How to rank for 'things to do in Sedona' and turn it into bookings
“Things to do in Sedona” gets searched tens of thousands of times a month. The query peaks twice a year, once in spring and again in fall, matching the seasons when Sedona’s weather is actually pleasant enough to be outside. Summer heat and winter cold create dips, but even in those off months the volume stays surprisingly high. People plan Sedona trips well ahead of time.
Search that phrase right now. You’ll see TripAdvisor, Viator, U.S. News Travel, Visit Sedona, and a handful of travel bloggers filling the first page. Local tour operators and outfitters are mostly absent. That’s worth paying attention to, because Sedona’s tourism industry generates over $1 billion a year and supports more than 10,000 jobs, according to the City of Sedona’s tourism program. The average visitor spends $750 per trip. A lot of that money gets decided by whoever shows up when someone types “what to do in Sedona” into their phone.
You can capture a share of that traffic. It takes a specific kind of page, written with real local knowledge, and built to move readers toward a booking.
Why this query is worth your time
“Things to do in Sedona” is a pre-decision search. The person has already picked Sedona. They’ve booked the Airbnb or the resort. What they haven’t done is decide how to spend their days.
That makes it a different animal than “Sedona jeep tours” or “Sedona vortex hike.” Those come from people who know what they want. The “things to do” searcher is still browsing, still open. If your company shows up with a useful guide that mentions your sunset jeep tour alongside the Devil’s Bridge hike and a morning at Slide Rock State Park, you’ve put yourself in the trip-planning conversation at the right moment.
Even a second-page ranking pulls real visitors. These are people with travel budgets, actively deciding how to spend them.
What’s ranking right now
Pull up the search results. Predictable lineup: TripAdvisor runs a “15 Best Things to Do in Sedona” list cobbled together from user submissions. Viator and GetYourGuide push paid activity listings. The Visit Sedona tourism bureau covers everything at surface level. U.S. News Travel publishes a “19 Epic Things to Do” article that reads like someone rewrote a press kit. Travel bloggers like Culture Trekking and Journeys and Jaunts write personal narratives from a weekend visit, then link to OTAs for bookings instead of to you.
The gap is obvious. Nobody on page one is a local operator writing from years of running tours through the red rocks.
Pink Jeep Tours has been operating in Sedona since 1960, running thousands of people through Broken Arrow and the Coconino backcountry every year. Earth Wisdom Tours holds permits for every major vortex site in Sedona. Arizona Safari Jeep Tours takes groups to Airport Mesa, Rachel’s Knoll, and Amithaba Peace Park. These companies know Sedona in a way that a travel blogger passing through for three days does not. That kind of local depth is what Google rewards more and more, and what the current top results do not have.
Build the page that deserves to rank
Your things to do page should read like a recommendation from someone who lives and works in Sedona. Not a tourism board brochure.
Start with outdoor activities, because that’s what most visitors come for. If you run jeep tours, lead with the off-road experience through Broken Arrow or Soldier Pass, then cover hiking Devil’s Bridge (4.6 miles round trip from the Dry Creek Vista trailhead, or about 2 miles if you have a high-clearance 4WD), scrambling up Cathedral Rock (700 feet of elevation gain in half a mile, and it’s genuinely steep), and swimming at Slide Rock State Park’s 80-foot natural waterslide in Oak Creek Canyon. Give each activity a couple of short paragraphs with specifics: distance, difficulty, time required, best season.
The practical details matter more than people realize. The Red Rock Pass costs $5 per day, $15 for a week, or $20 for an annual pass. You can buy one at trailhead kiosks or on recreation.gov. Sedona runs a free shuttle from park-and-ride lots in central town, Thursday through Sunday, 7 AM to 5:30 PM. Including this kind of information signals to Google that your page was written by someone who actually knows the place, not someone who aggregated ten other listicles.
Name real businesses where it fits, even if they’re not yours. Tlaquepaque Arts and Shopping Village for galleries and handmade crafts. Red Rock Balloons for a sunrise hot air balloon flight over the mesas. This makes the page genuinely useful, and it tells Google your content comes from someone embedded in the community.
Use your own photos. Not stock. If you run jeep tours, show your actual vehicles on your actual trails with real Sedona dust on them.
Structure the page with clear H2 headings for each category. Keep the URL clean. Put “things to do in Sedona” in your title tag, H1, and first paragraph. A surprising number of outfitters skip this because they build tour pages instead of area guides. If you want more guidance on what to write about for your outdoor business, start with pages like this one that match the way people actually search.
Connect every section to a booking
Most outfitters who build a things to do page treat it as a public service. Nice information, no links to their own trips, no reason for the reader to do anything except leave and book with someone else.
Every activity section on your page should connect back to your trips or booking flow. If someone is reading about jeep tours through Broken Arrow, a sentence like “We run two-hour and three-hour guided off-road tours through Broken Arrow daily from March through November” with a link to your trip page is helpful, not salesy. The reader is planning what to do. You are telling them what you offer.
Your trip pages should already be built to convert. The things to do page feeds traffic into them. Broad intent enters through “things to do in Sedona” and narrows into specific trip pages where the actual booking happens.
Include seasonal timing in each section. “Cathedral Rock is hikeable year-round but the scramble gets dangerous when wet or icy. March through May and September through November are the best months.” That kind of detail answers a real question and opens a natural link to content about the best time to visit.
Put a sample two-day itinerary near the bottom. Something like: “Day one: morning jeep tour through Soldier Pass, afternoon hike to Devil’s Bridge, sunset at Airport Mesa vortex. Day two: swim at Slide Rock State Park, lunch at Tlaquepaque, guided vortex meditation at Boynton Canyon.” People linger on a page when they can picture the full trip. Your business ends up at the center of the itinerary they’re imagining.
Local seo signals that support the page
Ranking for “things to do in Sedona” is not just about the page itself. Google weighs local signals heavily for destination queries.
Your Google Business Profile needs to be claimed, complete, and actively maintained. Post to it. Upload photos from recent tours. Respond to every review. A well-maintained profile tells Google you’re a real, operating business in Sedona, and that carries weight when the algorithm decides which local operators deserve to appear alongside TripAdvisor.
Build citations on tourism-related directories: the Visit Sedona site, Sedona Chamber of Commerce listings, Arizona tourism directories. Make sure your business name, address, and phone number match everywhere. Routine work, but it compounds.
Reviews matter here too. Pink Jeep Tours has thousands of Google reviews, and that volume is one reason they hold local search visibility even without a dedicated things to do page. Getting more reviews is one of the highest-return SEO activities for any outdoor operator.
Track whether the page is working
Once the page goes live, watch two numbers: organic traffic and bookings that originate from the page.
Set up event tracking or UTM parameters on every link from your things to do page to your trip or booking pages. You want to see how many people land on the guide, click through to a specific tour, and book. If the page ranks but nobody clicks through, rethink your internal links. If people click but don’t book, the problem is likely on your trip page or booking flow.
Give it three to six months before judging. SEO for competitive destination queries is slow. But a well-built things to do page tends to hold its ranking once it gets there. The red rocks are not going anywhere. Cathedral Rock will look the same next year. Your page just needs periodic updates as tour pricing and trail conditions change.
Sedona sees 3.2 million visits a year, and the average visitor spends $750. Being the outfitter they find while planning the trip beats any ad you could buy.
