Core Extractions received their license to sell CBD in December 2018. Their primary goal to drive sales was via an ecommerce website and organic search traffic. At that time, there were already dozens of well established CBD brands that dominated search engine rankings, and keyword research was difficult to perform as Google was not providing any data on cannabis search volume at the time. Starting with a brand new domain name with 0 domain authority, it would be a challenge to outrank these well established brands.

My role was to build the website and drive sales via organic traffic. I was to design a custom Wordpress template that aligned with the company's brand and implement the payment gateway and checkout process.

In addition to web design and development, I was also responsible for driving the organic traffic needed to hit sales targets. To do this I conducted detailed keyword research for the product line, developed a keyword strategy and wrote content for all website pages around this strategy.

• Utilized Google's suggested search box and related searches to make up for lack of CBD keyword volume
• Targeted more specific long tail keywords in the keyword strategy to more easily outrank well established brands (i.e. instead of targeting 'cbd capsules', target '50mg cbd capsules'.

After launch, I would then perform a 6 month SEO campaign to improve domain authority, grow organic traffic, and drive online sales. This SEO campaign included:

• Citation backlinks: List client brand on top directory sites that link back to website.
• Guest-post backlinks: Perform guest-post outreach to CBD and alternative medicine blogs to build links back to website.
• Content marketing: Research informational keywords and write blog articles around these topics, which were posted on ecommerce website's blog section. These articles also linked internally to the product pages to improve the page authority of the product pages.