Home Services & Trades
Furnaces that quit in January, burst pipes, ice dams, tuckpointing and wet basements. Chicago’s housing stock keeps the trades busy — we make sure the panicked search finds you first.
Chicago brands the engines keep naming
Chicago SEO that wins you customers on Google & AI search
From Fulton Market software teams to the trades keeping century-old bungalows standing, we get Chicago businesses found by people ready to buy. We don’t chase every algorithm update — we build the kind of authority that survives them, in Google and in the AI answers your customers now read first.
- SEO
- AI Search Optimization
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- Web Design
Serving Chicago, Cook County & Nationwide
Jeff Tormey
Founder & Lead Strategist
Get your free SEO audit
See where your site stands in Google and AI search across Chicagoland — your report lands within one business day.
5.0 · 64 Google reviews·No obligation, reply within one business day
Accreditations
Where we are accredited
The Work
Every lever that moves a Chicago business up the page.
One job, every angle: when someone in Chicago goes looking for what you sell, make sure you’re the name they find and the name the AI recommends.
Local SEO
Three names make the Map Pack. We build the proximity, category and review signals that decide which three — whether you serve one neighborhood or every township from Evanston to Joliet.
AI Search Optimization
More buyers now ask ChatGPT or Gemini before they ever open Google. We structure your site so those answers name you, and cite you as the source.
National SEO
Chicago head office, national ambitions. We grow the topical depth and earned links it takes to outrank bigger brands on the terms that actually convert.
Our Process
How a quiet site becomes the one that rings.
No black box, no mystery retainer. You’ll know what we’re working on each week, why it matters, and what it should move.
- 1
The Teardown
We pull apart your site, your Google Business Profile and the five competitors beating you, then show you exactly where the gap is.
- Full technical crawl
- Keyword & Map Pack gaps
- Competitor link teardown
- 2
The Plan
A twelve-month plan sequenced so the fast wins land first and fund the slower structural work behind them.
- Quarterly milestones
- Content calendar
- Reporting you can read
- 3
Week-by-Week Build
Technical fixes, pages written by people who understand your trade, local signals and link outreach — shipped every week, not saved for a quarterly review.
- Weekly deliverables
- Live dashboard
- Direct line to your strategist
- 4
Widen the Lead
Once the core terms move, we push into the neighboring suburbs, adjacent services and the questions AI engines keep getting asked.
- Monthly strategy calls
- Competitor watch
- Suburb-by-suburb expansion
Industries We Serve
We already know how Chicago searches for what you do.
We’ve ranked businesses across more than 20 industries, so we come in knowing how this city looks each one up — the cold-snap spikes, the way the suburbs search differently from the city, and the rivals already parked above you.
Medical & Healthcare
Private practices, dental groups, surgeons and clinics competing for patients in a city where Northwestern, Rush and UChicago Medicine already own the brand searches.
Legal & Professional
Personal injury, family, immigration and business law — among the most expensive clicks in the country. We win them with substance rather than bigger ad budgets.
E-Commerce & Retail
Shopify brands, showrooms and specialty retailers selling across Illinois and shipping nationwide from the country’s busiest freight corridor.
Franchise & Multi-Location
Ten locations across Chicagoland shouldn’t compete with each other. We give every site its own footprint while the brand compounds above them.
B2B, Manufacturing & SaaS
Fulton Market software teams, West Side manufacturers and the logistics firms moving freight through the nation’s biggest rail hub — long sales cycles, technical buyers, high-value deals.
Built around your business.
A search strategy for your market and your goals.
Jeff Tormey
Founder & Lead Strategist
15+
years in SEO
Meet Our Founder
You get the strategist, not a sales handoff.
Jeff Tormey spent fifteen years building SEO Guru into a firm clients stay with, working with businesses across the country. SEO Guru Chicago runs that same playbook here — and he is on your account from the first call, rather than handing you to a junior team once the contract is signed.
Most owners we meet can say what they spend on marketing but not what it earns. So we start somewhere plainer: can a customer in your service area actually find you — in the Map Pack, in the organic results, in the answer ChatGPT gives when asked to recommend someone? Usually the honest answer is no. That gap is the work.
None of these channels work alone. Organic rankings, the Map Pack, your review profile, paid search and now AI answers all feed each other — strong reviews lift local rankings, strong rankings cut what you pay per click, and both make it likelier an AI names you. For a Chicago business that compounding is the whole advantage, because your competitors are still treating each one as a separate line item.
“If you can’t rank your own agency’s site, you have no business running anyone else’s SEO.”
Proven Track Record
Figures we will put in writing
Using our tried and true local SEO strategies, we help businesses across Chicago, Chicagoland and the rest of the United States climb the rankings. Schedule a 15-minute chat to talk through your goals.
320+
Clients Served
Neighborhood trades through to national brands
1,200+
Subscribers
Reading our weekly breakdown of what changed in search
524+
Projects Delivered
Campaigns, rebuilds, audits and migrations
$12M+
Client Revenue
Traced back to the organic work we did
Wins in AI Search
When the machines get asked who to hire.
Buyers no longer start every search on Google. They ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity who to hire — and act on a single recommendation instead of ten blue links. These are real client accounts where the answer came back with their name on it.
120%
Increase in Organic Revenue
ChatGPT
“acupuncture atlanta”
Gemini
“acupuncture atlanta”
54%
Increase in Organic Events
Gemini
“it installation in marietta”
ChatGPT
“it installation company in alpharetta”
37%
Increase in Organic Traffic
Gemini
“commercial hvac in oklahoma”
ChatGPT
“commercial hvac service in oklahoma”
142%
Growth in Organic Events
Perplexity
“best weight loss surgeons in mexico”
Claude
“best bariatric surgeons in mexico”
AI SEO
AI search is here. We make sure you’re in it.
Search isn’t just keywords and rankings anymore — it’s whether you show up inside the answer itself. Google’s AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini now decide what people see before a single link gets clicked, and holding that space takes more than classic SEO.
We build AI SEO so your brand isn’t only ranked but referenced, cited and recommended by the tools themselves. That means strengthening your E-E-A-T signals, writing for the way Chicago buyers actually ask questions, and making your site a source these engines reach for when they put an answer together.
With live data and content shaped for how AI reads the web, we help you win the generated results, earn the citations, and keep your visibility steady as search keeps changing underneath everyone.
Proof, Not Promises
Accounts we can show you end to end.
Real engagements, verified numbers, no rounding up. Open any one for the full account of what we found, what we changed and what it returned.
Strategic SEO
119%
more search clicks
119% More Search Clicks & 75% Organic Traffic Growth in 8 Months for a Landscape Design-Build Company
A strategic SEO program that grew clicks from search by 119% and organic traffic by 75% in eight months.
Read Case Study September 10, 2026SEO + Google Ads
939%
organic traffic growth
939% Organic Traffic Growth & 8,190 Leads in 15 Months for a Full-Service Landscaping Company
Organic, local and Google Ads together took a landscaping company from under 2,000 organic sessions a year to more than 19,000.
Read Case Study September 9, 2026Meta Ads · Healthcare
36.7x
return on ad spend
36.7x ROAS & $170K in Net New Revenue
Paid social built for one thing, revenue: 34 leads and $76.5K in profit for a healthcare practice.
Read Case Study May 8, 2026
Seen more.
Booked more.
Want to know how you stack up against the firms chasing the same Chicago customers, and what it would take to get past them? An audit is the fastest honest answer.
Give us a URL and we’ll send back where you actually stand today — rankings, technical health, and the handful of fixes worth doing first.
5.0 · 64 Google reviews|320+ clients
Your SEO Report
yourwebsite.com
82Score
Good — room to grow.
Fixing 3 issues below could move you from page 2 to page 1 for 12 keywords.
- CRITICAL4 pages missing meta description
- WARNINGMobile speed: 3.2s (target < 2.5s)
- GOODSchema markup implemented
Next-Gen Search · AI SEO
How search changed — and why it matters.
A growing share of searches now end in an AI-generated answer, with no click to anyone. If your pages aren’t built for ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to quote, you simply don’t exist on the fastest-growing channel in search.
We close that gap — getting your brand not just ranked but referenced, cited and recommended, by strengthening E-E-A-T, writing for real questions, and turning your site into a source these tools keep coming back to.
- AI Overview optimization so Google's generated answers cite your pages.
- LLM crawler access for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended.
- Passage-level citability: content restructured for conversational answers.
- llms.txt implementation and entity-level brand signal engineering.
burst pipe repair chicago
Then · 10 blue links
result-1.com
24/7 Emergency Plumber Chicago | Burst Pipes
result-2.com
Top 10 Plumbers in Chicago, IL – Yelp
result-3.com
Best Emergency Plumbers Near Me – Angi
result-4.com
Plumbing Contractor Serving Cook County
Now · AI answer
AI Overview
For a burst pipe in Chicago, Your Business is the name that comes up most: licensed, answering overnight in January, and covering the North Side through the western suburbs.
Sources
- yourbusiness.com
- Google Maps
- Yelp
Illustrative example. “Your Business” is where your brand gets cited.
Your Reporting
Open your numbers whenever you want.
You get a dashboard from day one. Rankings, calls, reviews, Search Console and Google Business Profile data in one place, live — so you never have to wait for a monthly PDF to find out how the work is going.
- Keyword rankings, updated daily
- Calls, directions and reviews from Google
- AI citations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity
From our desk
A few minutes on what shifted this week.
Short, no-fluff videos on what is actually working in Google and AI search right now.
What Our Clients Say
Don’t take our word for it.
Sixty-five-plus verified Google reviews from the owners who have actually worked with us, pulled in live and unedited.
Client Stories
Two owners on what actually changed.
“We went from page five to the top of the results in under six months.”
They rebuilt the foundation instead of papering over it — fixed the technical mess, rewrote the service pages properly, and the calls followed.
Owner · Chicago home services company
“The first agency that actually explained what they were doing.”
Everyone before them sent a report nobody could read. These folks moved the numbers and showed us how, in language we understood.
CEO · Chicago professional services firm
Trusted by 320+ businesses across Chicagoland and the rest of the country
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Your best primary category plus up to 5 additional ones, services to add, and a local SEO pro tip.
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On Camera
The campaigns, as they ran.
Why Choose Us
Put us beside the agency pitching you.
The honest side-by-side — including the parts most agencies would rather not put in writing.
| Feature | SEO Guru Chicago | Typical Agency |
|---|---|---|
| AI search visibility (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) | ✓In every plan | ✗Not offered |
| Live reporting you can open any time | ✓24/7 client dashboard | ✗Monthly PDF |
| Who you actually talk to | ✓The strategist doing the work | ✗An account manager |
| Knows Chicagoland street by street | ✓Dedicated Chicago branch | ✗Often offshored |
| Who writes your pages | ✓People who learn your trade | ~Increasingly AI-generated |
| Contract after the first six months | ✓Month to month | ✗12–24 month lock-ins |
| Founder involvement | ✓On every account | ✗Sales call only |
Notes & Analysis
Notes from the work this month.
What actually changed in search this month, and what it means if you are trying to get found in Chicago.
Technical SEO
Core Web Vitals: what a slow site really costs you in rankings
Read More »August 19, 2026
Common Questions
The questions Chicago owners actually ask.
Still have a question? Call us at 877-806-0303 and talk to a real person.
Why does SEO matter for a Chicago business?
Because almost every job now starts with a search, and in a metro this size the top few results take most of the work. Whether someone is typing “tuckpointing near me” from a Logan Square two-flat or asking ChatGPT for a commercial HVAC contractor in Schaumburg, you are either in that answer or you are invisible. Ranking is simply the most reliable way to be the one they call.
How much does SEO cost in Chicago?
It depends on how competitive your category is. Ranking a neighborhood trade across a handful of ZIP codes is a different job from taking on personal injury firms downtown, where a single click can cost more than a hundred dollars in ads. Tell us your market and your goals and we will quote honestly. Call 877-806-0303.
How long before I see results?
Most clients see early movement in two to three months — usually Map Pack placements and long-tail pages. The competitive head terms typically take six to twelve. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is either targeting keywords nobody searches or planning something that will cost you later.
Do you guarantee a number one ranking?
No, and be wary of anyone who does. Nobody controls Google’s results, and a guaranteed position usually means a keyword with no demand behind it. What we do guarantee is more qualified leads from search as a result of our work, or your money back.
Do I need a Chicago SEO agency, or will any firm do?
Plenty of good agencies work remotely. What local knowledge buys you is the detail: that search behavior swings hard with the weather here, that the suburbs and the city behave like separate markets, that Cook County permit rules shape the questions people ask. We do not have to be taught the market before we can compete in it.
How long are your contracts?
We ask for six months, because that is roughly how long meaningful SEO takes to show its value. After that it is month to month — we would rather keep earning the work. Call 877-806-0303 and we will talk through what makes sense for your situation.
Want the top of the page in Chicago?
A free audit, no pitch attached. We’ll show you where you rank across Chicagoland right now, what is holding you back, and the first three things worth fixing — whether or not you hire us.