Rank and Rent Websites Guide PLUS 5 Real Examples

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Rank and Rent Websites Guide PLUS 5 Real Examples

September 2, 2024

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Rank and rent websites allow you to generate online income by renting out your website space to businesses who want marketing support. The rank and rent business model is especially popular among SEO professionals because it relies on the ability to rank websites on the first page of Google. However, rank and rent is simple enough that anyone can do it. Creating websites these days is incredibly easy with no-code website builders like WordPress enabling anyone to throw up a professional looking website in a matter of hours.

Although creating rank and rent websites is much cheaper than buying and renting real properties, the income potential is about equal in many cases. The average home in the United States costs $417,700, according to The Motley Fool, with the average rent at just $1,372, based on data from Apartment list. On the other hand, a local lead generation rank and rent website costs just a few hundred dollars to set up, and can bring in up to $3,000 per month in income. This guide breaks down rank and rent websites in depth, helping you to understand how millionaire online entrepreneurs like Matt Diggity and Dan Klein have leveraged this business model to create wealth and freedom.

What are rank and rent websites?

Rank and rent websites are websites created to generate income through local lead generation services. Rank and rent websites earn income by attracting customers for local service business in specific geographic locations and sending those customers to a real local business who pays a fee for the leads. Many local business owners are happy to pay for leads from a rank and rent website because organic website traffic is a reliable and efficient marketing channel. Instead of a local business owner investing into this marketing channel themself, they can just partner with a site that has already proven the ability to generate customer leads.

How do rank and rent websites work?

Rank and rent websites work by using local SEO tactics, like setting up a Google My Business (GMB) profile and building local citations, to get a website to rank at the top of Google for local search queries. Once the website ranks, a local lead generation website owner partners with a local service business to take the leads in exchange for money. Rank and rent websites capitalize on the fact that SEO professionals are more capable digital marketers than many local business owners are.

Local SEO campaigns work well because they are substantially less competitive than global SEO campaigns. You only need to compete with a handful of small business owners for local traffic in a specific location rather than competing against any website accross the internet.

5 Real Rank and Rent Website Examples

1. Grand Rapids Tree Care

ippei kanehara lead generation success story

In the last 7 years, I have built and ranked over 80 sites and currently have 55 paying business owners. If you're wondering what an Ippei rank and rent site looks like, below is an example of an asset I built following Dan's Rank and Rent training. It is a tree care site that I ranked in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

My Grand Rapids Tree Care site took about 15 hours to build and rank and the overhead costs were around $500. My tree care site has paid me $2000 every month for over 8 years. That's a total of $192,000 with a profit margin of over 95%. In an average month, this site will produce between 30 and 50 leads.

Tip: Look for opportunities in suburbs because they rank faster and will generate leads quicker. Move on from a business owner if you notice red flags like a business owner who is always late with payments.

2. EDH Pool Cleaning

Dan Klein spent almost 18 months testing, failing, and retesting several strategies to create his proven concept. The EDH Pool Cleaning site below is one of the first websites he built. He ranked it at the top of the SERPs and generated a steady influx of high-quality leads without relying on paid traffic ads. The site didn't even have a Google My Business listing. Fast forward to 2024, this digital asset still pays him every month. In an average month, this site will produce anywhere between 40 and 70 leads.

Dan also uses it in his Rank and Rent program to show students how to build and rank their online properties. Plus, he gives his students step-by-step instructions so you can learn from his mistakes and reach financial freedom faster than he did.

3. Can-B-Clean

Jarrett is one of Dan's students who started his rank and rent business right before the COVID-19 pandemic. He went from a self-employed commercial construction worker and associate pastor in his local church to a $100,000+/year earner and SEO professional.

Jarrett built over 50 websites and paid off his tuition in his first year in the program. One of his lead generation properties is the Can B Clean website that offers pressure washing services in Metairie. In an average month, this site will produce over 35 organic leads.

Jarrett's Tip: "You need to be organized and have your systems in place before you scale your business. You need to have the right mindset and be ready to be better."

4. Windward Side Electric

Chad is another local lead generation student. His Windward Side Electric site is his first lead generation property but it brings in a steady stream of leads for his paying client. In an average month, this site will produce over 20 leads per month with the search engine optimization skills he learned from Dan.

This site has paid him $500 every month for the last 2.5 years. Chad continues to build assets that pay him every month.

Chad's Tip: "You need to do the hard work upfront. But once your sites are ranked, they bring in money on autopilot."

5. An Example Of An International Rank and Rent Site

Below is an example of a rank and rent site created by one of our students in Europe. He joined in 2020 and now has over 60 lead generation sites.

This is proof that this business model can be done anywhere you have an internet connection. Some of the over 7400 students in the local lead generation training program are from Australia, South Africa, Europe, and Asia.

10 Steps for creating rank and rent websites to earn online income

1. Choose a niche

Choosing a niche for rank and rent entails choosing both a service industry and a specific location to target. Starting with the industry aspect, some service industries are better for rank and rent than others. You want to choose industries that have high profit margins because professionals in these industries can typically afford to pay a higher premium for leads. For example, the cost to pave a driveway ranges between $600 to $23,000, and the average gross profit margin is 40%, according to Ironline Advisors. As such, driveway pavers are usually well equipped to compensate those who supply them with qualified leads.

Once you have an idea for an industry you want to generate leads for, you can start researching potential locations to focus your local SEO efforts. Cities with populations between 75,000 to 250,000 are usually best for beginners because competition is lower. You can research the competition level by searching for a combination of your location and industry to see the marketing efforts of local businesses.

2. Select a domain name and hosting provider

Select a domain name that is relevant for your city and industry. Although Google doesn’t reward exact match domain names (such as chicagoplumber.com) like they did previously, it’s still best to get your main service and location keywords into your domain name. Also, make sure to choose a Top-Level Domain (TLD) like .com, .net, or .org. Although TLDs are a minor SEO factor compared to on-page SEO or backlink profiles, they still affect your overall marketing performance, according to SEMRush. You can buy your domain name from a domain name registrar like Namecheap or GoDaddy.

Web hosting providers, like SiteGround and Hostinger, provide the necessary structure for you to showcase your website on the world wide web. A high quality web hosting service is essential for a local lead generation website because it affects factors like the site’s consistent availability and speed. According to Google Blog, 53% of online visitors are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Pro Tip:

Some website hosting companies like Bluehost provide a free domain name with their hosting service. Therefore, you should first verify that your chosen hosting provider doesn’t already offer a free domain if you want to save some money.

3. Choose a website builder

Choose a website builder to start creating your first rank and rent website. Some popular website builders include WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. Although these popular website builders can be great for making generic websites like blogs or simple business pages, they are not optimized for generating income through rank and rent.

The best website builder for rank and rent is Snapps.ai. Snapps.ai contains unique tools to give rank and rent website owners the advantage, such as localgrids, which showcases Google map pack rankings in a dynamic grid for easy analysis. Snapps also comes with a host of AI tools that can allow you to develop rank and rent websites, and generate unique SEO-optimized copy and images at scale.

4. Perform competitor analysis

Performing competitor analysis entails taking a deeper look at what you need to do to rank your lead generation website above your competition. This is typically done using SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz. You can use these tools to analyze factors like what kind of keywords your competitors are ranking for and how many backlinks point to their website.

5. Find keywords for your website content

Finding the right keywords for your website content is essential for getting your site to rank for relevant search queries in local search results. You don’t just want to go for the exact keywords that your competitors are already ranking for because these might be too competitive. Instead, look for keywords that are low difficulty with a reasonable amount of search volume that are relevant to your niche. Mainstream keyword research tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can tell you how difficult keywords are to rank for and provide you with the estimated monthly search volume, but they are expensive.

You can get started with rank and rent keyword research for free by using my keyword research tool. Simply enter a keyword you want to target and Ippei’s Keyword Research Tool will generate two separate lists of 100 keywords in a matter of seconds.

The first list is 100 related keywords. These are mostly short-tail keywords with higher search volume and more competition. Short-tail keywords can be a great starting point for your keyword research. You can add modifiers to them to lower the ranking difficulty. For example, changing “robotic pool cleaner” to “robotic pool cleaner for saltwater pools” if you want to generate leads for saltwater pool cleaning service providers.

ippei keyword research tool related keywords list

The second list is 100 long-tail keywords. These are low competition keywords you can target to more easily rank on the first page of Google and attract clicks to your rank and rent website.

ippei keyword research tool long-tail keywords

6. Publish website content

You need to publish quality website content that incorporates your target keywords to get your website to rank on Google. For pages, your rank and rent website should include a basic home page, about page, contact page, and pages for each of the services your targeting leads for within your niche. Beyond those pages, you are also going to want to write informational blog posts to boost your website's authority in the eyes of Google and attract backlinks.

For example, if you are trying to attract leads for the lawn care niche, some blog post ideas might include:

5 Essential Lawn Maintenance Tips for Every Season
The Ultimate Guide to Organic Lawn Care
Top Lawn Diseases and How to Treat Them
Choosing the Right Lawn Care Equipment: A Buyer's Guide
Safe Lawn Care: Keeping Children and Pets in Mind

AI tools allow you to create website content easier and faster than ever before. A survey by Authority Hacker found that approximately 85.1% of marketers are using AI content writers for content creation. However, most marketers are using mainstream large language model (LLM) tools like ChatGPT and Claude to write content. Although these tools can produce impressive results, they have a major drawback in that they use non-agentic workflow. Non-agentic workflow is like writing an essay in one attempt, without using backspace. As such, content produced with a non-agentic workflow often needs to be heavily edited by a human to achieve the desired result.

Try my AI content writer for free

My AI content writer tool uses an agentic workflow to produce website content. Agentic workflow leverages multiple AI agents, or workers, in the writing process. Each of these workers contributes to the content by specializing in an individual task, such as research, writing, or editing. AI writers with an agentic workflow have been found to produce superior results compared to non-agentic AI writers because they can make adjustments during the writing process. For example, my AI content writer incorporates an editor agent that makes content more readable to humans before publishing.

Instantly generate SEO content for your rank and rent website with my agentic workflow AI content writer.

7. Set up Google My Business

Setting up a Google My Business profile for your rank and rent website enables your site to show up in the Google Map Pack. The Google Map Pack is the first thing a potential customer sees for most organic listings. Therefore, setting up a Google My Business profile can increase your chances of getting more clicks and leads.

8. Perform off-site SEO

Performing off-site SEO for a rank and rent website primarily entails building local citations and backlinks. Building local citations is getting listed in business directories, such as Angie’s List, Yelp, or Yellow Pages. You also want to search for directories that are focused on your specific niche.

Besides citations, you need to build backlinks. Backlinks are when another website links back to your website, and Google uses these when assessing a website's authority. There are a variety of strategies for building backlinks, but some of the most common include:

Creating high-quality content or site tools that naturally attract backlinks
Purchasing links from a link farm or PBN (private blog network)
Reaching out to relevant sites to provide guest posts or niche edits for a fee

Of these options, attracting natural backlinks is optimal. However, it's highly unlikely you will attract natural backlinks with a local service website, no matter how good the content is. There's just no benefit for a webmaster to link to a low authority local website. That means you'll typically need to buy backlinks if you want your local website to rank.

You can get cheap backlinks through Fiverr. However, cheap links are a sign that the backlinks are being generated through a link farm or PBN. Not only do these links typically have low authority, but Google actively targets these types of link operations and punishes the websites that the links point to. Don't just take my word for it, though. You can test pointing Fiverr links to your rank and rent website and see what happens for yourself.

The most common and safe method for attracting backlinks in 2024 is with guest posts and niche edits. This strategy works by reaching out to relevant websites and requesting backlinks. You provide some content and pay a fee for the website owner to include a link back to your website within that content. However, link building this way often requires extensive time and effort because you need to reach website owners on mass scale, negotiate pricing, and provide content to get your backlinks. That's why most local service websites use link building agencies that specialize in these tasks to get links more efficiently.

Get high authority backlinks

My link building service offers you backlinks from high authority websites that attract quality traffic at sufficient levels for Google to notice. I've partnered with one of the leading link building agencies in the world to get seriously powerful links at wholesale prices, providing you with top tier backlinks at a fair value.

9. Rent out your website

Once your rank and rent website starts getting website traffic and leads, you can reach out to local business owners to pay you for the leads. One of the best strategies for closing clients is to provide them free leads temporarily. This allows a business owner to try out your leads risk-free before committing to a more permanent contract with you, increasing the chance they will respond positively to forming a business relationship with you.

There are a few methods you can make money by renting out your website, including:

Flat Fee - Paying a set fee each month to receive all the website leads
Pay Per Lead - Paying a fee for each lead.
Commission Deal - Paying a percentage of the revenue the leads generate.

10. Automate website maintenance

To get the most out of your rank and rent website, you can automate the processes necessary to keep it operating. Automating the website's maintenance tasks enables you to focus on scaling your lead generation business with more websites while still receiving a monthly income. To automate a local lead generation website, you can employ tools and freelancers. For example, you can hire a VA and equip them with AI content tools like Surfer SEO to ensure the site continues publishing content at the right rate to maintain or improve Google search rankings. Although rank and rent sites typically require minimal maintenance anyway, this step ensures that you put the right processes in place to optimize the scalability of your business.

How much money can you make with a rank and rent website?

You can make anywhere from $500 to $3,000/month with a rank and rent website. The true power of rank and rent is that the business model can provide passive income, so you can scale your rank and rent business with multiple rank and rent websites to generate at least 5-figures in income per month. You can achieve $10K/month with just a handful of rank and rent websites.

How much does a rank and rent website cost?

A rank and rent website costs between $100 to $500 for the first year. Some of the major costs of a rank and rent website include:

Domain: $10-$15/year
Hosting: $3-$12/month for shared hosting
Call Tracking Number: $25/month
Backlinks: $5 to $100+/link

how-much-does-it-cost-to-rank-and-rent-a-website

How long does it take to rank and rent a website on Google?

It takes between 6 weeks and 6 months to rank and rent a website on Google. Rank and rent websites can get to the first page of Google much faster than other websites because competition for local SEO is relatively low.

What are key rank and rent SEO factors to rank quickly?

Key rank and rent SEO factors to rank quickly are:

Correct website title
High quality content
High quality backlinks
Local citations
GMB profile
Social media accounts for business

What are the benefits of rank and rent?

Rank and rent is different from other business models because it offers low start-up costs and high margins (real estate without the down payment of huge upfront capital).
You own the digital asset, which includes the website, tracking number, and leads.
Minimal client interaction and you don't need their permission to make changes to the website (unlike an SEO agency).
Scale by ranking a site and then moving on to the next one. You can also implement cut-and-paste methods for templates or outsource SEO services and tasks.
Low overhead costs. Your sites require little effort or maintenance, making this an extremely lucrative online business model.
The focus of this online model is free traffic. So not only does it produce the most consistent and long-term results, but you don't need to spend money on Google Ads or other forms of paid advertising, which is getting more expensive with each passing year.
You don’t need the skills of SEO professionals or implement technical SEO tactics to be successful.

Are rank and rent websites legal?

Yes, rank and rent websites are legal. It's completely legal to create a website that offers a business service and then contract someone else to actually perform the business service. However, there are some practices you can take to further ensure you are operating your business legally, such as:

Putting a disclaimer in the footer of your website explaining the true purpose of the site
Avoiding services niches that require licensing, like real estate or finance
Registering your business as a legal business entity to protect your personal assets

Conclusion: Why rank and rent websites are the best SEO opportunity of 2024

Rank and rent websites are the best SEO opportunity of 2024 because they aren’t as influenced by Google’s algorithm updates or generative AI responses as other SEO web entities have been. For example, niche sites that earn money through affiliate marketing have taken a major hit recently, as Google has propelled Reddit and high authority sites like Forbes Advisor to the top of the search engine results. This is currently Google’s best attempt at quelling bad AI content from taking over the SERPs. They are giving more value to forums like Reddit that are based on real human experiences and high authority domains that have been publishing high quality content for many years already.

Fortunately, a rank and rent website doesn’t rely on informational searches for traffic like many niche affiliate marketing sites do. Rank and rent websites can create informational blog posts to boost their website's overall rating, but commercial searches are where the clicks actually come from.

Furthermore, generative AI results, like those that currently appear at the top of Google for most informational searches, are expected to take a major portion of organic website traffic. In fact, technical research and consulting firm Gartner expects that organic website traffic will drop 25% by 2026 as a result of generative AI responses. However, these generative AI responses don’t seem to affect local commercial searches. Local search queries, like roofer in Dallas, are not returning generative AI results currently. The local map pack is still at the top of the search results page, with local business websites following. There is little chance generative AI responses will take over local searches in the future because people want to see real human reviews and testimonials when considering paying for a service.