Dispensary SEO — Win the Local Pack and Weedmaps

Local Pack is dominant. Most dispensary buyers never scroll past the three-pack — they pick one and drive. Getting into the three-pack for "[city] dispensary near me" is a function of proximity, prominence, and review velocity. We engineer prominence (citations, schema, on-page relevance) and review velocity (a real, compliant review-request flow that doesn't violate Google's ToS).

Weedmaps and Leafly are the second engine. Buyers who don't trust Google for cannabis (a non-trivial cohort) go straight to Weedmaps. Optimising listings is a discipline of its own — photos, deal cadence, menu freshness, response time, and the sponsored vs. organic positioning. We don't sell Weedmaps ads, but we'll plan them with you and tell you when paid is worth it.

Google Business Profile is the operating layer underneath both. Hours, photos, posts, products, services, attributes, Q&A — every field has a ranking weight. We update them weekly for active retainer clients.

Google's spam policy bans review-gating (asking happy customers only) and bans incentivised reviews (free product for a 5-star). Most cheap "review services" do both, and the dispensaries that hire them get filtered or suspended.

Our flow: at point-of-sale or in the post-purchase email, every customer gets an unconditional request to leave a Google review (or, for medical dispensaries with HIPAA constraints, on Leafly/Weedmaps). No filtering, no discount-for-review, no automation that masks the human review-request step. Volume is slower — typically 8–15 reviews per month per location — but it survives Google's spam systems.

We also build review-response into the cadence. Every review (positive or negative) gets a non-templated response within 48 hours. Google's algorithm rewards engaged businesses; AI engines extract review content into recommendations.

Colorado (MED — Marijuana Enforcement Division): mature market, high SEO competition, "recreational" terminology accepted. Pages cite MED rules and dispensary license numbers.

California (DCC — Department of Cannabis Control): saturated SEO market, "adult-use" terminology preferred. License-number prominence is regulator-required on every page.

New York (OCM — Office of Cannabis Management): newer market, narrow license window, social-equity provisions to surface in About content. Lower SEO competition, faster wins.

Massachusetts (CCC), Illinois (IDFPR), Michigan (CRA) — each its own template variant. We maintain a per-state compliance template that updates with regulator changes. When a state shifts a rule (NY medical-rec convergence, CA license renewals), we push a site-wide update before the regulator's notice goes public.