How to rank for 'things to do in San Juan Islands' and turn it into bookings

“Things to do in San Juan Islands” gets searched thousands of times every month. Most of those clicks go to TripAdvisor, Viator, and Expedia. If you run a kayak outfit, a whale watching company, or any outdoor operation on the islands, that traffic should be yours. You know the place better than an algorithm scraping user reviews. You just need the right page.

What follows is a walkthrough for building a “things to do” page that ranks in Google and actually sends people to your booking calendar. Not theory. Steps that work for operators in places like this.

Why “things to do” searches matter for san juan islands operators

The San Juan Islands pull serious visitor spending. In 2022, tourists spent $289.7 million across the islands, with $31.2 million going directly to recreation, according to the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau annual report. And 68 percent of peak-season visitors are coming for the first time. They don’t know where to go, what to book, or who to trust.

That’s who is searching “things to do in San Juan Islands.” They’ve booked the ferry or the seaplane. They need to fill three or four days. The person typing that query has a credit card and an empty itinerary.

Sea Quest has been running kayak tours out there for over 30 years. Western Prince started whale watching from the islands in 1986. The audience exists. The question is whether your website is the one that catches them.

Look at who ranks now and where the gaps are

Pull up the search results for “things to do in San Juan Islands” and you’ll see a pattern. TripAdvisor lists the top 15 attractions with thin descriptions pulled from user submissions. Viator lists bookable tours but gives almost no local context. Expedia does the same. A few travel bloggers fill in the gaps with personal recaps.

What you won’t see much of: actual local operators. Nobody writing from the perspective of a kayak guide who knows the west side of San Juan Island is the best water for orca sightings. Nobody with a whale watch captain’s knowledge of how the humpback numbers have shifted over the past five years. Google wants that specificity. So do the readers.

You don’t need to outrank TripAdvisor across the board. You need a page specific enough that Google slots it alongside the aggregators. The travel bloggers already in those results prove it’s doable. One of the top-ranking posts for this term was written by a former kayak guide who knew the islands personally. Local knowledge beats generic lists every time.

Build the page around real activities, in order of demand

Structure the page by activity, not by island. Most visitors don’t know the difference between San Juan Island and Orcas Island yet. They want to know what they can do, then figure out which ferry to take.

Start with the activities that draw the most interest:

• Whale watching from a boat. Mention that the San Juan Islands are one of the best places in the Pacific Northwest to see orcas, humpbacks, and minke whales. If you run whale watching tours, link directly to your trip page. If you don’t, mention operators like Maya’s Legacy, which runs six-person trips with marine biologists on board.
• Sea kayaking. The west side of San Juan Island along Haro Strait is prime territory. Discovery Sea Kayaks runs a bioluminescence paddle that draws visitors specifically for that experience. Crystal Seas Kayaking, owned by second-generation islanders, has been voted best tour company on the West Coast by Sea Kayaker Magazine. These details matter because they signal expertise.
• Hiking and state parks. Lime Kiln Point State Park gives you shore-based whale watching with the lighthouse as a backdrop. Mount Constitution on Orcas Island is the highest point in the San Juans with views stretching to Mount Baker and the Cascades.
• Cycling. Lopez Island is known as the flat, bike-friendly island. San Juan Island has rolling terrain. Orcas has climbs.
• The town of Friday Harbor. The Whale Museum, local restaurants, the harbor itself.

Give each section two to three paragraphs of real detail. Who it’s best for, what time of year, how long it takes, what to expect. This is what separates your page from the chamber of commerce bullet list that says “Kayaking: Enjoy our beautiful waters.”

Connect every section back to your booking page

The biggest mistake operators make with content like this: treating it as pure information. A things to do page that ranks but doesn’t convert is a gift to your competitors. Someone reads your kayaking section, gets excited, then opens a new tab and Googles “kayak tour San Juan Islands” because you didn’t give them a link. You did the work. Somebody else got the booking.

Every section where your business is relevant should include a natural mention of what you offer and a link to the booking page. You’re not being aggressive about it. The reader came to your site looking for things to do. Offering them a specific trip is the most helpful thing you can do.

If you’re a whale watching company, your whale watching section says something like: “We run three-hour tours out of Friday Harbor from February through November. Morning trips tend to have calmer water.” Then link to the trip page. That’s it. The reader doesn’t feel sold to because you’re answering their question and giving them an obvious next step.

For activities you don’t offer, link to other local operators. Yes, really. It makes the page more useful, keeps people on it longer (which Google tracks), and positions you as the trusted local source instead of a business that only talks about itself. That’s what a things to do page should really do for your site: work as a funnel, not just an article.

Get the on-page seo details right

Put “things to do in San Juan Islands” in your title tag, your H1, and your first paragraph. Match the search query. Don’t get creative with the phrasing.

Write a meta description under 155 characters that includes the location and hints at depth. Something like: “A local guide to San Juan Islands activities: whale watching, kayaking, hiking, and itineraries from people who live here.”

Use H2 headers for each activity section. “Whale watching in the San Juan Islands,” “Sea kayaking the west side,” “Hiking Lime Kiln and Mount Constitution.” These headers can rank on their own for long-tail searches, which adds up over time.

Add TouristAttraction and LocalBusiness schema markup if your site supports it. This gets you closer to rich results in Google and helps with how search engines categorize your content.

And update the page at least twice a year. Swap in fresh photos, adjust seasonal hours, add any new tours you’ve started running. Google treats freshness as a ranking signal, and a page that sits untouched for two years will slide. Put the updates in your content calendar so they actually happen.

Use internal links to build authority around the topic

Your things to do page shouldn’t sit by itself. It works best as the hub of a cluster.

Link from it to your individual trip pages, your “best time to visit” page, and any blog posts about specific activities. Then link back from those pages to the things to do page. Google reads that structure as a signal that the page is central to your site’s topic.

If you’re not sure what to blog about beyond your core service pages, the things to do page gives you a roadmap. Every activity section is a potential blog post. “Best whale watching months in the San Juan Islands.” “Kayaking the west side: what to expect.” “A three-day San Juan Islands itinerary for families.” Each post links back to the hub page.

This is also how you compete with the aggregators over time. TripAdvisor has domain authority, sure. But it doesn’t have a dozen interlinked pages all focused on San Juan Islands activities written by someone who actually paddles those waters. You do, or you can.

Track what happens after the click

Ranking is step one. Knowing whether it actually produces bookings is step two, and it’s the one people skip.

Set up Google Analytics to track the path from your things to do page forward. Are visitors clicking through to trip pages? Reaching the booking form? Where do they bail?

If traffic grows but bookings don’t, look at the connection points between the content and your trip pages. The calls to action might be buried. The trip page itself might need work.

Watch which sections get the most engagement, too. If everyone reads the kayaking section and skips cycling, that tells you where to invest more content and more links. Let the data steer what you write next.

The San Juan Islands have the visitor volume and the search demand. A things to do page built with real local detail and real links back to your services will pull bookings for years. The operators who build it first get the head start.