Expedition Kanab | Case Study

The Situation

When ResmarkWeb took over the account in May 2025, Expedition Kanab was a well-regarded operator competing in a search landscape where its most valuable keywords were held by large travel media publishers rather than other local tour companies. The site had technical issues holding rankings back and an underdeveloped internal link structure connecting blog content to bookable tours. The plan was to build a clean technical foundation, develop real topical authority around the site's core tour themes, get proper analytics tracking in place, and progressively push mid-ranking pages onto page one.

Dylan Chong, the owner of Croydon in The Mountains, had a unique goal in mind. Since he is based in Jamaica, naturally he wanted to increase their Local Reach. He also wanted a long term plan to reach a broader audience in the USA, ideally attracting new people interested in Jamaican Experiences.

Our goal was straightforward: boost their online visibility by helping them rank higher for the keywords that mattered. By targeting those valuable search terms, we aimed to bring in more organic traffic and connect Croydon In The Mountains with people actively looking for authentic coffee and estate tours in Jamaica. It was time to get them the visibility they deserved.

The Work

Phase 1: Foundation and Topical Architecture (May–June 2025) 

The campaign opened with a full technical audit to fix missing meta tags, missing H1 tags, and keyword cannibalization across pages. Existing blog posts were reviewed and grouped into topical clusters, with new cluster topics mapped to fill gaps, tying the Zion National Park destination content and travel-planning guides directly into the tours theme. Blog posts within each cluster were interlinked, and contextual links were added from informational content into relevant tour pages.

Phase 2: Visibility Recovery (July–September 2025)

New technical issues (broken internal links, sitemap errors, missing meta tags) were addressed, and indexing status was reviewed and corrected in Search Console. Internal links from top-performing blog posts were routed into commercial tour pages, and the pages showing declining organic traffic were reoptimized with refreshed content and new internal links. The quarter closed with a heatmap and session review of the highest-traffic, lowest-converting tour pages, building the data-backed conversion plan for Q4.

Phase 3: Analytics Setup, CTR, and Conversion Optimization (October–December 2025)

A new Google Tag Manager account was built and configured to fire GA4 eCommerce events (view_item, add_to_cart, purchase) across every tour page, giving the account real conversion attribution. Meta titles and descriptions were rewritten for high-impression, low-CTR pages, FAQ schema went live on key commercial pages, and above-the-fold conversion updates were applied to the homepage and the UTV tours page. A side-by-side comparison widget was built for the Peekaboo Slot Canyon and Peekaboo + Great Chamber Loop tours to cut down on choice friction between the two. By year's end, Google Search Console impressions had grown from 189,000 to 201,000 and average position had improved from 14.8 to 9.6.

Phase 4: Content Expansion and Authority Building (January–March 2026)

Pages generating strong impressions but weak click-through were flagged and re-optimized, and rising queries in positions 5 through 20 were identified for new content opportunities. A mid-funnel blog calendar was built around Expedition Kanab's core tours, and two decision-stage posts were published: a Great Chamber and Peekaboo one-day itinerary, and a Coral Pink Sand Dunes sandboarding beginner's guide. A NAP audit of Expedition Kanab's citations found real inconsistencies, including conflicting phone numbers and address variations, and a single canonical NAP was established starting with the website itself.

Phase 5: Local Entity and AI Overview Authority (April–June 2026)

April's competitive GBP audit compared Expedition Kanab against three local competitors for the keyword "Kanab ATV tours," reviewing categories, services, photos, and business description, while NAP corrections continued across the site, GBP, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and tourism directories. May delivered a review acquisition and response strategy, along with citation and listing work across TripAdvisor, Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and other directories. June restructured Expedition Kanab's strongest informational posts for AI Overview extraction: clear H2 questions, short direct answers, and FAQ sections, with two new posts built the same way from the start.

The results

Click growth came from better rankings and better click-through working together. Pages that improved position started showing up where people could actually click them, and meta rewrites plus FAQ schema pulled more clicks out of impressions the site already had. Comparing the last six months to the six months before that, Google Search Console clicks are up roughly 42%, consistent with the 41.7% year-over-year figure the account has tracked since the campaign began.

Revenue growth followed better-targeted traffic and a more persuasive booking experience. The above-the-fold updates cut drop-off on key tour pages, the Peekaboo comparison widget reduced choice friction between two similarly named tours, and the blog-to-tour internal linking turned informational readers into tour page visitors. Organic search revenue is up 34.5% year over year.

Key Takeaways for Tour Operators

1. Map topical clusters before optimizing individual pages. Building content and internal links around a coherent set of themes gives Google a clear picture of your expertise instead of a pile of disconnected pages.
2. Target the pages closest to page one on purpose. Internal linking focused on positions 11 through 15 moved more pages across the threshold than spreading the same effort evenly across the site.
3. A messy NAP is a quiet tax on local visibility. Conflicting phone numbers and address variants across directories can hold back local search performance for years before anyone notices.
   

Ready to Outrank the Publishers in Your Market?

Expedition Kanab had the reputation, the guides, and the reviews. What it needed was a search program built for the specific competition it was actually facing, national travel publishers, not local rivals, plus the analytics and conversion work to turn that visibility into bookings.

ResmarkWeb helps tour and activity operators build the same kind of program: clear the technical debt, build real topical authority, and move the pages that are close to page one across the line.