How Local SEO Landed 14 Clients in 30 Days

This week, I sat down with Marc Brookland, founder and CEO of SEO Local, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. Mark started the company in the summer of 2017 working solo out of his apartment with nothing but a laptop, and his partner joined him about a year later.

Today SEO Local has grown to almost 20 employees and works with over 250 clients, recently moving into an 8,500 square foot office in Montgomeryville. Mark got the business off the ground with a month of relentless cold calling using scraped local business data, before settling into SEO, paid search, and website builds as the agency’s core services.

We covered what actually separates local SEO from national and international campaigns, the most common mistake home service businesses make with location pages, a real case study of an HVAC client whose budget grew from $500 to $1,500 a month, his honest take on Google’s Local Service Ads, and how he uses AI both internally and to help clients convert leads faster.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Mark that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. From an Apartment and a Laptop to Almost 20 Employees

Mark started SEO Local in the summer of 2017 with just himself and a laptop in his apartment. His partner joined about a year later, and the company has since grown to almost 20 employees and over 250 clients, recently moving into an 8,500 square foot office in Montgomeryville, Montgomery County.

“I actually started SEO Local the summer of 2017. It’s just me in my apartment and a laptop. And since then my partner joined me about a year later. Now we have almost 20 employees, over 250 clients.”

— Marc Brookland

2. A Month of Cold Calling Landed the First 14 Clients

While waiting for his own SEO to kick in, Mark spent the first 30 days making what he calls an infinite amount of cold calls, using a scraper to pull local business names, websites, emails, and phone numbers off Facebook. After roughly a million calls, he landed around 14 clients, and he never cold called again.

“I would do an audit. I would call these people and I would ask them if they were interested or wanted to talk about SEO. And maybe a million calls later, I ended up with like 14 clients or so in that first 30 days. That was after that I never went back to cold calling ever again.”

— Marc Brookland

3. Local SEO Means Hyperfocusing on One Specific Area

Mark explains that local, national, and international SEO campaigns are fundamentally different, and most people don’t realize it. For home service businesses, that means building landing pages hyperfocused on the exact county or town they serve, since customers and business owners alike rarely travel far outside a tight radius.

“It’s really important when you are identifying these keywords and building out that strategy that you are hyperfocused on that specific county or towns or whatever it might be that is going to make the most sense for that company to offer.”

— Marc Brookland

4. The Biggest Mistake: Trying to Rank One Page for a Thousand Areas

The most common pitfall Mark sees is home service businesses trying to target too many locations on a single page. Search engines can’t connect one generic page to dozens of different towns, so businesses need dedicated location pages if they want to show up for searches in each specific service area.

“A lot of times I’ll see people are trying to target all these different areas, they might be trying to target a thousand areas on one page and it’s just not feasible. I think that’s the biggest pitfall, a lot of these home service businesses don’t build out those location pages to optimize themselves for search.”

— Marc Brookland

5. An HVAC Client Grew From a $500 to $1,500 Monthly Budget

Mark’s favorite case study is an HVAC company started by a friend of his business partner. The client called SEO Local for help getting started, launched with roughly a $500 monthly budget, and grew that to around $1,500 a month over what has become a five to seven year relationship, expanding his target market along the way as leads converted at a high rate.

“His starting monthly budget was somewhere around $500 a month, and then he grew that to around $1,500 a month. All it was, was building out those local SEO pages, getting him new business.”

— Marc Brookland

6. Google’s Local Service Ads Are a Mixed Bag

Mark doesn’t charge clients to manage their Local Service Ads because the platform is so automated there’s little to manage: no choice of keywords, budget strategy, or ad copy, and visibility on some profiles simply never improves no matter what’s changed. The upside is that it’s a pay per lead system rather than pay per click, so an unspent budget means no charge at all.

“You don’t get to pick your keywords. You don’t get to pick your different budgeting strategies. You don’t get to add different assets to your ads, you don’t get to pick what the ad says. You’re very limited.”

— Marc Brookland

7. Speed to Lead and AI Are Reshaping How Clients Convert

Mark is a firm believer that instant contact wins jobs, whether through AI texting, phone calls, or web forms. He’s seen business owners insist their leads aren’t converting, only to find missed messages sitting untouched in their own inbox. Internally, SEO Local leans on AI for keyword research, content outlines, metadata, and even code, and Mark tells budget-conscious owners to use tools like ChatGPT to research keywords and draft their own location pages.

“Instant contact is huge. The faster you can get back to someone, the more likely you are to land that lead. Speed to lead really is the name of the game.”

— Marc Brookland

Looking Ahead

Mark’s closing message is that SEO isn’t dying, it’s evolving alongside AI and LLMs, and optimizing for those tools is still a form of SEO. His advice for owners weighing the cost, typically $500 to $1,500 a month, is to save up a full year of marketing budget before starting rather than stopping short after only a few months.

“Don’t let yourself get behind. If it’s something you really want to do, just make sure you save up for it. Save up, get a year’s worth of marketing dollars saved, and then come back, find an SEO company, and then we can really make something.”

— Marc Brookland