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Rank and rent: how the model works and what it earns
Rank and rent is a lead business. The owner of a local website that shows up for a service in one city rents that site, and its phone number, to a business that wants the calls. The owner keeps the site. The renter pays a monthly fee. About 320 searches a month in the US look for the model by name, and about 90 more for "rank and rent websites."
What rank and rent means
Three parts make up the deal:
- The site. A small local website for one service in one city, such as roof repair in a mid-size town.
- The number. A tracked phone number or form on the site. Every call and form is counted.
- The renter. A local contractor or firm that receives the calls and pays a fixed monthly fee, instead of a price for each lead.
The owner does not do the work the callers want. The renter does, and keeps the revenue. That is why this is closer to renting a shop window than to selling leads one at a time. The sale of single leads is covered on the pay per lead page.
The business model in numbers
Every figure below is a made-up example with round numbers, not a result. It shows how the economics work.
Start with the renter's side, since that decides what the owner can charge. Say a roof job is worth $9,000 and 1 in 8 calls becomes a job. Say a site delivers 24 calls a month. That is 3 jobs and $27,000 in revenue for the renter. Say the renter pays $1,500 a month. That is about 6% of the revenue the site brings.
Now the owner's side. Say an owner has 10 sites, and 6 of them are rented.
| Line | Say |
|---|---|
| Sites owned | 10 |
| Sites rented | 6 |
| Average monthly rent | $1,200 |
| Monthly rent income | $7,200 |
| Upkeep, tracking and hosting, per site | $60 |
| Monthly costs, all 10 sites | $600 |
| Monthly result before the owner's time | $6,600 |
Three numbers decide whether a portfolio like this works: how many of the sites are rented at any time, how long a renter stays, and how much of the revenue the renter can see coming from the calls. If a renter cannot tell that the site produces jobs, the rent is likely to be renegotiated.
What a finished rank-and-rent site looks like
A site for one trade in one city is small. This is an example plan for a roofing site:
| Page | Job it does | The searches it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Home page | Names the service and the city, shows the number | The service plus the city |
| Repair page | Describes one job in detail | Searches for fixing a problem |
| Replacement page | Describes the larger job | Searches for a new roof, with the price range |
| Emergency page | A short page built for a call | Urgent searches such as storm damage |
| Service-area pages | One for each nearby town or district | The service plus a town name |
| Proof page | Photos of finished jobs, reviews, license numbers | Searches that compare local firms |
| Contact page | The tracked number and a short form | Anyone ready to ask |
The test of a good one is simple: a visitor knows within seconds what is offered, where, and how to reach someone. Details about the local pages that carry the city names are on the location pages page.
Which trades rent well
A trade can rent well when one call is worth a lot to the renter. High-ticket and urgent work can pay higher rents, since the renter earns the fee back with a single job. US monthly searches for "<trade> leads" run to about 1,000 for roofing leads and about 720 for HVAC leads; the lead terms for every trade are on the markets page.
Those are national figures, and a rented site lives in one city. What counts is how many people in that city search for the service, and how many buyers in the trade are in that city. Local keyword research covers the first number, and market size covers the second.
The risks for owners and renters
For the owner:
- The site can drop out of the pages that show first at any time. The rent stops with the calls.
- A renter leaves and the site sits empty until the next one signs.
- A renter disputes the call count, so the tracking and the call log must be clear.
- Putting many sites in one trade and city makes the portfolio fragile.
For the renter:
- The rankings are not yours. If the owner sells the site or raises the rent, you lose the calls.
- The phone number may belong to the owner. Moving to a number of your own means starting from zero.
- Calls from people who will never hire are billed the same, and they cost the renter time.
- Do not assume exclusivity. It exists only if the contract says so.
What to ask before you rent or buy a site
- How many calls did the site receive each month for the last 12 months, and can I hear a sample?
- How long has the site been in its position, and what was it before?
- Who owns the phone number, and can I keep it if I leave?
- Is the arrangement exclusive in my city for my trade?
- What happens to the rent if the site drops, and who pays for fixing it?
- For buying a rented site: who rents it today, since when, and what are the past renters' reasons for leaving?
What to do with it
- Price the rent from the renter's numbers. The value of a lead shows how to turn job value and close rate into a ceiling for the fee.
- Spread the risk across trades and cities, not just sites.
- Keep a call log you can show to a renter in a minute.
- If you are the renter, rent for a short term first and track jobs, not calls.
FAQ
Is rank and rent still profitable?
It is profitable when the rent is well below the revenue the calls bring, the site holds its position and the renter stays. The worked example above shows the mechanics. Any real result depends on the city and the trade.
How is rank and rent SEO different from other local SEO?
The ranking work can be the same kind. The difference is who owns the result. In normal local SEO the business owns its site and its maps listing. In rank and rent the site belongs to the owner, and the business pays for the calls.
What is a rank and rent business model worth?
The value is the rent income minus costs, as in the table above, times the number of sites that stay rented. It rises with renter retention and falls with ranking risk.
Can a renter take the site with them?
Only if the contract says so. Ask before you sign, and get the answer in writing.
If you sell leads or sites and want the search demand behind a trade in a market, see Querytally for lead generation.
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