Rank and Rent

Rank and Rent is an SEO business model where a practitioner creates a website targeting profitable local or niche keywords, ranks it through various SEO techniques (often including grey or black hat methods), and then rents out the generated traffic or leads to businesses in that space. The concept is often compared to digital real estate: the SEO practitioner builds and ranks the property, then leases it to a tenant who benefits from the traffic. Common implementations include local service sites (plumber, electrician, lawyer) that generate phone calls or form submissions routed to paying local businesses. While the business model itself is not inherently against Google's guidelines, the execution often involves manipulative techniques: PBNs, fake business listings, automated content, and multiple sites competing in the same local space. Google has specifically targeted fake local listings and doorway pages used in many rank and rent schemes. The model also raises ethical concerns about consumer transparency, as visitors may not realize they are interacting with a lead generation intermediary rather than the actual business.