Cannabis SEO Results, Measured And Dated
Real accounts, real numbers, and the
- 6 engagements documented in full
- 4 of them cannabis retail
- 1 manual action recovered
- 0 links bought on any of them
Every Engagement, Start To Finish
Filter by the kind of problem, then open the one closest to yours. Every card shows its headline figure and the window it was measured over.
21 screenshots from the accounts themselves. Search Console and Business Profile screens, shown with each engagement below. Names and contact details are blurred. The numbers are not.
- 6 Search Console
- 15 Business Profile
5.11 million Search Console clicks in twelve months across a fifty five store chain
5.11M Search Console clicks 55 locations, multiple states Read It Michigan DispensaryFrom almost no organic search presence to 172,000 clicks in six months
172,000 Search Console clicks Michigan Read It Three Store Michigan Chain73,474 Business Profile interactions in one month at a single store
73,474 Business Profile interactions Three stores, Michigan Read It Michigan Dispensary ChainClicks from 36,500 to 151,000, with click through rate up from 4 to 10.4 percent
151,000 Search Console clicks Michigan, multiple stores Read It Hydroponics SupplierNearly 4,900 organic keywords for an indoor growing supplier in a saturated market
8,590 Search Console clicks Michigan, online and retail Read It Insurance Agency NetworkLocal SEO across a hundred branch network, with fifteen profiles taken first
32,800 Search Console clicks United States, nationwide network Read ItNo engagement on this page matches that filter yet.
Multi-State Dispensary Chain
5.11 million Search Console clicks in twelve months across a fifty five store chain
The largest account on this page and the one worth reading first. A multi-state chain that arrived with a live manual action, one template behind every store page, and a menu Google could not read. The recovery came first. What followed is the work that runs every day: local search for fifty five stores, each with its own Business Profile, its own page and its own competitors a few minutes away. This is penalty recovery and multi location local SEO on the same account.
Last Twelve Months, To September 2026
The Recovery, Three Months After The Lift
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
Where The Clicks Come From
115,433 clicks 1,789,968 impressions from these queries alone
Top non branded queries in Search Console over the last twelve months, as in the screenshot above. The brand query is left out.
| Query | Clicks | Impressions | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|
| dispensary near me | 64,439 | 778,299 | 8.3% |
| dispensaries near me | 27,642 | 590,269 | 4.7% |
| dispensary | 7,799 | 121,187 | 6.4% |
| [town] dispensary | 5,627 | 110,104 | 5.1% |
| michigan dispensary | 3,624 | 75,018 | 4.8% |
| [town] michigan dispensary | 2,174 | 38,448 | 5.7% |
| dispensary [town] | 2,105 | 43,056 | 4.9% |
| dispensaries in [town] michigan | 2,023 | 33,587 | 6.0% |
What Was Wrong
- A live manual action suppressing the entire domain
- Spam backlinks and manipulated anchor text from earlier campaigns
- Location pages near identical across more than fifty stores
- Dynamic routing generating duplicate URLs at scale
- Thousands of low value pages diluting the site, plus 3XX and 4XX errors throughout
- Fifty five Business Profiles to run, each against its own local competitors
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Inventoried the whole affected pattern, not the examplesGoogle names a sample. The action applies to everything matching it, so every URL and every referring domain was catalogued from the sitemap, Search Console, and a full crawl before a single fix was made.
- Backlink cleanup with a documented outreach logSpam links and manipulated anchors identified, removal requested at source with every attempt dated and recorded, then disavowed at domain level only where removal failed.
- Location pages rebuilt from per store factsPrototypes built first, then rolled out. Real parking, landmarks, staff, and local detail, with the standard that no paragraph should still make sense if the city name were swapped. Store pages are the heart of local work for a dispensary.
- Content pruned, consolidated, and removedEvery page given one of three outcomes: rewritten, merged with redirects, or removed with correct status codes. Dummy pages cleared through Search Console removals.
- Technical remediation across the estateDuplicate URLs from dynamic routing resolved, canonicals corrected, subdomain meta data fixed, structured data errors cleared, and the redirect chains untangled. This is the technical half of the job and it came before any content.
- Trust signals and an education programPrivacy policy, About page schema, and editorial standards addressed, then a cannabis education blog built to give the domain something to be authoritative about.
- One evidenced reconsideration requestSubmitted only after every fix was live and documented. Numbers, decisions, and dates rather than argument, because a denial makes the next review slower. The free request builder walks through the same structure.
- Local SEO across all fifty five storesEvery store treated as its own local search problem: its Business Profile, its page and the searches made around it, checked store by store rather than reported as one average. The four stores in the screenshots show why that matters.
- Progress read from non branded searchA chain this size is found by name whatever its SEO does, so the measure is the searches that do not name it: dispensary near me, the town searches, and delivery.
Two things worth reading carefully. The 5.11 million clicks include people searching for the brand by name, which a chain this size gets whatever its SEO does, so the non branded report is the fairer measure, and it is led by dispensary near me. And the stores do not all move together: over the same months store C rose 6.3 percent while store B fell 28.5 percent. Across fifty five stores that spread is normal, and a report showing only the stores that went up is not one to trust. The recovery before all of this followed the same sequence used on every engagement: list the whole pattern, fix all of it, then submit once.
Michigan Dispensary
From almost no organic search presence to 172,000 clicks in six months
A Michigan dispensary with a strong reputation in store and almost nothing in organic search. It was competing in one of the most crowded cannabis markets in the country, on a site that gave Google very little to work with. The fix was ordinary dispensary SEO done in the right order.
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
What Was Wrong
- Almost no organic visibility despite a full product range
- Site architecture that made crawling and internal linking inefficient
- No meaningful local presence in the surrounding towns
- Thin, repetitive content across the pages that existed
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Keyword research built around real buying intentMapped the terms customers actually search, separating product intent from location intent so pages were not competing with each other before a word was written.
- Technical rebuild of speed and mobile renderingFixed the delivery problems first, because content added to a site Google struggles to read is budget spent twice.
- Google Business Profile and location pagesBuilt the profile properly, then created location specific pages carrying real detail rather than one template with the town name changed. Ordinary dispensary SEO, done in order.
- Local citations and directory consistencyBusiness citations across the platforms that matter in this industry, with identical details everywhere, which is what makes a local entity credible.
- A sustained content programEducational and category content to build topical authority, rather than a burst of pages published once and abandoned.
The click figure looks hard to believe until you see the starting point. This site was not losing rankings. It had never really had any. So the first six months were about showing up in search at all, not about climbing. That is a very different job from recovering a site that has slipped, and it is worth being clear which one you are reading.
Three Store Michigan Chain
73,474 Business Profile interactions in one month at a single store
A chain competing against dispensaries a few minutes down the road in every one of its markets. The websites looked fine and were nearly invisible in local search. That pattern costs a store more than any other, because a customer searching locally is already ready to buy. Spreading that fix across several stores is the multi location problem in one sentence.
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
What Was Wrong
- Limited visibility in the local results that drive walk in traffic
- Business Profiles left under optimized across all locations
- Very few local citations, and a thin backlink profile
- Site architecture that needed work for mobile and for crawling
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Location level keyword researchTerms assigned per store, such as the searches around one town, so branches stopped competing for the same results and each page had something specific to win. That mapping is the first thing a chain needs.
- Business Profile optimization across every storeDetailed categories, real photography, consistent details, and regular posts and questions, treated as an ongoing channel rather than a one off setup.
- Dedicated pages for each dispensaryBuilt individually rather than generated, with the meta data, headings, speed and mobile experience handled per page.
- Local education contentGuides written for the communities each store serves, answering the questions that come up in that specific market.
- Citations and industry relevant linksBuilt through directories and cannabis specific platforms rather than bought, which matters in an industry where link penalties are common.
The number worth looking at here is not the interactions, it is the calls. A dispensary customer who phones is usually checking stock before driving over. That makes a call the closest thing to a booked sale that local search produces.
Michigan Dispensary Chain
Clicks from 36,500 to 151,000, with click through rate up from 4 to 10.4 percent
A well known Michigan chain that was ranking and not being clicked. Impressions were fine. The results themselves were not worth clicking. That is a different problem from being invisible and it needs a different fix, which is why the diagnosis comes before the plan.
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
What Was Wrong
- Ranking without converting the impression into a visit
- Content that had never been written with search intent in mind
- Poor mobile performance on a site where most visits are mobile
- Weak rankings on the location terms that drive footfall
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Business Profile work per storeEach listing optimized individually, because a chain is not one entity to Google, it is a set of them that each need to earn their own prominence.
- Local keyword integrationLocation terms worked into the site properly rather than appended, so the pages read naturally and still matched the searches.
- Review generation and responseA steady flow of recent reviews with replies, which feeds both local prominence and the decision a customer makes when comparing two nearby stores.
- Mobile and speed remediationFixed the experience on the device most of these visits actually happen on.
- Content built around real questionsProduct guides and blog content aimed at what customers ask before they buy rather than what the business wanted to say.
One thing worth being straight about: not every store moved the same way. One store rose 67 percent while another fell about 15 percent over the same window. That is normal across a chain, and it usually comes from something local rather than from the work. A report that shows you only the store that went up is a report you should not trust.
Hydroponics Supplier
Nearly 4,900 organic keywords for an indoor growing supplier in a saturated market
A catalog business selling growing equipment, up against both local shops and national retailers. Its problems are the ones every cannabis adjacent online store has: technical debt, thin category pages, and no authority to fall back on.
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
What Was Wrong
- Site speed, mobile performance, and a structure that hindered crawling
- A deep product range with almost no organic visibility behind it
- National retailers dominating the terms that mattered
- Category and product content too thin to compete
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Keyword research across local and national intentSeparated the terms winnable locally from the ones requiring national authority, and sequenced the work accordingly.
- Technical remediationSpeed, mobile responsiveness, and a rebuilt architecture so navigation made sense to a crawler as well as a customer. The free site check reports most of these faults in a minute.
- Category and product page optimizationReal content on the pages that sell, with internal linking that pushed authority to where it converts.
- Authority contentGuides that establish the site as worth reading in a category where most competitors publish product specifications and nothing else.
- Earned link acquisitionTargeted outreach to gardening and agriculture sources rather than bought placements.
An average position of 33 tells you this was still early. Impressions grew much faster than clicks, which is exactly what happens when a site starts showing up for terms it is not yet strong enough to win. That gap is the opportunity, not the failure, and it is the next thing to work on.
Insurance Agency Network
Local SEO across a hundred branch network, with fifteen profiles taken first
Not cannabis, and included on purpose. It is the clearest proof of the thing multi state dispensary chains actually need: running local search across a very large number of stores without it collapsing into a template. That is the same problem a chain of any size runs into.
The Screenshots Behind These Numbers
Names, domains, addresses and account details are blurred. Every figure is left exactly as Google showed it.
What Was Wrong
- Around 100 Business Profiles, most of them unmanaged
- Location pages needed for a hundred branches without duplicating them
- Low organic visibility in a competitive local category
- No consistent content or link strategy across the network
Local Search Results
What Was Done
- Full audit before anything was touchedTechnical health, content gaps, and link opportunities mapped first, so the sequence of work was decided by evidence rather than by habit.
- Prioritized fifteen profiles rather than all hundredSpreading effort across a hundred locations at once produces nothing measurable anywhere. Concentrating it proves the model, then you scale what worked. That is the approach behind every account on this site.
- On page and internal linking overhaulMetadata, structure, and internal links rebuilt so the network passed authority to its own location pages properly.
- Citations and listing consistencyConsistent business details across directories, which at this scale is a genuine data management problem rather than an afternoon of edits.
- Content aimed at local service queriesWritten for the searches people actually make in each market, plus educational material for the questions that precede them.
The lesson a dispensary chain can take from this is about order. Fifteen stores done properly beats a hundred done thinly. The first gives you a result you can point at and repeat. The second gives you a report nobody believes.
Questions About These Case Studies
The Checks Behind These Results
Every engagement here started with the same diagnosis, and the tools run the same checks free.
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