I'm Saad Tanvir, a freelance SEO consultant working remotely with Chicago businesses, from trades and professional firms in the suburbs to manufacturers and ecommerce brands selling nationwide. I cover local SEO, technical SEO and content strategy.
There's no Chicago office. Service-area businesses get a plan for the city and the suburbs they actually cover. Ecommerce and B2B companies get technical and category work, not a downtown pin that doesn't match the business.
Many Chicago businesses find SEO help through marketplaces like Upwork and Thumbtack. I've worked through Upwork for years and hold its Top Rated Plus badge, so you can check my history there before we talk. If we work together, we contract directly.
Chicago local search is split between the city and a large suburban ring: Naperville, Evanston, Schaumburg, Oak Park and the towns beyond them. Service businesses usually need service-area pages and a Google Business Profile that reflects where they work, not just a downtown address.
For B2B and ecommerce companies headquartered here, the bigger lever is often technical SEO and category-level content. A generic "Chicago SEO" page will not outrank a national brand for a product term, and I will not sell you that promise.
The closest local proof on this site is a Dublin phone repair shop that went from 4 to 84 organic clicks a month after a Wix to Next.js migration and local SEO rebuild, not a Chicago client. I use it because the model is the same: one business, a real service area, and Search Console numbers from matched 28-day windows.
Chicago splits into three search markets, and most businesses are only in one of them. The city: neighborhood searches in Lincoln Park, Wicker Park and the Loop, where Map Pack competition is dense for restaurants, clinics and professional services. The suburbs: Naperville, Schaumburg, Evanston, Oak Park, Aurora and Joliet each have their own Map Packs; for trades and home services, this is usually where the volume and the jobs are. National product searches: Chicago has a large manufacturing and B2B base whose buyers search for the product or the part, not the city.
B2B sites usually have the same problems: product catalogs that Google only half indexes, spec sheets locked in PDFs, and no page that matches how engineers and buyers actually search. The fix is usually structural. That means clean category templates, indexable product data and a few pages that answer the questions buyers ask before they request a quote.
The first question is whether you need to win Chicago, the suburbs, or national product searches. A roofer covering Naperville and Schaumburg does not get the same plan as a manufacturer whose buyers search the product, not the city.
Month one maps that split in Search Console and on the Google Business Profile. Months two and three fix the mismatch: service-area settings, pages that name towns you work in, or category templates if the business sells online. I will not add a stack of suburb pages that repeat the same paragraph with the town swapped.
You get one person on the work, a written scope, and USD pricing that matches the rest of the site: local SEO from $500 a month, audits from $499.
Often a junior after the pitch
Account management and office overhead
Usually higher central-city retainers
Large multi-channel programs
0→43
0→129
0→58
A brand-new domain, one month after launch. Google showed it in 43 countries and for 58 different searches. 129 pages are indexed. 358 impressions in the last 28 days, about 74% from the US. Average position 14.7.
Also: Dublin phone repair, 4 → 84 clicks a month (same remote model).
You describe the business and the city or service area. I say whether SEO is the right lever.
A ranked list of what to fix first, tied to your market, not a generic checklist.
I do the work, or I hand your team ticket-ready recommendations. Reporting stays plain-language.
Calls in US Eastern time. A 30-60 minute call for $75.
