Local
Burrous Brothers Company
A fifty-year-old Mill Valley cleaning business, bought by a searcher on an SBA loan, more than doubling lead volume in the months after close.
+110%
Lead volume
Client reported Over the engagement
Service
SEO diligence and growth for ETA Searchers
For people buying a small business. Under LOI, a comprehensive audit of the target's web presence: the risks, the opportunities, and what each is worth in revenue. After close, ongoing support to grow what you have just bought.
Who it is for
Searchers under LOI on a trades or services business, and new owners in the first year after close, usually inheriting a dated site and a Google Business Profile still tied to the seller's personal email.
Before you call
- What am I inheriting when I buy this business?
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Often a Google Business Profile still tied to the seller's email, a domain in the seller's name, and leads that depend on paid more than anyone said. Under LOI, I put a revenue figure on each.
Scope
What is included
- Where the leads actually come from. Branded against non-branded traffic, map pack position across the real service area, and how much depends on paid
- What breaks at close. Google Business Profile ownership, review velocity, and whether the domain, hosting and registrar sit in the seller's name
- Traffic and keyword trend over the last eighteen months, from external data only, so the report runs inside an exclusivity window without the seller's cooperation
- Thin content and single-vendor lock-in that an AI-answer shift is about to eat
- A 90-day and twelve-month plan, scoped and costed, so the decision at close is to execute the plan rather than to hire an agency
- Post-close execution on retainer, for owners who want the plan run rather than handed over
What is not included
Written down here so it is not a conversation you have to have later.
- Quality of earnings, legal, or financial diligence
- Deal sourcing. SEO is the wrong tool for finding a business to buy
- Any promise about what a finding will do to the price. That is your negotiation
- Website development. I write the tickets, your developer ships them
In detail
Selling SEO to a searcher for deal sourcing has broken economics. The window is twelve to twenty-four months, SEO takes six to nine to matter, and a searcher needs exactly one deal rather than a pipeline. The useful moment is later, under LOI, and the useful product is not a growth pitch.
Diligence is price leverage, not growth
If forty percent of a target’s leads come from a Google Business Profile tied to the seller’s personal Gmail, or organic traffic has been declining for eighteen months, that is a purchase-price conversation. A report that surfaces it pays for itself in the negotiation, whether or not any SEO work ever follows.
The report is built entirely on external data, because nobody gets analytics access before close. Semrush for traffic and keyword trend, geo-grid scans for the map pack reality, and manual profile and review forensics. That constraint is a feature: it turns around in about five days without the seller’s cooperation.
What the 90-day plan is for
The report closes with a plan that is scoped and costed. It is there so that at close, when the business is yours and the profile needs moving out of the seller’s name in the first week, the decision is whether to execute the plan rather than whether to go and find an agency.
The honest constraint
My best work sometimes kills the deal, and a dead deal never becomes a retainer. The report has to stand on its own as a piece of diligence, and it does.
How it starts
A revenue-at-risk report, turned around in about five days inside an exclusivity window, built entirely on external data.
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