One of the reasons content marketing is so important today is because it’s incredibly effective to boost your website’s search engine traffic. High quality content published to your website and shared online can bring long-term sustainable growth to your brand’s website and your business if you understand current trends and follow best practices.

This month, Semrush released data from a new study, The State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report, and it’s filled with insights about trends cannabis brands should know and best practices to follow to get the best results from content investments this year. Let’s take a look at three key areas that matter most in 2022 based on the data.

Invest in the Right Tactics

According to the results of the Semrush study, content marketing is most successful for brands that focus on the right tactics. The top 10 tactics that were most helpful to brands in 2021 were ranked as follows by survey respondents:

1. Improving content quality: 55%
2. Search engine optimization (SEO): 46%
3. Creating more video and visual content: 41%
4. Updating and repurposing existing content: 38%
5. Optimizing the business’ website: 35%
6. Analyzing competitors’ content: 28%
7. Researching our audience and optimizing the customer journey: 26%
8. Publishing more “how to” and educational content: 25%
9. Adapting to COVID-related changes (e.g., agility): 24%
10. Diversification and publishing new content types: 24%

It’s important to point out how closely aligned content marketing and search engine optimization are. Every new piece of content that you publish on your website creates a new entry point for search engines to find your brand. Therefore, the more you can publish high quality, diverse, useful content that is consistent with your brand promise and meets your audience’s needs, the more organic traffic you’ll get from search engines.

With that said, respondents to the Semrush survey said the five tactics below were most helpful in ranking content organically in 2021:

1. Improving the quality of our content and making it more authentic: 61%
2. Creating more content and posting more often: 45%
3. Paying more attention to keyword research: 43%
4. Creating more content with unique research and insights: 32%
5. Improving technical SEO on our website: 28%

The lesson for cannabis brands to learn for 2022 is to create a lot of high quality content, publish it on your website, make sure your content is better than your competitors, use keywords naturally, and optimize your website for search.

Structure Your Text Content Strategically

There is an art and a science to creating text-based content that resonates with your brand’s audience, motivates people to take action, and helps drive traffic to your website. The Semrush study found a number of structural elements that you should include in your digital content to get the highest return for your investments in terms of performance:

• Headings: Use advanced heading structure in text content (e.g., headline/title uses the H1 tag, subhead uses the H2 tag, sub-subhead uses the H3 tag, and so on) to improve organic search traffic to your website
• Lists: Include one or two lists per 500 words for text content to increase traffic.
• Guides and How To: Create guides and how-to articles and use the word “guide” or “how to” in your content title and headings.
• Images: Include images in every piece of content you publish (when possible) to boost organic traffic.
• Videos: Include videos in your content to increase traffic.
• Length: Always publish content that is more than 500 words. Be sure to publish some content that is more than 3,000 words.
• Coverage: Make sure your content fully covers the target topic.

The lesson for cannabis brands to learn for 2022 is to create content with strategic structuring, design elements, length, and purpose to generate the most search traffic to your website.

Define Your Content Creation, Distribution, and Promotion Plans

To define your 2022 content marketing plans, you first need to determine what kinds of content you’ll create, how you’ll distribute it so people know it exists, and how you’ll promote it to get even more eyes on it. Based on the Semrush survey results, companies got the best results from the following 10 types of content in 2021:

1. Video
2. Blog posts
3. Success stories
4. Case studies
5. Webinars
6. Infographics
7. Product guides and manuals
8. Data visualizations
9. Ebooks
10. White papers

When it comes to distributing and promoting content, companies reported using the 10 following channels most often:

1. Social media (organic)
2. Email marketing
3. Social media (paid)
4. Organic search
5. Sponsorships (events, webinars, podcasts)
6. PPC / paid advertising
7. PR / media outreach
8. Influencer marketing
9. Guest posts
10. Native advertising / sponsored content

The lesson for cannabis brands to learn for 2022 is to focus on creating different types of content for prospects at different stages of the buyer journey and marketing funnel. When you publish content, your work isn’t over. You need to promote it to ensure people see it. In the cannabis industry, organic social media, email marketing, sponsorships, media outreach, and influencer marketing are some of the best options to test in 2022.

Key Takeaways about Content Marketing and SEO for Cannabis Brands

Content is the foundation of any search engine optimization strategy. As you publish more useful, high quality content that your audience wants and needs, your search engine traffic will go up organically. Follow the trends and best practices identified in the Semrush study to build a content marketing plan for 2022 that will set your cannabis or cannabis-related brand up for more exposure and sales for years to come.