The Edward Show

E1117: Breaking down Rank-and-Rent, one of the most profitable local SEO business models.
We are joined by a pro in the subject: Ippei Kanehara
Ippei has been building Rank-and-Rent websites for more than 11 years. During that time he's built hundreds of local lead generation sites, generated recurring income from websites that are over a decade old, and recently built 130 new sites to test what's working in SEO today.
One of his earliest websites took around 15 hours to build and has generated more than $240,000 over its lifetime while continuing to produce recurring monthly revenue.
We cover the complete strategy behind modern Rank-and-Rent SEO, including niche selection, keyword research, website architecture, topical authority, Google Business Profiles, AI content workflows, and why bottom-of-the-funnel SEO continues to outperform many traditional content strategies.
Whether you're an SEO professional, agency owner, affiliate marketer, local business owner, or someone looking to build recurring income online, this episode is packed with practical insights and real-world examples.
Topics covered include:
- What Rank-and-Rent SEO is
- Whether Google Business Profiles are still required
- How the business model differs from running an SEO agency
- How to generate leads before signing clients
- Using free leads to acquire long-term customers
- Commission deals vs. flat monthly rental agreements
- Why recurring rental income often produces lower client churn
- The biggest misconceptions about rank and rent
- How successful operators continue building without relying entirely on GBP
- Choosing profitable local niches
- Why home service businesses continue to offer strong opportunities
- High-ticket vs. low-ticket service industries
- Avoiding overly competitive local markets
- What to look for when analyzing competing websites
- Why many local businesses still have weak SEO
- Exact match domains and partial match domains
- Building brands around local search intent
- Website structures that consistently rank
- Homepage optimization
- Heading hierarchy
- Service page strategy
- Sub-city landing pages
- Internal linking strategy
- Using the homepage as the authority hub
- Building topical authority across an entire site
- How many pages to launch with
- Creating dozens of bottom-of-the-funnel pages
- Expanding into neighboring cities
- Finding overlooked service keywords
- Using Google's autocomplete for keyword research
- Google Search Console to discover new opportunities
- When to create new pages versus expanding existing content
- Information architecture for local SEO
- AI-assisted content creation
- Entity optimization
- Editing AI content for higher quality
- Making local landing pages more unique
- Case studies and location-specific content
- Image strategies for local websites
- Link building vs. topical authority
- Why Ippei has largely stopped relying on guest posts
- Using internal authority across owned websites
- Building multiple websites for the same client
- Scaling local SEO without unnecessary complexity
- The first 30 days of launching a new Rank-and-Rent website
- Why beginners should build multiple sites
- Common mistakes new local SEO operators make
We also discuss how Google's algorithm updates have affected different business models. Ippei shares how large content websites can be heavily impacted by updates while many local lead generation sites continue producing consistent results by focusing on commercial search intent and bottom-of-the-funnel keywords.
⭐️ Ippei's Blog - https://ippei.com/ 
⭐️ Ippei's Web Builder & Call Tracking - https://ippei.com/dashboard/ 
⭐️ Ippei Kanehara on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@IppeiSEO 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Rank and Rent Intro
00:27 Model Breakdown
03:31 Monetization and Billing
05:03 Why It Beats Agencies
08:48 Ippei Origin Story
14:24 Best Site Example
14:58 Misconceptions and GBP
17:17 Picking Profitable Niches
18:46 Reading Competition Right
23:07 Site Structure Basics
25:44 Branding and Scaling Cities
28:22 EMDs and Must Have Pages
31:36 Internal Linking Strategy
36:31 Avoiding Doorway Pages
39:44 AI Content Workflow
43:34 Keyword Research Methods
46:22 GSC Insights and New Pages
47:27 Keyword Page Splits
48:31 Backlinks Versus Authority
51:09 First 30 Days Blueprint
54:38 Site Structure Strategy
56:35 Image Sourcing Tactics
57:59 GBP Lead Boost
01:00:45 Video Verification Hacks
01:05:52 Reviews And Conversions
01:08:23 Monetization Models
01:10:08 Lead Handoff Scripts
01:16:16 Contracts And Leverage
01:18:14 Scaling And Mistakes
01:21:51 Mega Brand Rollup
01:27:18 Why Projects Fail
01:29:30 Final Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#rankandrent #seo #searchengineoptimization

E1116: James Dooley joins the pod to explain what's working in SEO in 2026, based on years of testing across hundreds of websites, multiple industries, and highly competitive search markets.
James describes himself as a "money-hat SEO": he is less interested in labels such as white hat or black hat and more interested in testing, measuring results, managing risk, and building assets that make money over the long term.
We discuss:
- What James does during the first 30 days of a new SEO project
- Why he often builds an exact-match domain, a partial-match domain, and a branded website for the same business
- How he chooses between short-term ranking opportunities and long-term brand building
- Why bottom-of-the-funnel pages remain central to his lead-generation strategy
- How to tell whether a site needs more authority, better content, content pruning, or conversion work
- What "discovered, not indexed" and "crawled, not indexed" can reveal about a website
- Why deleting a large percentage of weak pages can sometimes increase traffic
- What the Google API leak confirmed about user signals, clicks, branded searches, and NavBoost
- Why site speed, concise content, image size, dwell time, and user behavior still matter
- Which links still move rankings in 2026, including digital PR, guest posts, citations, press releases, and PBNs
- Why James now prefers links that competitors cannot easily copy
- What still works in iGaming SEO and why James is reducing his involvement in that market
- How parasite SEO, expired domains, exact-match domains, and indexing tools fit into his current process
- Why top-of-the-funnel content is increasingly being published on Reddit, social platforms, and third-party sites
- How one strong review, testimonial, award, or case study can be repurposed across many platforms
- Why force-indexing social posts and third-party content may help those pages appear in search and AI systems
- How brands can improve their chances of being cited and linked in Google AI Overviews
- Why consensus and third-party corroboration matter for recommendations in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity
- James's "who you are, what you do, and why you're brilliant" framework
- How knowledge panels, Knowledge Graph IDs, schema, books, podcasts, IMDb, Wikidata, and entity connections work together
- The difference between using schema for rankings and using schema to clarify an entity
- How James outranked another well-known person with the same name in Google's Knowledge Graph
- Why fewer clicks from informational searches do not always mean fewer leads or sales
- How AI-assisted search can send better-informed prospects who are more likely to convert
- The SEO mistakes James has made, how he tests penalties, and why he teaches new team members to find the limits
- The one SEO action he recommends completing in the next 24 hours
- Why SEOs should test ideas instead of repeating advice they have never verified
⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley 
⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Welcome James Dooley
00:32 From Business to SEO
01:46 Content Amplification Flywheel
05:11 First 30 Days SEO
08:07 Money Hat SEO
11:58 Google Leak Signals
15:52 iGaming Negative SEO
19:13 Pruning and Authority
21:14 Revenue Keyword Research
23:52 Multi Domain Strategy
26:26 Entity SEO Knowledge Panels
31:01 Link Tactics 2026
36:17 Schema for Entities
40:50 Search Volume vs Corroboration
42:20 Schema for Knowledge Panels
43:37 Schema Testing for Rankings
44:35 R&D Testing Mindset
46:13 Social Platforms for Long Tails
48:12 AI Overviews and Better Leads
50:15 Consensus Framework for AI
52:56 Amplify Testimonials Everywhere
56:57 Ethics of Review Manipulation
59:49 Semantic Triples Explained
01:01:35 Force Indexing Social Proof
01:04:43 Omnichannel Consistency Wins
01:08:20 Mentorship and Industry Growth
01:10:27 Nofollow and Mentions Debate
01:11:44 Unlinked Mentions Matter
01:12:36 Why SEO Is Surging
01:13:54 Bottom of Funnel Keyword Wins
01:15:01 Inside Their SEO Testing Lab
01:16:43 Image Search Traffic Plays
01:18:01 Video And Podcasting Boost
01:18:37 Podcast Syndication For LLMs
01:24:08 Monetizing Podcasts With Sponsors
01:26:49 Strategic Micro Episodes Plan
01:30:16 Three Questions
01:36:04 Who To Follow In SEO
01:40:46 Wrap Up And Where To Find
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #blackhatseo #digitalmarketing

E1115: Endre Olsvik Elvestad built a large SEO program around SignLab, a sign-language learning company. Its websites offered searchable sign language videos across multiple countries.
Then Google AI Overviews appeared.
SignLab lost about 50% of its Google clicks. High-intent traffic and app downloads fell even harder. Google could show the answer directly in search by displaying SignLab's videos, leaving users with no reason to visit the website.
In this episode, Endre explains what happened, why the original programmatic SEO strategy stopped producing the same results, and how the company rebuilt organic acquisition across Google, YouTube, and AI search.
We cover:
- How AI Overviews reduced clicks while rankings and impressions often stayed stable
- Why losing website visits caused a much larger drop in app downloads
- How SignLab moved thousands of sign language videos from self-hosting to YouTube
- The upload limits, verification issues, and automation challenges involved
- Why YouTube became an important search engine for sign language queries
- Why YouTube improved visibility without fully replacing website conversions
- The difference between top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel traffic
- Which queries produced the most app downloads after the decline
- Why "Does Duolingo have ASL?" became a strong bottom-of-funnel topic
- How the team shifted from individual sign queries to broader communication problems
- Why traditional SEO fundamentals still mattered after AI Overviews
- How SignLab manages separate SEO strategies across multiple countries and domains
- Why direct translation was not enough for international SEO
- How AI agents help with research, outlines, writing, review, publishing, and updates
- Why content must reflect the culture, search behavior, and needs of each country
- How customer reviews can feed new topics into an automated SEO workflow
- What useful, specific, reviewed AI-generated content looks like
- Which tactics were less useful, including gray-hat LLM tactics and expensive monitoring tools
- The few actions that drove most of the recovery
This case study is for anyone dealing with declining organic clicks, zero-click search, AI Overviews, programmatic SEO, international SEO, YouTube SEO, or AI-assisted content production.
SignLab did not recover by finding a shortcut. It recovered by changing its content, expanding into YouTube, targeting queries closer to conversion, and applying solid SEO practices across every market.
⭐️ Endre Olsvik Elvestad on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/endreelvestad/ 
⭐️ Endre Olsvik Elvestad's company, SignLab - https://www.signlab.co/ 
⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ 
⭐️ Will Qu on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-qu/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Traffic Cut in Half
00:27 Sign Language SEO Model
01:37 AI Overviews Steal Videos
05:25 App Downloads Collapse
07:19 Working With David
09:44 Recovery Strategy Shift
15:24 YouTube Migration Plan
16:08 Upload Limits and Workflow
18:41 Verification to Scale Uploads
20:52 Titles Format and Editing
25:25 Replacing Embeds and SERP Impact
26:59 Why It Felt Unfair
32:31 YouTube Beats AI Answers
34:38 SEO Reset With Experts
36:16 What Good Content Means
38:21 Middle vs Bottom Funnel
42:00 Links And Topical Authority
44:06 Agentic Multilingual Publishing
46:25 Avoiding AI Translation Traps
51:12 Automated Content Feedback Loops
57:12 What Actually Drove Recovery
59:15 LLM Visibility And Community
01:01:40 Lessons And Closing
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #programmaticseo #digitalmarketing

1113: Five websites once dominated Google search, bringing in millions and millions of clicks every month. Then their rankings collapsed.
We break down five major SEO declines from the last few years, explain what caused them, and show why one site was able to recover while the others continued to struggle.
These examples cover some of the most common SEO mistakes companies are still making today, including scaled AI content, aggressive self-promotion in top-of-funnel content, weak search intent alignment, topical overreach, poor user experience, and an overdependence on informational traffic.
You'll learn what happened to:
- AInvest
- WPBeginner
- ClickUp
- HubSpot
- HouseFresh
AInvest scaled AI-generated finance content and briefly grew from roughly 270,000 monthly Google clicks to 9.5 million. After Google's spam updates, that traffic fell to fewer than 8,000 monthly clicks.
WPBeginner went from being one of the largest WordPress resource sites to losing nearly all of its organic search visibility. Its decline shows what can happen when informational content becomes overloaded with promotion, slow introductions, thin answers, and poor user experience.
ClickUp's blog fell from approximately 1.19 million monthly organic visitors to around 28,000. Many of its pages were built around ClickUp's conversion funnel rather than the searcher's actual intent. When rankings started falling, the company added thousands of additional templated pages instead of addressing the underlying problems.
HubSpot lost millions of monthly Google clicks after publishing across too many unrelated topics. Its content ranked for searches involving career advice, quotes, emojis, technical instructions, business ideas, and other subjects far outside its core expertise. HubSpot survived because its business was not dependent on blog traffic alone.
HouseFresh is the recovery story.
After being hit by Google's helpful content update, HouseFresh fell from around 50,000 monthly clicks to approximately 1,000. Instead of abandoning the site, the team continued improving its reviews, navigation, design, brand visibility, and presence outside Google.
HouseFresh later recovered to approximately 275,000 monthly clicks, more than five times its traffic before the original decline.
You'll learn:
- Why scaled AI content can create serious long-term SEO risks
- Why search intent matters more than publishing volume
- How excessive self-promotion can weaken informational content
- Why adding more pages may make an SEO decline worse
- How topical authority affects rankings
- Why high traffic does not always lead to revenue
- How branded search, direct traffic, referrals, and other channels reduce dependence on Google
- Why product pages and commercial pages can be more resilient than broad informational content
- What HouseFresh did differently after losing nearly all of its traffic
- Which SEO practices companies should avoid moving forward
The main lessons:
- Match the searcher's intent
- Do not scale low-value AI pages
- Do not publish content simply to increase page count
- Stay within subjects where your business has real expertise
- Avoid forcing product promotion into informational articles
- Give people useful answers quickly
- Build branded search and direct traffic
- Earn backlinks that also generate referral and direct traffic
- Create useful commercial pages for searches with buying intent
- Continue improving the site when rankings decline
- Do not use Google as your only source of customers
⭐️ Google's War on Scaled AI Content: The Rise and Fall of AInvest - Ep 803 - https://youtu.be/RpgOKUO_SyI 
⭐️ Google Took WPBeginner From 2.6M Clicks to 27K - Here's Why - Ep 1082 - https://youtu.be/pUBiXeLrxf4 
⭐️ From 1.19M to 28K: ClickUp's SEO Collapse (And What It Teaches Us) - Ep 1038 - https://youtu.be/SDsxGF3KTcc 
⭐️ Writeup - HubSpot SEO collapse - https://thestacc.com/blog/hubspot-traffic-drop-analysis/ 
⭐️ Why HubSpot Lost 20M Clicks (and How They Plan to Recover) - Ep 820 - https://youtu.be/AqjXoBv-7nA 
⭐️ From 1,000 to 200,000 Clicks: The INSANE SEO Comeback of HouseFresh.com - Ep 832 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QewNJ2AgQxM 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Biggest SEO Collapses
00:38 First Crash
02:51 Second Downfall
04:57 Third Decimation
07:13 Fourth Overreach and Destruction
10:14 Why It Survived
12:41 The Major Comeback
14:42 SEO Lessons Recap
15:22 Wrapping
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #seopodcast

E1114: AI can search faster, pull data from dozens of sources, analyze entire websites, and complete hours of SEO research in minutes.
But AI still does not think.
Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen explains what large language models actually do, why their reasoning can look more intelligent than it is, and where AI agents commonly fail when used for SEO.
We discuss why AI-generated work often sounds convincing while completely missing search intent, how bad context compounds across prompts, and why automating SEO without expert review can quietly destroy a website.
Andrew also breaks down how he uses AI agents responsibly to collect data, run SEO audits, create reports, and handle narrow tasks without allowing the system to publish unchecked changes.
Topics covered:
- Why an LLM is a statistical model, not a human brain
- Why AI "thinking" is different from actual human judgment
- How ChatGPT and AI agents use search and query fan-out
- Why AI often produces average or surface-level SEO content
- How AI misunderstands bottom-of-funnel search intent
- Why correcting an AI can accidentally make its output worse
- What context poisoning is and how it affects future responses
- Why memory can introduce irrelevant or incorrect assumptions
- How hallucinated numbers can corrupt SEO analysis
- The risks of connecting AI to Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics
- Why automated title and content updates can create bad user signals
- How agencies can damage client websites by removing human supervision
- Why Google is equipped to identify large-scale AI spam
- Why mass AI publishing could lead to severe Google penalties
- How to keep prompts, instructions, and source information focused
- Which SEO tasks AI agents are actually good at
- How one SEO audit went from 16 hours to eight minutes
- Why that audit still required an hour of professional quality control
- How AI agents can run separate research tasks without overloading one context window
- Why retrieving and organizing information is often AI's greatest strength
- When it is faster to stop prompting and complete the work yourself
- Why experienced professionals should use AI as an assistant, not a replacement
- How smaller companies and solo operators may adopt AI faster than large organizations
- Why AI is more likely to change jobs than eliminate human work entirely
The main lesson is simple: AI can dramatically reduce the time required to gather and organize information, but it cannot replace the judgment required to make good SEO decisions.
Use AI to retrieve, summarize, format, and assist.
Do not let it think it is the SEO.
⭐️ Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amovfx/ 
⭐️ Saaga Solve - https://saagasolve.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meet the Guest
01:06 From Games to Bitcoin
02:52 Crypto Hype Lessons
05:57 Agents Need Humans
08:07 LLMs Explained Simply
16:11 Search and Fan Out
19:55 Why LLMs Feel Smart
24:00 Spam and Google Purge
29:08 Dead Internet Incentives
32:18 Jobs and Upskilling
34:55 Common SEO Failures
37:47 Context Hygiene Tips
43:36 How He Uses Agents
47:00 When AI Slows You Down
49:16 Model Choice Matters
51:25 AI Inside Organizations
53:42 16 Hour SEO Audit to 8 Minutes
57:40 Sales Agent Edge Cases
01:01:32 Are LLMs Topping Out
01:07:46 AI SEO for Non Natives
01:11:44 Recursive Hyper Agents
01:18:01 Automation Traps and Risks
01:27:21 Responsible Agent Workflow
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #aiseo #digitalmarketing