Every cannabis company already works with brands that have websites: growers, glass makers, POS vendors, event organizers, the lab that tests your flower. Those relationships produce links no outreach email can get, because the other side already knows you. Start with the partner list you have before paying strangers.
Inventory the partners you already have
List every business that touches yours: cultivators and brands you stock, the seed bank you buy from, your POS and ecommerce vendors, packaging suppliers, the testing lab, the lawyer who handles your licensing, event organizers, trade groups you pay dues to. Most have websites. Many have partner pages, client logos, testimonial sections, or blogs hungry for material. You are not asking a stranger for a favor; you are asking a business you pay, or that pays you, to acknowledge the relationship.
Product collabs come with links built in
When a brand and a dispensary drop a collab strain or a co-branded product, both sides publish. Announcement posts, product pages, mentions in the trade outlets covering the launch. Those links carry topical relevance no general-news mention can match, and they arrive naturally because the launch is real news to both audiences. Bake the linking into the launch plan: who publishes what, on which page, pointing where.
Stockist and where-to-buy pages
If your products sit on other companies' shelves, you should sit on their websites. Stockist pages, store locators, and brand directories on retail sites are the most under-collected links in cannabis. The reverse works too: a dispensary's brand pages linking out to producers give those producers a reason to link back to their retail partners. Check every account in your wholesale book against your Ahrefs backlink list and collect what is missing.
Events, co-hosted content, and shared audiences
Co-host an education night with a brand you stock. Run a joint giveaway with the glass shop next door. Publish an interview with your cultivator about growing practices. Each produces two or more pages that reference each other from separate domains, plus whatever local coverage the event pulls in. The content has an audience either way; the links are the exhaust.
Keep cross-linking within reason
Reciprocal links between real partners are normal, and Google's guidance says as much: excessive link exchanges are the problem, not linking to businesses you work with. A dispensary linking to its twelve brands while those brands link to their retail partners looks like an industry. Two hundred swapped links with sites you have no relationship with looks like a scheme. The relationship being real, and provable, is the line.
A worked example: one grower, twelve retail links
A mid-size grower selling into thirty stores emailed each buyer a short note: updated logo pack, product photos, a two-line brand description, and a request to be listed on the store's brands page with a link. Twelve stores added it inside a month. Zero dollars, one afternoon of email, and every link came from a licensed in-state retailer — exactly the neighborhood a grower's backlink profile should live in.
Key takeaways
- Your supplier and buyer list is a link prospect list that already answers your emails.
- Collab launches, stockist pages, and co-hosted events all produce links as a byproduct.
- Audit wholesale accounts against your backlink profile and collect the missing listings.
- Reciprocal links between provable partners are normal; bulk swaps with strangers are not.
- Relationship links compound: the partner that links once will link again at the next launch.
Frequently asked questions
Are reciprocal links between partners safe?
Linking to companies you demonstrably do business with is ordinary web behavior. What Google's policies flag is excessive exchanging, links traded purely for ranking with no relationship behind them. Keep it proportionate to your actual partner list.
Should partnership links be nofollowed?
No, unless money changed hands specifically for the link. A stockist listing or collab announcement is editorial: the site is stating a fact about its own business. Paid sponsorship placements are the ones that need rel=sponsored.
What if a partner's site has weak metrics?
Take the link anyway if the business is real and licensed. Relevance and legitimacy matter more than a small site's numbers, and a profile made of real industry relationships is the whole point.
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