The CBD & vape SEO checklist: 25 things to fix first

Last reviewed 18 September 2026 · By the 420 Web Design team.

Technical foundations

1. Is the site indexable? Check robots.txt, noindex tags and canonical tags. Age-gate overlays and CDN bot rules sometimes block Googlebot and AI crawlers by accident.
2. Core Web Vitals — LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1 on mobile. Bloated themes and app stacks are the usual culprits on Shopify; oversized images on WordPress.
3. One version of every URL — https, non-www or www, trailing slash: pick one and 301 the rest. Faceted navigation (flavour × strength × size) needs canonical and parameter control so you don’t index thousands of near-duplicates.
4. XML sitemap and clean internal links — every product and collection reachable within three clicks; no orphan pages; no links to redirected URLs.
5. Structured data — Organization, Product (with price, availability, review data), BreadcrumbList, FAQPage and Article, validated and consistent with on-page content.
6. Mobile first — most CBD and vape traffic is mobile. Check that filters, variant selection and checkout are actually usable on a phone.
7. Migration hygiene — if you have changed platform, confirm every old URL 301s to its equivalent and that redirect chains are removed.

Content and pages

8. Unique collection/category copy — a paragraph or two of genuinely useful, claim-free content on every category page, not just a product grid.
9. Product pages that answer questions — strength, format, ingredients, how to use, lab results, who it is for. Thin manufacturer descriptions copied across fifty stores will not rank.
10. Claim-safe language everywhere — medicinal claims don’t just breach the CAP Code, they invite manual review under Google’s health-related quality guidelines.
11. Buyer-question content — “how much CBD should I take?”, “nic salts vs freebase”, “what is a pod kit?” — educational guides that earn links, rankings and AI citations.
12. Comparison and “best” content, honestly done — buyers search for it; brands that publish transparent comparisons win it.
13. Local pages for physical shops — one page per store with address, hours, parking, stock highlights and embedded map, matched to a Google Business Profile.
14. Title tags and meta descriptions — unique, specific, with the product/category term and “UK” where it makes sense; no keyword stuffing.
15. Image alt text and file names — descriptive, useful for image search and accessibility.

Trust and E-E-A-T

16. Visible lab testing — COAs linked from product pages, ideally searchable by batch.
17. About and author pages — who you are, where you are, why you know what you are talking about. Anonymous CBD sites do badly.
18. Reviews — genuine, on a platform that accepts the category, with review schema where appropriate and no health-claim testimonials.
19. Policies and contact details — physical address, phone, returns, shipping, terms, privacy. Quality raters and underwriters both look for these.
20. Consistent business information — name, address, phone and description identical across your site, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. This also feeds AI assistants’ confidence in who you are.

Authority

21. Link profile audit — remove or disavow spammy links from past agencies; the category attracts them.
22. Earn links that accept the category — industry publications, stockists, directories, digital PR around data or expertise; never bought networks.
23. Brand search growth — the strongest signal of all. Everything that gets people typing your name (retail, events, creators, PR) helps SEO.

AI search (AEO)

24. Are you cited? Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your customers ask and record who they recommend. If it isn’t you, find out why — usually clarity, structure or trust.
25. Make yourself readable — plain-English answers near the top of pages, FAQ sections with schema, an llms.txt file, AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt and not blocked by your CDN. See AEO.