About our founder -
Chris Sheehy

The Person Behind the Strategy

I didn't start as a designer who learned SEO. I started as a business owner in 1997 who needed the phone to ring. Five times. Across five different companies. I learned SEO, Squarespace, WordPress, Google Ads, and analytics because I had to, not because I wanted to be an "SEO guy." I needed to pay my mortgage.

I spent more than a decade figuring out what actually worked, with my own money and my own risk. I only started offering web design and SEO to regional businesses after I knew it worked on my own businesses first - and because my consulting clients were asking me to build their businesses online, like I had mine. They did, after all, discover me through an online search!

I look at your marketing budget the same way I look at my own: it has to return more than you put into it. I don't care about retainer justification. I care about whether the phone rings, whether the right leads come in, and whether your revenue is steady enough that you stop worrying about it.

Maybe you paid for a beautiful website, and the phone still doesn't ring. Maybe your rankings slipped and you didn't notice until a competitor showed up first. Maybe you tested ChatGPT by asking for a roofer in Bristol - and your business didn’t show up. Whatever happened, throwing more money at it isn't the answer. And returning to the same people to fix it - who built it - doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Experience Pays Dividends

I've been doing SEO since 1997, before Google was even a company, when it was still a Stanford project called "BackRub." I started running Google Ads in the early 2000s, right when it launched in the US. I was building with IBM's Watson AI in 2018, five years before ChatGPT made AI a household word. This was before smartphones, before social media - heck, when I started out, my fax machine was my marketing machine.

You learn a lot when you've been doing something this long. You start to see the same patterns come back around, the same mistakes every time a platform rolls out a new feature everyone panics about. The fundamentals don't actually change, even when the buzzwords do. You can't read your way into that kind of experience, not even from a page like this one. It's lived. And as I like to say, experience pays dividends.

Here's the short version of my 30 years getting here:

  • Before search (1997 and earlier): I spent over a decade running businesses in the automotive and insurance industries before I ever touched SEO professionally, including my own appraisal firm and a regional role managing dozens of franchise locations. That's where I learned to read a P&L, cut costs that didn't matter, and protect what did. Nothing teaches you how to talk to a business owner like being one first.

  • Building the playbook (1997 to 2009): I spent these years learning search from the ground up, including building and selling a niche vertical search engine for the auto industry called CollisionVision. It eventually became obsolete as the technology moved on, but the brand name still lives on in that industry today, and the project taught me how to build something specific enough to actually solve a real problem.

  • Proving it works at scale (2009 to 2022): I founded Sidewalk Branding Co. and grew it into one of the region's most recognized SEO and digital marketing agencies, with clients that spanned industries across the globe (see the list). We earned "Top Web Development Firm" from Providence Business News and "Top Startup in New England" from Mass High Tech along the way. In 2022, I exited Sidewalk through an acquire-to-hire deal with Brave River Solutions, which is about as strong a proof point as it gets that the work held up under someone else's due diligence.

  • Running it for someone else (2022 to 2025): I led that digital services department, continuing the same SEO, PPC, and AI search work for local and regional businesses. In 2025, that work earned me a Rhode Island Tech10 Award recipient honor, the first ever given to someone from the search and digital marketing industry.

  • Omni Search Labs (December 2025 to present): I founded OSL to get back to doing what I've always done best: working directly with micro and small businesses that need real, sustainable leads and revenue, not a one-time jumpstart. No account managers, no handoffs, no junior strategists running point on your account. You work directly with me and the playbook I've spent 30 years building.

Teaching Is in My DNA

My experience has been tested and grown in the classroom as well as in the field. Here's where that's shown up:

  • Rhode Island School of Design (RISD): Created curriculum and instructed and SEO and digital marketing class.

  • New England Tech: Advised on curriculum for their Web Development program and lectured on data ethics for their IT Master's program.

  • University of Rhode Island: Graduate program digital marketing consultant.

  • Columbia and Johnson & Wales Universities: Subject matter expert on entrepreneurship studies.

  • Rhode Island Polaris MEP: Manufacturing SEO and digital marketing workshops, featured in a NIST success story.

  • American Marketing Association (AMA), Sail America Conference, and Search Engine Marketing New England (SEMNE): Presented on SEO, PPC, and schema markup implementation to working marketers and industry groups.

  • Auburn, Mercer, Morehouse, and St. John's Universities: Published contributor on marketing-major career strategies and AI-era search.

Teaching is in my DNA. I've spent as much time explaining how this work gets done as I have doing it, and that's exactly the kind of transparency I bring to every client relationship.

Why "Labs"?

Marketing shouldn't be a guessing game. It takes art, experimentation, and science to get it right. That's the reason for the name. I've been doing this for 30 years with all kinds of businesses. There is no magic here. Just process, discipline, and our EQUATE Writing Framework.

Recognition, Press & Publications

Awards & Industry Recognition (merit based, not fluff)

I've also written for or been cited by Search Engine Journal, MarketingProfs, Social Media Today, GoLocalProv, Databox, GoodFirms, and Marketer Magazine, and contributed career and AI-era search guidance for Auburn University, St. John's University, Morehouse College, and Mercer University. See the full As Seen On page for every citation, syndication, and recognition.

Beyond Client Work

Beyond client work, I put real time into giving back to the small business community that made my own career possible.

I serve as a SCORE Rhode Island volunteer Subject Matter Expert and a mentor through the Small Business Administration and Start-Up RI, helping small-business owners work through the same challenges I once faced myself. It echoes my earlier volunteer work with the RI Small Business Development Center, where I provided free website assessments to Rhode Island small and medium businesses, plus pro bono website and SEO work for local nonprofits through United Way RI and Brave River's community initiatives. I've also presented to marketing majors at Rhode Island College, a chance to speak candidly with the people building tomorrow's tools about what we owe the people on the other side of the screen.

Beyond the Screen

I'm a New Englander, a New Haven area native (home of apizza!) transplanted to East Providence over 30 years ago, and I genuinely live and breathe this market. I also volunteer with I-CAR, administering auto repair certification exams and helping ESL and literacy-challenged trade professionals get through their testing, a small way to make sure hard-working people don't get left behind by paperwork. When I'm not auditing a site or keeping up with the latest SEO developments, I'm probably out for a drive in my old car, wrenching on a classic project in the garage, grabbing a cabinet (not a milkshake) with my wife, debating (and testing) who has the best pizza, or spending time with my family at Blount's Clam Shack digging into some stuffies with chouriço (which, sadly, is no longer on the menu).

I believe in doing the hard work, being brutally honest, and doing the job right the first time.

Ready for what kind of conversation? You don't need more jargon. You need someone who speaks your language and actually gives a damn about your bottom line.

See What Our Clients Say | Start the Conversation

Chris Sheehy - restaurant
The front cover of the Rhode Island Monthly magazine features Chris Sheehy of Omni Search Labs. He is the first recipient of the Rhode Island Tech10 award from the SEO industry in 2025.
Chris Sheehy - founder - Omni Search Labs 0n URI campus
Chris Sheehy, founder Omni Search Labs smiling, sitting in a workshop or garage in the engine bay of a sunfire yellow 1968 Barracuda car.

About OSL

Our Mission

To ensure the Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts businesses that deserve to be found actually appear across every search engine, AI tool, map, and voice assistant where their customers are already looking.

For businesses that deserve to be found online but aren't, it's rarely because the website is terrible. It's typically because the way search and artificial intelligence work has changed faster than most sites and content have kept up, especially for small and mid-sized businesses.

That's the gap OSL exists to close. I provide big business strategy and advanced search knowledge that fit micro and small business budgets, ensuring you get the visibility you deserve. This is my primary focus.

The Name

"Omni" comes from the Latin omnis, meaning "everywhere."

"Search" is both an action and a destination. Each question asked, answer discovered, and business located defines this space. It's omnipresent and serves as the foundation of my work.

"Labs" reflects my approach. I treat your strategy like a laboratory: form a hypothesis, test it, verify with data, and iterate. I embrace the idea that failure is simply part of the innovation process. The Kaizen mindset of continuous improvement is woven into how I operate. If I'm not occasionally failing, I'm not testing the limits to find what actually succeeds for your business.

"I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (Thomas Edison)

After 30 years in digital marketing, I've found more than a few of those failures myself, along with a lot of what works. Like any investment, there are ups and downs in the market and in the strategies, I test, but it's the long-term outlook where real progress occurs.

Experience brings tangible results. That's not just a slogan. It's 30 years of SEO, 26 years of Google Ads, and eight years of working with AI compounding into the playbook you're hiring.

The EQUATE Framework

The six hexagons in the OSL logo aren't just decorative. Each one represents a core pillar of the EQUATE framework. This framework is the blueprint I use to ensure your strategy meets the highest standards for search and AI platforms, as well as your future customers.

  • Expertise: Showcasing your deep knowledge and professional skills in your specific field.

  • Quality: Crafting clear, helpful, and well-structured content that directly answers your customers' questions.

  • Uniqueness: Highlighting what makes your business distinct and bringing your original perspective to the table.

  • Authority: Establishing your reputation as a reliable, go-to source in your industry.

  • Trust: Building a transparent and secure foundation that gives your audience absolute confidence in your business.

  • Experience: Demonstrating your first-hand, real-world practice and history with your products or services.

Our Vision

A world where search sparks curiosity, creates opportunity, and inspires continuous improvement for businesses and searchers alike.

Chris Sheehy, from Omni Search Labs (OSL), is depicted in a relaxed setting, casually seated in a chair and holding an Old-Fashioned cocktail in a crystal whisky glass.

  • Most agencies treat SEO as one line on a long list of services. At Omni Search Labs, search visibility — across Google, Maps, and AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — is all I do, and you work directly with the founder, not an account manager.

  • We structure your content using the EQUATE framework so both search engines and AI systems can understand, trust, and recommend you, which means more of the right leads find you when they ask for what you do.

  • We'll spend 30 minutes walking through where my agency tools show you showing up now, where you're invisible, and what's blocking you from getting more calls, form submissions, and sales — no jargon, no pressure, and no slide deck. Just a B2B conversation about your business.

FAQ