Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi, ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of KeywordsPeopleUsecom, the solution to finding the questions people ask online. I'm an affiliate marketer, seo, and I've been building and monetizing websites for over 20 years. I've built sites from the ground up, bought sites and sold sites in large exits. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Today, I'm going to talk about the Rank and Rent model. Is it the new SEO gold rush, an SEO monetization model that's become much more popular and to discuss during 2023, is the Rank and Rent model. It might not be one you've heard of before, so I'll explain what it is. With the Rank and Rent model, what you do is you build a website for a niche topic that has an end user service, so usually like a locally provided service things like carpet cleaning, pool cleaning, locksmith services, plumbing services, accountancy, kitchen installations these are usually niches where people will actually turn up at a house or a business and provide a service. They're the type of business that rely on a steady flow of local leads to maintain and grow their business. Most of the people who run these kind of businesses are not necessarily very online marketing or seo savvy. So this is where the opportunity for website builders and seos comes in. So if you can build a website that can rank for local terms that could collect leads for these kinds of businesses such as, say, plumbing in London or plumbing in Manchester or plumbing in any place where people are actually searching for plumbing then you could sell those leads to businesses that are actually providing the service in that area.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Now the attraction to SEOs in these types of search terms is that they don't monetize well, or even at all, using like the more traditional affiliate or display ad model. So usually there's no affiliate programs available on such local terms and the volumes of traffic are just far too low for display ads to be worthwhile. But for a business that's selling one of these services so like a plumber or a roofer then the individual leads can be very valuable to those businesses in the local area that they work in. So, like a roofer business, for example, an individual sale could be tens of thousands of pounds or dollars if you're in the US, so a very small volume of leads could actually be very valuable to them. Now, as these terms don't monetize well using, you know so, the more usual affiliate and display ad methods, then it means these are areas where there hasn't ever been much competition from experienced SEOs. So, compared to niches which are heavily trafficked, which work well with display or have big affiliate programs, such as broadband, then these areas which haven't got that, then they've just never been saturated with people trying to rank for them. So therefore it's a much less competitive market to get sites ranking in.

Speaker 1: 4:06

So once you've built your site in a niche and you're ranking this is the rank side of the name you then sell the leads that these pages generate to local companies. That's the rent side of the name. Hence the rank and rent name of the model. Now you might be asking what does a rank and rent website actually look like? So the ones I've found they're quite easy to find if you kind of um search them for many generic terms, like underfloor heating installers in an area, for example, then you'll you'll find in the top 10 results. You usually will find one or two of these rank and rent type websites and what they'll do is they will talk about, you know, the actual service that is they're promoting and they will have examples of the service, the questions that people might ask around the service. That's particularly a big one and they will have usually quite prominent enquire or quote buttons or forms where people can actually show their interest, and that quote functionality is actually really important to the part where you actually generate the leads. Without having that method of generating leads, then you're never really going to be able to to rent this website to anybody, because you've got to be able to pull those leads in.

Speaker 1: 5:20

Now, a lot of these sort of beginner rank and web websites, people will tend to target just one city or one location, especially if it's a big city, especially, say, in America and the US, where it might just target New York or any big city or the suburbs of a big city. More sophisticated rank and rent websites will actually tend to target entire countries and they will use programmatic techniques to generate templated pages which are all very similar but are targeted in particular individual areas. Now, in general, the stuff I've found doing this tend to be not very heavily commercially focused in terms of sales. They don't tend to try and sell you. They tend to be much more informational. They seem to be trying to capture people at the top of the funnel, where they're just coming in to start doing research on a topic. So they are much more authority-focused in terms of those questions they ask.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Things I've talked about before, where you know you want to be able to answer everyone's questions. So, say, underfloor heating, for example. You know these sites have lots of content on all the questions that people ask about underfloor heating. So someone can come there who's just thinking about getting underfloor heating and we'll educate them on the process of how to install it and the benefits of it. And then we'll educate them on the process of how to install it and the benefits of it. And then we'll say, click here for more information, click here to get a quote to drive people further down the funnel for those leads that can then be sold out to the actual people who can actually go and install these services for them.

Speaker 1: 6:56

So how much can these bank and rent websites actually earn. Well, I think a lot's going to depend on the individual niche. Some, um, some sites are definitely going to earn more per lead than others because, simply because the service that's being sold in some cases is much more valuable um than than others. You know, an oven clean is only going to earn so much per lead compared to a new roof, but you might get more oven cleans than people want in new roofs.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Um, I've looked at some of the numbers of people who do talk about um, having sites like this and the amount they make um and it. For those people making really big money, it tends to be a numbers game. They have a lot of sites doing rank and rent, with lots of web pages, generating lots of leads and breaking down what you can tell from what they say and other sort of information sources you can get. You know, I think an average, an average website like these could possibly make somewhere between 500 pound and 20 000 pounds pounds a year. I mean, that's not bad money, especially if you have a large number of them. So you can have a large number of these sites if you can systemize it, if you can template it, if you can use programmatic SEO, which is something I'll talk about in another podcast to push out sites like this, then, you know, it becomes a numbers game. You know, the more pages, the more sites, the easier it is to draw in the traffic and draw in those leads and then sell them on. So what are the challenges with the rank and rent model? Well, clearly, the big one is selling those leads. That's, finding someone to rent your site or parts of your site for any period of time, and how you, how you charge them.

Speaker 1: 8:44

A lot of the people who want these leads are hard to find. You've got to get in front of them. You've got to. You've got to persuade them to. You know, essentially pay you for these leads, or to you know, or to rent them now with. It's easy. You just join a display ad network With affiliates. It's easy. You just join affiliate programs.

Speaker 1: 9:04

The companies there are trying to find publishers to promote them. These companies are smaller companies. They tend to be less tech savvy, as I say, they don't know much about online marketing. They're harder to find. You've got to really persuade them to come in. I think that's the real challenge the ranking to find. You've got to. You've got to really persuade them to come in. I think that's the real challenge, the ranking side of it. If you know a bit about seo, if you follow a few few examples, it's not actually that going to be that hard to do at present.

Speaker 1: 9:27

But it's then finding people to sell those leads to. That is where the tricky thing is and I think that's where a lot of people who rush into this are going to struggle. They're going to struggle to find people to sell those leads to. In fact, most people that run, rank and rent websites tend to just sell the leads on mass. So rather than charging per individual lead, they'll just say you can have all the leads for a month or a year or whatever given time period for a set amount of money for a particular area. So if you've got a site that's doing wonderful heating and it's covering all areas of the uk, then you might Someone who buys all the leads in the West Midlands for a set amount per year, or all the leads in Scotland for a set amount per year, or all the leads in any particular area, and they'll rent a part of the website and the leads that come from that part of the website for a certain part of the year, because simply trying to sell individual leads and the whole admin overhead of working at how many leads have been sent a month and how much each lead's worth, and it's just not worth it. So that's why that's where the rent model the rent name in the model comes from, because they sent people essentially rent out all the leads from part of the site to individual companies for a set period of time.

Speaker 1: 10:38

And this is the reason why I think this could probably be called a new gold rush, the new seo gold rush. And that's like back in the days in california, you know, in the end of the couple of centuries ago, when people went off into the hills. The first few people found some gold and came down and said, hey, there's gold in them hills. And then there was a rush of people up there digging, digging, digging, trying to find the gold. And there just was gold there, but there just wasn't enough for the amount of people that suddenly started chasing it. And that's where I worry that this model won't be sustainable for the vast majority of people in the long term, because it's now been identified as an area of low competition, are going to pile in and all of a sudden it is going to become very competitive, but there are only so many companies out there that will buy these leads. Just creating more websites is just going to be chasing the leads. The number of leads isn't going to change, but the number of people chasing them is now.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Just because it's a bit of a goal doesn't mean that I don't think it's something that you shouldn't consider. But if you are going to do it, you really need to think carefully. You need to choose the niches that you chase carefully, do a lot of research. If there's already a lot of people doing rank and rent on these areas, then you've either got to do a much better job than them or decide to move on to a different area. And whichever area you do choose, you've really got to produce a good site.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Just because it's easy to rank and it's low competition doesn't mean that it's always going to be easy. You still have to be there to answer people's questions, get them at the top of the funnel and work them down, and that's where something like Keywords Peoplecom can actually help, because we live mine, google and other sources on the internet for any subject, for any niche, to find the people questions people are asking in those areas. So if you're looking at doing a rank and rent website, then I'd definitely suggest we're a good place to start doing some of your research and to base some of your content on when you start to push out those sites. So yeah, a bit of a plug there, but it's true. You need to know those questions people are asking if you're ever going to rank top of funnel for them and you know, however good you are, you're never going to know everyone's questions without doing research, and that's where we come in and can help you out. So I hope that's given you a good overview of the ranking, what the opportunities are, what the challenges are and how to get started, if it's something you're interested in.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps. Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom. These solutions find the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom. If you want to get in touch or have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter or you can email me at podcastkeywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is Not that Hard.