One “Chicago” page for everything
The site never names a neighborhood or a suburb.
SEO Services for Chicago Businesses
Get the calls from Logan Square and from Naperville.
Chicago is 77 community areas inside a county of more than 130 towns. We help you show up in the ones your customers live in, and in front of the companies headquartered here if you sell to business.
What we measureSEO Services for Chicago Businesses3/3
- Neighborhoods and suburbs where you appear
- Leads from each side of the city line
- Calls and forms from priority areas
Get your free SEO audit
No cost and no commitment.
The search problem
The city and the suburbs search differently.
A homeowner in Naperville and a renter in Logan Square both say they live in Chicago, and they search in very different ways. One types the suburb and the other types the neighborhood. A site with a single “Chicago” page reaches neither, and the business ends up paying for ads to cover the gap.
We sort your customers into city and suburb, find the names they search by, and build for each. For a company that sells to other companies, we build for the industries and head offices that make Chicago one of the country’s largest business markets.
In plain terms
How does SEO work in Chicago?
SEO in Chicago means working two markets at once. Inside the city, people search by neighborhood, across 77 official community areas from Rogers Park to Pullman. Outside it, they search by suburb: Cook County alone has more than 130 municipalities, and the metro reaches into Indiana and Wisconsin. A business has to know which it serves, and say so on the page.
Chicago is also a head-office city, home to United Airlines and McDonald’s among others. A company that sells to businesses can treat the metro as a market of buyers, which is the work on our B2B SEO page. Machina is based in California and works with Chicago businesses remotely.
Signs the site serves half the market
Strong in the city, absent in the suburbs
You rank where the office is, and nowhere your suburban customers live.
Paying for every suburban lead
Ads cover the towns your site does not reach.
A consumer site for business buyers
Your buyers are purchasing managers, and the site reads as if it were for homeowners.
What we do in SEO for Chicago businesses
We review where your customers are and sort them by city neighborhood and by suburb. The two get different pages, since the searches, the housing and often the services differ.
Neighborhood pages for the city and town pages for the suburbs, each with real work or customers from that place. A renter in Lincoln Park and a homeowner in Schaumburg want different things, so they get different pages.
About a third of Chicagoans speak a language other than English at home, most of them Spanish, with Chinese and Polish next. Where your customers do, we build pages in their language.
Calls and forms are traced to the page and the area they came from, so you can see which neighborhoods and suburbs pay.
Check it yourself
Search one neighborhood and one suburb.
Pick one city neighborhood and one suburb where you have good customers. Search your service with each name. Most businesses find they appear for one and not the other, which shows which half of the market the site was built for.
Look closely at the suburb results. They are often held by small local firms with a page for that town and a few dozen reviews. A city business with real customers there can usually earn a place beside them.
- 01Choose one neighborhood and one suburb where you already have customers.
- 02Search your service with each name. Note where you appear on the map and below it.
- 03Open the top result for the suburb, and see what it says about that town.
- 04Check that your Google profile lists the suburbs you serve.
- 05Sort last year’s customers by city and suburb, and compare the split with your web leads.
What you get
Work you can hold.
- A split of your market by city neighborhood and suburb
- Neighborhood and town pages for your priority areas
- Pages in Spanish or Polish where your customers search in them
- A Google profile with the right service areas
- Lead reporting by neighborhood and suburb
The readout
How we know it worked.
We record a baseline before we change anything, then read search visibility beside the actions that pay the bills.
- Neighborhoods and suburbs where you appear
- Leads from each side of the city line
- Calls and forms from priority areas
Pricing
Your investment in being found
Three ways to invest in your business showing up when buyers search. Each package is billed monthly, month to month, and each one includes everything in the one before it.
Foundation
The work every site needs, done properly and kept up every month.
$1,000a month
Month to month
We recommend
Growth
Foundation, plus the pages, articles and links that reach more of your buyers.
$2,500a month
Month to month
Leadership
Growth, plus press outreach, more markets and reporting that follows each lead to revenue.
$5,000a month
Month to month
The price changes only when the scope does, such as a very large catalog, many locations or a move to a new platform, and we agree any change in writing before the work starts.
Questions
Before we start.
Does Machina have a Chicago office?
No. We are based in Hollister, California, and work with Chicago businesses by phone and video. We learn the neighborhoods and suburbs that matter from your customer list, and build from there.
Should the city and the suburbs have separate pages?
Yes, where you serve both. People in the suburbs search by the name of their town, and people in the city search by neighborhood. One page cannot answer both well.
Can we rank in the suburbs from a city address?
On the map, Google favors businesses close to the searcher, so nearby suburbs come easier than distant ones. In the regular results under the map, a good page for a town you serve can rank from any address.
We sell to other companies. Is local SEO the right approach?
Probably not on its own. A B2B company is found by what it solves more than by where it sits. We would build around your industries and your buyers’ questions, with Chicago as a market to name where it helps.
How much does SEO cost for a Chicago business?
It depends on how many services and areas you want to win and how strong the competition is in each. We look at your site and your market for free, and you see the scope and the price before any work starts. There are no long-term contracts.
Keep exploring
Find the next useful page.
All SEO servicesExplore the full search program and its specialized services.Local SEOThe map, your Google profile and reviews.B2B SEOSearch for companies that sell to companies.SEO for ContractorsA page for every service and every town you work in.Small Business SEOA focused plan for an owner-run business.International SEOPages in more than one language, set up correctly.
Tell us what you do and where your customers are. We will show you which half of Chicago can find you today.
- How your buyers search for what you sell
- Who shows up above you today, and why
- Your website, as Google reads it
Prefer email? Write to hello@wearemachina.com
Prefer to talk? Call (831) 230-7787
What we measureSEO Services for Chicago Businesses3/3
- Neighborhoods and suburbs where you appear
- Leads from each side of the city line
- Calls and forms from priority areas
Get your free SEO audit
No cost and no commitment.