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Question about renting local site

by J smith
6 replies
Hello warriors,

I have two questions for those who are renting sites to local companies/clients.

1) Do you find there is enough search volume? I was looking at "dentist State" and exact search is like 90, broad is around (broad is at 40k though) ("Dentist State-Capital" has 14k broad and 500 exact, so a bit better but I am a bit less interested in that market atm)

Is this typical? Should I go for some other keyword? (doesn't look like there is anything much better, as far as dentists go at least.) I live in a city of about 70k residents, a "dentist City State" has a broad of 500, exact of 90, which I guess isn't that bad.

So, is this enough volume to make it worthwhile for would be clients to pay (something along the lines of 200-300$/month) or is the volume too low and I should look at other businesses? (accountants, plumbers etc)

2) How do you deal with Google Local Listing taking up a chunk (if not all) of first page? For "dentist city state" top 7 results are google local listings (which I am not sure you can even beat and get ahead of in this instance)

So, what do you do? Do you go for long tail keywords (that don't display google local listings) and drive traffic to your site that way? I am just curious how people work around this.
The idea of renting a site to a bunch of local clients (in different cities) sounds great, but if they don't get clients from the site it won't work.

Looking forward to your ideas and suggestions!
#local #question #renting #site
  • Profile picture of the author J smith
    Surely for all the people talking about making good money with renting sites, there has to be at least one who could answer those questions.

    I realize it's all about value, so I should sell more than just a site (creating an email campaign with marketing tips etc. for clients as well as offering other services) and that's fine.

    However, how do you rent your sites if a "professions city state" search returns 7 google local business listings insteadof regular sites. Can you beat google lbl with enough back links? Do you just go for long tail keywords and other key words that don't show google listings? Would really like to know how people deal with this.
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  • Profile picture of the author rjhartl
    Well first I would like to state that I'm not currently doing this, so an answer from somebody who is would probably be much more valuable (experience > theory).

    That being said, in my tiny brain, I would think about it like this:

    When you're dealing with the local level, search volume is obviously going to be much lower than a national/global search. But, the potential visitor value can be enormous for an individual business owner. So for you specifically, if you own the top spot in Google for "Dentists in Blank", and you have a recorded analytic record of 22 unique visitors a month, that means that a dentist owning that site would have 22 people that could possibly pay him $200-$5k that same month.

    To me, that is where the value comes in. In other words, while you could not sell that site on Flippa outside of your city, 100 hits a month is HUGE in your local area. For anyone really. Pizza, plumbing, laundry, cigars, etc. Most importantly, because you can SHOW that it happens. The longer the analtic record, the more value you can rent it for.

    It seems like it would be all about the Analytics though.

    Also, remember, with your website, you have the ability to record data, communicate with customers, build lists, funnel sales, etc. Listings can't do that. So being #1 for a local search with only a G-list page is still missing a ton of value!

    Those are my thoughts. Maybe someone who has more experience could steer you the right way if I'm dumb.
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  • Profile picture of the author Davidoff
    >google local listings (which I am not sure you can even beat and get ahead of in this instance)

    Yes, you can beat that, even I can. I have MANY sites where my top keyword is ABOVE google places.
    What you can say? Tell them the truth: Most people don't want to click from one local placeholder to the next etc, but rather want an overview - who's doing what, when and why. And how good.
    Also, I second what rjhartl wrote.
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    • Profile picture of the author J smith
      Thanks David. It's just been a while since I bothered with looking at local sites, and when I looked at a few they all seemed to have google listings above the sites. So I wasn't sure if google changed something or if it's because all those local sites are unfocused directories (or have no back links at all)

      What I plan to do is offer to put a future client's info on a site (with my google phone # for people to call so I can track calls) for free, as I build the site and back links. Pretty hard to say no to potential free leads, so they should go for it. And it would allow me to track results as I build the site up.

      The once I get the site to where I want, and assuming the results were good, they would likely go for a leasing it from me (and even if they for some reason don't, it's always an easy sell when you can show results)
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      • Profile picture of the author Davidoff
        J, I overlooked your other question, sorry: Search volume on my local sites is between 400/500 and 90/month - I don't usually go lower than that.
        I guess, an average of 300/m I have.

        Here's an example site for you: accountantsbelfast.com. Is #2 for that keyword, and also on page 1 for various related keywords. (You needa use the Google plugin to view from within a country, here UK). It was ranking there all the time, with just THREE pages! :-) The massive amount of extra pages I only just "wrote" yday when I played around with my newest acquisition, the LPN plugin. I guess I'll use that now on many other sites too. Makes the directory look even bigger ;-)

        "it's always an easy sell when you can show results" - what?? Show me how. I don't find it easy at all, although I can offer dozens of sites with top search positions: ca 30 for accountants, 30 for lawyers, 15 for dentists, etc. These "idiots" seem not even to notice that I show up top for their key searchterm and that they could have easy marketing! (Yeah, I should actively sell to them...)
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  • Profile picture of the author mrmatt
    I pretty much dismiss local search results.

    For example chiropractor my city my state in in the keyword tool shows and exact match of 58 broad match shows 360.

    I have an adwords account set up for this particular client bidding on local keywords. Based on impressions that keyword actually gets about 600 searches per month.

    I only use the keyword tool to find commonly searched terms and then add my geo modifier to it. I never rely or believe what it shows me as far as local searches.

    The searches are there even if the tool does not show it to be.

    Hope that helps.

    BTW this is for a city of about 75K in population.
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