Outdoor recreation keyword research tool: find what your customers are searching
Most outdoor recreation businesses are guessing what to write about. They pick blog topics based on what feels right, what a competitor posted last month, or what came up in conversation with a guest. Meanwhile, the actual searches people type into Google - the ones that lead to booked trips - go completely ignored.
A keyword research tool fixes that. It shows you exactly what potential customers search for, how many people search for it each month, and how hard it’ll be to rank. You don’t need an SEO background or a big budget. You need 30 minutes and one of the free or cheap tools below.
This article walks through the specific tools that work for outdoor businesses, how to use them without getting lost, and how to turn raw keyword data into content that brings in bookings.
Start with google keyword planner (it’s free)
Google Keyword Planner is the obvious first stop because it costs nothing. You need a Google Ads account to access it, but you never have to spend a dollar on ads.
Sign in, click “Discover new keywords,” and type in what you’d expect a customer to search. If you run a rafting company in West Virginia, start with “whitewater rafting West Virginia.” The tool returns a list of related terms with monthly search volume ranges and competition levels.
The volume ranges are broad - Google might say “1K-10K” instead of giving you an exact number. That’s fine. You’re not trying to build a spreadsheet empire. You’re trying to figure out whether people actually search for “New River Gorge rafting” (they do) or “whitewater adventure West Virginia” (barely).
One trick that works well for outfitters: type in your activity plus every town, river, lake, or trailhead within driving distance. “Kayak rental Lake Tahoe” and “kayak rental Donner Lake” are two different keywords with two different levels of competition. Google Keyword Planner surfaces both.
The limitation is precision. You get ranges, not exact numbers. For many operators, that’s enough to prioritize which pages to build first.
Ubersuggest gives you more for $29 a month
If you want exact search volumes, keyword difficulty scores, and content ideas in one place, Ubersuggest is the tool we recommend most for small outdoor businesses. At $29/month, it costs about the same as one half-day guided trip.
Type in a seed keyword like “fishing charter Destin” and Ubersuggest returns the exact monthly volume, an SEO difficulty score from 0-100, and a list of related keywords you might not have considered. It also shows which pages currently rank for that term so you can see what you’re up against.
The content ideas tab is underrated. It pulls up existing articles that rank for your keyword and sorts them by social shares and backlinks. If the top five results are all “best time to fish in Destin” guides, that’s a strong signal about what to write.
There’s a 7-day free trial if you want to test before committing.
Google trends shows you when to publish
Search volume alone doesn’t tell you when people search. Google Trends does.
Go to trends.google.com and enter your core keyword. The graph shows relative search interest over time on a 0-100 scale. It won’t give you exact monthly searches, but it reveals seasonal patterns that matter enormously for outdoor businesses.
“Kayak rental” searches climb starting in March, peak in June and July, then drop through fall. If you’re a kayak outfitter publishing your rental page in August, you’ve already missed the window when most people start planning. Google Trends makes that timing obvious.
Compare two or three terms side by side. A fly fishing guide might compare “fly fishing lessons” against “fly fishing guided trip” and discover that “lessons” gets searched year-round while “guided trip” spikes in summer. That changes which page you build first and when you publish seasonal content.
The tool is completely free. Pair it with Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest for volume data, and you’ve got a solid picture of what to write and when.
Answerthepublic finds the questions your customers ask
AnswerThePublic takes a keyword and generates every question, preposition, and comparison phrase people search around it. Type in “whitewater rafting” and you’ll get results like “what to wear whitewater rafting,” “is whitewater rafting dangerous,” and “whitewater rafting vs kayaking.”
Each one of those is a blog post waiting to happen. And because they’re question-based, they align with how your customers actually search before booking a trip.
The free version gives you a limited number of daily searches. That’s usually plenty - you’re not doing this every day. Run a search for your primary activity, save the results, and you’ve got a quarter’s worth of content topics in about ten minutes.
These question keywords tend to be lower volume individually, but they’re high intent. Someone searching “what should I bring on a rafting trip” is much closer to booking than someone searching “rafting.”
The keyword patterns outdoor businesses miss
Most outfitters research their main activity keyword and stop. “Kayak rental [city].” Done. But there are entire categories of searches they never check.
Comparison searches. People search “kayak vs paddleboard” and “rafting vs tubing” constantly. These terms are often less competitive because most outdoor businesses don’t write comparison content.
“Best time” searches. “Best time to fish in Montana,” “best month for rafting Colorado.” These pull in travelers during the planning phase, months before they book. They’re the kind of overlooked keywords that drive real traffic.
Nearby activity searches. “Things to do near Yellowstone” or “outdoor activities Gatlinburg.” These aren’t activity-specific, but they capture people who haven’t decided what they want to do yet. A well-written page targeting these terms can introduce your business to customers who didn’t know you existed.
Run each of these patterns through whichever tool you chose above. You’ll find dozens of terms your competitors haven’t touched.
Turn keyword data into pages that rank
Finding keywords is the easy part. The step most businesses skip is mapping those keywords to actual pages on their website.
Group your keywords into three buckets. Trip pages get buying-intent keywords like “book fishing charter Key West.” Informational content gets question keywords like “what to wear kayaking” - these become blog posts that build your local keyword presence. Location pages get geographic variants - “kayak rental Lake Tahoe” and “kayak rental Donner Lake” shouldn’t live on the same page.
Write the highest-volume, lowest-competition keywords first. If Google Keyword Planner shows “guided fly fishing Smoky Mountains” at 1K-10K monthly searches with low competition, that page gets written before the one targeting a 100-search-per-month term.
Pick one tool and start this week
You don’t need all of these tools. You need one. Google Keyword Planner if you want free. Ubersuggest if you want more data for a reasonable cost. Google Trends to nail your timing.
Spend 30 minutes this week running your main activity and location through your chosen tool. Write down the top ten keywords by volume. Then check which ones you already have pages for and which ones you don’t. The gaps are your content roadmap for the next three months.
The outdoor businesses that consistently show up in search results aren’t doing anything mysterious. They looked at what people actually search for, and they built pages to match.
