Marc Brookland of SEO Locale explains why more traffic is not the goal, how AI search fits in, and how to hire an SEO agency without getting burned. For small business owners who want to be found.
GROWTH PILLAR: Marketing & Branding
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY’LL GAIN: A plain read on what SEO is, which numbers to check, how to spot agency red flags, and what a small budget should buy first.
Most business owners think more traffic means more customers. It doesn’t. Until you fix that, you keep paying to be seen by the wrong people.
Marc Brookland solves a problem most owners never see: paying an agency without knowing what they get.
Marc is the founder and CEO of SEO Locale, a digital marketing agency. He started it in 2015 from a laptop and cold called his way to 14 clients in his first 30 days. His father once lost his website after cancelling a big agency, because he never owned it. That story shaped how Marc works today: month-to-month contracts and a client dashboard that shows every metric. In this conversation, Marc explains how local SEO works, how AI is changing the way people are searching, and how to spot an agency you can trust. He also shares what a small budget should buy first. This episode is for the business owner who wants a website that gets found without getting burned.
Key topics covered
Guest links
Also mentioned: Nick, Marc’s partner and developer, who built the client dashboard. Thank you to Lisa Snow for the introduction.
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Bernie (00:22)
Question of the audience. Have you ever hired someone to help your business and walked away with less than what you started with?
Yeah, that feeling is real. And it happens more than most people talk about. Today's guest built an entire company because of that exact moment. And what he built has helped hundreds of small businesses actually get found online. Marc Brookland is the founder and CEO of SEO Locale, a full service digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He started the company in 2015 from a laptop in a tiny apartment in Old City.
In his first 30 days working full time, he cold called his way to 14 clients. Today, SEO Locale has nearly 20 employees, over 200 clients and offices across the Philadelphia region. They made the Inc. 5000 list. Marc's mission started personal. His father got burned by a big agency that took his money, hid the results and disappeared.
Marc decided that would never happen to another small business owner on his watch. and his grandparents immigrated from Cuba with nothing and built a furniture business that lasted 50 years. That kind of work ethic runs in the family. And you can find Marc at seolocale.com and locale is spelled L-O-C-A-L-E.com. Marc, absolute pleasure having you here today. How are you doing?
Marc (01:42)
Hey, Bernie, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Bernie (01:44)
You have a favorite quote or saying?
Marc (01:46)
Uh, yeah, I do. A good SEO is not about driving traffic. It's about driving the right traffic.
Bernie (01:52)
Very important, very important. So you started from a laptop. What was going through your mind in the first month? Like, know, hang on, I've got a laptop. Let's spin the dial.
Marc (02:02)
Yeah, mean, a lot of it was I really hope this works. And some of it was I feel like I have a lot of free time to kind of do whatever I want. know, when I first started, I didn't really have any actual clients. It was really just one, which was my former employer. But yeah, I mean, I knew that if I was serious about it,
And I really wanted this to go somewhere that I was gonna have to get some clients. And I kind of understood that the only way or the best way that I could do it as quickly as possible was to just, start knocking on people's doors, so to speak. So that's what I did. Wasn't really prepared for how much rejection you get and how much rejection hurts.
you you make it up in your head, but you don't really know until you go through it. but yeah, that's really what I did. I was just crushing the phones all day, every day, for about a month straight.
Bernie (02:58)
What made you pick SEO, search engine optimization as kind of the path to go? I know it's bit more than that, but you could have been coding web pages. You could have been, making fanciful artwork. know, why that lane?
Marc (03:12)
Um, well, I'll be honest, I didn't really pick SEO. tell people that SEO kind of picked me. Um, I got an internship at a web design company in Fishtown, Philadelphia called O3 World. They do phenomenal, phenomenal work. Um, back when they were a startup, I was an intern as a project manager and the parts of the job that I really enjoyed doing, the, my, my boss who's, who's the head of project management then.
and is actually still there. But he said, like, you like doing this type of work, you need to get into SEO. I had no idea what that was, but I read up a little bit on it. And that's when I ended up finding an SEO agency and got my first job.
Bernie (03:50)
Your dad got burned by a bigger agency. First off, like how much that shape your desire to get into this space and how does that happen? How does a big agency fluff a hardworking soul?
Marc (04:02)
It's a lot easier than you think to take advantage of business owners, especially in this kind of space where most of them don't really know what's going on, what to expect, what kind of results that they should expect, the process of anything. Most business owners, especially ones that have relatively successful businesses, they're being charged 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, 2,000 bucks, whatever it might be.
and they kind of just forget that it's even happening. They just assume that everything is okay. And unfortunately, a lot of these agencies don't do much. Some of them actually don't do anything at all. But in my dad's case, I mean, he just had no clue. He had no idea what they were or weren't doing, how successful it was or was not. And how he got burned so badly was once he, you he was...
telling me about these things and asking me my opinion about all this SEO stuff. And I told him like, know, dad, I think I'm in a spot now where I can, I can probably do it for you. I can do it myself. So he put in his cancellation notice. We're going through the process and I'm on his website and all of sudden there's no website. And I'm like, what did, what did you do? What'd you do? I called him and he was like, dad. And he goes, Marc, I haven't.
touch this website, I've never been in it, I don't know what you're talking about, if the website is down, figure it out." I said, okay. So I called this former provider and what they didn't tell him is that he never owned his website. For however long he had it, decades, he never owned his website and part of his marketing package was renting this website. All he owned was the domain. So...
When he canceled services with them, he effectively canceled his website as well. And, it really hurt. the work that I was doing, his website was down for about a week until I cobbled together. You asked why I into SEO and not designing websites because it was the worst website I think I've ever seen. Luckily, my partner now, Nick, is the opposite. He's a phenomenal developer.
and he was nice enough to fix it for me so that it was at least presentable. But yeah, mean, and that kind of thing is still very prevalent today where companies sell people websites that they don't own and they have no idea.
Bernie (06:09)
So SEO, what is it? is it, search engine optimization? I think it's, the key word, fluffy bunny, if that's if you're in the fluffy bunny business, all right, whatever it is, red fluffy bunny even. What is SEO? What is it? What does it mean to the lay person who is not? I shouldn't say not computer savvy. You can be savvy to computers, but you might not understand the underpinnings of some of the stuff. And it's the underpinnings that
Might need the explaining.
Marc (06:34)
Yeah, I mean, the way that I've defined it has evolved quite a bit over the last 15 years or so. But the way I would describe it today is simply as possible would be maximizing the visibility of your brand online.
Bernie (06:46)
OK. What's the difference between ranking for keywords and for visitors versus buyers? you might not be looking, let's say, for example, please buy my product. You might also be looking for vendors. How do you maximize that with keywords?
Marc (07:01)
Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to the keyword research. Doing the competitor analysis, understanding what other people are doing and what has been working for them. The key for us and the success that we've had for our clients has been identifying the user intent behind these keywords that we're targeting for them. So whether they are targeting directly to the consumer or their B2B, they're looking for vendors or resellers, whatever it might be.
Our job is to identify what those keywords are and create that website and content and experience for that specific buyer.
Bernie (07:33)
So is it just, does it all hang around the website or is it other assets you have that are out there like social media?
Marc (07:40)
If you wanna do SEO, you wanna maximize that avenue, you gotta have a website. And that is a question we get a lot. You have to have a website if you wanna leverage SEO, if you wanna be found in AI results and be cited and things like that. There is social media, that is a separate part. Of course, all you need for that is a Facebook or a X page or what have you. And that all plays into it indirectly.
those types of signals aren't necessarily directly beneficial factors to how well you're going to be found, but they can indirectly help traffic and visibility.
Bernie (08:14)
Okay. Is it? I've heard that part of the optimization is not only being found what you're hosting, but backlinks. How do backlinks kind of carry into this? Because a backlink almost sounds like it's something that's either attached to your website that goes out or something that refers to you. Is that part of the process too?
Marc (08:33)
Yeah, back linking is always going to be important, regardless of how much value. I believe that it's changed over over the last years to today. But I think it's as important as ever today. And the process of getting other people and other websites to refer to your brand and your website and link back to you is extremely powerful. It's a huge trust signal when it comes to search engines.
So that's certainly part of our process. There's different strategies that we might implement depending on what your business is, but it's absolutely an important piece to a successful SEO strategy.
Bernie (09:11)
So someone comes to you as a client and they say, listen, I think I got a pretty good job. Proud as punch. What do you normally find underneath the hood when you take a peek? Where do people miss the mark?
Marc (09:24)
It honestly depends. I've had people come to me and say, I've been doing it myself. What do you think? And I tell them, I think you've done a fantastic job. And there are other times you tell me that they've been doing it themselves. They have no idea how successful it is. I'll take a look and I'll say, well, probably doing nothing. You have to leverage the different tools and data sets that you have. Take a look at how well they're ranking, if at all, what their visibility looks like, how much traffic they're getting, if they have their conversion.
Hopefully they have their conversion tracking set up and identify how many conversions that they've had coming through the website. So, I mean, it's really been all over the board. What I most commonly see when it comes to people missing the mark in SEO strategy, I guess it's kind of one A and one B, is a content strategy. I don't really see a clear content strategy in place to support whatever it is that they're trying to focus on.
Um, and as an extension of that, I don't really see a lot of, um, landing pages that have been created to help boost and drive specific traffic to, to your sites. So, for example, uh, if you're an SEO agency and you're trying to focus on businesses throughout greater Philadelphia, you'd probably want a landing page about Philadelphia landing page about Bucks County, Montgomery County, Chester County, et cetera. Um, I don't see that type of strategy implemented.
Bernie (10:41)
You figure that AI is now being a part of this, like whether it's one of the chat engines or search, search engines, if it's one of the major AI platforms. Is that also influenced how things are going? Because normally it's like I'm embedding words and these words are the trigger words everybody's looking for. Now AI is getting into the game. How does that influence the overall take?
Marc (11:03)
It's part of it. I mean, it's the next evolution of search is what it seems like will happen. It doesn't mean SEO is dead, that you'll, the most popular thing you'll probably read about. It's just the next phase of SEO. It's all SEO, just a different version of it. But I mean, AI is becoming more more prominent despite how much traffic you might see coming into your website from it.
But if you're not setting yourself up, your website up already to be as findable or visible on AIs, then you're probably gonna end up behind the ball a little bit. It's incredibly important to build your brand, try to be cited, create useful content, and take advantage of the additional platforms that there are available to you to be found by users. So I mean, it's all part of it.
I don't separate them. You can't really have one without the other. They really go hand in hand and that's how we build our strategy.
Bernie (11:56)
you mentioned something earlier about monitoring it or finding out the clicks. So how do you track that? Is there, is there a couple of monkeys in the background going, click, or bean counters literally hitting a stopwatch going, like, they're going into Costco or something or what?
Marc (12:10)
Yeah, mean, tracking data overall has just been increasingly more impossible, just with different regulations and policies and things like that. We use Google Analytics as our primary tracking tool. And it has done, or it's at least trying to do a better job of helping website owners filter out, oh, this is the traffic I'm getting from various LLMs.
But we're able to track users coming to the website, the actions they're taking on your website, how many people are trying to call you or fill out a contact form, email you, what have you, whatever you feel is the most important part of the website, geographically where they're coming from. So you get all kinds of information, but capturing 100 % of data just isn't realistic anymore. And frankly, the number just continues to...
to decrease. And as far as tracking on LLMs, I mean, if you wanted to a certain phrase that you want to be found for or cited for, it's nearly impossible. There's just so much volatility when it comes to AI. could do, you yourself could go on ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, type in the same exact thing 10,000 times and you're going to get 9,997 different answers. It's just that.
Bernie (13:25)
Wow. So the AI can help you, but it's not an absolute. So when someone comes to you, looking for like a year-long contract? Is it month to month? What's the setup?
Marc (13:39)
It varies a little bit, but primarily everything we do is month to month.
Bernie (13:43)
So why did you set it up that way?
Marc (13:44)
I just think that it is really important for us to do it that way. Going back to how easy it is for SEO agencies and digital marketing agencies to take advantage of business owners. I feel like that if we have a monthly agreement in place that automatically renews, it's now on us to prove to them, this is what you're paying us for. This is why you're paying us. This is the work that we're doing.
So if there's a month or however much time goes by and they're like, these people aren't doing anything for me. Well, then they can cancel. But I put a lot of the onus on us to prove to them why they should continue working with us.
Bernie (14:22)
Very nice. Is there some place that there's a dashboard that they can look at? You when you sit down at your workstation or you're the owner, you come into the store and you go turn on the computer. I'll check my bank statement for the day, because you like doing that. I will read the news articles. OK, I got that. Is there a dashboard that pops up and says, listen, you're doing hot, you're kind of sluggish or.
You need to tweak something your images are kind of running afoul. is there some sort of feedback loop that tells
Marc (14:48)
Yeah, there's a couple things in there. So of course we run regular technical audits for every site that we're managing, just to see if there are images or title tags, whatever the case might be, something that needs to be adjusted. As far as the dashboard goes, my partner, Nick, he built us an in-house platform that not only we have access to, but every single client has access to their own personal dashboard.
And that dashboard will show them, here's all the keywords we're tracking and here's the progress that those keywords have made over time as far as rankings. It's connected to your Google Analytics or Google Search Console, different data sets that you can also see and compare how well your campaign is going. But for us internally, what Nick has created are a lot of different things for the team to be able to review, but there's
a report that shows us like, this campaign has lost a lot of keyword positions. You might want to take a look at it. Or these are some campaigns that have significantly increased, which is a pointer for our project managers to say, you might want to ping the client, let them know, hey, things are looking really good or things are starting to turn up. So we have all kinds of different data points that Nick was able to create. It's actually a pretty incredible dashboard.
Bernie (15:56)
That's fantastic. does that involve you? I get the following the triggers, the SEO awards, etc. Does that mean you have to get involved in recrafting the website somewhat? Like it might have the bones, but you might be putting on a new coat of paint or moving a wall around? Do you come up to the website and move things?
Marc (16:16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, sometimes we'll do that. But yeah, I mean, our strategy, we're creating content, we implement everything, we're monitoring everything, we're making any website changes that the client might want as long as they're within scope. So yeah, I we handle everything from start to whatever the finish is. We'll take care of everything.
Bernie (16:38)
Those are obviously at the end of the day, there's a correlation between, hey, you're getting found. People are really interested in what you have, service or product or both and sales. So how long is the cycle between let's do this, let's put this keyword in and to saying, know, which is going to be a pretty strong result.
to actually the person, the company can actually see that it's gaining traction. What's typical life cycle?
Marc (17:06)
Yeah, good question. Yeah, typically, I tell clients, it's about six months. Of course, there's, it varies a lot on so many different factors. But I usually tell them six months, I'll tell clients, you should have enough of a marketing budget or an SEO budget saved up for at least a year. And the last thing that I want, whether they listen to me or not is if someone only has, $1,000 left to their business or $5,000, whatever it is,
I probably can't help that person fast enough. Unless if they happen to have, know, maybe their website for whatever reason is already ranking really great and I only have to do a little bit to really get them from page, two to page one, whatever it might be, then maybe that could make a difference. But by and large, I think that planning for that year is really important to make sure that you're not, you're not sweating the bills or anything like that.
Bernie (17:54)
You're talking about planning. how often do you go back either you or say someone has a website? How often do you go back to make sure things are running smooth? Like if if I were to sit back on here's my website, what do I use to go sniffing around to figure out whether I'm kind of good, not good, go, my gosh, I better call Marc because I think I'm tanking.
Marc (18:17)
Yeah, that dashboard that they created is going to be where we or our clients would go. we go through every website monthly. It's part of our checks. part of our deliverables. It's part of our job. So we're of course, if you're a newer website, there's a lot more things you have to do. So you're getting looked at much more than a month. But once you're been working on a on a site for a year or two years or even longer,
Mostly what you're doing is making sure like, okay, the site is clean. Things are continuing to climb. There's not much, ranking dips going on. You're really just kind of looking to see like, okay, Google or any search engine is releasing this update. How has our website been impacted? If at all. Those are the things that you're, starting to do where you might get some more advanced things where you're looking at how can we potentially be more visible across LLMs, things like that.
So yeah, I we touch websites every month, however many times that might be. And for a client to take a look at, they would go directly to the dashboard and take a look at all my keywords for ranking and now I'm not ranking for anything, what happened? And that explanation could be a myriad of things.
Bernie (19:19)
preferred website platform to work with that or that's more optimal for for people to work with or a series of them. I mean, it must be like cars, right? There's some cars, they got that's that one's good. That one would be good if it wasn't around. But
Marc (19:38)
Yeah.
Bernie (19:38)
on positive side, we'll stay on the positive side.
Marc (19:41)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's pretty hard for a website platform to like, be so bad. There are one or two that have managed to do it, but I WordPress, in my opinion, is the best. That's what we like to work with. That's what we build on if we are tasked with building a new site. But that's, I always recommend build your site on WordPress and host it on WordPress.
Bernie (20:03)
So Solopreneur is starting up a website. Let's say they just, they cobbled something up. They've got something from the web domain supplier, DNS. What are the first few things they should consider to set up their SEO the right way?
Marc (20:18)
There's not a whole lot that you really need to consider. I think it's actually an interesting kind of misconception type of thing. because there's not most of the setup that you do to be set up for SEO the right way is kind of prebuilt. Like for example, you would have your language tag be set up for EN hyphen us, which means you are targeting English speakers in the U S that's
the default like 99 % of the time and that's where people are targeting 99 % of the time. Other than that, everything else is a little bit more of a strategy and structure than the actual initial setup of how you're building a site. You want it, with WordPress specifically, you want to try to use less plugins. You don't want the site to be too bloated. You want it to be fast.
You want to have a clear user journey. want it to flow well, but everything is so kind of preset anymore. There's not a whole lot and every, literally every single client I speak with who asks us, if we build a website, if we will set it up for SEO. And I just say, yes, but it really doesn't mean anything anymore. They're, kind of already are. It's more of, can you do the SEO the right way?
Bernie (21:29)
So what's the biggest mistake you see people doing with SEO that keep rinsing and repeating?
Marc (21:34)
I see people implementing strategies from over 10 years ago that are 10 plus years old. In fairness, for whatever reason, sometimes you see those still working, but by and large, I mean, it's only a matter of time before you get in trouble. People will have blank white text on a white background. People will have the same content just duplicated on a million different pages.
all kinds of crazy internal linking and crazy stuff in your footers. Yeah, I mean, those are some pretty typical ones, but again, sometimes they still work and those are always interesting ones to work with.
Bernie (22:09)
quirky one, so it's wonderful. Is a business ever too small to have SEO active or being focused on it?
Marc (22:15)
No. Yeah, I don't think there's ever a business that's too small or too big to worry about SEO. think SEO is incredibly important. I mean, you're talking about how visible your brand is going to be online. Whether people know you or not, you want to make sure that if someone is trying to find you, whether it's find you directly or find you indirectly, you're being found, you're being found the way you want to be found. So I think it's incredibly important.
The real question is, can you afford SEO or can you not? Do you have to learn to do it yourself or can you hire a professional?
Bernie (22:48)
So if you if you hired a professional, much like your dad, and all of a sudden, like, walked away with, oh, my gosh, I don't have a website now. And or they've done nothing. How do you know? Other than I think I'll raise a son. He shall take care of me or daughter, as the case may be. How do you find a company then going, yeah, you're trustworthy. What are the indicators?
Marc (23:12)
Yeah, it's really, really hard because anyone can talk the talk. Anyone can talk just like me and say all the right things. And unfortunately, you never know until you know. But some of the things that I like to look at, think testimonials are incredibly important, not just written ones, video ones. That way you kind of know it's a real person who had this experience.
I also like to ask what the, find out what their process is. So find out if they are doing the keyword research, if they're doing the strategy creation, if they're doing the implementation, understand what the expectations are. If you have someone who's saying like, give me 30 days, probably a red flag. if you have someone say like, I have no idea also probably a red flag, that's probably more accurate than 30 days.
You you want someone who can confidently say, would expect about this much time, here's why. I would also ask if they outsource anything. I've seen a lot of issues with outsourcing. That's why we don't do it. And contracts. I think being month to month is incredibly powerful.
and it really protects you as a business owner. So I really, if someone's trying to lock you in for, I guess six months isn't too bad, because you really need that much time anyway. But I mean, a 12 month contract or even something longer, I think is a big red flag.
Bernie (24:34)
So if a company has a limited budget, what's the first thing they should, where should they plant their first SEO dollar?
Marc (24:40)
I think if you're going to first start investing in SEO, if you're going to do it yourself, it's going to be in industry standard tools, something like SEMrush or Moz. SEO app is another one. I think those are all tools that you could use to help you with the competitor analysis, the keyword research, content creation.
and that'll help you build your baseline. And they're not that expensive, know, a couple hundred bucks a month maybe, or even less. But if you have that, if you have enough budget to hire a professional, there's not necessarily, I mean, we have a standard process, but you're kind of investing in everything at that point.
Bernie (25:21)
So where do see this all heading? Where do see the future of SEO? Is it going to be more than just a keyword and an image? Is it going to be something else?
Marc (25:32)
Yeah, I mean, it's already way more than just, keywords. I mean, and the way that AI has expanded and continued to grow, it's only going to become more ingrained in what we know today as your standard search. We've kind of actually already seen it with Google.
They're integrating their AI mode more and more into their standard search process. So yeah, I just think that your content is going to have to be as good as it's ever been. It's going to have to be unique. You're to have to figure out how, no matter what profession you're in, how you offer something different or something new that someone else isn't, not necessarily does.
but information that they're offering. Even if you're some home service business where every roofer is a roofer, what can you offer to a customer that someone else isn't offering? Whether it's information or whatever it might be, how are you gonna position yourself and your content to be different? And that's incredibly difficult. But I think that that's the way that we're gonna have to continue to leverage
the future of search is going to be through content and focusing on your brand much more than you probably have in the past.
Bernie (26:48)
Google reviews or doing four star reviews, is that something that helps? And part two of that question is what happens if you're inside another ecosystem? I'm thinking like Amazon, where you get our ranking. Is that all part of the SEO game or is that, or is it just kind of localized?
Marc (27:05)
I think, well, I mean, a lot of those things help in different things. your Google business listing, if you have a bunch of reviews, that's gonna be great for being found in the map section. It's gonna be great for your local SEO. And it's gonna be great for LLMs. If you're part of an Amazon store or whatever, I think that's gonna be great for LLMs. I think it's gonna be great for your branding. So yeah, mean, those things certainly helped. Of course, they're not all...
applicable to every business. yeah, mean, anything that you can do to add your brand online and make it look good and make it look better is only going to help. So whatever platforms, whatever major platforms are out there, definitely worth taking advantage of.
Bernie (27:47)
There's the time I was driving down the roadway in my, in my local neighborhood and I'm using Waze and I come up and the, the, the phones are mounted on the dash and all of a sudden it pops up and I'm stopping at the lights and it says, over there is a, pick your favorite food, fattening, tasty environment. This is it's over there and you have a special is geofencing part of this too. Is that, is that where you're kind of now?
left your website and now you're adding in, in context, where location, other things are coming in together and all of a sudden today we have a special for you.
Marc (28:21)
Yeah, that's a little bit different. But that's how crazy marketing is anymore. That's probably something more on like the programmatic display marketing type of type of thing, or maybe Waze's own marketing platform. To be honest, I'm not entirely, entirely sure that's not necessarily the sandbox that I play in. But but yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy that that
you whenever you're near something, you have a coupon or something in an app or whatever, pops up and lets you know in case, in case you're hungry. Yeah.
Bernie (28:53)
Well, if it's measuring your blood sugar, then you know, it's getting way too personal. Right. I've noticed here at home, we have a platform and it's Google based. And if I say its name well enough, it'll respond going, yes, master. But it's, it's always ears on. And so does that, if I start talking about something, I'll say, I want to go on a road trip to XYZ location, whatever.
Is that also part of the formula of SEO optimization or is that much like the last example using the phone and I happen to just be contextually aware? Does SEO thread into that at all or is that just? Yeah.
Marc (29:31)
That is a little bit of that's a different sandbox. There was a really, really interesting article that I read on that a little bit ago. I can't 100 % remember exactly what it was about, but it essentially discussed it was discussing like, why do I keep seeing all these ads that I was just talking about? And it's really all these platforms just gathering all of this data.
on you. mean, they really are essentially listening to people because they have so much data and so much information on these people, on everyone. But that's not really my space. That's something different.
Bernie (30:05)
I just thought it was a hyper SEO hard work. Let me finish the bridge. You're out there, you're selling ice cream and this person is looking for it. At the end of the day, what would be the ideal connection for you to work with, whether it's a business or a partnership?
Marc (30:20)
Yeah, it's a good question. As far as partnerships go, we work with a lot of branding agencies. They're excellent referral partners for us. Typically, they're creating the content, creating the website, whatever it is they do. They're more than happy to explain to their client that they are not SEO experts and that's when they bring us in. So we have a lot of partners like that that we're white labeling services for. Those are excellent for us.
for me to work with a business owner directly, I don't really care what their business is, what the size of the business is, what the revenue is. That isn't really what's important to me. what I'm looking at is what type of person is the business owner? Are they really in growth mode? do they truly see SEO as.
that medium that's going to help take their business to the next level. Do they want to be involved in the process? Do they want to understand what we're doing? Do they want to be more collaborative or more kind of hands off and just do whatever you want, I don't care. Those are the people that I want to work with. Those are always the ones that we have the best relationships with, build the best campaigns with.
It's the ones who are much more like, don't understand this. don't want to understand it. I don't really care. only doing it because this guy does it and he does really well, whatever. Those are always the ones where everything seems okay. And then out of nowhere, they start screaming at you that everything sucks. you never really, it's just a bad relationship with that business owner.
Bernie (31:51)
You preferred everything, the businesses that you deal with to be in the state, continental US, North America, global, where's your reach?
Marc (31:59)
Yeah, I mean, 85 % of our business are running local SEO campaigns. The majority of those local campaigns are probably Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Delaware. But we have clients all over the country. We have a lot of clients in Canada. We have clients, a few other international clients around the world. So we'll work with anyone anywhere.
But yeah, happy to work with any, with any, most of our clients predominantly are in the U S.
Bernie (32:26)
So Marc, I understand that you're offering a free technical audit and SEO review for the Knack 4 Business listeners and all they have to do is head over to seolocale.com and reach out and mention the show. Is there anything else they should do? there a contact form they would fire that into or what?
Marc (32:43)
Yep, you can fill out the contact form or fill out the free audit request form. You'll be prompted to give us your information. We'll look it up, set up a call, and we'll be to go through it with them.
Bernie (32:53)
Long setup.
Marc (32:54)
The call or for us to go through it
Bernie (32:56)
Yes.
I suspect
the call is going to be quick, but...
Marc (33:01)
Um, yeah, I mean, for us to do an audit typically pretty quick, depending on the size of the website. Um, I'd say it usually takes us maybe like an hour. Um, and then the call really depends on how many questions they have. Um, but they're usually anywhere between 30, 60 minutes.
Bernie (33:16)
Okay. What type of budget should a company a lot for SEO optimization? Assuming they're not hammering and going, my gosh, my gosh, I got to rebuild from scratch.
Marc (33:28)
Yeah, I would say on average, our clients are spending around $1,000 a month. That's typically a pretty good budget, but we can work with clients from starting at $500 a month and going up from there.
Bernie (33:39)
perfect. So folks, listen, go to seolocale.com. Let Marc know that we're listening to this at the Knack 4 Business podcast. could change how your business does on the overall universe at large. I would like to say a special thank you to Lisa Snow for the introduction.
She introduced Marc to the Knack 4 Business podcast. So Lisa, we appreciate you. And she's been doing a lot of that. So Marc Brookland had built a company to fix something that was broken.
So small businesses were handing over money to agencies that hid the work, dressed up the numbers and disappeared. And Marc can actually show you how it works, why it works. No smoke and no mirrors. All right. He started from a single laptop and he's made a lot of cold calls. He understands that. And actually, the SEO helps take away the cold calls. You're trying to find the right match, the right client for your business and vice versa. So that's that's kind of the key. So.
To reach us at knack4business.com, that's K-N-A-C-K, or the number 4 business.com. Reach out to us, use our chat bot, which is the Web Indexer, to find out about other podcasts or book a call with us.