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Reacting to Caleb Ulku "Rank #1 SO Fast People Think You Hacked Google"

Ippei reacts to Caleb Ulku's SEO video, arguing his Rank and Rent model (building owned local lead-gen websites) outperforms agency-style SEO for local businesses. He walks through an HVAC case study

Key Takeaways

  • Owning multiple local lead-generation websites (Rank and Rent) can produce more durable revenue than optimizing a single client GBP or website.
  • Targeting exact-match domains and less competitive high-ticket keywords can avoid crowded HVAC-style searches.
  • Local map rankings are volatile and driven by recent reviews, so diversification matters.
  • Quality local citations, links, and trust signals matter more than volume of blog content.
  • The presenter's claims are self-promotional and largely unverified in the excerpt, and the transcript is partly disjointed.

What the video covers

  • The presenter reacts to Caleb Ulku's video 'Rank #1 So Fast People Think You Hacked Google', noting Caleb learned SEO in the presenter's former community.
  • The presenter has run a Rank and Rent business for 11 years: building and ranking his own local websites, each with a tracking phone number that generates leads and commissions for clients.
  • He argues that clients want leads, not rankings, and that owning multiple lead-generation sites produces more revenue than optimizing a client's existing site or Google Business Profile (GBP).
  • He agrees with some of Caleb's SEO tactics and disagrees with others, claiming his methods outperform Caleb's in pure lead generation.
  • Using a Kansas City HVAC contractor case study, he describes moving the business from position 3.36 to the top of local results in about two weeks, which he credits to a five-step system rather than blog posts, backlinks, or manipulation tactics.
  • He criticizes agencies that chase generic keywords like 'HVAC [city]' and recommends targeting less competitive, high-ticket keywords such as 'heat pump installation' using exact-match domains.
  • He warns that map rankings fluctuate with recent reviews and competitor activity, so relying solely on a GBP is fragile.
  • The presenter describes using AI tools (Claude Opus, a prompt-based local SEO analysis) and a citation tool to build local links and citations.
  • He recommends local link-building through chambers of commerce, sponsorships, and city preferred-contractor directories as trust signals for Google.
  • He notes that many SEO agencies struggle to land local clients despite strong technical skills, which motivates his teaching offer.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Introduction and Reaction Setup
  2. 02:03Who I Am and Rank and Rent Business Model
  3. 04:03HVAC Kansas City Case Study
  4. 06:23Why Google Local Ranking Works This Way
  5. 09:23Targeting Lucrative Keywords with Exact-Match Domains
  6. 12:00Content, Links, and Citations Strategy
  7. 20:00AI Prompts and Local Link Building
  8. 25:00Closing and Agency Client Acquisition

Answers

Questions about this video

What is the Rank and Rent model described in the video?

Rank and Rent means building and ranking your own local websites at the top of Google, each with a tracking phone number that generates leads. The presenter gets paid commissions when clients close jobs from those leads, rather than doing SEO for another company's site.

Why does the presenter say the HVAC contractor's ranking improved so quickly?

He says the improvement came from a five-step system that gives Google what it wants for local search, not from blog posts, backlinks, CTR manipulation, or map link tactics. He claims the ranking rose from position 3.36 to the top within about two weeks.

What does the presenter recommend instead of relying on one Google Business Profile?

He recommends setting up multiple websites targeting different keywords and cities, and possibly multiple GBPs, because map listings can be outranked when competitors gain more recent reviews and single-GBP optimization is fragile.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
Hey, what's up, guys? So today I'm going to be reacting to Caleb Okus video, Rank Number One So Fast People Think You Hacked Google. Now, funny story, Caleb is somebody that learned SEO initially in my previous community. And what I do, and what I've been doing for the last 11 years, is I do the business model called Rank and Rent, where I build and rank my own websites at the top of Google.
00:15
Speaker A
I attach a tracking phone number on each of these sites, and each of these sites that I build generates phone calls for my clients. Here you can see all the phone calls that my sites are generating for my clients, and these are all sites that I own and control.
00:27
Speaker A
Here's some of the commissions that my sites have been generating for my clients, and I get paid every time a client closes these jobs. This is a $1,800 commission from a $26,000 job.
00:39
Speaker A
Now, what Caleb is teaching is how to do SEO for other companies' websites. But in this video, I'm going to make the case as to why I prefer doing the Rank and Rent model, or otherwise known as the local lead generation model, where I'm not going to do SEO for another company's website. I'm going to set up my own websites that generate leads for my clients, and I'm going to show at the end of the day that clients just want more leads.
00:53
Speaker A
I'm going to show how my strategy of Rank and Rent actually produces far more revenue for my clients than simply doing an SEO agency model. But I think in this video I'll have some points where I agree with Caleb on his SEO strategies, and some points where I may not agree with him, so we'll see.
01:06
Speaker A
This is one of his top-viewed videos on his channel.
01:18
Speaker A
Caleb has done an amazing job over the last couple of years making well-produced YouTube videos. But I will say, when it comes to SEO and pure lead generation, I believe that I have certain tactics that can outperform what he's doing. I rank local businesses so fast that people often think I hacked Google, and honestly, I get it. I understand why. When you rank a local business from position 3.36 to 1.23 in just two weeks, that's not normal. But honestly, I didn't hack anything. I just gave Google exactly what it wanted.
01:33
Speaker A
Now, most agencies are playing regular SEO tactics to local search, promising six-month timelines while their clients lose money waiting for results that never come. So, in this video, I'm going to show you the five-step system that ranks local businesses in two weeks instead of six months. I'll also show you why Google's local algorithm wants three specific things that most agencies completely miss.
01:38
Speaker A
And finally, promising to rank in two weeks is not very realistic when it comes to SEO. If you're going to get some results in two weeks, what he's talking about is taking over existing Google Map listings and doing some optimization to get that site to rank a little bit better on certain metrics. What we call in the SEO agency world is going after the low-hanging fruit optimizations. But in order to create a substantial difference in the business's revenue, I like setting up multiple different websites, multiple different Rank and Rent websites that I own.
01:52
Speaker A
And if you're a business owner, you can utilize my same strategies too, which is building and setting up multiple different websites, targeting different keywords, different cities, and possibly creating multiple GBPs. That actually increases revenue permanently, unlike just optimizing a singular GBP. But I'll talk more about that in this video, the exact AI prompts and tools that do 90% of this work for you.
02:03
Speaker A
Now, I've been running a seven-figure SEO agency since 2016, and this system has helped hundreds of local businesses go from invisible to fully booked. But first, let me show you why this HVAC contractor in Kansas City was stuck at position 3.36 for months, even though we were doing everything right.
02:15
Speaker A
Now, we had great content, solid backlinks, and we followed every SEO playbook. But look at this ranking map. Barely any green coverage beyond their immediate area. Google didn't trust that they could serve their customers beyond this core circle here, especially as we get south, farther and closer to Kansas City proper.
02:28
Speaker A
I think people put too much weight on this heat map situation because these rankings are constantly changing, and depending on the keyword you put in, it changes drastically as well. So, just using a singular heat map and seeing increases in it doesn't always translate to real-world revenue increases. For example, if a company does metal gates and the company's name is Joe's Metal Gates, no matter how much optimization you do on that site, if I come in with an exact-match domain with the city and the words metal gates in it, along with a GBP, I'm still going to pick off tons of leads from that company.
02:40
Speaker A
Anyways, maybe we'll discuss a little more, but again, this is only a very slight view of what's actually happening in search.
02:55
Speaker A
We're very close to their address. So, here's what made this even more painful. This HVAC contractor was bleeding money. They had three employees sitting around with nothing to do. Truck payments were due. His wife was asking why the SEO expert they'd been paying for months hadn't really moved the needle. Does that sound familiar to anyone out there?
03:12
Speaker A
So, I realized something, and it changed everything. Google's local algorithm isn't just looking at your website like regular SEO. It's trying to solve a completely different problem that most SEO agencies don't even understand. So, think about it from Google's perspective. When someone searches "HVAC near me," Google needs to show businesses that can actually drive up and fix the broken air conditioner, not some national company writing blog posts about maintenance steps. Google has spent 25 years trying to figure out if a business is worth recommending based on nothing except what Google can see about that business online.
03:24
Speaker A
So, once I understood this, everything clicked. I developed a specific five-step system that gives Google exactly what it's looking for. Before I show you that, just real quick, here's where SEO agencies get really stuck and start playing in the wrong games: when you try to rank for just "HVAC [city]." Okay? Not understanding that in the HVAC niche, there are so many other keywords people are searching for. For example, heat pump installation is a high-ticket item. So, if I come in with my own Rank and Rent sites that have "[city] heat pump" in the domain, I can pick off the most lucrative keyword in that niche and not even have to compete with all the SEOs trying to rank for HVAC, because HVAC is the main keyword and it's going to be the most competitive. With Rank and Rent, I don't have to play that same game. I can go target the more lucrative keywords and dominate with no competition. That's one thing to really keep in mind.
03:37
Speaker A
That system, I want you to see what happened to this HVAC contractor in Kansas City when we implemented it. Here they are, and two weeks later, look at this transformation. Green dots everywhere. This HVAC's phone started ringing off the hook. He went from three guys sitting around to being booked out for weeks. His wife went from questioning the investment in SEO to asking if they could hire more employees. And here's the crazy part: we didn't write a single
03:47
Speaker A
Now, I'm curious to see what he has done for this, but just so you know, the map listing is always changing in the rankings because a big component of map listings is what's called recent reviews. So, if another company starts getting more recent reviews, you can easily be outranked again in the map listing. So, again, I don't like to fully depend on the map listing to generate leads for my clients. I like setting up lead generation websites and ranking those at the top.
04:04
Speaker A
single blog post. We didn't build hundreds of backlinks. We didn't use CTR or map links or any tactics like that designed to trick Google. All we did w
04:19
Speaker A
if I come in with exact match domain with the city and the word metal gates in that city and with the GBP, I'm still going to pick off tons of leads off of that company. Anyways, well, maybe we'll
04:30
Speaker A
discuss a little bit more, but again, this is only a very slight view on what's actually happening in search.
04:38
Speaker A
We're very close to their address. So, here's what made this even more painful. This HVAC contractor was bleeding money.
04:43
Speaker A
They had three employees sitting around with nothing to do. Truck payments are due. His wife asking why the SEO expert they've been paying for months hadn't really moved the needle. Does that sound familiar to anyone out there? So, I
04:51
Speaker A
realized something and it changed everything. Google's local algorithm isn't just looking at your website like in regular SEO. It's trying to solve a completely different problem that most SEO agencies don't even understand. So, think about it from Google's
05:01
Speaker A
perspective. When someone searches HVAC near me, Google needs to show businesses that can actually drive up and fix the broken air conditioner, not some national company writing blog posts about maintenance steps. Google has spent 25 years trying to figure out if a
05:13
Speaker A
business is worth recommending based on nothing except what Google can see about that business online. So, once I understood this, everything clicked. I developed a specific five-step system that gives Google exactly what it's looking for. Before I show you that,
05:24
Speaker A
just real quick, here's where SEO agencies get really stuck and start playing in the wrong games is when you try to rank for just for HVAC XYZ city, okay? Not understanding that in the HVAC niche, there are so many other keywords
05:38
Speaker A
that people are searching. For example, like heat pump installation is like a high-ticket item. So, if I come in with my own rank and rent sites that has city heat pump in the domain, I can pick off the most lucrative keyword in that niche
05:52
Speaker A
and not even have to compete with all these SEOs that are trying to rank for HVAC because HVAC is the main keyword that's going to be the most competitive with rank and rent with what I do. I can
06:02
Speaker A
I don't have to play that same game. I can go target the more lucrative keywords and and dominate with no competition. That's one thing to really keep in mind.
06:11
Speaker A
that system, I want you to see what happened to this HVAC contractor in Kansas City when we implemented it. Here they are, and 2 weeks later, look at this transformation. Green dots everywhere. This HVAC's phone started ringing off the hook. He went from three
06:22
Speaker A
guys sitting around to being booked out for weeks. His wife went from questioning the investment in SEO to asking if they could hire more employees. And here's the crazy part. We didn't write a single Now, I'm curious to see what he has done
06:33
Speaker A
for this, but just so you know, the map listing is always changing in the rankings all the time because the big component of map listing is what's called recent reviews. So, if another company is like starting to get more
06:47
Speaker A
recent reviews, you can easily be outranked once again in the map listing. So, again, I don't like to fully depend on the map listing to generate leads for my clients. I like setting up lead generation websites and rank those at
07:00
Speaker A
the top. single blog post. We didn't build hundreds of backlinks. We didn't use CTR or map links or any tactics like that just designed to trick Google. All we did was give Google's local search algorithm exactly what it was looking
07:10
Speaker A
for. So, what does Google's local algorithm actually want? There are three specific things, and if you miss any of them, you're going to be stuck in local SEO purgatory just like our HVAC contractor in Kansas City was. No matter
07:18
Speaker A
how good your traditional SEO actually is. Google wants proof that you're a real business, proof that you serve the area, and proof other local entities recognize you. If you miss any of these, you're going to be invisible.
07:28
Speaker A
I just feel like most companies have done this, so I'm just curious to see how you're going to compete when other companies have done the same thing.
07:36
Speaker A
Remember that position four is completely invisible. But, here's how we give Google exactly what it wants. This first step sounds simple, but 90% or more of local businesses get this completely wrong. They have maybe five pages on their website when they should
07:47
Speaker A
have 30. Or they have 300 pages, but they're all worthless blog posts. Please, stop wasting your time writing blog posts. It's not about having more pages, it's about what those pages show Google. So, you need to build out what I
07:57
Speaker A
call the core 30. That's one page for every category and every service on your Google Business Profile. But, here's the key. They need to be structured so that they match the Google Business Profile exactly. If your GBP says air
08:07
Speaker A
conditioning repair, the page title must include air conditioning repair with the city name, character for character. Now, it can include other words, of course, but it must include those characters so that Google knows it matches the Google Business Profile. Google needs to see
08:19
Speaker A
that your website and GBP are talking about the same business. When they match perfectly, Google gains confident that you're legitimate. So, let me show you this AI prompt. Wait until you see what it actually outputs. You're going to be
08:29
Speaker A
amazed by how incredibly specific to get. So, let's find an HVAC contractor to analyze really quickly with this prompt. So, my go-to example is Fort Wayne, Indiana, not for any particular reason. It is a mid-size city in the
08:40
Speaker A
Midwest, and it's just a very typical example of a city that we might like to do local SEO for business professionals.
08:46
Speaker A
Not Houston, not Chicago, too big, too competitive. Fort Wayne, Indiana, is just right. I search for HVAC contractor Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I don't want to take a look at the top three. I want to find somebody who's a little bit lower.
08:54
Speaker A
So, if we hit more businesses, we're going to see this. If you take another look at the company that was listed at the top three there, they had like over a thousand reviews, which is why with Rank & Rank, I don't
09:04
Speaker A
really even like going into HVAC cuz it's saturated with these like huge listings. But, if you still want to generate leads for HVAC, again, I would go into more subniches, like heat pump installation, a whole website for that,
09:16
Speaker A
or air conditioning installations, things of that nature. more businesses, and we can see this here. These are the top three, and what I'm looking for is someone who's not in the top three, but has a bunch of reviews. And here's a good one, right?
09:24
Speaker A
Doc Dancer, 4.9, 1,900 reviews. They've done the hard stuff. They got the reviews, but they're not ranked in the top One of the big issues with this Doc Dancer guy is that he has no keywords in his brand name, okay? That's hurting his
09:36
Speaker A
GBP a lot. So, if I was to take that client on, obviously I would I don't like taking ISO clients, but I would it's straight-up that you're already at a disadvantage. No matter how much pages you add or different try to optimization
09:50
Speaker A
and description you try to add on the GBP, this map listing, in my opinion, will never be able to consistently outrank other companies with just as much reviews as this guy that has better keywords in the name.
10:01
Speaker A
in the top three. And look, 1,900 reviews, that's more than any of the top three. I always say local reviews are not a huge ranking factor. People give me flak for that. There's so many examples just like this. More reviews,
10:10
Speaker A
better reviews, not in the top three. Anyway, what I'm going to do next for Doc Answers, I'm going to run a local Review recency is a factor, okay? But review is the certainly a factor when it comes to pure GBP rankings.
10:21
Speaker A
ranking map for them. So, the tool we use for that is called Lead Snap. So, let me head on over to Lead Snap. So, I'm going to hit new Actually, the owners of Lead Snap also came from my previous Rank & Rank
10:30
Speaker A
community Shannon. heatmap. And then, I'm just going to search for Doc Answer. And this is them, 4.9, 1,886 reviews, and they're in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So, that is the business. Then, I'll click on keywords, and I'll do air conditioning repair,
10:40
Speaker A
Fort Wayne. In my experience, HVAC technicians really like air conditioning repair the most. Often, somebody who is calling for air conditioning repair issues actually needs a new air conditioner. So, we'll close, and then we'll run the scan. Okay, so he
10:50
Speaker A
To really help this company, I would simply build air conditioning repair, Fort Wayne type of a domain.
10:56
Speaker A
Here's my completed heatmap. This gives me an idea of where they currently rank. So, you can see that we're going to start with Home Comfort Experts. Their average rank is 3.2, and these are sorted by average rank. So, here we are,
11:03
Speaker A
Doc Answer, average rank 9.5, with 16% in the top three. Remember, if you're not in the top three, you're absolutely invisible. This is saying that Home Comfort It's not true that you're invisible. If people are closer to that person's
11:14
Speaker A
location, you'll still be found top three if they search near me type of search queries.
11:18
Speaker A
Experts are 62% visible across Fort Wayne, and Doc Answer is 16 and 1/2%. So, let's take a look at their website.
11:23
Speaker A
This is the Doc Answer website. One of the first things I always do is I'll do a site colon search. That tells me how big the website is. Doc Answer, 385 results. So, that's a pretty big website, but they're not ranked very
11:31
Speaker A
well. So, this is a sign that maybe they've been doing weekly blog posts or something like that, but they've been producing the wrong type of Yeah, having 300 pages is like way too much. So, I agree with Caleb here. If
11:42
Speaker A
you write bunch of random blog posts, that can hurt your overall SEO rankings. You run into the issue what's called increasing the site radius too big and it leads to dilution of the central focus of the site.
11:53
Speaker A
So, here's their actual GBP and you can see I'm now using GMB everywhere. It's a free plugin because I want to be able to see their deep categories and services.
11:59
Speaker A
So, if I hit find more here from GBP everywhere, then I'm going to see this.
12:02
Speaker A
So, these are the categories. It's recommending some related ones and then here are some services. Okay, so let me show you that prompt at long last. Okay, so this is my school community where that prompt lives. 2600 SEO
12:11
Speaker A
professionals in here. I try to answer every single question. You can see I'm a little behind, but I'm going to get there. So, I'm going to head over to the classroom and I'm going to hit modern SEO and then I'm going to come down to
12:17
Speaker A
my local website SEO analysis prompt. So, I'm going to copy this prompt. Feel free to use AI to grab this if you don't want to join school, no problem. going to give this prompt over to Claude. I'm going to switch this over to Opus, which
12:26
Speaker A
is the better model for this type of analysis. Perfect. Okay, so now I need a Screaming Frog run. So, this is Screaming Frog. I did this offline, but you can see I ran Duck Dancer. So, what I'm going to do is export the internal
12:34
Speaker A
all and then I'm going to export links all. All right, so I'm going to give Claude the internal I just want to point out that here's another tedious thing that I hate about running a SEO agency is that you are
12:44
Speaker A
responsible for fixing all the issues they made on these sites, which is a lot of work. And let's say you do all this work to fix their site and they get marginal increase in revenue, hopefully, right? And they stick with you month
12:58
Speaker A
after month paying you. But if they decide that they no longer need you and they they can just stop paying you and there's nothing you can do. And you put in all this work on their site and they
13:07
Speaker A
get to just keep it. Whereas when I do rank and rent, I rank my own websites.
13:11
Speaker A
If they stop paying me, I can just shut off the phone lines. Like which is the most beautiful aspect of the rank and rent model is I own the website. I own the phone lines. If they stop paying me,
13:21
Speaker A
it's as simple as going into my phone settings right inside here and just change who I'm forwarding the calls to.
13:28
Speaker A
And again, we are not burdened with all these mistakes that this client made on their own side that we have to fix. We are starting brand new sites and correctly building them from day one so that we are not wasting energy and time
13:44
Speaker A
fixing other people's mistakes. internal all in the links all files. You can see we've told Claude here that we're going to give that the homepage content. So, I'm just going to control A, I'm going to copy it, come back into
13:52
Speaker A
my prompt, and paste it in. And then GBP categories, so here I'm going to copy all, again come back into the prompt.
13:57
Speaker A
And then GBP services, again come down here, copy all, give it to the prompt.
14:00
Speaker A
And city name, we're going to give it of course Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we'll run the prompt. You might be thinking Claude of course is capable of crawling websites, so is ChatGPT. So, why do I need to give it the homepage content,
14:09
Speaker A
and why do I need to give it the Screaming Frog files? Now, Screaming Frog is completely free as long as you're doing 500 URLs or less. And for most local websites, there'll be fewer than 500 URLs. I have the unlocked
14:16
Speaker A
version, but you would be able to do this exact same analysis with the free version of Screaming Frog. The reason we do that Screaming Frog Frog just basically allows you to crawl the entire site and see what all the pages they have on the
14:26
Speaker A
site. This is something that only is useful when you're running a SEO agency. We don't need Screaming Frog if you're doing the rank and rent model. You do that is the AI bot are not nearly as good at crawling websites as Google is.
14:38
Speaker A
So, if we asked it to run the analysis without giving it the crawl data, then the analysis we would get back would be very faulty. So, instead we give it crawl data, and then ask it to do the
14:46
Speaker A
analysis based on that crawl data, we get much better results. So, it's finally starting to output some results here. So, we know that we're missing some GBP category pages. We have category pages with title tag Okay, GBP category pages. Okay, I mean, I just
14:57
Speaker A
don't see adding GBP category pages is going to make a big difference in the long run when other companies have already added those categories, the main categories. Most GBP listings have added those already.
15:11
Speaker A
title tag issues. So, you want to update these title tag issues. Giving you some gaps on homepage gaps. I guess I kept a plumbing mention, no problem. So, I would rerun this obviously. And then we have a bunch of service page gaps where
15:19
Speaker A
we're missing dedicated pages for a variety of them. And we have some internal linking structure. So, we have a pretty good path forward here on what we're going to do to help fix this H Vectors website. So, now that this
15:26
Speaker A
analysis is complete and there's a few more service pages, things like that that are missing, but this gives us a pretty good path forward for which pages we need to create to make sure the GBP is in complete alignment with the
15:35
Speaker A
website. And for this particular HVAC contractor, it looks like they need probably around 30 additional pages of content from missing service pages particularly. Even though they have the index URLs. You might be thinking, "30 pages of content, that'll take forever."
15:45
Speaker A
And of course, that's what we used to think before AI could write a lot of the content for you. So, let me show you the AI prompt that we used to write these category and service pages. And that's
15:52
Speaker A
really our second component. We need to write this content that actually makes Google see you as a local business.
15:56
Speaker A
We're going to use AI to write locally relevant content for each service, not generic HVAC advice. Content that mentions Kansas City neighborhoods, local weather patterns, specific building codes. Again, the AI prompt is in my school community and it's going to
16:06
Speaker A
create content that makes Google see you as generally local to that area. All right, so again, back in the classroom of my school community, I have my own AI content writer for our own rank and rent sites that produces
16:16
Speaker A
far better output than Claude or ChatGPT myself. I'm going to scroll down and grab the content writing prompt. And it's set up for a plumbing website, but this is the same prompt that we use, so I'll copy it
16:26
Speaker A
and I'll paste it in here. Now, I've already edited it for the HVAC company.
16:28
Speaker A
I haven't changed this target keyword because I wanted this analysis first. So, let's make the target keyword heating equipment supplier because we're missing that category page.
16:35
Speaker A
This prompt is going to be lacking in the fact that unless you custom analyze all the different keywords and entities for HVAC and all these other niches, Claude has a limited context window, so it's not going to be able to find all of
16:49
Speaker A
it with this prompt even if you were to tell it that you're an SEO expert content writer. Whereas, with my AI content writer, it's using AI agents to do real-time research of all the different entities and different keywords that appears in the SERP
17:05
Speaker A
instead of a single-shot prompt. We can also add an outline to this and with the outline, we can beef it up with all the needed keywords in the right places and force the AI to write in this proper
17:15
Speaker A
structure. If you do it in a single context window and a AI, it skips a lot of these keywords and no matter how much you try to prompt it, it ends up writing very generic using its limited knowledge
17:29
Speaker A
base and it doesn't nail all the keywords. The other changes I made an HVAC company, comprehensive HVAC services and made it specific to Fort Wayne and gave it the HVAC categories and services. So, I'll ask it to run. You can see here I'm
17:38
Speaker A
using Sonnet 4. Sonnet is going to be better at writing content than Opus. While this is going, I'll copy it here and I'll come on over to Zero GPT, which is our AI detector. I'll paste it in I want to like circle back to what this
17:48
Speaker A
output, okay? Like the these are not good H2s. Add you need H2s and H3 structures that break this keyword and deeper on. Also, why Fort Wayne homes need reliable heating equipment is not a good first H2. It needs to go right into
18:07
Speaker A
the various keywords that people are actually searching for, service keywords. While this is going, I'll copy it here and I'll come on over to Zero GPT, which is our AI detector. I'll paste it in and hit detect and our text is human
18:17
Speaker A
written. Now, a lot of agencies will see a GPT score like that and think they're done. This is a big mistake. They create all this AI content and wonder why Google still doesn't rank them. There's a hidden step that separates amateur
18:25
Speaker A
hour from professional results. The third thing you have to do is prove to Google that it's not AI slop. Now, Google can't detect AI content, but it can detect low quality content. So, we source medium quality links to every
18:35
Speaker A
page we create. Not expensive links, just enough external validation to show Google this content has value. One link for every URL we create. It's easy to generate a slop and post it online. Most of the people doing that aren't sourcing
18:44
Speaker A
any external links do that slop because that's harder. Easy and fast doesn't usually win if there's at least three other competitors in your area willing to take one extra step. So, I've seen agencies skip this step and watch them
18:53
Speaker A
struggle to get any traction in improving rankings. One agency owner told me his client fired him after two months because nothing was working. He created beautiful content, but skipped this one step because it was too hard or too expensive. Over the years, I've
19:04
Speaker A
built a network of sites that I use at my agency. You can get the same links that we use at the fulfillment website So, external backlinks are something that I'm am using any longer in 2026 because you can build authority to the
19:16
Speaker A
site in other ways by building pages that actually get traffic. I just feel that a lot of external backlinks, when it's low quality, Google has become a lot more strict on what actually passes PageRank today. If you're getting
19:30
Speaker A
backlinks from places that are link farms or places that or pages or websites that no longer is getting that much traffic, that external backlink that you spent money on might not really be doing anything. So, I'm a little bit
19:44
Speaker A
dubious at relying on building external backlinks today. website that I own, icecreamtruck.shop. Let me show you. This is the icecreamtruck.shop. If I go to our services and we hit five PBN links for $157, that's about 30 To me, PBN links are not something that
19:59
Speaker A
I recommend or I use any longer. PBN links are links you're getting from like dead websites with no traffic. And in my opinion, those links no longer carry the juice that they once did. Google has built more strict guidelines on what
20:14
Speaker A
actually passes PageRank. $30 a link. Now, here is where a lot of agencies think they're done, but there's a specific type of citation that's 10 times more powerful than the ones everyone else is getting. What you need, we call them super citations at my
20:23
Speaker A
agency. They establish presence on 50 plus sites that are actually hard to get. They require verification. Bing for Business, Apple Maps, BMW navigation system. These citations also help ChatGPT recommend you when people ask for local business recommendations. So,
20:33
Speaker A
here's what's interesting. Watch how many citations this tool I'm going to show you can actually get and how quick and easy it is to get these verification required super citations. So, I'm in Lead Snap again, and this is the same
20:42
Speaker A
tool we used earlier to run the ranking map. But here, I'm going to grab one of my clients and show you how easy it is to use for citations. So, going to hit citations and then we can hit business
20:49
Speaker A
details. And what we see is all of the information that's been pulled from the GBP. We can turn edit mode on and make these updates. Make sure everything is accurate. Make sure everything is filled out. Then all we need to do is take this
20:56
Speaker A
and it's going to turn on my monthly subscription for citations. And I can actually come into citations and listings and see how many we have. Out of 51, 25 are live, 19 more were submitted, seven are updated, none of
21:05
Speaker A
them require any action. Again, I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I don't build too much citation for many of my sites and I get rankings. I feel like citations have already been abused. Most companies
21:17
Speaker A
already have it. Most citations don't really get indexed. They don't really carry link juice. Now, I do agree certain citations are quite powerful if you were to able to get one from like BBB, but that's like quite expensive per
21:29
Speaker A
year. And we still do some social media links, but when it comes to these subscription model citations, I just don't think they're that big of a needle mover.
21:38
Speaker A
any action. I put a link in the description if you want to try that LeadSnap tool for yourself. It is an affiliate link, but it will extend the free trial and give you half off the first 3 months if you use that link. So,
21:45
Speaker A
the final piece is one of the most powerful, but it's also one that separates agencies that get clients results in 2 weeks versus 6 months. This is what took that HVAC contractor from good results to incredible results. You
21:54
Speaker A
need to build trust with powerful local links that prove you're embedded in the community. Join the local Chamber of Commerce. Sponsor a youth baseball team.
21:59
Speaker A
Get listed on the city's preferred contractor directory. These aren't just links. These are massive signals of trust both for Google and for Impact.
22:06
Speaker A
Again, I don't like these strategies cuz it's too much effort, too much work. Rank and rent is not about that, right?
22:14
Speaker A
It's about being able to leverage multiple different domains for the same client, targeting multiple different cities or different keywords, and be able to rank in search queries where other companies are not targeting.
22:26
Speaker A
Everybody else is trying to target the main keyword like HVAC, and they're trying to compete with backlinks, but in most HVAC in most cities, you're still not be able to outrank some of the main guys. Especially in HVAC industry, it's
22:39
Speaker A
like it's dominated by franchises that get direct traffic. Those franchises already have tons of like high-quality backlinks, and they have tons of reviews. So, it's just a game that, in my opinion, is not worth playing.
22:52
Speaker A
There's easier way to get leads and better ways to get leads if you know how to compete in suburb cities surrounding that main city or targeting certain specific keywords with a domain that other companies are not targeting.
23:05
Speaker A
AI bots like ChatGPT. I had another client, a personal injury attorney in New Orleans, and they were basically stuck at position eight for 3 months.
23:11
Speaker A
Then I joined the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce and we sponsored the Bayou Bash, a local event in New Orleans, for this business. Overnight, he jumped to position three. His first call the next morning was a case that they made
23:20
Speaker A
$14,000 on. So, let me show you what that looks like with another exact AI prompt. Here we are yet again in the school community, so I'm going to come down and grab the offsite analysis prompt. We'll give this to Claude, and
23:29
Speaker A
then we want to make sure that we're doing Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a local HVAC contractor business, and we'll hit run. All right, so the analysis is now done and it is giving me all of the local ranks. It's giving me the Chamber
23:37
Speaker A
of Commerce, Rotary Club, and all of these other organizations that I could join, events that I could sponsor, all of these very powerful local links that I could go after to rank this HVAC technician in Fort Wayne. Now, look, I
23:46
Speaker A
just gave you the exact Those links are often times quite expensive or very difficult to get. In my opinion, not worth relying on when there's, again, other ways to beat the competition using exact match domain and just some smart targeting.
24:02
Speaker A
The exact system that took that HVAC contractor from invisible to fully booked. But, if you're being honest with yourself, you already know ranking probably isn't your biggest challenge.
24:08
Speaker A
None of this matters if Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. So, so right now I typed "wood flooring Pasadena, California".
24:15
Speaker A
This is my website ranked at the very top. We also have a map listing here as well, but I have built a wood flooring site in Glendale, in Burbank, and all these surrounding areas. And most of these sites I was able to rank without
24:28
Speaker A
backlinks cuz I just know how to structure the content really well with all the keywords and I put unique entities and statistics into this content that other companies have not done. And I also built 30 to 40 hyper-targeted pages that drive traffic
24:43
Speaker A
over time that builds authority. Now, what I can also do is if I want to rank in a much bigger city like Los Angeles, I can create my own backlinks from my own sites that I have built in these
24:55
Speaker A
suburb cities back to one of my other sites that is in a much tougher city.
25:00
Speaker A
Now, a backlink from a site that actually gets traffic is way more powerful than getting a backlink from some local directory page that's hardly getting any traffic at all. And it's again, it's under my control, so I can
25:15
Speaker A
produce much more predictable outcome. This is the power of owning your own websites and ranking your own websites.
25:22
Speaker A
If you can't get clients in the door. I see agencies with incredible skills, amazing case studies, but they're struggling to even hit 10k a month because they have no idea how to land local clients. They can rank a business
25:30
Speaker A
in 2 weeks, but they can't convince a business owner to pay them $2,000 a month for it. The ranking game is completely different from the client acquisition game. Different psychology, different objections, different sales process. So, if you want to see the
25:40
Speaker A
exact client acquisition system that got me 90 cent clients in 6 months, click this video right here. Before you waste another month Yeah, the client acquisition, again, with rank and rent, it's completely different because we're ranking our own
25:50
Speaker A
sites, generating leads, we're able to forgive free leads to business owners, and get them begging to want to work with us. And if they don't want to pay us, we can simply send the leads to somebody else that want our leads. So,
26:02
Speaker A
again, we're in the driver's seat. With the SEO agency, you have to do a lot of prospecting, you have to almost beg the business owner to want to pay you $2,000 a month, and you do your best to try to
26:12
Speaker A
optimize their site and get these backlinks, and we you work really hard, and even if you do really good job and get them results, after 5 months, they decide they don't you're not worth paying $2,000 a month, they can cancel
26:24
Speaker A
the contract, cancel paying you, even if you have everything in written contract. If they stop paying you, there's nothing you can do. And this is the same issue I've ran into over and over again with SEO clients, which is why today I don't
26:37
Speaker A
bother with SEO clients. I All I focus on is ranking my own lead generation rank and rent websites to the top of Google, and I also know how to get my own GBPs as well. And once I got that,
26:49
Speaker A
that's something that no one can take away from me. I simply sell the leads.
26:53
Speaker A
There's plenty of business owner that want to continue to buy those leads from me on a monthly basis, and I have a much more stable passive income flow as opposed to doing a bunch of agency client work. So, if you're somebody
27:04
Speaker A
that's serious about creating long-term passive income, SEO is an amazing skill. I just believe in my heart that creating a rank and rent business is a much better long-term strategy than trying to do SEO work for other people's sites or
27:19
Speaker A
other people's GBPs. So, if you're interested in finding more about how to make money with SEO and with the rank and rent SEO, click the link in the description. I have a coaching program that I just launched this year with all
27:31
Speaker A
new training videos, and in my opinion, I have some of the most cutting-edge SEO strategies as well. See you in the next video.
Topics:SEORank and Rentlocal SEOGoogle Business Profilelead generationHVAC marketinglocal citationsGoogle Maps rankingAI promptsdigital marketing

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