How to rank for 'things to do in Gulf Shores' and turn it into bookings
“Things to do in Gulf Shores” gets searched tens of thousands of times every month. The query pulls visitors from across the Southeast and beyond, people who have already picked Gulf Shores for a trip and are now deciding how to spend their time and money. If you run a charter fishing operation, a kayak tour company, or any outdoor recreation business on the Alabama Gulf Coast, that search is your opening.
The problem is that TripAdvisor, Expedia, and the Gulf Shores CVB currently own the first page. You are competing against sites with massive domain authority. But you have something they don’t: you actually operate there. You know which launch point on the Back Bay Blueway avoids the weekend crowds. You know that redfish bite best on a falling tide near the Bon Secour flats. That local knowledge is what Google rewards, and what travelers actually want to read.
Here is how to build a “things to do in Gulf Shores” page that ranks and converts visitors into paying customers.
Understand what searchers actually want
Someone typing “things to do in Gulf Shores” is usually two to six weeks out from their trip. They’ve booked a condo or a hotel. They’re looking for a plan. They want specifics, not a list of 47 attractions copied from a chamber of commerce brochure.
The intent behind this search is commercial. These people are ready to spend money. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach welcomed 8.4 million visitors in 2025, and those visitors spent $1.42 billion in retail alone, according to Alabama’s coastal tourism agencies. A slice of that spending starts with a Google search for what to do once they arrive.
Your page needs to answer the question the way a local friend would. Opinions. Timing advice. The kind of details that only someone who works on the water every day would know.
Build the page around activities, not attractions
Most “things to do” pages from big travel sites read like phone book listings. A line about Gulf State Park. A line about the Wharf. A stock photo of a beach. That format ranks because of domain authority, not because anyone finds it useful.
Your version should go deeper on fewer things. Lead with outdoor activities, because that is where your business lives. A charter fishing company in Gulf Shores might structure the page around deep sea fishing and inshore charters, kayaking the Back Bay Blueway, the Gulf State Park pier and Backcountry trail, dolphin tours out of Perdido Pass, snorkeling at spots like Poseidon’s Playground, and then a few non-outdoor options like the Wharf entertainment district and local seafood restaurants.
Give each activity two to three paragraphs of real detail. Not “enjoy fishing on the beautiful Gulf waters.” Instead: “Half-day offshore charters out of Gulf Shores run four to six hours and usually target red snapper in season, king mackerel, and triggerfish. Most boats leave from the Gulf Shores Marina or Sportsman Marina between 5:30 and 6 a.m.” That level of specificity is what separates a page that ranks from one that sits on page four.
Whistlin’ Waters, a kayak charter company out of Orange Beach, does this well on their own site. Their trip descriptions name specific species, specific waterways, and what to expect hour by hour. That is the kind of detail you want on your things to do page, applied across every activity in the area.
Make every section a path to your booking page
The biggest mistake operators make with a things to do page is treating it as a public service announcement. It should be useful, yes. But every section should lead back to your services.
If you run dolphin tours, your section on dolphin cruises should include a sentence like “We run two-hour dolphin tours out of Perdido Pass daily from March through November” with a link to your booking page. That isn’t pushy. The reader is planning a trip and you are offering exactly what they came looking for.
Internal links do double duty. They move readers toward your trip pages that are built to convert, and they tell Google which pages on your site matter most. Link your kayaking section to your kayak tour page. Link your fishing section to your charter page. Link a mention of seasonal timing to your best time to visit content.
Dolphin Cove Marina runs guided kayak tours through Bon Secour and Oyster Bay. A visitor reads about kayaking in the area on a things to do page, clicks through to the guided tour page, books a three-hour trip. The things to do page did the work without ever looking like a sales page.
Get the on-page SEO right
Your primary keyword, “things to do in Gulf Shores,” belongs in the title tag, the H1, and your first paragraph. Match the query. Don’t overthink this part.
Write a meta description under 155 characters that includes the location and signals local expertise. Something like: “A local operator’s guide to things to do in Gulf Shores: fishing, kayaking, dolphin tours, and how to plan your days.”
Use H2 headers for each activity or category. “Deep sea fishing charters” and “kayaking the Back Bay Blueway” can each rank on their own for long-tail queries. People search for those specific activities too, and your page can show up for dozens of related terms if the headers match what people type.
Add LocalBusiness and TouristAttraction schema markup if your site supports it. Schema helps Google understand the page and can earn you enhanced results in search.
One thing most operators skip: update the page at least twice a year. Swap in new photos, add a new activity, refresh seasonal hours. Google treats freshness as a ranking signal. A page that hasn’t been touched since 2024 will lose ground to one updated last month.
Use your photos and your voice
Stock photos of white sand beaches are everywhere. They do nothing to set your page apart. Use your own photos instead. A customer holding a red snapper on your boat. Kayakers paddling through marsh grass on a foggy morning. The Gulf State Park pier at sunrise with nobody on it yet.
Real photos from your operation build trust with readers and tell Google your content is original. They also make the page feel like it was written by someone who works there. Because it was.
The writing works the same way. The CVB has to stay neutral and cover everything. You don’t. You can say the Backcountry trail is the best bike ride in Baldwin County and mean it. You can recommend a specific restaurant for post-fishing lunch. Opinions are what make a local guide worth reading, and they’re the one thing the aggregator sites will never have.
Add a sample itinerary to keep people on the page
A two- or three-day itinerary at the bottom of your page does two things. It keeps readers on the page longer, which Google measures. And it puts your business at the center of someone’s trip plan.
Something like: “Day one: morning inshore fishing charter targeting redfish and speckled trout, afternoon at Gulf State Park beach, dinner at LuLu’s. Day two: kayak tour through the Back Bay Blueway in the morning, Wharf in the afternoon, sunset dolphin cruise.” If you operate the fishing charter or the kayak tour, those lines link directly to your booking pages.
In Too Deep Charters, a deep sea fishing operation in Gulf Shores, could build an itinerary that puts an offshore trip on day one, a beach recovery day with snorkeling on day two, and an inshore trip on day three. Each mention of their service links to a booking page. The reader gets a trip plan. The operator gets a funnel.
This format also helps you rank for queries people search before booking, like “Gulf Shores 3 day itinerary” or “what to do in Gulf Shores for a weekend.” Those long-tail terms add up.
Track what the page is doing and adjust
Once the page is live, watch it. Google Search Console shows you which queries drive impressions and clicks. You may find that “things to do in Gulf Shores with kids” or “Gulf Shores rainy day activities” are pulling traffic you didn’t expect. Add a section for those queries. Expand the page.
Track clicks from the things to do page to your booking or trip pages. If visitors land on the guide but don’t click through, the internal links need work. If they click through but don’t book, the problem is your landing page, not the guide.
Gulf Shores pulls over eight million visitors a year. Half the passengers at the new Gulf Shores International Airport in 2025 had never visited the area before. Every one of them will Google “things to do in Gulf Shores” before they arrive. The operator who owns that page gets first contact. First contact turns into bookings.
