Luc Durand’s Ranking Academy Review – SEO Pros and Monetization Alternatives |Ippei: Why Local SEO Lead Generation is the #1 Online Business Opportunity in 2025

Ranking Academy also offers a Google Business Profile SEO cheat sheet that is free to download. This SEO cheat sheet helps you rank factors that are important to be on top of the Google search engine. You just need to download it, then do each task inside at your own pace. It also has video tutorials in case you get stuck. Luc offers tons of free resources in Ranking Academy. Is Luc Durand the best option for you to improve visibility online?

In my 10+ years of experience with SEO, similar to the one taught by Ranking Academy, it reminds me of the Erie Canal, which is a huge, front-loaded engineering project whose locks and channels multiplied trade for decades after construction finished. Just how Erie Canal multiplied commerce, every SEO-optimized page, internal link, and backlink adds to domain strength and keeps compounding traffic long after the launch. SEO scalability is like GitHub Actions, where reusable workflow templates let teams spin up identical CI pipelines across dozens of repositories without rebuilding the process each time. Proven keyword-to-content templates and technical frameworks can be cloned across topics or sites to grow quickly while reducing effort.

This review analyzes Luc Durand’s Ranking Academy pros and cons, what you will learn from it, if its students are successful, and what other alternatives are there. At the end, you’ll discover how SEO compares to local lead generation, which is my trusted SEO-based business model for enduring income—to see which path fits your goals best.

What Are the Pros And Cons of Ranking Academy?

Pros:

It offers tons of free tutorials on its YouTube channel.
Ranking Academy receives good feedback from its subscribers.
Some of its clients in 1-on-1 achieve success.
Luc conducts research about your business before the session.

Cons:

The cost of Luc’s live sessions is expensive because of their short duration.
The live sessions require payment first.
Some of Luc’s free courses are slightly outdated.
There is no refund policy.

Price: Ranking Academy 1-on-1 live sessions costs depend on what you avail.

The Jump-Start 1-On-1 Live Session costs $180 for 30 minutes.
The 1-on-1 Depth Session costs $550 for 60 minutes.

Refund Policy: Luc Durand mentions nothing about the refund policy.

Origin: Ranking Academy started in 2016.

Reputation: Ranking Academy has a huge audience on its YouTube channel with 236K subscribers.

What Are the Ranking Academy 1-on-1 Live Sessions?

Jump-Start Session

This Jump-start session teaches you how to rank your small business on Google Search and Google Maps in just 30 minutes. It’s an open discussion in Zoom that focuses on strategies and proven SEO practices. After the session, Luc will send you the record to have a clear copy of your discussion with him.

What to expect before the live session?

Luc emails you to confirm the date and time for your session.
After paying, you will receive a Zoom link for the session.
Luc will do research on your website beforehand.

Who is the Jump-start session best for?

The Jump-start session is best for business owners who are on a tight budget but seeking expert assistance and guidance. This session provides insights into their website, Google Business profile, and tactics to upgrade their online presence.

Price: 1-on-1 Jump-Start Session costs $180.00.
Duration: This live session duration is only 30 minutes.

In-Depth Session

It is a one-hour in-depth analysis of your small business’ local search situation. You and Luc examine your Google business listing, link profile, website, analytics data, and more. During your live session, Luc focuses on every section to see why you are not ranking. Also, it provides an actionable list to replicate or achieve better success.

What to expect before the live session?

Luc tracks your 5 most relevant keywords to show the visibility of your business.
He will audit your Google Business Profile to make sure that it sets up correctly.
Also, he will pinpoint some SEO gaps in your website.
Luc reveals reasons your competitors outperform you.

Who is the In-depth session best for?

The In-depth session is best for business owners that seeking a thorough analysis of their visibility situation. Luc will help them know the strength and weaknesses of their SEO strategy.

Price: 1-on-1 Depth Session costs $550/
Duration: This live session is only 60 minutes.

What Are the Ranking Academy Free Courses On Class Central?

SEO for Beginner - How to Rank #1 in Google Fast in 2025

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called This course teaches you the 8 steps on how to rank your business in the Google search engine faster. It runs less than an hour and is also available on YouTube.

8 Steps to Rank Faster on Google

Step 1: Keyword research
Step 2: Define the structure of your pages
Step 3: Adding content to your pages
Step 4: Add search engine-friendly images
Step 5: Creating effective titles and description
Step 6: Linking your pages together
Step 7: Continue creating content
Step 8: Track your performance

How To Edit Your Google Business Profile

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called It is a 6-chapter full guide on how to edit your Google Business Profile. Essentially, Business Profile on Google is a free tool that allows you to decide how your business will appear on Google Search and Maps.

Six Chapters to Edit Your Google Business Profile

Chapter One: Logging into your account

Chapter Two: Interface Anatomy

Chapter Three: Icon Panel

Edit your profile details contact, categories, website
Read and respond to reviews
Messages
Adding photos
Check your performance
manage products
Manage services
Booking links
Q and A
Add Google posts
Review link

Chapter Four: Advanced Panel

Business profile settings
Notifications
Adding a new business profile
Accessing all profiles
Help/Feedback/ T and Cs

Chapter Five: Business Panel

Chapter Six: Suggestion Panel

Google My Business Profile Optimization - Ultimate Tutorial For 2025

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called This optimization tutorial takes you through each section of your Google my business listing and shows you how to leverage it step by step. This guide has tips, tricks, and trade secrets that help you outperform your local competitors in search engines like Google in 2023. Luc guides you to attract more visitors, which leads to more profits.

The Chapters in Google My Business Profile Optimization’s Ultimate Tutorial for 2023 will teach you how to log into your profile, create your business name, input your business address and phone number, how to understand business categories and other basics like inputting your website link. It covered more complex concepts towards the end, where you can learn how to input photos, information on products and services, and more.

On-Page SEO Tutorial For Small Businesses

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called This tutorial runs for over 20 minutes. On-page SEO is one of the three pillars of website optimization to speed up visibility in search engines to drive more traffic.

Chapter One: Why is on-page SEO so important
Chapter Two: Page Title
Chapter Three: Meta Description
Chapter Four: Headings and Subheadings
Chapter Five: Writing Content
Chapter Six: Images
Chapter Seven: NAP
Chapter Eight: Frequently asked questions
Chapter Nine: Google Review
Chapter Ten: Links
Chapter Eleven: Track your performance

Canva Tutorial

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called This free training tutorial teaches beginners how to use Canva. It helps you to use this software to create graphics in creating content for your social media platforms, blogs and in your website. It covers how to create a free Canva account to download and publish your design.

Lesson One: Create a Free Canva Account
Lesson Two: Home Page Overview
Lesson Three: Home Page - Top Bar
Lesson Four: Home Page - Side Menu
Lesson Five: Home Page - Main Area
Lesson Six: Canva Editor
Lesson Seven: Canva Editor Menu Bar
Lesson Eight: Canva Editor Side Panel
Lesson Nine: Canva Editor Design Aera
Lesson Ten: Download and Publish Your Design

Mailchimp Tutorial 2025

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called Mailchimp is the largest email marketing platform that can help your business grow. You will learn in this tutorial how to build a campaign from scratch and track your email campaign performance.

Chapter One: Create a Free Mailchimp Account
Chapter Two: Dashboard Overview
Chapter Three: Create an Audience
Chapter Four: Create a Campaign
Chapter Five: Send a Campaign
Chapter Six: Create a Sign-up Form
Chapter Seven: Campaign Performance
Chapter Eight: Create Email Templates
Chapter Nine: Manage Your Audience

How To Turn Your Listing Into A Client Magnet In 2022

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called This tutorial on his YouTube channel last 2020 made it slightly outdated. But, it gained 135,237 views and good feedback from active subscribers. It provides tons of tips and tricks to improve your online visibility.

The Ultimate Course Starting A Local Business

For pricing, Michael uses a dynamic pricing software that integrates with Airbnb called It is one of the most recent tutorials that Luc offers. It also covers steps to get your business rank on Google, this one is more in-depth which runs almost 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Chapter One: Setting up a Google business profile
Chapter Two: Optimizing your Google Business Profile
Chapter Three: Key pre-building steps for your website
Chapter Four: Building a Website with WIX
Chapter Five: On-page SEO for Higher Google Rankings

Who Is Luc Durand?

Luc Durand is the founder of Ranking Academy. Luc has 19 years of extensive experience in the web industry. He is proficient in search engine optimization, content management, web design, web analytics, and merchandising. His passion is to help small businesses to grow their business through online marketing. It leads him to create YouTube tutorials to share his expertise with small business owners. As of writing, his channel has 12,404,682 views in 2015.

After a year, he launched his own venture that offers free resources to guide small businesses. He guides them to reach large audiences, gain traffic and improve their revenue. Luc provides various tactics to rank your Google My Business higher. Also, he created this to offer personal guidance for entrepreneurs seeking an expert partner to succeed in their business ventures.

Who Is Ranking Academy For?

Ranking Academy is for business owners who are seeking mentors on how to improve their website’s visibility on search engines like Google. Also, this is for business owners that are on a tight budget and want to learn tactics to reach a wide audience for free. It includes generating traffic to achieve significant income. However, Ranking Academy will not teach you the steps on how to start an online business.

Are Clients Of Ranking Academy Successful?

Yes, some of the clients of Ranking Academy are successful. And most of them are real business owners who have a successful business. Their clients’ business is in different niches such as digital marketing, health, music, and also personal coaching.

In addition to that, their subscribers praised his free course on Cass Central. They thank Luc for making some methods easy for them to learn and understand. Also, Luc is answering questions from subscribers on their concerns in their business.

What Are Some of the Ranking Academy Alternatives?

The Affiliate Lab by Matt Diggity - A complete affiliate-SEO course teaching how to build, rank, monetize and flip niche affiliate websites.
Shinefy by Chase Reiner - An AI-driven all-in-one tool and training platform that helps content creators and affiliate marketers automate video production, keyword research and viral content creation.
Local SEO Mastery by Semantic Mastery - A training program focused on local SEO strategies, weekly live sessions, and community support for service-based businesses to dominate local search.

Final Verdict: Is Ranking Academy the Best Option to Build Long-Term Income?

Ranking Academy is not the best option to build long-term income because it focuses on skill development rather than income generation. Luc Durand offers credible SEO education and actionable tactics, but it’s primarily geared toward helping local businesses increase visibility, not teaching you how to monetize that visibility. To turn SEO skills into income, you need a model that connects ranking with ownership and cash flow. Without a monetization layer, SEO becomes a service and not a system for financial freedom.

How Does Ranking Academy’s SEO Training Compare to Local Lead Generation?

Ranking Academy focuses on teaching business owners how to improve online visibility through SEO, Google Business optimization, and on-page ranking strategies but it stops at visibility, not monetization. Luc Durand provides step-by-step tutorials and personal coaching, making it a valuable educational resource for beginners who want to understand SEO mechanics. However, the main challenge is that rankings alone don’t guarantee recurring income. Local lead generation bridges that gap by using those same SEO skills to create digital assets that generate predictable monthly revenue instead of one-time client gains.

Why Is Local Lead Generation the Most Practical Use of SEO Skills?

Local lead generation is the most practical use of SEO skills because it allows you to turn free search traffic into predictable monthly revenue without needing clients, contracts, or custom websites for others. Once you rank a local site for a high-intent keyword, you own the asset and rent the results and not your time. Instead of managing endless client expectations, you’re managing cash flow from digital real estate that compounds.

One of my clients is Chicago Commercial Epoxy Flooring Kings, 1640 West Howard Street, Chicago, Illinois 60626, 773-365-9922, https://www.chicagocommercialepoxy.com/. I earned $3,680 from 10% commissions in the month when 8 of my leads closed for $36.8K.

If you’re ready to stop ranking for others and start profiting from your own SEO work, now’s the time to explore local lead generation as a business model you truly own.