Open Search Console, compare the last six months against the six before, and sort queries by click loss. That decayed-query report is what a keyword refresh runs on, not a hunch that things feel stale.
Pull the Decayed-Query Report First
In Search Console's Performance report, set a date comparison: last six months against the previous six. Sort the query table by click difference, worst first. Export it. Everything losing clicks is either decaying demand, a ranking slip, or a SERP change eating your clicks, and the rest of the refresh is figuring out which and responding.
Screen Out Seasonality Before Reacting
Cannabis retail swings hard around 4/20, holidays, and harvest season, so a six-month window can lie. For any query that looks decayed, run the same comparison year over year. A term that dropped against last quarter but holds against last year is a season, not a problem. Rewriting pages to chase seasonal dips is the most common way refreshes waste effort.
Find the Queries You Never Targeted
Flip the sort. Queries gaining impressions that map to no dedicated page are demand your original strategy could not have known about: new product formats, slang shifts, a competitor's brand fading. These are the cheapest wins in the whole refresh, because the demand already found you.
Retire What Stopped Making Sense
Some targets die honestly. A product category you dropped, a law that changed, a term whose SERP is now walled off by bigger sites. Cut them from the priority list. Effort spent defending a keyword that no longer matches the business is effort the growing queries needed.
Re-Score Against Your Current Authority
The site doing the refresh is stronger than the site that set the strategy. Terms scored unwinnable a year ago may be reachable now. Re-check the SERPs for your deferred list while you are in there, a refresh that only prunes misses half its value.
Worked Example: One Quarter's Refresh
A shop runs the comparison and finds three things. "Delta 8" queries collapsed after a state ban: retired, page redirected to the legal-products category. "Infused pre rolls" impressions tripled with no dedicated page: page built that week. An old "best dispensary" post held position but lost a third of its clicks to a SERP feature: title and answer box rewritten to fit the new result layout. One report, three different responses, one afternoon.
A cannabis SEO audit will show whether this is actually holding you back or whether the problem sits somewhere else.
Key takeaways
- The Search Console date comparison is the refresh's starting document.
- Check year over year before treating a seasonal dip as decay.
- Rising queries with no page are the cheapest wins available.
- Retire dead targets and re-score old "unwinnable" terms against current authority.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I refresh a keyword strategy?
A light pass quarterly, a deep one annually. Quarterly catches decaying queries early. The annual pass re-scores difficulty, retires dead targets, and rebuilds the priority list against current demand.
What counts as a decayed query?
A query steadily losing clicks or impressions across comparable periods after seasonality is ruled out. One bad month is noise. Two comparable periods trending down is decay worth acting on.
My positions held but clicks dropped. Why?
Usually the SERP changed around you: an AI answer, a bigger map pack, or a new feature absorbing clicks above your listing. Compare CTR at the same position over time to confirm, then rework titles and on-page answers for the new layout.
Should I delete pages for retired keywords?
Rarely. Merge overlapping pages and redirect the losers so the link equity survives. Outright deletion is for pages with no rankings, no links, and no salvageable content.
Sources
- About Search Console, Google Search Console Help. Covers what the reports measure.
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