How to rank for 'things to do in Boundary Waters' and turn it into bookings

Around 150,000 people visit the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness every year. Before most of them ever pick up a paddle, they pick up their phone and type “things to do in Boundary Waters.” If you run an outfitting company in Ely or along the edge of canoe country, that search is where your next booking starts.

Most outfitters don’t have a page targeting this query. They’ve got a homepage, a trip menu, maybe a blog post from 2019 about portaging tips. So the “things to do” traffic goes to TripAdvisor, Explore Minnesota, and travel bloggers who’ve never carried a canoe over a portage. You can take some of it back.

Why this query matters more than your trip pages

Your trip pages convert well, but they only catch people who already know what they want. Someone searching “Boundary Waters canoe trip 3 days” has made their decision. Someone searching “things to do in Boundary Waters” hasn’t. They’re earlier in the funnel, still open to influence, and there are a lot more of them.

The volume behind these queries is real. Mid-size tourist destinations see 10,000 to 30,000 monthly searches for their “things to do” variation. The Boundary Waters sits in that range, and the searches spike between January and May, months before your season opens. Your page needs to be ranking while Ely is still buried in snow.

The person typing this query has already picked the Boundary Waters. They just haven’t decided what to do when they get there. That’s the window you want to be in.

Build the page around what people actually do there

A “things to do” page that ranks isn’t ten bullet points with stock-photo thumbnails. It reads like a guide written by someone who has actually been there, and it keeps readers on the page long enough for Google to take note.

Start with the anchor activities. For the Boundary Waters, that means canoeing and kayaking, fishing, and hiking. These are what most visitors come for, and they’re what Google expects to see on a page about this destination. Give each one real depth: mention specific lakes, portage routes, fish species (walleye, northern pike, smallmouth bass, lake trout), and trails by name. The Eagle Mountain Trail, at 3.5 miles, takes hikers to the highest point in Minnesota. That kind of detail is what separates your page from the chamber of commerce blurb that says “enjoy paddling on our beautiful lakes.”

Then cover the experiences that surprise people. The pictographs at North Hegman Lake are estimated to be 500 to 1,000 years old, and most first-time visitors don’t know they exist. The waterfalls along the traditional voyageur route, including Curtain Falls and the Basswood falls, are worth a full day of paddling. Blueberry picking in late July and August is free and everywhere. The Boundary Waters is a designated dark sky sanctuary, which makes it one of the best spots in the lower 48 for northern lights viewing in late summer and fall.

Write each section with enough detail to be genuinely useful: how to get there, how long it takes, who it’s suited for, what time of year works. Two to three paragraphs per activity. TripAdvisor’s Boundary Waters page is user reviews and star ratings. Yours should read like advice from a friend who paddles these lakes every week.

Link every section back to your services

Your things to do page is informational, but it should also move people toward a booking. Every activity section is a chance to point the reader at a trip you actually sell.

If you’re describing a three-day canoe route through Lac La Croix, a line at the end of that section that says “we outfit fully guided and self-guided trips on this route from May through September” with a link to your booking page is exactly what the reader needs. They’re planning a trip. You’re offering to handle the logistics. That’s not a sales pitch. That’s a service.

Fishing section links to guided fishing trips. Canoeing section links to outfitting packages. Winter trips, same thing. Williams and Hall in Ely has been outfitting canoe trips for over 50 years, and their site organizes trip pages by specific route. If yours does too, every activity on your things to do page has a natural place to send people on your own domain.

Include a sample itinerary near the bottom of the page. “Day one: paddle in from Entry Point 25, set up camp on Knife Lake, afternoon fishing. Day two: day trip to North Hegman pictographs, evening northern lights viewing. Day three: paddle the Basswood falls route, take out by mid-afternoon.” This keeps people on the page longer and puts your business at the center of their trip vision. It also gives you a natural spot to link to your trip guides that rank for the routes you operate.

Get the on-page SEO right

Put the target keyword in your title tag, H1, and first paragraph. “Things to do in Boundary Waters” or “Things to do in the Boundary Waters” both work. Match what people type.

Your meta description should be under 155 characters and mention the location. Something like: “A local outfitter’s guide to things to do in the Boundary Waters: paddling routes, fishing, hiking, and trip planning.”

Use H2 headers for each activity section. “Canoeing and kayaking routes,” “Fishing on Boundary Waters lakes,” “Hiking trails near the BWCA.” Those sub-headers can rank on their own for long-tail queries, pulling in traffic you weren’t specifically targeting.

Freshness matters more than most outfitters realize. Update the page at least twice a year. Add photos from the previous season. Refresh permit details: BWCAW permits for 2026 went on sale January 28 on a first-come-first-served basis, and including that kind of detail tells both readers and Google that this page is current. A page last touched in 2022 will lose ground to one you updated this spring.

If you want to understand what your customers are searching before they book, look at the queries that lead to your existing pages. You’ll probably find “things to do” variations already showing up, which means Google already thinks your site is relevant for these terms. You just need a dedicated page to capture them.

Don’t try to cover everything on day one

Ely has 22 professional canoe trip outfitters. You’re not going to outrank all of them and TripAdvisor by next week. You don’t need to.

Start with one thorough “things to do in Boundary Waters” page built around the activities you know best and the trips you actually run. A fishing outfitter writes a different page than a canoe outfitter, and that’s fine. Your angle is your advantage.

Once it’s indexed and pulling traffic, you’ll see it in your analytics: visitors land on the things to do page and click through to your trip pages. That’s the funnel working. Then you can expand. “Things to do in the Boundary Waters in winter” is a separate page with separate search volume. “Things to do in Ely, Minnesota” targets the town query rather than the wilderness area.

The Boundary Waters draws around 150,000 permitted visitors per year, according to the Forest Service’s annual Permit and Visitor Use Report, and 92 percent of them come between May and September. Every one of those visitors searched for something before they booked. If your outfitting company doesn’t have a page answering their first question, someone else does. The fix is one well-built page, grounded in the local keyword approach that matches how people actually search, with clear paths from information to booking.

You know the Boundary Waters better than any travel blog or review aggregator. Put that on a page, make it easy for Google to read, and point every section at the trips you sell. That’s what your website should be doing in the first place.