If you are reading this post then my guess is you are doing your due diligence on this rank and rent method that you might be hearing about.
Or maybe you watched one of my rank and rent Youtube videos and you are here to learn more about becoming a digital landlord and making monthly profits from investing in digital real estate.
I have personally been doing local SEO and rank and rent for over 11 years and I have learned a ton over the years. Both the good, the bad and the in between.
I am going to spill the beans and try to add as much value on this topic that I can and my goal here is after you read this complete guide and break down that you completely understand what rank and rent is and how to get started with the right skills and tools for success.
Here is a picture of a check I recently collected from a rank and rent partner.
What Is Rank And Rent?
“Rank and Rent” is a local SEO business model where you build and optimize a local website, landing page and Google Business Profile with a process in place to generate local leads and sell those leads to a relevant local business owner for a monthly price which would be the rental fee.
For example: you build a local website and optimize it for the niche of roofing and for the location servicing Orlando, Florida. Once the website and Google Business Profile is optimized and ranking in the search engine for targeted search intent keywords such as roofers in Orlando you will then start generating inbound leads.
You can now rent this website out to a local roofer in Orlando who will take all those leads and turn them into estimates and jobs.
I mentioned fast and profitable in the title because after 12 years of being in this SEO game I have tried it all and I can honestly say over the last year I have learned the fastest and most profitable way to build your rank and rent business.
The traditional way of rank and rent and the common method in most courses and training is to build a website, wait for the website to rank and once it gets leads then find a client to rent it.
This approach is all wrong and there is a much better way. You see, there is a science to this process and many rank and rent business mistakes start with picking a niche and location.
This mistake can hold you back especially if you are waiting for your digital asset “local website or GMB” to rank. If you pick a saturated competitive niche like roofing along with a popular high population city like “Orlando” you are going to be waiting a long time before you start getting leads coming in.
This can take months to see results or even worse over a year. You see you will not just rank overnight especially if you are in the wrong marketplace.
Listen, I am not saying that roofing is a bad niche because it is not but there are other niches and other cities to build in that are just as profitable and easier to get results.
Many rank and rent courses will teach you to do a shotgun approach and launch multiple rank and rent websites in hopes that one takes off and ranks and gets leads faster than others.
I’ve done this approach as well and let me tell you there is a much better way. What if I told you you could actually save time, resources and energy by being able to test a market quickly to see if it’s profitable?
Yes, there is an actual real solution to this bottleneck that is slowing you down. You must first do your due diligence and identify a profitable niche within a city that meets specific competitive analysis rules.
You will learn more about the best rank and rent niches in my other blog post or you can also watch my Youtube Video on this topic but here are a few quick takeaways of things you want.
- A High Ticket Service And Profitable Service Niche
- A City That Is Not Overpopulated
- Your research Should Reveal That Companies Are Running Paid Ads In This Location
- The Niche Has Companies Already Buying Leads (AngiesList, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Etc…)
- The Websites On Page One Meet Our Rank Metrics (DR, UR, Content, Optimization, Links, Etc…)
Why Do Rank And Rent Model
Rank And Rent is a very lucrative and low overhead online business model compared to other online business opportunities.
It is one of those opportunities that once you develop specific skills and understanding you can start implementing and creating revenue fast.
There is no buying of inventory, no trying to drop ship a trending item, no flipping furniture and all the other crazy “side hustles”.
This is NOT a side hustle, this is a real business and people are making thousands of dollars by providing a real legit service that is not going anywhere any time soon.
You will learn local SEO and leverage this skill to build a profitable digital asset.
Benefits Of Rank And Rent Business
Unlike a traditional SEO Agency when you do rank and rent you do not need to worry about trying to convince your client you can produce results.
With rank and rent you are literally giving results in advance. You are providing the local business owner with exactly what they want, which is more business.
Another huge benefit is that you are investing in a piece of digital real estate that you fully control and own the asset. If your client decides to stop the service you can easily find someone else that wants all those leads.
It is night and day compared to running or starting a marketing agency for local clients.
Here is a quick list of the best benefits of running a rank and rent business
- Low Overhead
- Low Investment To Get Started
- High Profit Margins
- Work From A Laptop
- SEO Work Can Be Easily Outsourced
- You Can Pre Sell And Start Bringing In Revenue
- You Own The Digital Asset (It Can Never Be Taken From You)
How Do I Get Started With Rank And Rent
If you are a beginner to rank and rent then this blog post is a great place to start so that you start to understand more about the ins and outs of everything.
Also watch my youtube videos and absorb some of the lingo and free information. I do have step by step training that is really focused on ranking your local assets leveraging solid local SEO skills.
The one thing that I do not want you to do is just go through my training and keep building local assets. This is again “the common mistake.”
Instead, I would suggest that you do your niche and location analysis. Pick at least two niches and cities that look profitable and sustainable.
Once you have a niche and city you can then get your feet web by building out an optimized rank and rent website and Google maps listing.
Quick tip: Once you have a basic website up you can jump start traffic with a paid local ppc campaign which helps test that local market and fast forward you to start selling.
If you read the step by step rank and rent guide down below it will explain better on how to get started.
If you are someone that already has been in rank and rent and has digital assets that are producing leads but no client then you need to step up your sales process and framework.
You have money that is waiting to be collected. This is common…
Fastest Way To Close A Rank And Rent Client
The fastest way to close a rank and rent client is to use the pre selling approach. This is how the pre selling approach works. You find a niche and location after you do your due diligence.
Once you feel you found a niche and city that meets the parameters mentioned below in the rank and rent guide then you set up a PPC Campaign to start generating leads.
As soon as you get a quality inbound lead you want to contact a local service provider for your niche and give him the lead.
Give this local service business 3-5 leads for free and make sure they are actually getting these exclusive leads and going on the estimates.
A great thing to do before turning on your local PPC Ads is to make a list of potential clients that would be interested in your leads. Keep a spreadsheet and organized list of these potential clients so you can easily call them as soon as leads start coming in.
It is important that you frame the business owner from the beginning that these are quality leads, your business is important and that you are in control.
Remember you have the most important thing for a business owner to thrive. Once you send the business owner a taste of how good your leads are you want to jump on a scheduled call to discuss how you can work together.
This is where you make the close. There are many ways to make money with rank and rent including:
- Flat Fee Model: This is where you offer a no brainer flat monthly fee for your client to receive all the leads that you generate. This price will never change even during the busy season or slow season.
- Pay Per Lead Model: This is where you charge the client for every qualified lead that comes through your pipeline.
- Commission Deal: This model is structured for you to receive a commission on every job that closes.
- Affiliate Model: Receive a small fee for every lead you generate for a larger lead broker.
I have tried all these models and I can say hands down the flat fee is the best way to run this business and scale.
Don’t get me wrong I have had success with all of these models but I learned and pivoted to only focus on the flat fee model which allows me to be able to close more and scale.
There are just too many bottlenecks in the other business models. Pay per lead is time consuming. You have to count every lead and make sure they are quality otherwise your client will be nagging you about the price.
Also once you have a big month of high volume leads you can easily sticker shock your client with a high bill. We are dealing with local business owners, not big companies with venture capitalists backing them.
I know what you are thinking, the commission deal sounds great. You are right, you can make big money if you are working in a high ticket industry and you can get a nice cut of each closed job.
The issue with this model is if you are planning to scale, how are you going to keep track of all the jobs that closed, started, completed and how much was collected.
This type of model requires incredible trust and I suggest unless you are going to be an active partner with someone you personally know then stay away from this. ( I have been burned and had to collect)
Last but not least the affiliate model I thought was an excellent solution for so many things. Unfortunately these big vendors who will buy your leads and phone calls offer very low commissions and they are not 100 percent reliable.
For example, we generated HVAC leads for repairs and new installs and a HUGE VENDOR who would buy leads from us and resell them would occasionally only pay $3.00 to us for a lead that was worth at least $40.
Once we noticed this through our payment dashboard we quickly realized the juice is not worth the squeeze.
This is why I pivoted and focused only on flat fee deals. Go directly to a hungry local business owner and let them taste what you can deliver. This allows you to create a win-win relationship with a local business owner who needs your leads.
You put a credit or debit card on file and charge a fair fee every month and just keep their phone ringing. This is great for closing, scaling and retention rate.
It’s really one of the best ways to be a digital landlord.
Rank And Rent SEO Overview And Mindset
If you are looking for an online business opportunity then this could be the business model that finally hits home.
Like I mentioned earlier I have been doing local search engine optimization for 12 years. I have helped local businesses 4x their bottom line.
SEO is an incredible skill to have. Search engines like Google which is the biggest one of them all getting 5.6 Billion searches every single day.
I am sure if you think about the last time you were looking for a specific product, service or local restaurant you most likely jumped on over to Google and did a search.
With rank and rent you can take advantage of this and position your digital asset in front of some of these very specific searches.
I have done it with success time and time again.
Yes, big billion dollar companies like Home Advisor and Angie’s List understand the importance of driving leads to local business owners.
We are doing the exact same thing but with a more disruptive innovative approach.
I know you may be thinking but how can I compete if big companies and other marketers are jumping in.
Do not have a scarcity mindset, there are plenty of niches, locations and ways to generate these leads.
I even share some of my digital assets live in my training because again there is room for all of us.
Do not use the skill of SEO to only build clients assets up. They can end up canceling and all your hard work and effort will be left with them.
Instead use SEO to invest into your own online assets and turn around and rent them out for a recurring fee that builds cash flow and opportunity to invest into more of these digital real estate properties.
Step By Step Rank And Rent Beginners Guide
STEP 1. Pick A Niche: (This can make or break your first Rank And Rent Website)
STEP 2. Pick A City Location: (You want to be in the city that has the right parameters. If it is your first Rank And Rent website we want it to be not that competitive but coincides with a Niche that brings in calls.)
STEP 3. Selecting The Correct Domain Name: (Emotional Selected Branded domains will slow you down! You want keyword rich EMDs or Partial Match)
STEP 4. Conversion Optimized Website Design: (Our Designs convert! What good is traffic if no one is calling or filling out your forms?) You want a clean and simple design with the right call to actions and optimization.
Someone looking for a service just wants an estimate. Make it easy for them to get in touch in a fast convenient way.
STEP 5. Tracking: (Phone Number, Forms, Google Search Analytics and Insights) (You are in COMPLETE CONTROL when you have this all set up correctly)
An important and incredible feature about rank and rent is the ability to track everything.
All of the inbound leads that you generate will be captured.
There are plenty of good call tracking softwares you can use that will get the job done.
CallRail is one of the most popular and reliable.
This will allow you to pick a local phone number, set it up for call recording and tracking for your rank and rent business.
Now anytime a lead calls in your call tracking dashboard will capture it.
For form leads what we like to do is use a customizable wordpress form plugin.
We make sure that both our client and our company lead managers email are both on the form output.
This allows both our client to get that form lead and our google spreadsheet that we have tracking all form leads that come in.
Not only do you have a valuable asset but you have absolute control and every inbound potential job that you created for your client is tracked.
STEP 6. Add All The Specific On Page SEO: Key On Page Optimization Elements
- A well written piece of content about your services
- Optimized Images (File, ALT Text and GEO Tag)
- Page Title And Headings Keyword Optimized
- Internal Linking
- Google Map Embed
- Name, Address & Phone Number On The Website
STEP 7. Build Off Page SEO: (Quality and Relevance is KEY! Look at what your top competitors are doing)
It’s time to treat this like a real brand. You want to build out all the important business listings that your rank and rent brand should be on.
For example: YellowPages, Yelp and Manta are just a few core business listing citations where you can place all of your business info.
Name, address, phone number, logo and a link back to your website.
You can use SEO tools like Whitespark, SemRush or Ahrefs to reverse engineer your competitors backlink profile and find important citations you should also be on.
Another important off page element is to build all your social media brand profiles such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, Etc…
These will also have all your business information along with a backlink back to your website.
This is what we call foundational link building.
If you did good niche and city research sometimes what we discussed above is enough to get you ranking page 1.
If you are in a tougher more competitive niche you may have to build more of a robust backlink profile which can include guest posts, web 2.0s and press releases.
STEP 8. Find Potential Clients Who Are Already Buying Leads: Create a list of local business owners who spend advertising money. If you do a quick Google search around the terms that your rank and rent property is optimized for you will see local businesses spending advertising dollars on PPC.
You will also see business owners listed on Home Advisor or Thumbtack or even businesses buying ad space on Yelp. These are potential partners for your business because this is a direct sign that they want what you can provide “more business”
Put these potential partners in an organized list. As soon as you get a quality lead from your rank and rent property start calling your list and give this lead off to a business owner that is hungry to grow.
Let them taste the quality of your exclusive leads. Quick Tip: Make sure they are getting the leads and going on the estimate.
STEP 9. Once A Few Calls Go Through, Follow Up And Work Out A Deal With A Potential Client: Once you send 3-5 really good quality leads to this business owner make sure you follow up and tell them it’s time to talk business.
Ask them what time tomorrow will you be free to talk so we continue to send over these jobs? Do not send more than 5 leads max. Start asking for this call after 3 really good leads but if the business owner is busy that next day let them know that you will need to have a call the following day or you will need to move on.
If you handed this business owner exclusive, quality leads he will show up to that call otherwise you move to the next potential renter.
If you make enough calls and frame it right you will get a deal. Remember these businesses are already spending money somewhere else in the effort to grow. All you have to do is convince them that their money is better spent with you.
STEP 10. Rinse And Repeat! This is the beauty about this business model. You get to take your cash flow profits and put them back into more rank and rent digital assets and continue selling local business owners to become your tenants.
WANT This 10 Step Rank And Rank Checklist
Download The Checklist Here
Best Rank And Rent Courses And Training
When it comes to the top training for rank and rent I can only recommend two options. First and foremost I do not want to sound biased but I have training around rank and rent.
I cannot recommend any other training because I have never taken a course on this topic. I started SEO about 12 years ago and started to dabble with this model on my digital online business journey.
Again, I made plenty of mistakes and made major adjustments. I can say I recently had an inside glimpse of an incredible high level coaching program on rank and rent and it’s for a very select type of person.
My rank and rent course really is focused on the skill set of finding your niche and building your asset with local SEO in mind.
One of the important skills is getting your rank and rent website and Google Business Profile to rank for the main keywords that produce inbound qualified leads.
This specific coaching program I am talking about is high level sales and in depth training and coaching to get you to close clients fast!
It is really for the individuals who want to build a real scalable business and are ready to invest at all means to build a digital empire.
I always suggest you watch all my Youtube videos on Rank And Rent and learn everything you can to make sure this is something you want to do.
If you decide you want to be a digital landlord you can check out my training which covers everything you need to know to rank an asset but if you are looking for coaching to get you to that next level then click the button below to book a call with someone from my team.
If you join the high level coaching you will receive all of my local SEO training and rank and rent tips along with that high level coaching on sales, processes and shortcut to success.
Rank And Rent FAQ’s
What is local business SEO? Local Business SEO is the strategy that we implement in rank and rent to get a local website and Google Business Profile to rank in the top of the search engine for targeted local searched keyword terms.
How do you make money on rank and rent? There is a few ways to make money with rank and rent. You can make commission deals, pay per lead, pay per estimate or even charge a flat monthly rental fee.
Is rank and rent local lead generation? Yes, rank and rent use local lead generation as its model to monetize and make money.
What are the dos and don’ts for the rank and rent website business model? Do not get caught up building a bunch of sites and not taking sales action. Do not jump into highly competitive niches because you heard someone made money in them. Start researching and doing due diligence for a good niche and city location. pick only 1 or 2. Make a list of potential business owners. Verify a GMB or run paid ads and see how it goes. If leads come in go into selling mode.
Do I need a technical background or marketing to start rank and rent? No you do not need a technical background at all. You can use WordPress and drag and drop templates to build a quick website. Join some good rank and rent or local SEO training that provides over the shoulder training and just implement what you learn. Watching and implementing processes that have worked before is the easy shortcut to being successful with any business model.
How Easy is it to rank a website? You always want to look at competition but if you do really good upfront with research you can rank within a few months. But paid ads can always help jump start.
How much does it cost to rank a rank and rent website? The average rank and rent website cost $700 to fully build, optimize and rank.
Is there a rank and rent course? Yes, you can check out the course mentioned above or just visit learn.mymediapal.com
Should I give rank and rent SEO a try? If you are fully ready to commit to build an online business and become a digital landlord than I would say this is a perfect opportunity to give it your all.
Is rank and rent SEO difficult? It is only as difficult as you make it. I would say any job can be difficult. Most people who are working a 9-5 have difficult tasks that they must implement ever single day. A lot of times we get in our own heads about things. This is a business and skill that anyone can learn as long as they are willing too.
Rank And Rent Review And My Last Two Cents
Of Course my review on rank and rent is absolutely positive. It can be a life changer if the business model is implemented correctly.
There are plenty of success stories in the rank and rent game. Some of our students are crushing it.
This business concept has to be treated just like any other business venture. If you are jumping in thinking this is easy and involves no work at all then I suggest you stop right here.
There is no business that makes money and provides a quality service without learning a skill and implementing that skill.
What is incredible about the rank and rant business is that you literally can use your clients money to invest into cash flowing digital assets quickly.
I have assets that profit almost 100% every month. What other business model allows you to get in with a low investment and provides returns like this?
That is my two cents on rank and rent or as some would call it rent and rank.
