Meet Russ Thornton

Founder of SEO Local. Built the engine because local businesses deserve execution, not just reports.

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The Story Behind SEO Local

Russ Thornton founded SEO Local because he saw the same gap every local business falls into: paying for tracking when what they needed was execution. His background in local business operations and growth strategy drives the platform's focus on results over reports.

Most local SEO companies were built to sell reports. Show the client their rankings, show them their citations, show them their review count, and call it a month. The report is clean. The phone is not ringing. Rinse and repeat.

SEO Local was built from the other direction. What does it actually take to get a local business into the Map Pack and keep it there? What does it take to get cited by AI systems? What does it take to generate a consistent flow of new reviews without the business owner managing the process? Those are execution questions, not reporting questions. SEO Local is an execution company.

The Mission

Local businesses should pay for results, not reports. Every product, every process, and every team member at SEO Local exists to move the needle on the metrics that actually drive revenue: Map Pack position, AI citations, review velocity, and inbound lead volume.

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