Is Rank and Rent Legal? (Tested Across 7000 Students) |IPPEI

Updated On 2022-07-27

The rank and rent business model is legit. It’s legal to create a website and offer a service such as tree care, limousine rental, paving, plumbing, etc., even though you don’t own the actual business. It’s also legal to rank a website on Google for the keywords relevant to the niche and service you’re offering.

When people call the tracking number you place on your website, which is also legal to have, your client receives the phone calls and provides them with a legal service. In the process, you get paid a commission each month. You’re simply facilitating the generation of leads for a local small business. You’re an asset to the local community and economy by ranking and renting lead generation websites which support local small businesses.

Lead generation websites are like billboards, but on the internet. A business like Starbucks can have multiple storefronts. Why not a local business owner? Creating a website and ranking it on Google does the same thing. It’s just another digital storefront.

We have a local lead generation coaching program that began in 2014. Today, it has over 7400 students and not one of them has gotten into any legal trouble for generating leads and helping local small businesses. Many students have been able to scale to 6-figures and many more are passively making thousands of dollars each month with sites like this tree care site that has paid me $2000 per month ever since I built and ranked it.

Local lead generation

Our clients treat our sites like if they own multiple business names, which is also legal to have.

Still, some people are skeptical about rank and rent.

Things You Can Do To Remain Completely Safe

What then to do if you’re a bit skeptical? If you’re still paranoid but love that you can earn a passive income with this business model and want to take extra measures for your peace of mind, here are some things we recommend you do to remain completely safe.

In the footer section of your website, you can put a disclaimer stating that the purpose of your website is to generate leads. Nothing more.

By doing this, no one can say you’re using shady marketing techniques. Most times, though, people won’t be calling asking what your site is about. In the local lead generation training , you’re taught how to make it clear what you’re offering.

If someone contacts your site, their intent to buy is already high and they just need a service to be done.

2) Avoid Contractor Niches That Require a License

Many states require contractors to display their local contractors’ license on any marketing material they release. This includes business cards, billboards, other marketing material, and yes, on websites. If you aren’t a licensed contractor, you won’t have a license number to display.

To get around this, you can simply avoid those niches and go for niches that don’t require your clients to have a license. Here are some ideas…

Carpet Cleaning
Pool Cleaning
Pressure Washing
Moving
Photography
Accounting
Appliance Repair
Auto Detailing
Beauty Salon
Catering Services and more.

3) Add a Contractor’s License Later

If you still want to go after niches that require a contractor to display their license, you can simply add it to your site after you land a client.

Many students in the local lead generation coaching program have had no issues adding the contractor’s license after they landed a client. Once they close a deal, they just tell their client they’ll display the number on the site. After all, it is the contractor himself who will perform the service. The license # isn’t anyone else’s.

4) Register Your Lead Gen Business Name with a DBA

Another great way to add more legitimacy to your lead generation business is to register with a DBA ( Doing Business As ) in the market your lead gen site is in.

This is a simple process that allows you to do business with your lead generation site under your LLC. You can do this for each digital property and they cost anywhere from $10-$60+ depending on the market your lead gen site is in. This method has given some students a peace of mind moving forward because your local town now recognizes your lead generation business.

The Basic Rank and Rent Process is Legal

The basic rank and rent process is legal. Let’s analyze the 5 important steps that you need to follow and see if there’s anything shady about them.

1. Finding a Profitable Niche is legal

Riches are in the obscure niches
Target niches in cities of 70K-300K in population; this ensures there will be plenty of online traffic
Avoid niches where the top 3 spots have over 80 reviews in the Google Business Profiles
There should be at least 10 companies doing business in that city when doing a local search
Your website and citations should be indexed before you verify a GBP

2. Building your Assets (The Website & GBP) is legal

Use a simple website builder like Snapps instead of WordPress. Add at least 1000 words on the homepage of your site, after doing keyword research, sprinkle in keywords relevant to your niche, add your phone tracking number at the top of the page, and an email contact form towards the top as well. Nothing illegal here.

Creating your Google Business Profile is very easy and Google themselves show you how to do it in the following video.

You will need a physical address so that you can receive your verification code from Google in the mail. You can use your own address or a friend’s address for your first couple of sites. Again, there is no internet police, so using a friend’s address isn’t illegal.

Once you get the code in the mail, you go back to your GBP, enter the code and you’re done. Now, you’re verified and your Business Profile can be seen on Google maps.

Back when the local lead generation training program started, you could verify your Google My Business Profiles using a UPS mailbox. In 2025, that no longer works because Google wants an actual residential or commercial address.

Another method to get a Business Profile verified is to go on Craigslist and pay someone $50 to receive the postcard for you. This has worked for me many times and I’ve never been fined or sent to jail. Not even a citation.

3. Optimizing your Assets (SEO, Citations, etc.) is legal

After you’ve chosen your niche, built your digital properties, and verified your Google Business Profile, you need to rank them. This is where SEO techniques come into play.

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is done by adding backlinks and citations. Backlinks are simply votes that your site gets from other influential websites, which increases Google’s trust in your site and boosts your ranking. Citations in SEO are the Name, address, and phone number of your business listed anywhere on the internet. Backlinks and citations are a good thing on the internet.

Ways to get more Backlinks

Guest link posts
Forum and blog comment links
Private Blog Network Links

The idea is to get more backlinks, or votes, than your competitors. But not all backlinks are the same. For example, in Hollywood, there are different levels of actors. Getting a vote from Tom Cruise would differ from getting a vote from a no-name background actor.

When scouting for backlinking opportunities, steer clear of getting links from places like Fiverr or anyone that offers you many links for cheap. These are not quality links and will hurt your digital rental property in the rankings. If you go for spammy links, you won’t go to jail, but you will negatively affect how Google views your site.

In our training program , we have link circles to help each other get high-quality links from other sites in the same niche but different markets.

4. Prospecting (Results in Advance)

The best way to prospect for potential customers is to send leads in advance. Our call tracking software has more features than other call tracking systems like Callrail. Once calls start flooding your ranked website, you forward them to a business you’re prospecting.

By sending them free leads for a week or so, you’re easily proving your worth to them. Not getting paid to send leads to a business owner isn’t illegal. It’s a gesture to gain trust. You have nothing lose because you own your lead generation site and will continue generating leads.

The Results in Advance strategy makes it easy to break the ice, close a potential client, and dictate how much you’re going to rent your lead generation site for. There’s no need to cold call or know much about sales.

Watch this 5 minute video of Dan Klein talking about Results in Advance.

5. Scaling

By the time you’ve ranked and rented 5-10 sites, it’s time to scale as a digital landlord because you have enough cash flow to do so. Here are some scaling tips to follow.

Hire & train VAs to build sites, Google Business Profiles, and prospect.
Use Time Doctor to record your VAs work
Automate payments for each tenant you have
Set and stick to goals

After you get your first lead generation sites ranked and rented, you’ll see how simple the process can be and that you aren’t doing anything illegal.

For a deeper dive into these 5 steps, read my article, Rank & Rent: 5 Step Guide (6 Figure Passive Income Blueprint) .

Top 3 Ranking Factors

Optimized Website Title; have your main keyword and city as far left as possible in the title. Then add other keywords to get a better chance at roofing (Ex. Newington Roofing: Connecticut Roof Repair & Replacement (Commercial or Residential) Affordable Prices). Try to do the same for your domain name.
Authoritative Content; provide useful content that a potential buyer of that service will need to know. Take your niche and search it in larger cities like New York, Chicago or Dallas, since those are competitive cities. If a site ranks well in those cities, the content will be great. Take the best aspects of those sites and implement it in yours.
Create a Digital Footprint with Social Media Marketing; create social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Twitter, and YouTube. Set a schedule to post on those platforms. This tells Google you’re not a spam site and you’re legitimately going to be doing business. Creating social media profiles is also perfectly legal.

Your SEO efforts will pay off if you stick to them closely. To view the rest of the list of critical ranking factors, read my article on the 8 Critical Ranking factors for 2025 .

Top Choice to Learn Rank and Rent

The top choice to learn rank and rent is the local lead generation training program by Dan Klein.

I joined in 2014 and have reached a monthly passive income of over $50K per month for creating sites like this limousine rental site.

Within this training program, you learn how to run an efficient, perfectly legal, local lead generation business. You’re taught everything from niche selection and site build out to proper optimization, prospecting and more. What’s even more valuable are the contacts and resources that are at your fingertips once you’re a part of the private community. Also, every week, there are two live coaching calls where we continue to improve our lead gen, digital marketing and sales skills.

Those calls are valuable because we always stay up to date with our legal strategies and stay connected as a community. We always continue to motivate and push each other to continue growing our businesses by changing the lives of those we work with. Those being the local small business owners we send leads to.

Over 7400 students have joined this training program to date. They continue building out their digital real estate and closing deals with local business owners who understand the value in what we do.

The goal is to have financial freedom and the skills you learn in the program are the key to that.

To learn how to earn a passive income, check out the local lead generation training and start making a difference in your community.