Key takeaways
- Start with the errors that strand a customer who already chose you: wrong hours, a name that doesn't match your sign, a broken pre-order link.
- A menu that only lives inside a provider's embed, or behind an age gate Google can't pass, leaves your product pages out of search.
- Never trade loyalty points for reviews. Ask at the counter and after a first order instead.
- Do a full pass about six weeks before 4/20 and again before the holiday rush, not the week of.
A local SEO checklist for a dispensary covers four areas: the Google profile, the website and menu, reviews, and tracking. The fifteen items below are written so you can work through them this week with your store manager and whoever runs your POS, and each one follows how first-time customers actually find a cannabis store.
The checklist
- Profile: Cannabis store as the primary category. Add Medical marijuana dispensary only if you hold the license and serve patients in your state. An adult-use-only store should leave it off (how categories work).
- Profile: a name that matches your sign and license. Use the exact name on the storefront and on your state license. No "Weed, Deals, Open Late" tacked on.
- Profile: hours that match your license and your door. Set holiday hours for 4/20 week, the day before Thanksgiving and December early, not on the morning itself. A shopper who drives to a locked door writes a review about it.
- Profile: the right links. Point the website link at your store page, not the home page of a menu provider, and add your pre-order link. If you deliver where it is allowed, add those delivery areas and keep your storefront address showing.
- Profile: photos that help someone find you. Show the exterior from the street, the entrance, the parking and the sales floor. Keep product shots modest and free of claims.
- Listings: the same details everywhere. Match your name, address, phone and hours on the cannabis directories you use, plus Apple and Bing. Mismatched hours across directories confuse shoppers and search engines alike.
- Site: a menu Google can crawl. Open one product category in Search Console's URL Inspection and look at the rendered page (Search Console). If the products are missing, they are not helping you.
- Site: an age gate that doesn't hide the page. The gate should sit over a page that already loaded, not redirect every visitor to a separate gate screen.
- Site: one page per store. Each needs the address, hours, map, parking, accessibility notes and what ID to bring.
- Site: first-visit and medical pages. Explain the 21-and-over ID check, what a patient needs to bring, how pre-order pickup works and the payment options you accept.
- Site: local business markup. Add structured data with your address and opening hours to each store page (Google's markup guide).
- Reviews: a routine ask. Ask at checkout and in the email after a first order. Never attach loyalty points or a discount to a review (Google's policy).
- Reviews: replies without claims. Thank people within a few days. Don't promise effects, mention products for sale or confirm anyone's patient status.
- Tracking: tagged profile links. Add campaign tags to the website and pre-order links so orders from Maps show up separately in your analytics.
- Tracking: a source field at sign-up. Add "How did you find us?" to loyalty enrollment in your POS, so first-time customers from Google get counted.
The local SEO checklist at a glance
Google profile
- Primary category matches your main service
- Address and hours exact
- Services and photos filled in
Website
- A page for each main service
- Tappable phone number on every page
- Fast on a phone
Reviews
- Requested from every customer
- Every review answered
Listings
- Same name and phone everywhere
- Duplicates removed
What to fix first
Fix what strands a customer who already picked you, then fix what helps new customers pick you. Here is the order, with a deadline on each group.
| When | Items | Why this order |
|---|---|---|
| This week | 2, 3, 4 | A wrong name, the wrong hours or a dead order link loses customers who were already on their way |
| This month | 1, 7, 8, 9 | Relevance: Google has to understand what you sell and read the pages that prove it |
| Before your next peak | 5, 6, 10, 11 | These lift your visibility and conversion ahead of 4/20, the holidays or a big product drop |
| Ongoing from now | 12, 13, 14, 15 | Reviews and tracking compound. Starting late costs you months of data |
A single store can usually clear the first two rows within a month. Multi-store groups should run the list per store, because hours, photos and categories drift apart from one location to the next.
If you want to know why the ranking items carry the weight they do, the Map Pack ranking guide explains it. The categories guide settles item 1.
How often to review
Review on a rhythm set by your calendar, not by when something breaks.
- Every week: read and answer new reviews, and check the profile for edits suggested by the public. Anyone can propose a change to your hours or category.
- Every month: check Search Console for menu pages that fell out of the index, and confirm the pre-order link still works after any POS or menu update.
- After every product drop: make sure the new product appears on your menu pages and that retired products redirect rather than show an error.
- About six weeks before 4/20 and before the holiday season: run all fifteen items again, set special hours early and add fresh storefront photos.
- Whenever your license, hours or ownership changes: update the profile, site and directories the same week, one change at a time.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We work through this checklist with you as a dated project: the first two rows done in the first weeks, and the rest scheduled around your 4/20 and holiday calendar. Everything we touch stays in your name, from the profile to the analytics. Our reporting covers first-time customers and loyalty sign-ups from search, not task lists. Book a growth consultation and we will run the checklist against your store live and hand you the five fixes that matter most.
Sources
- Manage your business category, Google Business Profile Help
- Google Search Console, Google
- Local business structured data, Google Search Central
- Prohibited & restricted content (Maps user-generated content policy), Google Maps Help