Free SEO Audit Guide for Dispensary Websites

An SEO audit for a dispensary website checks whether Google can find, read and trust the pages that bring customers in: the store page, the menu, the first-visit page and the deals. Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and your own phone cover most of it in an hour. Running it yourself also lets you check what an agency says it did against what Google actually sees.

What an audit checks

An audit checks five things, in the order a problem would block a customer:

• Access. Can Google get past your age gate and into the menu, and are the pages you care about indexed?
• Content. Does each page say plainly what you sell, where and when? Are there pages for the categories you stock, the first visit and medical patients?
• Local signals. Does your Google profile link to the right page? Do your name, address, phone and hours match everywhere? Do store pages carry local business markup?
• Experience. Does the site load fast on a phone, and can a customer get from Google to a finished pre-order without getting lost?
• Measurement. Can you tell which first-time customers came from search?

Run a quick self-audit

1. Minutes 0–10: search like a customer. On your phone, search "dispensary near me" from your parking lot, then from a neighborhood ten minutes away, then search your store's name. Note whether you appear, whether the hours are right, and where the website link goes.
2. Minutes 10–20: read the Pages report in Search Console (Search Console). Compare indexed pages with the pages you think you have. Hundreds of redirected or excluded pages usually point to the age gate or a menu setup problem.
3. Minutes 20–30: inspect one menu category page. Paste a category URL, such as your flower or edibles page, into URL Inspection and view the tested page. Check whether the product names appear on your domain, or whether the page is an empty frame around someone else's menu.
4. Minutes 30–40: run PageSpeed Insights on the home page, a store page and a menu page, on the mobile setting (PageSpeed Insights). Look at the Core Web Vitals results first (what they measure). Heavy menu scripts and full-screen gate overlays are the usual reasons for a slow score.
5. Minutes 40–50: walk the pre-order path on your phone. Start from your Google profile, open the website link, and go as far as a full cart. Count the taps, and note every point where the address bar changes to another company's domain.
6. Minutes 50–60: read your queries. In the Performance report, sort queries by clicks. If nearly every click comes from your store's name, the site keeps existing customers informed but isn't winning new ones.

Write down each problem as you find it, with the page it affects.

Most common problems for cannabis dispensaries

Most dispensary sites fail in the same handful of ways, and most of them trace back to the age gate or the menu.

Two of these are worth checking every time your menu changes, not once a year: the menu inspection in step 3 and the "Not found" count. A menu switch can undo months of work in an afternoon.

What to do after the audit

Turn the findings into a short, dated list, and fix what blocks first visits first. A practical order:

• This week: anything that stops Google reading your pages, like gate redirects, noindex tags and broken profile links.
• This month: the path from profile to pre-order, and redirects for broken menu links.
• Before your next peak: missing pages for the categories you stock, the first visit and medical patients, finished weeks before 4/20 or the holidays.
• Ongoing: speed, markup and the monthly menu check.

Give each fix an owner. Your menu or POS provider owns integration faults, your web developer owns redirects and speed, and your store manager owns the profile. If an agency does the work, ask to see these same checks in its monthly report, so you can verify the work yourself. The local SEO checklist covers the profile side, and the SEO cost guide explains what ongoing work should include.

How VETS Growth Marketing helps

We run this audit with you live, menu and age gate included, and turn it into a dated fix list with an owner on every line. The site, Search Console and analytics stay in your name. We report in first-time customers from search, so you can see whether each fix changed anything. Book a growth consultation and leave with the five fixes that matter most for your store.