Waikiki Surf School Grows Organic Clicks by 434%
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434%
Increase in organic clicks
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40%
Increase in Conversion Rate
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27%
Increase in Google Business Profile calls
“SmartSites has been absolutely amazing to work with! We couldn't be happier.”
About Ohana Surf Project
Ohana Surf Project is a surf school and watersports rental company in Waikiki, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Co-founded by Sean Anderson, who has more than 30 years of professional surfing, coaching, and teaching experience, and Susan Geraci, it offers private, semi-private, group, family, and professional surfing lessons, stand-up paddleboarding and bodyboarding lessons, and board rentals from its Ohana Surf Center inside the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort and Spa. Lead instructors average 15 years of teaching, with more than 150 combined years across the team, and a dedicated safety coordinator is in the water on every lesson. The school welcomes all ages and abilities, offers multilingual instruction and a courtesy hotel shuttle, and holds the Hawaii Tourism Authority Qurator Elite Certification.
Challenge
Waikiki is one of the most competitive places in the world to sell a surf lesson, and most of Ohana Surf Project's customers are visitors who book online before or during a trip. The school needed its website to rank for surf lesson, surf school, and rental searches across Waikiki and Oahu, and it needed a paid search program that could keep lessons booked at a sensible cost per lead after its previous PPC account was cancelled. Over time the site had also accumulated duplicate pages for lesson pricing, rentals, and photos that split its authority. SmartSites set out to rebuild organic visibility, clean up the site's structure, and turn search demand into booked lessons.
How we helped Ohana Surf Project.
SmartSites builds a booking-first website for surf schools & watersports rental companies
SmartSites designed and built a new website for Ohana Surf Project that puts lessons, rentals, and online booking front and center for visitors planning a Waikiki trip.
- Design & UX: Opened with full-width imagery of surfers off Waikiki, bold sunset-orange headlines, and a Book With Us Now button fixed in the header.
- Platform & booking: Connected Book Now and Book a Lesson calls to action to FareHarbor online booking, with a merchandise shop and a seasonal promo code on the homepage.
- Lessons & rentals: Built separate pages for beginner, private, kids, family, stand-up paddle, and bodyboard lessons, plus surfboard, SUP, and bodyboard rentals.
- Story & resources: Gave the founders' story, team, foundation, Waikiki surf report, history of surfing, FAQs, forms, and parking their own pages.
SmartSites grows organic bookings for surf schools & watersports rental companies
SmartSites helped Ohana Surf Project become far more visible for surf lesson and rental searches in Waikiki through content, technical cleanup, and structured data.
- Monthly Content: Published new lesson and blog content each month, added author bylines, and refined earlier posts.
- Site Consolidation: Merged duplicate lesson cost, rental, photo, and surf school bus pages into single canonical URLs with 301 redirects and one canonical host.
- Schema & Internal Linking: Added schema markup and strengthened internal links between lesson, rental, and resource pages.
- Audits & Indexing: Ran an AI search audit, recurring indexing requests, and backlink health checks, and fixed the profile pages and booking form captcha.
Ohana Surf Project
Paddle board rentals near me
Top surf schools in Waikiki
Illustrative preview. A representative example, not a live search result.
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27%
Increase in Google Business Profile calls
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434%
Increase in organic clicks
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433%
Increase in organic impressions
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20%
Increase in organic site traffic
SmartSites turns paid search into booked lessons for surf schools
SmartSites took over Ohana Surf Project's paid search as its previous account was being cancelled and rebuilt it around lesson bookings.
- Account Transition: Rebuilt the campaigns in a new account so lesson advertising continued without a gap.
- Booking-Focused Targeting: Concentrated a modest monthly budget on Waikiki and Oahu surf lesson searches from travelers ready to book.
- Efficiency Tuning: Managed bids and ad copy against the school's goals of more bookings, more calls, and a lower cost per lead.
Sample ad. A representative example, not a live ad from the campaign.
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25%
Increase in Conversions
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40%
Increase in Conversion Rate
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21%
Improved Cost Per Conversion
Marketing that brings in more students.
Attract more students, increase leads, and elevate your reputation with a data-driven marketing strategy designed to maximize your ROI.
Schedule a meeting to:
- Define your growth goals, student needs, and competitive landscape.
- Uncover opportunities to attract more students and increase conversions.
- Map out a results-driven strategy to elevate your online presence and maximize ROI.
Let’s grow your education provider together.
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Susan Geraci
“Kristin at SmartSites has been absolutely amazing to work with! She helps us with our SEO and managed our website redesign, and we couldn't be happier with her performance. She’s super creative, full of great ideas, and always goes the extra mile to make sure everything is done right. Kristin is not only incredibly knowledgeable, but she’s also responsive, professional, and genuinely cares about her clients. It’s clear that she always has our best interests in mind and is constantly working to help us succeed. If you're looking for someone who is talented, dedicated, and just a pleasure to work with, Kristin is the one! Highly recommend!”
