SEOblog Interview: Chicago SEO Expert Jeremy Greenberg from 97 Switch

We’re excited to have talked to Chicago SEO expert Jeremy Greenberg from 97 Switch for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series! 97 Switch is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO agencies in Chicago.

Jeremy Greenberg founded 97 Switch in 2013 after discovering just how much he enjoyed solving digital marketing problems for clients. Today, Jeremy continues to take on an active leadership role in his business. He helps people solve a wide range of digital marketing challenges by turning them into opportunities.

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the Chicago SEO industry?

“Chicago is a unique market for many businesses working on their SEO. This is because Chicago is often creating many long standing sustainable businesses, and the people who are working in those businesses often are willing to prioritize long term sustainability rather than just immediate results. This makes many markets in Chicago very competitive for SEO because a lot of businesses are investing resources in helping their long term future. While all big cities are competitive for SEO, Chicago is unique because of the long term sustainable mindset of many businesses compared to some other bigger cities that may have more businesses needing rapid growth. For companies that need rapid growth, they may invest less resources on long term sustainable SEO efforts.”

How does your agency stand out in a crowded market like Chicago?

“97 Switch stands out because we focus on making people happy for long periods of time. We realize making people happy requires that the work we do has to make sense for them and make them better off after. We do this by setting expectations and executing what we say we will do. Because of this, we have a lot of people who are willing to speak about their relationship with us because of the way we help their business.”

Can you share a success story from a local SEO campaign centered around the Chicago area?

“We have partnered with a Chicago hotel that is select service. We realized what made this hotel stand out is the location, quality of service and value people received compared to other hotels in the area. This hotel focuses on making people happy with a great experience for the cost. This helped bring them a lot of positive reviews, which helped their TripAdvisor ranking.

Meanwhile, we started to focus their content around the biggest reason why people visit them, which was to be situated in downtown Chicago. We did this with relevant blog content, social media, and partners we targeted for referral traffic. The blogs talked about things to do in the city and were highly shareable, and the social media posts were often trendy pictures of Chicago locations that also received a lot of shares. Because of a variety of efforts, for a period of time, we had the hotel website have an average rank on Google for 170,000 search with the term “Chicago” be 2.8 position overall in the results.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“Learn how to listen and learn from people.”

What do you think is the most important quality that makes an agency truly great?

“I think an agency is great when it does everything it can to make the people they support successfully happy. It seems it’s easier to make people happy when an agency has a team of people that have curious minds that are great at listening and learning from the people around them.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“The biggest prediction for the future of SEO is that it will require more and more transparency of what is going on in a business. This will be accomplished with creating all kinds of content that does a really good job of telling the story that people are looking for.”

What is your reaction when you hear that “SEO is dying”?

“My reaction is that baseline SEO efforts on a website are becoming less significant. Over time, SEO will be using more and more factors to bring legitimacy to a website. This makes companies consider a more comprehensive approach to helping the SEO of a website.”

What do you think is the most important contributor to keeping clients happy?

“Always delivering what you say you will do.”

Interested in being considered as an SEOblog “Featured SEO Expert”? Reach out to our team at [email protected]! We’d love to hear from you and give you a high-traffic platform to share your SEO agency’s story and insights.