we're building a rank and rent directory to $10K/month completely in public, and the plan is to never talk to a single client. here's everything from this week:
the model is dead simple. rank a national directory site, calls come in, route them to a lead network, get paid by the network. no selling, no client calls, no retainers. jacky's done this before, ran a towing directory to $10K/month semi in public and sold it for $190K. not life-changing money, but an extra $10K/month of semi-passive revenue is very real for most people. we're revealing the URL and every tactic along the way.
the page structure is the sauce. national service pages linking down to city hub pages linking down to service area pages. hub page targets the broad search (tax accountant austin), service area pages catch the long tail (emergency tax extensions austin), and everything interlinks so link equity flows. the AI-era detail: people search their exact scenario now because they're used to talking to claude, "missed my filing deadline, need someone who does extensions." target the symptoms, not just the service.
the advanced play is a network, not a site. one topical hub (taxaccountantshouston.com) plus 10-20 satellite rank and rents each owning a subservice with the city modifier: taxplanninghouston.com, bookkeepinghouston.com. keep the topic clusters separate, scale into the suburbs, repeat in every major metro. programmatic SEO is dead because this entire build is a one-shot with AI now.
why bother with GBPs at all? because 60-80% of local traffic routes straight to the map pack, and the people calling from it are ready to buy. organic gets you the tire kickers plus the occasional whale. the office hack: find a commercial real estate agent, take the cheapest listing, $500 on the office, $500 on supplies, verify the profile. and no, don't buy the $100 GBPs from the cheap countries, they get clapped in 15 days.
meanwhile the vet clinic case study went nuclear and it's single-variable proof that citations still work. no new reviews (guy was in asia all month), no new links. all we did was citations plus the super boost through an indexer, and veterinary near me jumped 92 positions. impressions up 100%, 29 clicks in the last 24 hours from searches like "dog ear cropping near me." the map scan went from all red to yellow.
he also ignored our advice and won. tristan told him to phase the pages in slowly to be safe. the guy one-shot all 300 pages instead. they sat unindexed for a bit, then GSC exploded. every onsite change is visible in the rank tracker to the exact day. you don't even have to ask when he shipped, the chart tells you.
follow the build with @tristanzheng, URL and templates drop in local rank academy. watch/listen ↓
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