The keywords outdoor businesses are ignoring

Most outdoor businesses target the same handful of keywords. “Rafting in [town].” “Fly fishing guide [state].” “Kayak rentals [river].” These are fine. They carry booking intent and you should rank for them if you can.

But “if you can” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Those head terms are where every competitor, every OTA listing, and now every AI Overview is fighting for the same real estate. Outdoor recreation generated $1.3 trillion in economic output in 2024, according to the BEA. That money gets spent by people who search for things before they book. And most of what they search for, your website doesn’t cover.

This is the 2026 update to our original piece on overlooked keywords. The search environment has shifted enough in the past year that the opportunity set looks different now. AI Overviews show up in roughly 58% of Google queries. Zero-click searches account for 60% of all searches. The old playbook of targeting one obvious keyword per page still works, but it’s not enough on its own anymore.

Here’s what’s still sitting there, unclaimed, for most outdoor recreation businesses.

Trip prep queries are free money

“What to wear rafting.” “What to bring on a guided fishing trip.” “Do I need to be in shape for a multi-day hike.” “What shoes to wear kayaking.” “Can I wear glasses whitewater rafting.”

These searches get real volume. “What to wear whitewater rafting” pulls an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 searches per month nationally. Go look at who ranks for it: REI, OARS, and a few of the largest outfitters in the country. Your local rafting company probably isn’t on the first three pages.

That’s a problem you can fix, because the person searching “what to wear rafting” has already decided to go. They’re past the “should I?” phase and into the “what do I need?” phase. If your page answers their question and you happen to operate in their area, you’ve introduced yourself at the exact right moment.

Montana Whitewater has a dedicated prep page that covers what to wear on their specific Montana rivers, by season, with water temperature context that REI’s generic national guide can’t touch. Smoky Mountain Rafting takes a different angle with seasonal variants, pulling traffic across different months with pages like “what to wear white water rafting during each season.” These aren’t huge sites. They’re just outfitters who wrote down what they already tell customers on the phone.

You already know the answers to these questions. Your guides answer them on the phone and in pre-trip emails every week. A page on “what to wear on your Arkansas River rafting trip” with month-by-month water temps, what your company provides versus what guests should bring, and a link to book is more useful than anything REI can publish for that specific context. A simple template gets this written in an afternoon.

Every activity has its own set. “Do I tip my river guide.” “How cold is it rafting in May.” “What to bring on a fly fishing trip.” Each one could be its own page, and each page is another way someone finds you who wasn’t searching for you by name.

Comparison searches are where people decide

“Kayaking vs rafting Arkansas River.” “Half-day vs full-day raft trip.” “Fly fishing vs spin fishing for beginners.” “Jackson Hole vs Big Sky for skiing.”

People typing these have money to spend and a decision to make. They’re not wondering whether to take a trip. They’re choosing which one.

Almost no outdoor businesses write comparison content. We’ve looked at dozens of outfitter websites in the last year and can count the good comparison pages on one hand. These pages match a specific search intent and they convert well because the reader shows up with a question and leaves with a booking.

Write them as honest comparisons. If your full-day trip is better for families but your half-day is better for first-timers, say that. If kayaking is calmer and rafting is more exciting on your stretch of river, explain the difference. Then link to the relevant trip page for each option.

Destination comparisons are the same opportunity. “Rafting in Buena Vista vs Salida” or “fly fishing Yellowstone vs Madison River.” If you operate in one of those areas, you should own that comparison page. Check what your competitors have published and where the gaps are. You’ll probably find these wide open.

The questions people ask before they book

“Is whitewater rafting dangerous.” “Can non-swimmers go rafting.” “How much does a guided fishing trip cost.” “What age can kids go ziplining.”

These come from people who want to do the activity but are worried about something specific. Maybe they can’t swim. Maybe they’re bringing kids. If your website answers the concern honestly, you’ve removed the thing standing between them and a booking.

Google treats this kind of content well. Pages that demonstrate real expertise on safety and logistics topics tend to rank because accuracy matters and Google knows it. A rafting company that publishes a thorough, honest page on “is whitewater rafting safe” with details about guide training, safety gear, and what actually happens if you fall out of a raft will outperform a generic travel blog or forum thread.

The broader category of FAQ queries is wide open in outdoor recreation. “Do I need experience for a rafting trip.” “How much do you tip a fishing guide.” “Can you go ziplining in the rain.” Every one of these leads naturally to a trip page and a booking button. And nobody’s writing them.

This category matters even more in 2026 because of how AI Overviews work. Google’s AI pulls answers from pages that answer specific questions directly. If you have a clear, well-structured FAQ page or a series of individual question-focused posts, you’re more likely to get cited in the AI Overview. And sites cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks than sites that aren’t, according to a 2025 Seer Interactive study.

Queries that aren’t about your activity but are about your customer

“Where to stay near [your launch point].” “Camping near [river].” “Restaurants in [your town].” “How to get to [your location] from [nearest city].”

None of these are about your activity. But the people searching them are absolutely your customers. Someone looking up “where to stay in Buena Vista Colorado” is planning a trip that probably includes rafting, fishing, or mountain biking. If your site has a useful local guide, you’ve just captured a visitor who wasn’t searching for you at all.

You don’t need to build a hotel directory. A “planning your trip to [your area]” page with honest lodging recommendations at different price points, a few restaurant picks, and driving directions from the nearest airport does the job. Link to your trip pages throughout.

This is adjacent content. It doesn’t target your core activity keywords, but it builds topical relevance for your location and catches visitors during the planning phase. That matters for your overall site strategy.

The new keyword category: conversational and voice queries

This section didn’t exist in the original version of this article. A year later, it needs to be here.

The average voice search is 29 words long. The average typed search is four to six. That gap matters because voice queries sound like how people actually talk when they’re planning a trip. “Hey Google, what’s the best time to go whitewater rafting in Colorado if I’ve never been before” is a real query now. So is “what should I do in Moab for three days with kids who’ve never been outdoors.”

Pages that answer specific questions in plain, direct language tend to win these queries. Voice searches with local intent convert at 76% to in-store visits within 24 hours. For an outdoor outfitter, that means someone asking their phone a question at breakfast and showing up at your shop that afternoon.

If you’ve been writing prep content, FAQ pages, and “best time to visit” guides, you’re accidentally well-positioned for voice and AI search already. The content that answers a specific question for a specific person in a specific place is exactly what these systems want to cite.

If you haven’t started yet, figure out what your customers actually search before they book. That’s the foundation for everything else.

The math still works, but the ceiling is higher now

In the original version of this article, we said ten pages pulling 200 to 500 visitors a month adds up to 2,000 to 5,000 new monthly visitors. That math still holds.

But the ceiling is higher now. Prep queries, comparison queries, FAQ and safety queries, local logistics queries, conversational and voice queries. That’s five categories, each with a cluster of pages. Most outfitter websites cover zero or one of them.

The businesses that only target the obvious keywords are fighting over a shrinking share of clicks on a results page that increasingly gives the answer without a click at all. The ones who’ve built out these other categories have dozens of entry points their competitors never thought to create, and they’re the ones Google’s AI cites when it assembles an overview.

Ten pages won’t transform your business. Fifty pages across these categories might. The time to start building them is now, during the shoulder months, so they’re ranking when search volume spikes before your busy season.