The Skate
Farm.
Three pages to a hundred-plus. Day one: 32 clicks. Peak day: 247. A side project I'm genuinely proud of — a community-focused indoor skatepark trying to reach families across Sussex.
Why this one mattered.
My son fell in love with skateboarding about two years ago. Tom was his coach at The Skate Farm — and Tom's just one of those people. Genuinely nice, always helping someone, gives so much back to the community without ever making a thing of it. The kind of person you want to back.
So when there was a chance to help with the website, I was in. No brief, no scoping call. Just trust to crack on.
Shipped fast. Sharpened constantly.
Started with three pages doing the job. Now 100+ pages, an active blog, a network of Sussex location pages, and a habit of weekly iteration. Every search, every page, every word — earned its place.
Working it in.
This was my third job. Already doing my nine-to-six, already had a stack of other freelance work on the side, and The Skate Farm sat under both of those. Which meant from day one the rules were simple: ship it, ship it fast, get something useful in front of people, refine over time.
Every decision was made with one filter: will this help Tom reach more families? The point wasn't a portfolio-perfect mock. A community-focused indoor skatepark needs a site that earns its keep — pulling parents in across Sussex, turning searches into sessions. Performance was the whole point.
How I built it.
Started with the basics: home, skateboarding, contact. Three pages, doing the job.
Then it became a rhythm. Small tweaks, watch the data, see what's working, do more of that. Claude became a proper teammate on this one — I'd pull Search Console exports, sit with Claude to work out what the numbers were actually saying, decide which markets were worth going after next, then build the pages to go after them. Brighton, Crawley, Horsham, Burgess Hill, Lewes, Worthing, East Grinstead, Horley — every one chosen because the data said the demand was there. Newer additions like Chichester, Tunbridge Wells, Reigate and Eastbourne all live and indexed within their first month.
Same logic with the blog. Less "look at our skatepark", more "we can solve the thing you just typed into Google" — rainy day activities, indoor things to do with kids, school holiday ideas. Picked because the searches existed. Written because the searches existed.
The Sessions page — the page that actually turns visitors into bookings — is now ranking near the top of Google for the searches that matter. That's the page doing the real work.
Nothing on the site is precious. Everything earns its place.
What it grew into.
- 100+ pages, all shaped by real performance data
- An active blog targeting parent searches across Sussex
- A network of location pages covering everywhere within an hour's drive
- Constant iteration — every week something gets sharpened
The numbers.
Site went live June 2025. Everything below is what's happened in the eleven months since — split into five short chapters so the data actually reads.
Up 2.3×.
First full month after launch, beside the best month so far. Same site, same team — steady iteration off real Search Console data.
| Launch (June 2025) | Peak (today) | |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks in a single day | 32 | 247 · 3rd Jan 2026 |
| Clicks in a month | 1,279 | 2,923 · Jan 2026 |
That's 2.3× growth month-on-month — and 52 separate days have now cleared 100 clicks.
22k real humans clicked through.
Everything Google Search Console has logged from launch to today. Not sessions, not vanity views — actual people typing a query and clicking. Each card includes the lift versus the very first month.
Clicks from Google search
↑17.5× vs first month
Times a page showed up in results
↑11× vs first month
Visits to the homepage alone
↑14× vs first month
Pages now earning organic traffic
+148 since launch (started with 9)
Found 974 different ways.
Branded searches mean people look for them by name. Non-brand means Google trusts the site for queries like "skate lessons near me" or "things to do with kids in Brighton".
Branded "Skate Farm" searches
People now searching by name
Non-brand terms earning clicks
Up from 38 in the first month
UK audience — the right catchment
No paid spend, all organic
On mobile — parents on the school run
Mobile-first build paid off
Pays the bills.
Search clicks are nice. For a local skatepark the numbers that matter are phone calls, directions and bookings. Google Business Profile, last 28 days against the same window before launch.
Phone calls from the listing
↑108% vs Apr '25
Directions requests — people heading there
↑182% vs Apr '25
Website visits straight from the profile
↑240% vs Apr '25
Profile views in the last 28 days
↑310% vs Apr '25
Searches showing the listing
↑2,340% vs Apr '25
Built where the demand was.
Every page below was built off a real search-demand signal — picked from Search Console after looking at what people were already trying to find. Most didn't exist before launch (0 clicks). Today they're the biggest doors into the site.
What it shows.
A scrappy MVP, shipped fast, then sharpened constantly off real data — beats a perfect launch every time. Trust, speed, iteration, and a reason to care. That's the whole job.
And it doesn't hurt that I built it for someone who deserved it. Visit The Skate Farm →
Previous project
Lifecake.
← View case studyNext project