What is a backlink? How outdoor businesses earn them

A single backlink from your local tourism board can send more qualified traffic to your booking page than a month of social media posts. Yet most outdoor business owners have never heard the term, or they assume it only matters to big companies with marketing departments.

A backlink is simply a link on someone else’s website that points to yours. When Visit Bend links to your guided kayak page, that’s a backlink. When a travel blogger writes about the best rafting near Asheville and includes your URL, that’s a backlink. Each one tells Google your site is worth paying attention to.

How backlinks affect your search rankings

Google treats backlinks like votes of confidence. When a trusted website links to your page, Google reads that as a signal: this business is credible, this content is useful, this operator is real.

Not all votes count equally. A link from your state’s tourism board carries far more weight than a link from a random directory nobody visits. Google evaluates the authority of the linking site, how relevant it is to your industry, and whether the link sits inside real content or is buried in a footer.

Here’s what the data shows. Pages that rank first on Google have 3.8 times more backlinks than pages sitting in positions two through ten. And 95% of all web pages have zero backlinks at all. For a fishing guide or rafting outfitter competing in a local market, even a handful of quality links can separate you from operators who have none.

Backlinks also drive direct referral traffic. When someone reading an article on VisitNC.com clicks through to your trip page, that visitor already has intent. They’re planning. They’re close to booking.

Dofollow vs. nofollow (and why you shouldn’t obsess over it)

You’ll hear SEO people talk about dofollow and nofollow links. A dofollow link passes authority from the linking site to yours. A nofollow link includes a tag telling Google not to count it as a vote.

Most outdoor business owners don’t need to worry about this distinction. A nofollow link from TripAdvisor still sends real people to your site. A mention on AllTrails, even without a dofollow tag, builds brand awareness with exactly the audience you want.

Focus on getting linked from places your customers actually visit. The follow/nofollow question is a footnote.

Where outdoor businesses earn their best backlinks

The highest-value backlinks for outdoor operators come from sources that are both authoritative and relevant to your region or activity. Here’s where to concentrate your effort.

Tourism boards and CVBs. Your local convention and visitors bureau almost certainly has a website listing area activities. If you’re not on it, email them. River Rock Outfitter in Fredericksburg, Virginia, earned links from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by getting involved in their small business programs, eventually becoming a finalist for the America’s Top Small Business Awards. That put their name (and links) on uschamber.com, a domain with massive authority.

Chambers of commerce. Most local chambers offer member directory listings with a link back to your site. Walkabout Outfitter, a six-location outdoor retailer in Virginia, shows up on chamber profile pages that link directly to their website. Annual membership typically runs $200 to $500, and the backlink alone can be worth the cost.

Local news outlets. A story in your regional newspaper or TV station’s website about your guided trips, a rescue you assisted with, or a community event you hosted creates a backlink from a high-authority local domain. Pitch seasonal angles: “Rafting season opens early due to snowpack” is the kind of story local reporters actually want to write.

Complementary businesses. Hotels, restaurants, and gear shops in your area often have “things to do” or “partners” pages. A mutual linking arrangement with the lodge down the road benefits both of you, and Google sees the geographic and topical connection as natural.

Content that earns links without asking

Some backlinks come to you. You don’t pitch them. Someone finds your content useful and links to it on their own.

The type of content that earns these organic links tends to be specific and hard to replicate. A detailed guide to water levels on your local river. A month-by-month breakdown of the best times to fish a particular lake. A gear packing list for a specific trail that nobody else has written.

The Colorado Tourism Office links to operators and resources on its committee pages. If you produce genuinely useful regional content, tourism organizations, travel bloggers, and journalists will reference it.

We’ve seen outfitters earn links from publications like Outdoor Magazine and regional travel sites simply by publishing the most thorough “what to expect” guide for their specific activity and location. Nobody else had written it, so it became the default reference.

Backlink tactics that waste your time

Buying links from overseas vendors offering “500 backlinks for $50” will hurt you. Google’s spam detection is aggressive, and a batch of low-quality links from irrelevant sites can trigger a penalty that tanks your rankings entirely.

Link exchanges done at scale (“I’ll link to you if you link to me” with dozens of unrelated businesses) also raise red flags. A natural link from your local fishing shop’s recommended guides page is fine. A hundred reciprocal links with random websites across the country is not.

Blog comment spam, forum signature links, and directory submissions to sites nobody uses are all dead strategies. They might have worked in 2010. In 2026, they’re noise at best and a liability at worst.

How to check your current backlinks

Google Search Console shows you which sites link to yours, for free. Log in, go to Links in the left sidebar, and look at “Top linking sites.” If you see your tourism board, local news, and a few travel blogs, you’re in decent shape. If the list is empty or full of sites you don’t recognize, you have work to do.

Check quarterly. When you earn a new link from a strong source, you’ll typically see a ranking bump within a few weeks.

A simple backlink plan for this quarter

Pick three actions from this list and do them before your next season starts.

Get listed on your local CVB website. Call them if you can’t find a submission form. Get your chamber of commerce membership active and confirm your listing includes a working link. Pitch one story to a local reporter with a seasonal angle. Publish one piece of genuinely useful local content, like a packing guide or a “best time to visit” breakdown for your area. Reach out to two complementary businesses about adding each other to your websites.

That’s five potential backlinks from relevant, authoritative sources. More than most of your competitors will earn all year.

For a deeper look at link building when business slows down, see our guide on building backlinks in the off-season. And if you want to pair your backlink work with local link-building strategies specific to outdoor operators, that piece walks through exactly where to find opportunities in your area.

Three good backlinks from the right sources will do more for your Google rankings than a year of posting on Instagram.