Introduction
Welcome to my first monthly update for my local SEO Agency. For those new here, we’re a small, local SEO agency that primarily works with home remodeling clients.
Over the years, we’ve collected a handful of different legacy clients that we continue to serve as well.
Our approach is different from many agencies in the space - we’re not looking to scale rapidly by adding more and more clients. Instead, we focus on retention and growing our retainer values with the right clients.
When the perfect fit comes along, we’ll bring them on board, but our priority remains delivering measurable ROI for our existing clients rather than constantly chasing new business.
April has been an exciting month. As some of you may know, when I started SEO Gets with Gui last year, it became overwhelming to run both the agency and SEO Gets simultaneously.
A couple of months ago, I merged with another agency, and now I work as a fractional CEO.
My role involves helping with strategy, ensuring the company is heading in the right direction, and making sure everyone is happy and getting value.
Our Numbers
Revenue: $27,414.60
Our revenue comes from a mix of SEO retainers, legacy web hosting contracts, and occasional one-time projects. While we don’t actively pursue one-time gigs, we sometimes take on site builds, consulting, or specialized marketing projects when they’re a good fit.
Expenses: $19,849.93
This covers our three full-time employees, a small draw for myself, our software stack, hosting costs, and investments in high-quality directories and link building.
Profit: $7,564.73
April was unusually profitable thanks to a significant one-time site build project. Typically, we run much closer to breakeven. It’s always nice to stack some cash when you’re running a lean operation, but expect this number to be closer to break even in the coming months.
Clients: 13
Not all of these are SEO retainers, though the majority are. The rest represent legacy clients from different service offerings we’ve provided over the years.
Retention: 100%
We increased the budget for one of our clients this month, so technically over 100%.
New Retainers: 0
We didn’t bring on any new retainers in April.
Team Size: 4
- Project/Client Manager: The person I merged my agency with who now runs the team day-to-day. An absolute A-player who’s doing a fantastic job, allowing me to focus more on SEO Gets.
- Developer/Technical Lead: Handles all our development, creates automations within Zapier and CRMs, and serves as our technical glue guy.
- Full-time SEO (Philippines): Focuses on link-building opportunities and handles various repetitive but crucial SEO tasks.
- Myself: Working as a fractional CEO, providing strategic direction and oversight.
Our Tools
SEO Gets
Both our project manager and I use SEO Gets almost daily. It helps us identify growth opportunities quickly, get better seo results, and is the backbone for our monthly client reporting.
Keyword.com
We use this for precise rank tracking, as Search Console’s average position metrics don’t provide the specificity we need for accurate performance monitoring.
Plausible
Our go-to for web analytics - a privacy-focused alternative with clean, actionable data.
LeadTruffle.co
We implement this AI chatbot for lead generation on our clients’ websites, helping improve conversion rates.
WordPress + Oxygen
Our preferred CMS and page builder for our websites.
Rocket.net
Our hosting provider - would highly recommend them. We’ve seen significant improvements in TTFB since switching (amongst other benefits).
Slack
Essential for team communication and collaboration, especially with our distributed team structure.
Local Falcon
We use this for tracking and monitoring local maps performance for our clients.
SEOWind.io
A new tool we’re testing this month - possibly the most impressive AI content tool I’ve seen yet. Still exploring its capabilities, but early results are promising.
Screaming Frog
Our workhorse for technical SEO audits and site crawling.
Gusto
Handles all our payroll and HR needs efficiently.
1Password
Secures our growing collection of accounts and credentials with team-wide access management.
Final Thoughts
The agency is doing well, and I’m particularly pleased with our current position. Before the merger, I was obsessively focused on our clients’ results - partly because the SEO industry has a reputation for sometimes overpromising and underdelivering.
I’m a firm believer that SEO should be about ROI, not just vanity metrics like impressions or clicks. It’s challenging to track this as an agency, but we work hard to maintain open communication with our clients to ensure they can feel SEO working for their business.
Not immediately, of course - SEO takes time - but eventually, they should see more money coming through their door, not just prettier reports from us.
That’s why we’re selective about our clients. We take our time bringing on new clients, ensuring they’re a good fit and that we can make a genuine impact on their business.
If you’re an agency owner or consultant and want to chat about any of this, I’m always happy to hop on a call.
And if you haven’t checked out SEO Gets yet, I’d obviously recommend it! We’re constantly building and improving it, so let me know if there’s something you’d like to see added.
If there’s anything missing from this monthly update that you’d like to see in future editions, feel free to email me or comment here. I plan to continue these monthly updates, and your feedback will help shape them.
Thanks for reading, and best of luck on your SEO journey!
Matthew Mellinger
✨ Interested in simplifying your SEO analytics workflow? Try SEO Gets for free.
