SEO for the Outdoor Industry: Getting It Right

There are more than 50 million fishermen and at least 15 million hunters in the United States. Similarly, one estimate claims that nearly 50 million households went camping in 2020, more than 5 million more than the year prior. 

I don’t have figures on rock climbing, water sports, running, hiking, and other similar outdoor sports, but you can take it on good authority that there are plenty of people that partake in these pursuits – to the tune of millions of Americans around the country, every year.

The collective outdoor industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and every year eCommerce becomes more and more central to the trade. 

This means that for retailers of outdoor products to succeed online, they need to take digital marketing seriously. 

But digital marketing, specifically, SEO and content marketing for the outdoor industry, is different from marketing for other industries. 

Though the outdoor industry can be subdivided into very different pursuits – say, shooting and rock climbing, for instance – something that is true across the board is that this is an exceptionally competitive industry. 

It (and outdoor industry SEO by extension) is competitive in two capacities.

On the one hand, there are tons and tons of retailers and wholesalers and manufacturers that produce and sell products and accessories for outdoor sports. I don’t have figures but the market is saturated, even online. 

Moreover, there are some very large national retailers that have established very strong digital presences, like Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s, Academy Sports + Outdoors, Scheels, and MidwayUSA. 

You could almost fill up pages one and two of the search results just with listings for retailers of national scope. 

So that right there creates a big competitive roadblock for eCommerce merchants in the space. 

The other facet of the competitive nature of this industry is that consumers that are into outdoor sports like camping and fishing tend to be very well-informed and unforgiving about low-quality content. 

It is also an industry in which every man can be considered an expert in some capacity or other. Not everyone is an auto mechanic or a computer programmer, but anyone that has been camping or kayaking has personal experience that can be very useful in the field and which when shared with other outdoor enthusiasts develops a strong sense of community. 

In short, there is a very large pool of expertise in this industry. Consumers are passionate about these sports and by and large, are not willing to tolerate low-quality referential material. I myself am guilty of the latter two conditions. 

With that said, success in eCommerce through digital marketing, specifically SEO, is absolutely attainable, provided you keep to a few central maxims. 

The Value of Authoritative Content Creation in Outdoors SEO

For many sellers in the outdoor space – especially those that sell guns or bladed tools – PPC and other paid search marketing channels are off the table. 

Putting aside the censorial nature of Google, this actually opens up a world of opportunities for these companies.

Mainly, because their competition will have to compete on an organic-only basis.

This puts the value of content in a place of high esteem; in the place of highest esteem, actually. 

In a market as competitive as the collective outdoor industry, those that would attempt to create a new lead-generating channel through SEO and content marketing simply cannot afford to cheap out. 

Targeting product-only keywords and writing thin content (or publishing hokey, insightless videos) is not going to go anywhere, but it will go there fast. 

It’s hard to quantify, and, even qualify this, but have you ever been reading a blog post or an article or even on a retailer’s landing page and it became painfully apparent within a few moments that the person that wrote the copy had no idea what he or she was writing about?

That sort of thing creates a monumental amount of bounce and it does irreparable damage to a brand’s authority and credibility. 

Not that there is any room to play with that in any industry, but it is even more unforgiving in the outdoor industry. 

So the first and most important thing to note here is that to succeed in organic digital marketing in the outdoor industry, content is your most important asset. 

But it has to be good, it has to be written by someone specifically familiar with the industry, and it has to project expertise. 

How Expertise Breaks Down in Outdoors SEO

The easiest way to convey expertise through your marketing content is unfortunately not easy at all. It requires you, or the person responsible for authoring it, to be familiar (personally) with what the topic is.

I’ll be the first person to admit there are many, many aspects of outdoor sports with which I am not personally familiar. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to fake. 

You need someone in your camp (excuse the pun) that is experienced with the sport, the gear, and the processes and procedures involved in it in order to produce viable content for SEO and content marketing. 

Faking it can often do more harm than good.

The reason for this is that, even if you write thin-but-technically-optimized content in the beginning of a campaign, that will improve your impressions, rankings, and engagement. 

But if you post a lot of useless social media posts or write blogs that are reiterative and information-thin, your engagement metrics will flag and before long, those posts and the target URLs associated with them will start to slide.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be informative and accurate. If you can do that, you’ll get somewhere.

For online businesses that are startups or at the beginning of their journeys, get ready to roll up your sleeves. Winning in digital marketing in the outdoor industry is not impossible, and it can be done, but it is hard work. Just remember that all businesses, no matter how large, started where you are.

Coming Up with Relevant Topics for Outdoor Industry SEO: Topics, Not Keywords

Much of what constitutes success in digital marketing for the outdoors industry comes down to one of two things.

Creating useful content that is designed to serve as a lead funnel because it is optimized for low-hanging search terms and UX, and creating content that, while it may not expressly be optimized for short-term ranking increases, will serve as evergreen referential material that will boost your brand’s credibility in the long-term. 

Now, don’t let my little title at the beginning of this section throw you off. You still ultimately need to target keywords (at least in SEO, not really in social media) but the whole point is to write content that is valuable for its own sake and work the keyword in where feasible and relevant.

What you don’t want to do is churn out what is basically fluff, even if it is optimized for a lucrative keyword. 

What you want to do is consider topics that are relevant to your target audience. I’ll throw a smattering of ideas here so you get the gist. 

For hunting and fishing outfitters:

• Gear reviews
• Lists of FAQs related to specific seasons 
• Regulations breakdowns
• Tips and advice for certain seasons 
• Maintenance tips for fishing outfits/guns/bows

For watersports businesses:

• Safety tips
• Boating regulations and maintenance 
• Tutorials on how to manage/pilot paddle craft

For cycling business:

• Tips for repairs, maintenance, or upgrades
• Advice on how to cut seat tubes/inflate tires properly, etc. 
• Safety tips
• Listicles highlighting local trails and races

These are just some really basic examples, but if you’re seeing a common theme here, it’s that I’m not talking about specific keyword-related topics in any of those “ideas” I listed above. 

Ultimately, you need to build your brand as a source of experience and information on which your customers can rely. 

That will, over time, position you as a reference authority and a place that customers will bookmark to come back to time and time again for your experience. 

I also would like to expressly say that there are a million and one ways to craft content and sow in relevant keywords without making it evident that you are doing so.

It’s easy to do when the topic doesn’t utterly revolve around the given keyword but instead answers another valuable search query. 

First figure out the question you want to answer, then craft the content around that, working in keywords where possible. 

Writing content for the purpose of informing your customers will invariably yield more results than content written solely for the purposes of improving your organic standings for a few target keywords.

Outdoor Industry SEO: Coming Up with Relevant Target Keywords Anyway

One more note I’d like to make is that while keywords are central to any SEO campaign, for outdoor clients in specific, in order to build true authority and respect in the eyes of your customers, you should focus on topics instead of keywords. 

That will build topical authority and if what you publish is reputable, well-informed, and actionable, it will build your rankings in the long run. 

The trick here is to look for those low-competition keywords that have a reasonable search volume. 

It could be a product that your business sells, or it could be a brand or even a seasonally-relevant search query that’s relevant to or closely linked with what you sell (for instance, fishing tackle in the spring or lifting equipment in January when everyone makes a New Year’s Resolution to get in shape.)

But once you have those keywords, what you want to do is nest them into long-tail queries that are related to a process. 

No one (really) wants to read a list of bulleted features of a fishing reel. At least not in a blog. 

But if your article topic is “How to Clean a Penn Warfare,” or “How to Cast 1,000 Yards with Your Penn Warfare,” then you’re cooking with gas.

At that point, you’ve optimized for the product-related keyword and nested that into a topic that people may actually want to read about. 

Because what fisherman doesn’t want to know how to cast farther? 

Making sure your content is shareable and legitimately interesting is the most important thing you can do if you really expect to use SEO as a channel for growing your outdoor brand or business.

And sure, it takes work. But you can do it.