Chicago SEO & AI Search Agency · Founded by Jonathan Thompson
Thmpsn Digital is an SEO and AI search agency in Chicago. In plain English: we make digital marketing work. Getting found, more leads and sales, and reporting tied to revenue. For businesses like yours.
Every inquiry gets a reply from a person, not a funnel, within one business day.
+68%more qualified organic leads · national rentals company, year over year
+$1Mrevenue growth in year one · 30% lift for a small business
2The client list is limited on purpose. Right now: two seats open.
Recent clients
These are results from specific engagements, not promises. Your site starts from a different place and will compound differently. The Inspection tells you what to realistically expect before you spend anything on the work itself.
| Client | Engagement | Measure | Period | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real-estate management, Chicago | Full overhaul | Organic traffic | 6 months | +800% |
| National rentals company | Ongoing engagement | Qualified organic leads | Year over year | +68% |
| Small business | Overhaul, then contract | Revenue (about $1M) | Year one | +30% |
Real-estate management · Chicago · 6 months
Where they started: a site Google could barely crawl, ranking for almost nothing, invisible for the neighborhoods they serve. What we did: rebuilt the technical foundation, cut the dead pages, and wrote area and service pages around what renters and owners search. The honest part: 800% growth is easier from a low base; that's exactly why the note above exists. The leads were real either way.
National rentals company · multi-market
Where they started: traffic that looked fine on a dashboard and converted like a brochure. What we did: stopped chasing volume, rebuilt the pages around buyers with dates and budgets, and tied every ranking bet to a form fill or a phone call. The honest part: total traffic grew modestly. Qualified leads grew 68%. Those are different numbers, and only one of them pays invoices.
Small business · year one
Where they started: a good business that search treated like it didn't exist. What we did: the whole sequence: foundation, honest keyword picks, fewer-but-better pages, and monthly measurement against revenue instead of rankings. The honest part: the owner's operation deserves most of the credit; they could close what search delivered. We made the phone ring more.
“They didn't just improve our rankings, they got us in front of our preferred clients. The ROI has been undeniable.”
Figures from client analytics and reporting. Real Search Console screenshots are shown on the reference call; the attribution method is explained before you ever pay for anything.
A growing share of your buyers never see a results page. They ask an AI tool, and it recommends businesses it can read, verify, and trust. Getting cited there is a real discipline: structured data, entity signals, content machines can quote. It's also where a current, sharper practice beats a big agency still selling 2019.
Step 1
A buyer asks an AI tool who they should hire, in their own words.
What we do
Content that answers the question AI is asked.
Step 2
It draws on pages it can crawl and parse without guessing.
What we do
Structured data AI engines can parse and cite.
Step 3
It checks who you are against other sources: where you are, who you serve, who vouches for you.
What we do
Entity signals: who you are, where, for whom. Local signals for “near me” and Chicago queries.
Step 4
It recommends a short list. Either you are on it or a competitor is.
What we do
Monthly hand-checks: are you named in the answers?
Proof over promises: this site practices what it sells. Clean crawlable HTML, full schema, an llms.txt, and not one word that requires JavaScript to read. Run your own business through the same test on our first call, free.
Plain words first, trade terms for whoever runs your site.
Most of what an SEO would sell you doesn't fix these. They usually come first, and they decide whether any of the channel work below is worth doing at all.
Offers
You have their attention. What's missing is something to say yes to. We build the offer they can commit to before they leave the room.
offer design · packaging · sales strategy
Positioning
One story instead of several. Which name goes on top, what each brand is for, and how a buyer moves between them without getting lost.
repositioning · brand architecture · messaging
Channel
Often a broker, insurer, or consultant tells them to solve it. We map those relationships and work out which ones send buyers already convinced.
channel strategy · partnerships · referral
Paid
Make CPC meet ROI again. We find where paid earns its place, and where it's covering for something your site should do on its own.
paid media · google ads · paid social
01 · Foundation
We fix the structure underneath everything: speed, the paths crawlers follow, the pages Google never sees. You get a priced fix-list, in order of what matters.
technical seo · core web vitals · crawlability
02 · Intelligence
We look at what people actually search and which fights you can realistically win, including the ones you're better off leaving alone.
keyword strategy · competitive analysis · serp mapping
03 · Content
Fewer pages, each built around a question your buyers ask. If a page isn't earning its place, it gets rewritten or cut.
content strategy · topical authority
04 · Distribution
We make your site easy for search engines and AI tools to read and quote with confidence, so when someone asks for a recommendation, you're in the answer.
structured data · ai answer optimization · local seo
05 · Conversion
Being found is half of it. We work on the part where a visit becomes a customer, which also tells the algorithm to send more people your way.
cro · analytics · attribution
06 · Compounding
We keep it current (refreshing content, watching the numbers, adjusting when Google changes the rules) so year two builds on year one.
content refresh · algorithm updates · maintenance
Number six is the one most agencies leave off the sheet, because it admits the work never runs itself. We'd rather tell you that now than bill you for the surprise later.
Fixed fees. The number before the handshake. No hourly billing. Most engagements land in one of these four; no two businesses need the same thing, so we shape the work around yours.
01 · Start here
Free–$3,500
Scaled to fit · credited toward any build
How findable you are across Google and the AI engines, ending in a written verdict on whether the work is worth doing at all. The first look costs nothing.
02 · Compact
6 weeks
Fixed scope · quoted in the Inspection
For smaller operations: we clear what's blocking you, build the foundation, and show whoever runs your site how to keep it going.
03 · Ongoing
Quarterly
Renewable · priced to scope
For growing companies: a plan that builds quarter over quarter, with monthly reporting tied to revenue rather than dashboard metrics.
04 · Embedded
Advisory
Alongside your in-house team
We work with your people on audits, priorities, and vendor decisions, with the stated goal of training them to not need us.
Why publish a price? Because you shouldn't need a sales call to learn whether you can afford us. The Inspection usually costs less than one month of what you're already spending on ads. If it says the work isn't worth doing, that's the verdict you'll get, in writing, before you owe anything else.
Read before you hire us. We'd rather lose the deal than the reference.
Search builds slowly. If you need revenue in weeks, ads will get you there faster, and we're glad to help point them in the right direction. Come back once the pressure is off.
Some products just don't get searched for. The Inspection checks the real demand data up front, so if nobody is looking, you find out before you've spent anything serious.
If you can't take on more work, more customers just means more people you disappoint. Sort that out first. This will still be here when you're ready.
Search needs upkeep like anything else you rely on. Anyone selling "set it and forget it" SEO is really selling you a repair bill down the road.
If it isn't worth building, the Inspection says so before you owe us anything else.
Thmpsn Digital is an SEO and AI search agency in Chicago, founded by Jonathan Thompson after fifteen years in ministry and language study, then web development, then Orbit Media Studios as an optimization strategist across SEO and conversion.
Digital marketing is a communication problem wrapped in machine infrastructure. Persuasion, and reaching the people worth persuading, is the through-line. Now that AI systems sit in the middle, answering questions and recommending businesses and products, understanding the machinery is an advantage many in this field don't have.
The clients we like best, owner-operators with real businesses, are the ones big agencies serve worst: juniors on the account, retainers that outlive results, reports nobody reads.
You get quality work and a direct number, not delegated tasks and meager results. When a project needs more hands (development, PR), we bring in specialists we trust and stay accountable for the result. When it's the wrong fit entirely, you get the name of someone better suited, free.
Asked by real prospects, and answered the same way here.
The people who scoped it. Whoever diagnoses your site is who fixes it, and who you'll have on the phone six months in. Ask that question everywhere you're shopping — the answer is more revealing than anything in a proposal. At most agencies the people in the pitch are not the people on the account: senior staff win the work, juniors deliver it, and turnover means whoever knows your business changes once or twice a year. None of that is a secret; it just rarely gets said out loud. Where a project genuinely needs skills we don't keep in house (a development sprint, digital PR, photography), we bring in specialists we've worked with and manage them, and you'll see that in the priced plan up front.
First, the Inspection exists to catch that before you spend real money. If the demand isn't there, the verdict says so in writing. If we do the work and a bet misses, you'll see it in the monthly report in plain numbers, along with what we're changing. We can't guarantee rankings; no honest person can. But you will never wonder what happened or wait for a quarterly deck to find out.
Yes, where it's a power tool: research, data crunching, drafts we then rewrite. No, where it's a liability: publishing machine-written pages at scale is exactly the pattern Google and the AI engines are learning to ignore. The strategy and the words that ship are ours. That's what you're paying for.
Honest answer: technical fixes can move things in weeks; content and authority take months; AI-search visibility falls in between and is moving fast. The Inspection gives you a realistic timeline for your site. If you need results faster than search can deliver, we'll say so and point you at ads instead.
Free 30-minute call · no deck · no obligation
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll look at how you're showing up in Google and the AI answers, live while we talk, and tell you honestly whether there's enough here to be worth pursuing, and where we'd start if there is. If it isn't worth it, we'll say so on the call.
The form goes straight to us, not an inbox team. One reply, within one business day.