About Chris

The Person Behind the Strategy

Most local agencies are founded by creatives — designers and developers who love the craft.

Omni Search Labs is different. It’s a Rhode Island SEO and AI search optimization consultancy led by a business owner first, not a marketer — someone who had to learn SEO to pay the bills before ever offering it to anyone else.

I didn’t enter this trade as an agency marketer. I entered it as an entrepreneur who needed to pay my mortgage. I learned SEO, analytics, and digital strategy out of necessity — to grow my own companies first, on my own dime, at my own risk over a decade before pivoting to digital marketing and offering it to other businesses.

When I look at your marketing budget, I see it the way an owner does: as an investment that has to produce a return — more qualified calls, better-fit leads, and steady revenue.

Maybe you paid for a beautiful, functional website — but the phone still doesn’t ring.

Or perhaps your online visibility and rankings have quietly slipped over the last few years. Or maybe you’re noticing competitors show up in AI answers while you’re nowhere to be found and you’re wondering what that’s costing you.

A 29-Year Journey

I’ve been doing SEO since 1997 — before Google was the default search engine — back when it was still a Stanford project called “BackRub.” Over nearly three decades, I’ve founded four companies, navigated two major pivots, and exited my previous Rhode Island SEO agency (Sidewalk Branding Co.) through an acquire‑to‑hire transaction.

  • Innovating Before It Was an Industry (1997): I started by optimizing my own business websites so they would show up first and keep the lights on — long before “SEO agency” was a line item in anyone’s budget.

  • The Exit (2022): I founded Sidewalk Branding Co. in 2009, grew it into a regional SEO and digital marketing leader, and successfully sold the agency in 2022 — proof the strategies worked well enough for another firm to buy and keep.

  • The Academic Side: My experience has been tested in the classroom as well as in the field. I’ve taught SEO and digital marketing at RISD, advise at New England Tech, and have engagements at Rhode Island College, Johnson & Wales, Columbia, and publishing’s at Auburn, and St. John’s about entrepreneurship and search & AI optimization strategies. My mother is a retired high‑school teacher, and my brother is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado Law School — teaching is in my DNA.

Why “Labs”?

Marketing shouldn't be a guessing game. It should be part art, part experiment, and part science.

Omni Search Labs treats your strategy like a laboratory. I form a hypothesis, test it, and verify the results with data — grounded in nearly 30 years of working with hundreds of businesses across diverse industries. There is no "magic" here. There is only process, discipline, and the EQUATE Framework.

Recognition:

Beyond the Screen

I'm a New Englander — New Haven native, transplanted to RI over 30 years ago — who genuinely lives and breathes this market. When I'm not auditing a site or keeping up with the latest SEvO developments, I'm probably out for a drive in my old car, grabbing a cabinet (not a milkshake) with my wife, debating who has the best pizza, or with the family at Blount’s Clam Shack digging into some stuffies — with chourico, obviously.

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

Ready for a different 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.

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Chris Sheehy - restaurant
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

What Shapes Our Brand

Our Mission: To make sure the Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts businesses that deserve to be found actually are — 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 AI work has changed faster than most sites and content have kept up — especially for small and mid-sized businesses. That’s the gap Omni Search Labs exists to close, and it’s the only thing I do.

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

"Search" is both what people do and where they go — a verb and a destination. Every question asked, every answer discovered, every business found: that's search. It's omnipresent, and it's the only thing I do.

"Labs" is how I approach it. I treat your strategy like a laboratory — form a hypothesis, test it, verify it with data, iterate. I embrace the idea that failure is just part of the process of innovation and discovery. The Kaizen mindset of continuous improvement is woven into how I think and operate. Frankly, if I’m not failing some of the time, I’m not pushing hard enough to find what actually works for your business.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. — Thomas Edison

After nearly 30 years in search and digital marketing, I've found more than a few of those failures myself — and 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 returns are made. Experience pays dividends. That's what you're getting when you work with OSL.

Our six core values: The six hexagons in the OSL logo aren't just decorative. Each one stands for one of our six core values: Integrity, Trust, Relationships, Learning, Innovation, and Service. They're the order of operations for how I work with every client. Integrity first, because nothing else holds without it.

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

FAQ

  • 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 15–20 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 B.