Houston, TEXAS, July 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The SEO Contractor is a digital marketing agency that serves contractors and home-service businesses exclusively. The agency announced today that it has earned its fifth active SEO credential. Semrush Academy issued two certifications directly to The SEO Contractor: the AI Search Operating System certification and the Semrush SEO Crash Course with Brian Dean. Both certificates carry the agency's name, are publicly verifiable on semrush.com, and remain valid through July 2027. The agency's full list of credentials, including verification links, is published at https://seoforcontractors.agency/certifications/.
The agency's team also holds the AEO Fundamentals certification from HubSpot Academy, valid through August 2028. AEO stands for answer engine optimization. The HubSpot certification confirms the ability to build search strategies for AI-powered answer engines, structure content to earn AI citations, and measure brand visibility across those platforms.
The team's university credentials come from the University of California, Davis. The UC Davis Search Engine Optimization Specialization is a five-course program offered through Coursera, and it culminates in a capstone consulting project. The agency's team completed the full specialization, along with the standalone Advanced Content and Social Tactics to Optimize SEO course.
Semrush's AI Search Operating System program covers how AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews discover, evaluate, and cite content. The SEO Contractor applies this training to a single question: when a homeowner asks an AI assistant which roofer, plumber, or electrician to hire, which contractor gets named?
"Homeowners are not just typing 'roofer near me' into Google anymore. They ask ChatGPT who to hire," said Eric St-Cyr, Founder and SEO Strategist at The SEO Contractor. "Most contractors are invisible in those answers. We got certified in AI search before our clients' competitors even knew it existed, because that gap is where the next five years of leads will come from."
The SEO Contractor provides local SEO, PPC management, web design, content marketing, link building, and SEO audits to the trades. The agency serves roofing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, remodeling, and general contracting businesses across North America. Its campaigns are built on the agency's contextual density optimization methodology and are measured against calls, leads, and booked jobs.
About Eric St-Cyr, Founder and SEO Strategist
Eric St-Cyr is the founder and lead SEO strategist behind The SEO Contractor, the contractor-only member of the ProStar SEO family of agencies. He built The SEO Contractor for a single reason: the trades convert search visibility into revenue faster than almost any other sector, and most contractors have no one translating modern search strategy into booked jobs.
Expertise, documented and current.
St-Cyr is the creator of the Contextual Density methodology — the benchmark-driven framework behind every page his agencies build, and the engine behind The SEO Contractor's campaigns. Rather than guess at "quality," the method scripts the contextual density of the pages already ranking for a keyword, then engineers new pages to cover the topic more thoroughly, a standard he can validate page by page. His credentials are independently verifiable and kept current: he and his team hold Semrush Academy's AI Search Operating System certification and the Semrush SEO Crash Course with Brian Dean, HubSpot Academy's AEO Fundamentals certification, and the University of California, Davis Search Engine Optimization Specialization — five active credentials in total, valid through 2027 and 2028. He is a hands-on practitioner who personally works the most complex, competitive accounts and coaches his team through the rest.
Authority built across the web's hardest markets.
Under St-Cyr's direction, ProStarSEO.com has grown into a bilingual group of specialized agencies — ProStar SEO (the multi-industry flagship), Agence SEO Paris, Scalpel SEO, Med SEO, Dentist SEO, CannabisSEO.ai, CasinoSEO.ai, LegalSEO.agency and The SEO Contractor — currently serving more than 100 active clients across North America and Europe, with over 600 businesses helped since the agency's founding. Their largest client earns over 10 million organic clicks a month. The methodology was forged where competition is unforgiving and paid ads are banned or restricted: cannabis and CBD, online gambling, cosmetic surgery. St-Cyr is also a published author on his own author pages across those brands and a recurring guest on business and marketing podcasts — where he breaks down how SEO is evolving with AI and how answer engines decide which businesses to cite.
Trust, by design.
St-Cyr's commitment to being checkable is deliberate. Every credential The SEO Contractor claims is listed with a third-party verification link at seoforcontractors.agency/certifications/, and every certificate is issued in the agency's name. He never promises the number-one position — "anyone who guarantees it is not being straight with you, because no one controls Google's algorithm" — works without long-term contracts, and insists clients understand every action taken on their site. Campaigns are measured against outcomes contractors actually care about: phone calls, qualified leads, and booked jobs, not vanity rankings. The agency maintains a 4.9 out of 5 client rating. His guiding principle is that SEO should be treated like a science: transparent, measurable, and accountable to results.
Connect with Eric St-Cyr on LinkedIn or learn more at https://seoforcontractors.agency/.
About The SEO Contractor
The SEO Contractor is a contractor-only SEO and digital marketing agency. The agency delivers local SEO, PPC, web design, content marketing, link building, and SEO audits under one roof. The SEO Contractor is Semrush-certified in AI search, its team is trained through the UC Davis SEO Specialization, and it maintains a 4.9/5 client rating.
Learn more at https://seoforcontractors.agency/.
Press Inquiries
Eric St Cyr
eric [at] prostarseo.com
5814474376
https://seoforcontractors.agency/
1325 S CREEK DR STE 300
