Why do so many sites have a page for every town?
Because it looks like it should work. Someone searches for a plumber in the next town over, and a page with that town in the headline seems like the best match. So a site builder or a marketing vendor makes a template, fills in forty town names, and publishes forty pages that say the same thing.
The trouble is that a searcher who lands on one of those pages learns nothing they could not learn on your home page. Google lists warning signs of content made for search engines instead of people, and the first one is content made primarily to attract visits from search engines (Google Search Central). Forty copies of one page, each with a different town in the headline, fit that description.
Does a town page help you show up in that town?
Not much on its own. Google says its local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help). Relevance and prominence are things you can work on. Distance is not: a page cannot move your business closer to the person searching.
So a page about a town you rarely drive to cannot close that gap in the map pack, however well it is written. What it can do is answer a real question for someone in that town, and that only happens when the page has something specific in it.
When does a town earn a page of its own?
Give a town its own page when you can fill it with things that are true there and nowhere else on your site. A good test: if you swapped the town name for another one, would the page become false? If not, it is a copy.
- You have done real work there and can describe it: the kinds of jobs, the neighborhoods, the problems that come up in its older houses or its newer ones.
- You have a crew, a yard or an office there, so the drive time and the hours really are different.
- The rules differ: a permit office, an inspection step or a licensing requirement that applies in that town and not the next one.
- Customers there ask different questions, and you can answer them from experience.
What about the towns that do not get a page?
List them. One page about where you work, with every town you cover and a sentence on how you get there, answers the question every visitor has. It is one real page instead of forty thin ones, and it stays true when you add a town.
Then set the same area in your profile. A service-area business can list up to 20 service areas by city or postal code, and the whole area should be no more than about 2 hours of driving from where you are based (Google Business Profile Help). If you serve more towns than that, use areas that take in several of them. Keep the page and the profile saying the same thing.
What if your site already has dozens of town pages?
Sort them into the ones with something real on them and the ones without. Keep and improve the first group. Fold the rest into your service area page, and point each old address at it with a 301 redirect, a permanent one (Google Search Central), so a visitor or a link that reaches the old page still ends up somewhere useful.
Do it in one pass and check your links afterward, and hold any town page you add later to the same test. If you want new local pages written for you, the Local plan in our local SEO work includes two data-backed local pages a month.
Reading the doorway policy line by line
The policy is short. Here are three lines from it, and what each one means for a business that serves more than one town.
Quoted from Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search.
sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries
This is the test Google applies. The question is why a page exists. A page built only because people search a phrase with a town name in it already fits the first half of the definition, before anyone reads it.
pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
This names the town page pattern directly. If every town page ends by sending the visitor to the same contact form, and nothing before the form is about the town, the page is a funnel.
substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy
This is the difference between a list and a site. A small set of real pages that a visitor can move between is a hierarchy. A long run of near copies that only make sense arriving from a search is not.
Notice what the policy leaves out. It does not ban town pages, and it does not set a number. It describes pages made for searches instead of people, and it judges them by what they do for the visitor.
Questions
Will a page for each town get me into the map results there?
Not by itself. Distance is one of the three things Google says local results rest on (Google Business Profile Help), and a page does not change it. A page is still worth writing for a town you really serve, if it answers something a visitor there wants to know.
Can I put every town in my title tag?
No. Google asks for a descriptive, concise title on every page and warns against keyword stuffing (Google Search Central). Name the town a page is about, and leave the list of towns to the page about where you work.
Is it still doorway abuse if each page is written by hand?
It can be. The policy describes what the pages do, not how they were written. Forty handwritten pages that say the same thing and push to the same form fit the description as well as forty from a template.
How many towns can my Business Profile list?
Up to 20 service areas, set by city, postal code or another kind of area, not by a radius around your address, and the whole area should stay within about 2 hours of driving from your base (Google Business Profile Help).