I am one person, and that is the product
I am Tom McSherry. I have been doing SEO for seventeen years, I work with local businesses in Australia and New Zealand, and I do the work myself rather than selling you my time and delivering someone else's.
Why there is no team
Most agencies solve growth by hiring juniors and giving them a process to follow. It works for the agency. It is why the person who answers your email cannot answer your question, and why the strategy that was sold to you is not the one being run.
I went the other way. I take on three new clients a month and no more, because that is what I can onboard properly while still doing the work for everyone already here. The constraint is real and it is the whole reason the quality holds. It also means I turn down work regularly, which I have written down in public: who I do great work for, and who I turn down.
Why I publish my own research
Nearly every local SEO statistic in circulation is American, several years old, and a citation of a citation. That is a bad basis for telling an Australian or New Zealand business owner what to do with their money.
So I measure it. The Map Pack study is 231,907 Google Maps results captured across 480 grids, 20 industries and 24 AU/NZ cities, with the full method published - including the three predictions I recorded in advance and got wrong, and the two figures from an earlier write-up that did not survive a larger sample.
Publishing the failures is not modesty. It is the only thing that makes the rest of it worth believing.
How I actually work
Written, asynchronous, and month to month. No lock-in contract, because a contract that stops you leaving also stops me having to earn it. Published prices, so you can rule me out on cost without a call. And a diagnosis before a proposal, every time - I would rather tell you the work is not worth doing than sell you a retainer that will not pay for itself.
I use AI heavily for the mechanical parts of the job and not at all for the decisions. That split is deliberate and I have described it in detail rather than leaving you to guess: my actual workflow, step by step.
What I am not
I am not the cheapest, I am not fast, and I am not the right answer if you need enquiries this month - ads are, and I will say so. I am also not a good fit for businesses outside Australia and New Zealand, or for industries nothing like the clinics, trades, psychology practices, agencies and local retailers I already work with. Someone who knows your field will beat me, and I would rather point you at them than learn on your money.
Where to go next
If you want to judge the work rather than the claims, the research is the best place to start - it is the thing I would be most embarrassed to have wrong.