A small polygon is a polygon of unit diameter. The maximal area of a small polygon with $n=2m$ vertices is not known when $m\ge 7$. Finding the largest small $n$-gon for a given number $n\ge 3$ can be formulated as a nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic optimization problem. We propose to solve this problem with a sequential convex optimization approach, which is a ascent algorithm guaranteeing convergence to a locally optimal solution. Numerical experiments on polygons with up to $n=128$ sides suggest that the optimal solutions obtained are near-global. Indeed, for even $6 \le n \le 12$, the algorithm proposed in this work converges to known global optimal solutions found in the literature.