Mistakes
All in all, looking back, I made these 3 mistakes:
- Search intent: Queries with the keyword « drywall kingston » can potentially be people who are looking for the material « drywall » rather than services related to it.
- Competitor Backlink profiles: I had not looked at the top SERP results backlink profiles. Knowing the top SERP results backlink profiles beforehand is important to determine whether or not you will be able to equal or do better for your own site.
- Domain selection: I messed up when choosing « drywallkingston.com.» I should have chosen the domain « drywall-kingston-contractor.com » for the site to be more geared towards service intent queries as opposed to material intent queries. You can learn more about purchasing a domain for rank and rent in my rank and rent series.
- Page Rank: I should have used a tool to estimate the page rank of the pages on the first page of the SERPs. This would have helped me determine whether it would be easy to compete.
What I learned
EMD (i.e., exact match domain) did not work in this instance. Google seems to focus more on the page's title. When my page was titled to match exactly the target keyword, it was ranked position #12.
As soon as I edited the title to « Drywall Kingston
Residential & Commercial Contractor,» My page ranking started to drop to positions #30 ~ #40.
The drop might also have been due to adding « Terms » and « Privacy » pages. On these pages, I disclosed that the site was a referral site, and I believe that Google could have picked up on this, reducing its ranking position.
I learned that Google values more search intent and considers EMD sites (i.e., exact match domains) more as brands than as sites that guarantee to fulfill search intent.
Conclusion
It's important to remember that your first rank and rent site may fail, but this is an opportunity to learn and improve for the next one.
If you found value in my experience with the rank and rent model, I kindly request your assistance in getting this website to rank on page 1. To do so, please consider giving me a backlink to this URL: https://drywallkingston.com with the keyword 'Drywall contractor in Kingston' or simply 'Drywall '.