Case study
Leon Toppin
Full digital build for an independent skateboard instructor in New York — website, analytics, local SEO, advertising, and press outreach.
Visit leontoppin.com →0 → 5+
Active clients
18
Location pages
3
Analytics platforms
4
Press pitches sent
The client
Leon Toppin teaches people how to skateboard for a living.
He is a certified instructor based in Westchester County, New York. He travels to students across all five NYC boroughs and a dozen Westchester towns, seven days a week. His students range from age 4 to 65. He has been skating for 33 years, teaching for 15, and has done background skating work on HBO's Betty.
When we started working together, Leon had zero active clients and zero digital infrastructure. No website. No Google Business Profile. No way to book online. No presence in local search. His business ran entirely on word of mouth, Instagram DMs, and text messages. A parent in Larchmont searching “skateboard lessons near me” would never find him.
The challenge
First, we had to understand who was actually looking for skateboard lessons.
Before building anything, we researched the market. The ideal client turned out to be specific: parents in Westchester County and upper Manhattan, ages 30 to 50, looking for structured activities for kids under 12. They search on Google, not Instagram. They want a real website with pricing, credentials, and a way to book. Leon had none of that.
The competitive analysis was encouraging. Skateboard instruction is a thin market. Most “competitors” are skate parks or camps, not one-on-one instructors. The few individual instructors with a web presence had weak sites and no local SEO. Leon's 15 years of teaching experience and his range (Westchester to all five boroughs) were real differentiators. Nobody else covered that geography.
The gap was clear: Leon had a strong service and no way for the right people to find it. The job was to build the entire digital side of the business from zero and put him in front of parents who were already searching.
Homepage
Lessons
Pricing
The work
Every deliverable came from the research.
The audience research told us parents search by location. So we built 18 location pages. The competitive analysis told us nobody owned “skateboard lessons” in local search. So we set up a Google Business Profile and structured data to claim that space. The ideal client profile told us these parents want to book quickly. So we built a fast site with a booking form above the fold. Nothing was built on a hunch.
Website
Custom website
Custom-built, responsive, fast, with a booking form that sends leads straight to Leon. Cookie-consented analytics. Structured data on every page. Not a template.
Local SEO
18 location pages
One page for each area Leon teaches: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and 13 Westchester towns from New Rochelle to Tarrytown. Each has unique copy, local schema, and location-specific keywords.
Analytics
Full-stack tracking
GA4 events on every conversion point: phone clicks in the nav and footer, booking form submissions, and a generate_lead event mapped to Google Ads. Meta Pixel firing Lead and InitiateCheckout events. All behind cookie consent.
Advertising
Google Ads Performance Max
Performance Max campaign with conversion-based bidding. GA4 conversions imported into Google Ads, generate_lead set as the primary goal with a $120 value. Running across Search, Display, Maps, and YouTube.
Press
Local media outreach
Pitched four local publications: Westchester Family, The Journal News (lohud), Patch Larchmont, and News 12 Westchester. Each pitch written for the outlet's format and audience.
Content
Social and marketing assets
Produced a scrolling video of the site for Instagram Stories. Structured the lesson pricing into 7 tiers including 10-packs, monthly standing sessions, and 6-month commitments. Built the framework for an ongoing journal.
Search results
Indexed and ranking within weeks of launch.
The domain had no history. Within the first week of Search Console data, the site appeared for 9 search queries, including “skateboard lessons near me,” “nyc skateboard lessons,” and “skateboarding lessons near me.” 58 impressions in 7 days. No backlink profile. No paid SEO. That is what happens when you build a site around the exact terms your ideal client is searching.
The off-site audit turned up problems we expected. Yelp had Leon miscategorized under “Skating Rinks” instead of “Fitness & Instruction.” His Thumbtack profile was missing. Free directory listings on Kids Out and About, Macaroni KID, and local Patch calendars had not been claimed. We set up his Google Business Profile from scratch and flagged each of these for correction. Parents searching on those platforms were hitting dead ends.
0
Active clients before
5+
Consistent clients after
What we delivered
From zero digital presence to a full acquisition system.
Custom website
leontoppin.com
Location pages
18 pages
Client pipeline
0 → 5+ consistent
Analytics platforms
GA4, Google Ads, Meta
Conversion events tracked
4 events
Search queries (week 1)
9 queries
Google impressions (week 1)
58
Press outlets pitched
4 outlets
Lesson tiers structured
7 packages
Schema markup types
Course, LocalBusiness, FAQ
What comes next
The system is built. Now it compounds.
The Google Ads campaign is collecting conversion data and getting smarter about which clicks turn into booked lessons. The press pitches are out. Search Console data is already telling us which location pages to double down on and which new queries to target. Leon's Google Business Profile and directory listings keep building search authority week over week without any additional spend.
Leon went from zero clients and zero web presence to a full acquisition system in a matter of weeks. The infrastructure does not need to be rebuilt. It just needs to be fed: new content, new reviews, new data. Each piece reinforces the others.
Curious what this could look like for your business?