Heading Tags | SEO for Beginners

Posted on October 6, 2011 by
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Heading Tags | SEO for Beginners

Good use of heading tags is an important way to help search engines and your viewers understand the subject of your site. You can increase traffic to your website and make that traffic more useful by applying simple yet effective heading tag usage technique.

increase traffic to your website with heading tagsHeading Tags 101 and SEO

Heading tags are HTML that tell both search engines and viewers the heirarchy of the subject matter on the page. These heading tags (H1, H2, etc down to H6)  will have bigger fonts than your regular text and will enable viewers to quickly see an organized presentation of the information or product that they were looking for. Keyword rich heading tags will also help keyword optimization for the search engines and drive more traffic to your site.

The H1 heading tag | Repeat your title to retain traffic | SEO

heading tags and SEOWhen a searcher finds your site organically, that is to say from a typical non-sponsored keyword search result, they still may be skeptical as to whether they are in the right place. Repeating the title at the top of your page in the largest font possible will ensure them that they will be getting what they expected. After all, they clicked on that title in the SERPS (search results). When they see it again at the top of the page it will go a long way to making a great first impression as far as relevance goes.

The H1 tag also tell search engines that your content is loaded with the keywords that were in your page title, potentially helping your search result rankings for those keywords. This is a small benefit, but in today’s competitive markets every little bit counts.

The H2 heading tag | Outline and organization | SEO

seoThe H2 heading tags should be used to label to organize your page’s content. These tags once again help viewers make sense of your site and the website become easier to read in general. Just like the H1 tag, the H2 tag is picked up by search engines and will improve rankings for the longer-tail keywords as they appear in your content. This very page about heading tags uses the H1 and H2 tags exactly as suggested.

The H3 heading tag and beyond | SEO

Most writers use outlines when they have a lot of content to write about, especially in one page. The H3-H6 tags should be used as headers to the outline of the page. Most
SEO experts believe that it helps improve search engine ranking considerably to at beginner seo heading tagleast use H1, H2 and H3 on every page. On a short page like this one I chose to not use H3, perhaps sacrificing SEO for quality. If it doesn’t belong anywhere then do not force it.

Still, for longer pages and complicated content it is suggested that you use the header tags as much as you can, as it helps SEO and will increase traffic to your website.

 

 

Categories: How can I get more traffic to my site, White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , , , , ,

How to be Cool 101 | The making of the website

Posted on October 1, 2011 by
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How to be Cool 101

The making the ultimate how to be cool 101 website guide.

How to be cool 101 | website structure

how to be cool 101The how to be cool website will be set up on the same URL as with my how to be happy blog. It will have a main page titled “how to be cool 101 | everything you need to know about being cool”. I will add a page every week or so as a new part. The pages will be linked through navigation at the end of each how to be cool article.

How to be cool 101 | social media and comment links

To promote the how to be cool site, I will be adding social media such as YouTube and Squidoo. The plan for links is to frequent appropriate blogs and add relevant comments for dropping good links. These will be mostly nofollow links but they should still help for traffic promotion.

How to be cool 101 | content

how to be coolEach page will add on teaching its viewers how to be cool. I will be taking extra time to edit each article to make it as readable and as entertaining as possible. There are plenty of how to be cool 101 websites our there, but I think I can make mine to be refined, entertaining, and effective enough to draw my share of the search traffic market for these keywords.

How to be cool 101 | viewer interaction

The how to be cool 101 guide will include a comment section with each lesson as well as homework for its viewers. There will also be a “coming next week” section to try to get bookmarks and returning direct traffic. The links to the site will be dofollow, in an effort to get other how to be cool writers to contribute additional quality content on being cool.

How to be cool 101 | on page SEO

coolEach how to be cool 101 page will have extra time spent for title and description meta tag optimization. I intend for the website to have a very clean result in the Google SERPS.

How to be cool 101 | white hat website traffic

All techniques and tactics for content and promotion of how to be cool 101 will be 100% within Google’s Terms of Service. I would rather see growing traffic than watching traffic spike and then be reduced as Google get’s wise to any black hat or crap hat techniques.

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Why Are My Links Not Showing Up | Beginners SEO

Posted on September 29, 2011 by
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Why Are My Links Not Showing Up | Beginners SEO

Why your links are not showing up in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo, and Backlink Watch.

How Google and Web Master Tools see your backlinks

links not showing upI don’t know. Neither do most people that are not Google insiders. This is intentional. If Google and other search engines were to allow all links and content to show up in any of their tools and searches, then black hat SEO webmasters would too easily know what to do to trick the search engines. The way search engines collect website data and rank them in search results is not made public – therefore a check to see your backlinks from any service or search will never be accurate.

Less link checking and more link building

So what can you do about your links not showing up when you check them? Stop checking them. It’s mostly a waste of time. It is certainly not a waste of time to build white hat quality backlinks, however. You just have to build and build some more. Make your content excellent so backlinks will come even when you are not building them. It works.

In summary, do not be concerned with your backlinks not showing up in Google, Yahoo, Webmaster Tools, Backlink Watch, etc. Instead spend your energy to build quality links. It works.

Categories: How can I get more traffic to my site, White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog

Beginners SEO Blog | How to Get Links from Comments

Posted on September 22, 2011 by
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How to Get Links From Comments

Learn how to post comments on blogs to increase your own website’s backlinks (and therefore your traffic).

NoFollow links in comments | Are they worth anything?

nofollow comments links from blogsMost of the time that you post a blog comment you get to add a link to your website. This link is often automatically labeled as “noFollow”, which (sort of) tells Google not to consider that link very important. For the most part, it has been believed that these link carry very little weight when it comes to increasing your search engine rankings for given keywords. Many webmasters, therefore, mistakenly ignore their importance.

Fact: NoFollow links help drive traffic to your site and that they increase your websites rankings in search engines.

Perhaps they don’t help with search engine rankings as much as “DoFollow” links – but they help nonetheless. If you are looking for increased traffic to your website then you should at least spend a little bit of time with the community of your niche and grab a few blog comment links in the cases where you can add a helpful and relevant comment to someone’s post.

Keep your “white hat” on when you comment

low quality comment spam is crap hatThe last thing that you want to do is to just spam your link in a comment (many bloggers refer to this as “crap-hat”).

Good blogs moderate their comment sections and filter out comments with no, low, and spam content. That’s what you want. Blogs that do not allow crap-hat will likely grow and increase in quality, relevancy, and rankings over time. The quality of the link you get from these sites will do the same. These are the backlinks that you want – the ones that might grow in their power and significance and help your site the most and for the longest – without you even having to do anything.

When sites allow spam, there will be all sorts of irrelevant garbage and a multitude of cheap links being generated in the comment section. These types of links can’t really hurt you, but you won’t really get anywhere with them. Get links from quality sites. To do this you will not be able to spam or supply comments that are low in content or relevance.

Comment with something helpful

This doesn’t mean you have to be a “yes man”. You can totally disagree with a post and still write a helpful comment. You can also correct the webmaster’s spelling or grammar. Whatever you write, just make sure that it adds to the relevancy to the point of the topic and helps the author and/or the readers in some way.

Seek out relative blogs

seek out link relevanceRelevance is very important. Do not write a comment with a link to a site about legal issues on a post about creating flower arrangements. Again, it can’t really hurt (and it might even help a little) but it’s mostly a waste of time. If it does get approved then you really don’t want to be linked from that site anyway and the link will never likely prove to contain any juice.

Remember that you also want “referrals” from your blog comment links. Referrals are traffic that comes to your site through that link. Relevant referral traffic leads to more conversions (sales or ad clicks) and it may lead to high quality links as well.

When I do a search for a place to comment and leave a link, I type in a few keywords relevant to my website along with the search phrase, “leave a comment”. From this I get a list of pages that are relevant, powerful (the ones on the first few pages  of my search), and that allow comments. I then actually read the post – hey, maybe I’ll learn something. Then I decide if I have something useful to add. If not, I go back to the search results. Perhaps I will have something great to add to this author’s next post. No use annoying him or her with a low content comment in the mean time.

Comment as if you are at a business cocktail party

add useful comments to relevant blogsMingle a bit, add to a conversation here and there, meet people, network, even throw out a light brag here and there, but don’t be a nuisance by being in everyone’s face all of the time.

 

Categories: How can I get more traffic to my site, White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Don’t be lazy with Meta Description SEO – Learn More

Posted on September 10, 2011 by
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The Meta Description is the text below your page title in the search engine results. Just like titles they can influence the number of clicks you get greatly, regardless of SERP position – though some meta descriptions should actually be left blank. Let me explain.

Meta description and keywords

For sake of this discussion it is important to know what a long-tail keyword is. A long-tail keyword is a specific phrase that describes your content much more completely then a simple keyword. For example, “SEO” is a broad keyword. “White Hat SEO Help for Beginners Blog” is a long-tail keyword. These long-tail keywords will not get nearly as much search volume, but when potential website visitors use them, the results can be very accurately focused traffic. This is good.

Meta descriptions for regular or broad match keywords

This is where you need to get to work with thoughtful and compelling description writing. Let’s say that your website is about photographs, and one of your main broad-match keywords for the site’s home or index page is “pictures”. We already learned to write a good title like, “Really Cool Pictures Here - Check Them Out”, rather than just stuffing the title with keywords. With the meta description, we have another shot at getting the search engine user to click on our result. This is huge! We get another 20-40 words, in fact.

We should use this second chance and free publicity to accurately tell the searcher what is on this page (and this page only) AND to compel them to visit our site. Putting keywords in the description help rankings a tiny bit, but the opportunity to tell a search engine user what our page is about and why it should be clicked is much more important than this miniscule bonus.

When not to use meta descriptions

Many of our website pages will not be looking for broad keyword matches like our home page does. We might have pictures of dogs wearing clothes, for example. We can’t account for all of the long tail keywords that might be searched for when a searcher is looking for clothes on a dog, however. One potential viewer might type “cute doggie sweaters” and another “hot dog shoes”.

In this case it is often best to leave the description blank. Why? Because Google and other search engines will automatically scan our page cache for the long tail search contents of the searcher and show a snippet of text straight from our site in the description result. It’s pretty cool and this gets lots of relevant organic search traffic.

In summary, use the extra 20-40 words allowed in the meta description to drive searchers to main pages by accurately describing the page (not the site). This is best for index (home) pages with broad keyword targets. In the contrary, leave the description blank for more specialized pages and let the search engine show the long-tail keyword in a snippet to the searcher.

Categories: How can I get more traffic to my site, White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , , , ,

Easy but Critical SEO Page Title Help for Beginners

Posted on August 26, 2011 by
1 comment

Do not allow your backlink building and other SEO efforts to go to waste because of these common title mistakes. Setting up things like titles are boring, I admit, but beginners at SEO absolutely must consider these easy title tips or their ratio of impressions to clicks will suffer big time.

Top search engine rankings

This is everything right? Is it most important that we get our Google search position for our keywords as high as possible? Not really, no. A high search engine ranking won’t do much good if you don’t get clicks. We have to make sure that when our potential visitor sees our result in Google that he or she will feel compelled to click on it.

Why are titles important?

Two reasons. First is that while Google uses thousands of factors in sorting search results, keywords in the page title have a fairly high weight for ranking results. Having keywords in the title will very likely improve your search engine ranking position. Second, when a Google User performs a search, the results are presented to the user by actually showing the page titles. Titles give you a chance to make use of a good ranking, or any ranking for that manner, by getting people to click on it. Here’s your chance!

Do not just stuff your titles with keywords

This is a common SEO error of beginners. When we hear that keywords in the title will increase rankings for those keywords, we go crazy and stuff them all in there. Remember though, that a few rankings down is just fine if it results in more clicks. For example, I could have named this post, “SEO | Beginner | Easy | Page | Help | Titles | Search Engine Rankings | Tips | Website Traffic” and perhaps it would rank in a better position for its keywords. The problem here though should be obvious to you now - it’s not going to get many clicks.

Make your titles appeal to your potential visitors

Notice the title of this blog post. It contains relevent keywords and it generates urgency to be clicked by someone searching with those keywords. “Easy but Critical” drives both the lazy and fear emotions. “SEO Page Title Help” contains the keyword juice and “for Beginners” makes it very welcoming to be clicked as well as adding more description for the user. Be sure to keep your title tags below 63 characters. Google will cut you off at that point.

Look at your titles and see if they need optimization

Do your titles contain relevant keywords? Are they just stuffed with keywords? Do they stir an urgency within the searcher to be clicked? be sure to include title optimization along with all of your other SEO efforts.

 

Categories: How can I get more traffic to my site, White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , ,

What Google says you CAN do to increase traffic and backlinks to your website

Posted on August 24, 2011 by
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There is so much discussion about white-hat and black-hat SEO techniques. Website owners and promoters struggle from day to day on this concept, because perhaps technically speaking ANYTHING that one does themselves to build backlinks an promote a website is considered unnatural and against Google’s Terms of Service. I was confused myself until I came across a video of Google’s Matt Cutts himself answering the question of what you can do for your site that Google will accept as white-hat.

 His answer included eleven things that a website promoter can do to increase search engine rankings and website popularity. They included:

 1)      Controversy and link bait. He used caution not to overdo this – that ranting just to rant is not helpful. Writing legitimate blog articles that counter-point other articles in order to stir a buzz and create links within reason is considered OK.

2)      Answering questions on forums and posting a link is also considered legitimate as long as it is not done in a spammy or automated manner. For example, you are on a message board about small cap stocks and you link a thread that asks about small cap trading strategy to your site – because your site has helpful content to that subject. This is considered OK.

3)      Original Research. He says put this content on your site about your product or service.

4)      Newsletters. Remind people to go back to your site.

5)      Lists. Though a bit overdone, helpful list articles are still white hat.

6)      Social Media. If everyone is on Facebook. Promote your website on Facebook and you will get traffic.

7)      Blog. Matt Cutts says, “it is like a business card for you site.”

8)      How to’s and tutorials as content on your site. These attract links.

9)      Build a service tool such as a WordPress plugin.

10)  Site Architecture. Make you’re your site has an easy to follow URL footprint.

11)  Videos. Make YouTube Videos and link them to your site.

 

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Beginners SEO – Learn how to use You Tube to Increase Search Engine Rakings

Posted on August 15, 2011 by
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Many beginner webmasters looking to increase traffic through SEO and backlink efforts are surprised to learn that YouTube is the third most popular website in the world and has become a search engine in itself. Learn how a beginner can use YouTube to drive traffic and increase search engine keyword rankings.

How is YouTube helpful for increasing traffic and search engine rankings?

SEO beginners youtube to increase search engine rankingsThere are many arguments as to how Google’s famous algorithms actually work. Many SEO blogs claim their opinions as well as classic urban legends as if they are solid facts. The real answer is that no one knows for sure, except Google, and they are not telling.

One thing we can assume is that our site promotion should be as natural as possible, as Google’s prime task is to weed out sites that take advantage of the system by employing “black hat SEO” techniques. Instead Google looks to reward websites with trust-able content and backlink structures.

It is more than very safe to say that having a presence on YouTube will at the very least add “white hat” credibility to the legitimacy, natural presence, and trust of your site in the eyes of Google. A site that includes video content is one that is more likely to be well rounded, trustful, and useful. SEO case studies have also simply proven that sites with YouTube submissions have seen increase in rankings for their keywords.

Will YouTube posts increase my backlinks?

Well, sort of. If your video becomes very popular then it certainly will, as in this case the links back to your site will be “dofollow”. Mostly though, when you post a video on YouTube, and then add a link to your website in your description section, the links will be “nofollow”. Still, these links help in many ways. The backlinks still give full credit on all other search engines. Also remember that we want to grow our web presence in a natural fashion. For a site not to have any nofollow links is not natural. There is also speculation that nofollow links may increase page rank a little bit anyway, and may increase keyword search position quite a bit.

How to get started on YouTube?

Start and register a fresh YouTube account and make a video about your site’s content, products, or service. You can download free screen recording software like Cam Studio to make videos, or even use a simple web-cam and YouTube’s software. Look to make a video that is interesting, entertaining or informative, and watchable – not just a commercial about your site – though even that is OK for starters. Title your video to match your site’s keywords and include a link to your site in the description section.

Once complete, you have done a few good things. You have made your site more legitimate, trust-able, and easier to find. You learned how to get started with YouTube and you have significantly increased your understanding of white hat SEO. Good work.

Categories: White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , , , , , ,

What is the first thing I can do as a beginner to promote search engine rankings to my website?

Posted on August 8, 2011 by
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Are you a beginner at off-site SEO? Here is a simple and “white hat” guide to getting started for total beginners.

Register for a free blog

beginner white hat seo guide first thing to get startedDon’t be intimidated by the word blog. Think of a blog as a template for a website. This template comes with a website creator (the blog software) and the website comes in a typical format with dated posts. Facebook is a blog. What you are reading is a blog. Go to a website such as Blogger, WordPress, Blog.com, Thoughts, Squidoo, etc and sign up on one for free. They will give you your own sub domain of some sort so select a URL and username that is relevant to the site you wish to promote. Save all of this information in a word file or in notepad – you will likely end up with numerous free blogs. Let’s not get crazy though just yet - just learn hot to set up a free blog. It’s not hard at all.

Write an original article that promotes your website

Make sure it is completely original. Google has software that seeks out duplicate and computer generated content and will not give you any credit if it suspects anything “black hat” is going on. Write at least 300 words simply explaining what your website is about. When you are done, post your article, obviously, and submit your new URL to be indexed by Google. A quick search in Google will show you which page to do this in. Make sure that you submit your blog’s URL as it is seen by viewers – not the admin’s address that you might use to edit your blog. Google loves these sites and it should be indexed within a few days.

Add a picture

Add a picture to your blog to make it look better to both readers and search engines. Include a caption and add “alt text” if you can. The picture title and alt text should be keywords related to your main site.

Include keywords

Think of three keywords that explain your main site the best and that you would like better rank for. It’s ok to use long keywords (these are known as “long-tail” keywords). These longer keywords tend to have less competition. Set up your article so that the keywords are in the title and an introduction. Then write a paragraph for each with the keyword in bold as a header to each paragraph. See the way I used headers before my paragraphs in this article? Do this with your keywords and include a paragraph for each of the three.

Add a link with anchor text

Add a link to your main website’s home page. The text of the link should be those three keywords again. Links are not picked up so quickly. It may take Google a few weeks or even two or three months to show that it sees it. So get started now and do not look for instant gratification.

Submit your new blog and promote it with social media.

So your blog article is all set up with a picture, keywords, links, is submitted, and it looks good. Now go out and post in Digg, Facebook and post about it on Twitter. If you don’t know what these sites are, don’t worry. Just dive in, register free accounts, and do as I suggested. It’s actually pretty easy. Again, keep track of all of these accounts in your master word file that you created. Now you have a quality and hand written blog that promoted and provides a link with keywords and relevant content to your website. Congratulations!

Let the experts do it

If you do not have the stomach, interest, patience, creativity, or the time to get this stuff done, hire a white hat SEO service (like mine – just contact me) to do this stuff for you.

Categories: White Hat SEO for Beginners Blog | Tags: , , ,

The Tax Deadline and Income Tax History

Posted on July 31, 2011 by
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Tax Deadline

tax deadlineIn 1788, the United States Constitution became active. With the invention of the tax deadline, the federal government raised revenue through excise taxes and tariffs. It was the 16th amendment, however, that really set the precedent for the tax deadline. It reads, “congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

The Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Deadline

If you read the website over at the IRS, it says that their mission is to “provide America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and by applying the tax law with  integrity and fairness to all.”

The IRS oversees the execution of the Internal Revenue Code, as enacted by congress.Their job is to follow that code simply by collecting taxes. They also advocate tax payer compliance. Every year, the IRS sets a tax deadline – in which all personal tax returns are due. There are also tax deadlines for payroll taxes, corporate taxes, and many, many, more.

Income Tax and the Tax Deadline

Income derives from either financial gain from capital or from labor. Gross income means all world-wide income from whatever source derived, unless specifically excluded from taxation by law.Gross income includes income received in any form, whether in services, money, or property.

At the beginning of each year, taxpayers must tally their income to compute their tax liabilities. This is called the tax return and is due every year on the tax deadline.

The following is included in gross income:

Compensation for services, including fees, services, commissions, and certain fringe benefits. Net income derived from business, gains derived from dealings in property, interests, rents, royalties, dividends, alimony, life insurance, pensions, discharge of indebtedness, distributions from partnerships, income in respect of a decedent, or interest from in an estate or trust.

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How to Surf | Hire an Instructor?

Posted on July 30, 2011 by
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Should I hire an instructor to learn how to surf?

Beginning surfers that are learning how to surf have a lot of options in modern times when it comes to picking surfing instructors. Is hiring an instructor to show you how to surf going to be very helpful? Can you get away with learning how to surf on your own? The answer to these questions depend on what type of learner you are, how often you can get to the beach, how athletic you are, and how much you can afford.

How to surf for different types of learners

learn how to surfSome adults and most kids learn through natural the feedback and correction impulse system of the brain. This is sometimes referred to as cybernetics. When learning how to surf, if you can simply picture yourself surfing from point A to point B and let your body figure out the technical aspects of how to surf on its own – then you will not likely gain very much from an instructor. In many cases, kids learning how to surf should not be over-coached.

How to surf for those living far from the beach

People learning how to surf that can’t surf all the time should definitely hire a surf instructor. They will benefit more from the short time in the water then as they would alone. They will also have to rely on technique more than repetition when learning how to surf. A surfer who has a short drive to the beach can learn how to surf much more successfully on his or her own that someone who is only learning how to surf when on vacation.

How to surf for athletic people

If you are in great shape then you will also not need an instructor to learn how to surf as someone who is not in such great shape. Surfing is extremely fatiguing. Only if you are very athletic might you more extra time to practice. An instructor would help those learning how to surf that are not going to last so long out there. Also with an instructor, technique could be passed along and used rather than brute strength.

How to surf and how much you can afford.

If you have the means then heck, you may as well hire an instructor to learn how to surf. It can’t hurt.

 

 

Categories: How to Surf | Tags:

My airline surfboard experience to Hawaii. Next time I got a rental.

Posted on July 27, 2011 by
1 comment

A couple of years ago, I brought my own board to Oahu and had a bad experience. The next time I went on a Hawaiian surf trip I rented a surfboard and I was so glad I did. Let me explain.

Airlines charge too much and they crush surfboards.

surfboard rental airline damageI paid $300 from Los Angeles to Honolulu for my surfboards! How can it be this much you ask? Well, they charge by the board. I told them that I only had one board in my bag and they actually checked right there in front of me. It was humiliating. I got to Hawaii, drove up to the North Shore and unpacked. A total snap of my longer, big-wave surfboard occured in a critical spot – makeing the board pretty much worthless – even repaired. I called the airline and they pretty much said too bad – that a surfboard is too fragile and that they could not be responsible. Then on the way home – they hit me up again for another $300! I was so upset.

I ended up spending $600 for surfboard transport and spent half of my trip waiting for one of my boards to be repaired – which cost another $125.00 and my board will never be the same. I was so pissed off!

Much better to rent a surfboard

Forget the airlines. The next time I rented a board. You can rent a surfboard on Oahu for about $125 a week and you can get decent surfboards. Try Oahu Surf Guru or Oahu Surf Shop, for example. They also have North Shore Surf Tours that include a surf guide. Not a bad deal. I actually got to rent an Al Merick MX for my main surfboard rental and a Town and Country for the semi-gun. The surfboard rentals were in great shape and I was actually happier that these were a little bigger than the surfboards I normally ride. The bigger and faster waves on Oahu’s North Shore, along with some tough paddle-outs; and I was glad to have the extra beef under me.

 

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