential for Canna Cabana’s growth. Within the SEO process, the focus is on improving technical aspects, expanding content, optimizing the CTR, and broadening the product range.

Canna Cabana’s SEO team is eager to learn and dedicated. Despite the regulations, we can work together to optimize the platform and achieve our goals.