Forty town pages with the name swapped in read as filler to visitors and match Google's description of doorway pages. One honest service area page, plus separate pages only where a town genuinely differs, serves both better.

The site

A plumbing company with five vans, based in one Lower Mainland suburb, doing repairs, water heaters, drain cleaning and renovation work.

Its footer carries a block headed Areas We Serve: forty town and neighbourhood names, each a link to a page titled Plumber in, followed by the town.

Open any two and they are the same page. About four hundred words, the same photograph of a van, the same three testimonials, with the town name dropped in eight or nine times.

The pages were added in one batch, years ago, on advice that this was how local search worked.

The inference a visitor makes

A homeowner with a leaking water heater searches for a plumber in their town and lands on the page made for it. The first paragraph uses the town's name three times and says nothing about it.

Visitors notice. The page reads as written for a search engine, and they start to wonder whether there is a local business behind it at all.

The suspicion has a basis. Lead brokers, who sell calls to whichever company pays, often build sites in exactly this pattern, and a real plumber with a site like this looks like one of them.

Meanwhile the question the visitor needed answered, whether this company comes to their street and how quickly, goes unaddressed.

What every town page contains

The fifth is the one that does real damage. A one-hour arrival is plausible in the home suburb and impossible ninety minutes up the valley, and a customer who believed it finds out with water on the floor.

The copy and paste shows

Pages made by swapping a name tend to carry the evidence. On this site, the Langley page mentions Maple Ridge in its second paragraph, where the swap was missed.

Two pages misspell the town, one of them in the title shown in search results. Three are for places the company no longer serves, because the technician who lived there left.

Each slip is small. Together they confirm what the visitor suspected: nobody wrote these pages for them.

What Google calls doorway pages

Google's guidelines have described this pattern for years. Doorway pages are pages created to rank for particular searches, which then lead visitors to the same place.

Its named examples include pages targeted at particular cities or regions that funnel visitors to one page, and substantially similar pages that sit closer to search results than to a browsable site.

In 2015 Google announced a ranking adjustment aimed at doorway pages, and its guidelines treat them as a violation.

Whether or not it acts against a particular site, pages like these do little, and a site full of them reads as low effort.

Forty pages against one another

The home page and the main service pages are the ones with real content, links from other sites and some history. The town pages compete with them for the same searches.

For a search like plumber in the home suburb, Google has two candidates from the site saying nearly the same thing, and it may pick the thin one.

Every page also carries forty footer links, which on a small site is most of its links, pointing at the pages that deserve them least.

And forty pages need maintaining. When the company changed its after-hours rates, the new figure reached the services page and nowhere else.

A worked example

The company replaced the forty pages with one service area page and two location pages.

The service area page names the towns covered, grouped by region, with a map. It says plainly how travel works: no travel charge within the core area, a charge beyond it, and realistic arrival times for each region.

It shows real jobs in different towns, with photographs and the neighbourhood named where the customer agreed.

It also explains what differs locally, such as original galvanised pipes in some older neighbourhoods and well pumps on rural properties up the valley.

The two location pages are for towns where the company keeps a technician and a van, with that person's photograph and the jobs they cover.

Every retired address was redirected to the service area page, and the footer now carries a single link to it.

What one honest page says

A service area page earns its place by answering what the town pages only pretended to.

Which towns, plainly listed. How response times differ by distance. Whether evenings, weekends or travel cost more. What the company does not cover, so callers from farther out can find someone closer.

Evidence matters most: jobs in named areas, reviews from customers who say where they live, and a team that visibly drives these roads.

When a town deserves its own page

Separate pages are not wrong in themselves. They are wrong when they have nothing separate to say.

A branch, a technician based in the town, a distinct kind of work there, or local rules that change the job are reasons for a page. A different name in the heading is not.

The test is simple: delete the town name from the page and see whether anything particular to that town remains.

The counter-case within the site

A company that genuinely operates from several branches needs a page for each branch, with that branch's address, hours, staff and reviews.

A business covering a wide rural area may reasonably name more places on its service area page than a city plumber would, since customers search by their nearest town.

And retiring forty pages is a job to do carefully, with redirects, rather than deleting them in an afternoon.

None of that rescues forty copies. Replace them with one honest service area page, and a separate page only where a town truly differs.

What to change

  1. List every town page on the site.
  2. Delete the town name and see what remains.
  3. Write one service area page with real detail.
  4. Keep separate pages only where a town genuinely differs.
  5. Redirect every retired page to the new one.
  6. Replace the footer list with a single link.
  7. Match your Google listing to the areas you serve.

Step three is where the effort belongs. The forty pages took an afternoon of copying; one page answering how far, how fast and at what cost takes longer, and visitors from every town read it.

The older habit this grew out of is covered in keyword stuffing left over from an old site.

Frequently asked questions

What is wrong with a page per town?

When each page is the same text with the name swapped in, visitors read it as filler, and Google's guidelines describe the pattern as doorway pages.

What are doorway pages?

Pages created to rank for particular searches that lead visitors to the same place. Google's examples include near-identical pages aimed at particular cities or regions.

Why do visitors distrust town pages?

They repeat the town name without saying anything about it, and lead brokers build sites the same way, so a real local business looks like a call reseller.

What should a service area page include?

The towns covered, how response times and travel charges vary, what you do not cover, and evidence such as real jobs and reviews from named areas.

When does a town deserve its own page?

When there is something particular to say: a branch, a technician based there, distinct work or local rules. Delete the town name; if nothing remains, it does not.

Can I just delete the old pages?

Redirect them instead, each to the new service area page, so links and bookmarks still arrive somewhere useful. Then replace the footer list with one link.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Forty town pages saying one thing?

We will turn them into one service area page that answers how far you travel, how fast, and at what cost.

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