Local SEO for independent campgrounds and RV parks

Your next camper is in a truck cab, forty minutes out, deciding right now. They are not searching for your park. They're searching for a park.

The fifteen-minute customer

Somebody is on the highway at four in the afternoon with a trailer behind them and a dog in the back seat. They planned to make it another two hours and they've changed their mind. They pick up the phone and type "campgrounds near me open" or "RV park tonight," and they look at the map, and they pick.

That whole decision takes about fifteen minutes and your park name never enters into it. Three things decide whether you're in the running: are you close, do you look open, and does the listing look like somebody's actually paying attention. Nothing else on that screen matters at four in the afternoon.

This is the least brand-driven search in hospitality, and that's good news for you. A first-time camper choosing between you and the franchise park down the road is not comparing reputations, they're comparing two map pins. You can win that comparison with a clean listing and no advertising budget at all.

You can also lose it without ever knowing you were in it, which is the part that stings.

The hours problem, which is really the closed problem

If you close for the winter, this is the single most expensive thing on your plate, and I'd guess more than half of seasonal parks have it wrong right now.

Google's profile has three states: open, temporarily closed, and permanently closed. That last one is close to fatal. It strips you out of most results, it's slow and irritating to reverse, and here is how it usually arrives: somebody drives past your chained gate in November, opens the map, taps "suggest an edit," and marks you permanently closed. They were being helpful. Google frequently accepts that edit without asking you, and if you don't look at your profile in the off-season, you find out in April.

Meanwhile the off-season is exactly when next season's searches happen. February and March are when families book July. A park that reads as permanently closed all winter is invisible during its own booking season.

The fixes are unglamorous and they work. Keep the profile in the open state and use the special-hours field to mark the closed dates, rather than blanking your hours out, because empty hours look like abandonment to both Google and the reader. Put your season dates in plain words in the description and keep a current post on the profile saying when you reopen. Check the profile once a week between November and March, which takes two minutes, because that's the window when a stranger's suggested edit will go through unchallenged. And if you do use the temporarily closed state, understand that it costs you ranking while it's on, and set a calendar reminder to switch it back the week before you open, not the week after.

There's more on this, including what to do if you're already showing as closed, in why does my campground show closed on Google in the off-season.

Your category decides which searches you're even in

Google keeps a fixed list of business categories and you pick from it. You don't write your own. The one you pick as primary is the biggest single lever on which searches you appear in, and campgrounds sit right on a fault line in that list: "campground" and "RV park" are separate entries, and they behave differently.

Somebody typing "RV park" with a fifth-wheel behind them and somebody typing "campground" with a tent in the trunk are two different people with two different needs, and Google treats them that way. If you take both and you're filed under one, you're missing half your traffic. There are also neighbouring entries in that list that sound close enough to be tempting and will quietly hurt you, mobile home park being the worst of them, because it pulls you toward residential searches and away from travellers entirely.

The practical move is to open the category picker, type the words your campers use, and read the whole list of what comes back rather than accepting the first plausible match. Then set one primary that matches your main business and add the secondaries that honestly apply. I've written out how to make that call in RV park versus campground: which Google Business Profile category actually gets you found.

It's a branch grown over the exit sign. The park is fine, the road is fine, and nobody turns off because they never saw it coming.

Reviews, and the ten minutes a week nobody spends

Two separate jobs here, and most owners do neither.

Getting them is the harder one, because your guest is gone in three days and isn't coming back through your door next Tuesday the way a customer at the hardware store is. That means the ask has to happen while they're still on your property, and it has to survive the fact that your cell coverage is probably bad. A QR code on a card at the office window works. An email sent four days after they leave mostly doesn't. The full method is in how to get campers to leave a Google review before they check out.

Replying is the easier one and it's free. Every review gets a reply, including the good ones, including the two-word ones. Ten minutes a week clears it. The reason it matters isn't that Google rewards it directly in any way I can prove to you, it's that the next camper reads your replies. They're deciding whether the person running this park pays attention, and your reply to a complaint about the bathhouse in 2023 is the most honest evidence available. An owner who answers a bad review calmly and specifically converts better than one with a slightly higher star rating and total silence underneath it.

Pace matters too. If every review on your profile is dated the second week of July, your park looks abandoned in February when the planners are shopping. Keep asking through the shoulder weeks.

What this looks like as a job

The listing claimed under your own login. Categories set properly. Seasonal hours built so they hold up through the winter without you babysitting them. Duplicates merged with the reviews kept. Name, address and phone made to agree everywhere, including the camping directories that feed Google whether you registered with them or not. A review system you can hand to whoever is working the office window.

Three sizes, from $1,200, one payment each, and the full breakdown of what each one includes is on the main page. Everything that comes out of it is yours.

Email [email protected] with your park name and where you are, and I'll look up what Google is currently telling people about you before I quote you anything.