SEO.co
// seo agency · Chicago

Chicago SEO Agency

GET STARTEDSEO AUDIT SERVICES
200+
Ranking factors audited per page
01
15 yrs
Of search-algorithm operational history
02
5K+
Keywords moved into top-10 positions
03
F500
Clients alongside startups & agencies
04
~/seo.co/markets/chicago
$ seo.co --target chicago --strategy local

Chicago SEO, run from a national bench.

Local pack rankings, Google Business Profile optimization, citation hygiene, and review-signal engineering for Chicago-based businesses — operated by the same team that ranks Fortune 500 brands nationally.

// engineering methodology

How we engineer rankings.

A five-phase loop, repeated continuously. No black boxes — every step traceable to a measurable signal.

seo.co — process.ts
01
$ seo.audit()
Diagnose

200-point technical, content, and backlink audit. Core Web Vitals, crawl budget, schema, EAT signals — every lever measured before we touch a thing.

02
$ seo.strategy()
Cluster

Keyword universes mapped to topical authority pillars. Intent matched to content. Internal-link graph designed before a single page ships.

03
$ seo.execute()
Build

On-page implementation, schema rollout, content production, and white-hat link acquisition — coordinated across technical, editorial, and PR teams.

04
$ seo.measure()
Track

Position tracking, attribution modeling, conversion-funnel diagnostics. Weekly reports tied to revenue, not vanity metrics.

05
$ seo.optimize()
Iterate

Algorithm-update response within 48 hours. Competitive deltas surfaced in real time. Continuous remediation on the pages losing ground.

A Chicago SEO Company Serving Clients Since 2010

Our SEO team in Chicago has provided SEO agency and link building services to Chicago businesses for over a decade. We work at organic and paid search optimizations for small businesses and Fortune 1000 clients alike.

The competition among Chicago businesses can be fierce.

That's why you need an SEO company advocate with white-hat, deliverable strategies to help you win in internet marketing.

If you want your brand to have a shot at winning a decent share of the market, you’ll need some support.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is arguably the best approach.

But what are SEO services and how does it work?

robots.txt// crawl directives
 1# Engineered for budget, not just access
 2User-agent: *
 3Allow:      /
 4Disallow:   /admin/
 5Disallow:   /*?session=
 6 
 7User-agent: GPTBot
 8Allow:      /
 9 
10Sitemap: /sitemap_index.xml

Chicago Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Let’s start with a briefer on SEO.

As the name suggests, SEO is all about optimizing your site for search engines—in other words, making sure your site ranks as highly as possible in search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO strategies optimize your content in various ways to get you those higher rankings you need to grow.

A Chicago SEO company will get you better results from your digital marketing efforts. If you want to see your SEO rankings rise in the search engine results pages, contact us to speak with an SEO consultant. Whether you have a blog, a business website, or an ecommerce website, we can help you rank better.

lighthouse-report.json// page audit
96
Performance
100
Accessibility
95
Best Practices
100
SEO

The Chicago SEO Experts

Working with a Chicago marketing agency will benefit your business in many ways.

You’ll have an SEO firm helping you increase your search rankings and you’ll also have access to high-quality content marketing services since both go hand-in-hand.

An experienced Chicago SEO consultant will prove to be an asset to your business by improving your off page SEO and making suggestions to improve your web design to support your local SEO strategy.

All of this will contribute to higher search engine rankings in Google and other search engines.

schema-validator// structured-data status
Organization
valid
ProfessionalService
valid
FAQPage
valid
BreadcrumbList
valid
Article
valid
AggregateRating
valid
// ai-search visibility · GEO

Ranking is no longer just Google.

We track citation share across every major LLM-powered search interface. Client appearance rates across the surfaces our prospects actually use:

GPT
ChatGPT Search
01
82%citation share
PPL
Perplexity Pages
02
89%citation share
AIO
Google AI Overview
03
71%citation share
GEM
Gemini Search
04
64%citation share
CLD
Claude Citations
05
58%citation share
COP
Bing Copilot
06
73%citation share
// structured data

Schema-first because Google reads JSON, not paragraphs.

Rich results, knowledge panels, AI Overview citations, and LLM training data all key off structured markup. We deploy validated JSON-LD across every page, monitored for drift.

  • ▹30+ schema types covered (Organization, Service, FAQ, HowTo, Article…)
  • ▹Live Rich Results validation in CI
  • ▹Schema audit included in every engagement
schema.json
 1{
 2  "@context": "https://schema.org",
 3  "@type": "ProfessionalService",
 4  "name": "SEO.co",
 5  "areaServed": "United States",
 6  "aggregateRating": {
 7    "@type": "AggregateRating",
 8    "ratingValue": "4.9",
 9    "reviewCount": "312"
10  }
11}

Serving Discerning Chicago Businesses

Since 2010
gsc-coverage// index coverage · 30d
Indexed
1,842
Discovered
117
Excluded
28
Error
9

Strategy & Research

Strong SEO campaigns tend to revolve around a central strategy—a high-level plan for what you want to rank for and how you’re going to get there. It encompasses plans for many of the strategic elements below.

keyword-clusters.csv// cluster intent
technical seo audit4.4K/mo
KD 38
core web vitals optimization1.9K/mo
KD 24
schema markup implementation2.7K/mo
KD 31
internal linking strategy3.1K/mo
KD 42
site speed optimization8.8K/mo
KD 55

On Site SEO Solutions

To improve your website's ranking on Google, ensure that it is designed well and runs efficiently. It should be easy for Google to navigate and should have fast loading content for all users. Additionally, a mobile-friendly design, preferably one that is responsive, is important.

robots.txt// crawl directives
 1# Engineered for budget, not just access
 2User-agent: *
 3Allow:      /
 4Disallow:   /admin/
 5Disallow:   /*?session=
 6 
 7User-agent: GPTBot
 8Allow:      /
 9 
10Sitemap: /sitemap_index.xml
// core web vitals · field data

Page speed is a ranking signal. We engineer it like one.

Field-data Core Web Vitals from a typical client page after our engagement. Real users, real conditions, measured against Google's thresholds.

Good · 90+
Needs work · 50–89
Largest Contentful Paint
LCP
1.8s
score 94
Cumulative Layout Shift
CLS
0.03
score 98
Interaction to Next Paint
INP
120ms
score 91
// the difference

What “technical” actually means.

Capability
SEO.co
Typical SEO agency
Technical audit depth
200+ checks · weekly
Single annual audit
Schema markup
30+ types, CI-validated
Hand-rolled, often broken
Core Web Vitals
Engineered to <2.5s LCP
Recommendation, not implementation
Reporting cadence
Live dashboard + weekly
Monthly PDF
Algorithm response
48-hour playbook
Wait-and-see
Content + links + tech
Single coordinated team
3 separate vendors
// algorithm response log

Every algorithm update has a playbook.

We don't wait-and-see. The last five years of major Google updates and the engineering response we executed for client sites within 48 hours of confirmation.

  1. 2024March Core Update
    impact: AI-content devaluation
    → Manual byline audits, EEAT enrichment, schema author overhaul
  2. 2024Helpful Content Update v3
    impact: Site-wide quality signal
    → Topical authority pruning, low-value page sunset playbook
  3. 2023October Core + SGE
    impact: AI Overview rollout
    → Citation-shape content, FAQ schema density, listicle restructuring
  4. 2022Product Reviews + Helpful Content
    impact: Affiliate / thin content
    → Original research investment, first-hand testing methodology
  5. 2021Page Experience + MUM
    impact: Web Vitals as ranking factor
    → Performance engineering pipeline, Lighthouse CI rollout
// operating stack

The platforms we run.

Six surfaces, dozens of tools, one team trained to read every signal each one produces. We don't pick favorites — we instrument everything.

Crawl & Audit
  • Screaming Frog
  • Sitebulb
  • Botify
  • JetOctopus
Backlinks
  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Majestic
  • Moz Pro
Search
  • Google Search Console
  • Bing Webmaster
  • Yandex Webmaster
Analytics
  • GA4
  • BigQuery
  • Looker Studio
  • Mixpanel
Performance
  • PageSpeed Insights
  • WebPageTest
  • Lighthouse CI
  • Calibre
AI Search
  • Perplexity Pages
  • ChatGPT Search
  • Profound
  • AthenaHQ
// frequently asked

Common questions

01On-page Analysis.
By analyzing individual pages and keywords using Google Analytics, Google Search Console (reviewing accelerated mobile pages), Core Web Vitals (reviewing page speed) and other keyword research tools, we create a detailed roadmap that is industry agnostic and fully-repeatable for ranking in search engines.
02Complete Content Audit.
Your on-site content audit will perform keyword research to compare all the pages of your site, taking into account content quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing and keyword cannibalization issues that might be hurting your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
03Holistic Backlink Audit.
Understand impact of site-wide and individual web pages with a comprehensive look at backlink diversity, link velocity, anchor text variability, TLD diversity, internal links and internal link structure.
04Determine Link-Worthy Assets.
We find the best content assets on your website, worthy of inbound mentions and backlinks. If you don't have any or your content is lacking, our editorial team can help to beef-up your content assets.
05Find Publishers that Match Your Strategy.
We source publishers with relevance and authority and pitch them content ideas that include backlinks and references back to your website.
06Write The Content.
We draft your written content, including relevant backlinks and anchor text that aligns with our keyword research tool analysis (e.g. title tags, meta tags, keyword density, etc.). We then get publisher approval to get the content published.
07Backlink Reporting.
You receive regular backlink reports included in your standard monthly SEO work reports.
08On-page Analysis.
By analyzing individual pages and keywords using Google Analytics, Google Search Console (reviewing accelerated mobile pages), Core Web Vitals (reviewing page speed) and other keyword research tools, we create a detailed roadmap that is industry agnostic and fully-repeatable for ranking in search engines.
09Complete Content Audit.
Your on-site content audit will perform keyword research to compare all the pages of your site, taking into account content quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing and keyword cannibalization issues that might be hurting your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
10Holistic Backlink Audit.
Understand impact of site-wide and individual web pages with a comprehensive look at backlink diversity, link velocity, anchor text variability, TLD diversity, internal links and internal link structure.
11Determine Link-Worthy Assets.
We find the best content assets on your website, worthy of inbound mentions and backlinks. If you don't have any or your content is lacking, our editorial team can help to beef-up your content assets.
12Find Publishers that Match Your Strategy.
We source publishers with relevance and authority and pitch them content ideas that include backlinks and references back to your website.
13Write The Content.
We draft your written content, including relevant backlinks and anchor text that aligns with our keyword research tool analysis (e.g. title tags, meta tags, keyword density, etc.). We then get publisher approval to get the content published.
14Backlink Reporting.
You receive regular backlink reports included in your standard monthly SEO work reports.
// nationwide coverage

Other cities we serve

// ready to engage

Ready to rank in Chicago?

Get a city-specific proposal from the team that's engineered top rankings in Chicago and 40+ other US cities.

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