The first location page is easy to write. You know the town, you've done plenty of jobs there, and there's always a story. Page 2 is fine too. By page 9 of 14, the writer is staring at a template, swapping one suburb's name for the next and nudging the drive time up by ten minutes.
That ninth page is the one Google's spam policy describes. It's also the page a customer in that town reads and recognizes, correctly, as a template.
What Google calls a doorway
Google's spam policies define doorway abuse as sites or pages "created to rank for specific, similar search queries" that lead people to intermediate pages that aren't as useful as the final destination. The policy page lists examples; read them yourself on Search Central, because Google revises that page and the current wording is what counts.
Look at what the definition doesn't say. It doesn't ban location pages. A page for a town you genuinely serve, with information that's specific to that town, isn't a doorway. A page that exists only because the town has search volume, and says nothing the other thirteen don't, is exactly the pattern the policy is aimed at.
That's our reading. It isn't legal advice, and Google decides how its own policies apply.
The swap test
Take page 9. Replace the town name everywhere with the name from page 4. Read it again.
If it still makes sense, you've written a doorway page in all but intent. A real location page breaks when you swap the name, because it mentions things that are only true of that place.
What makes page 9 different from page 1
Information. And it rarely comes from the writer. It comes from the people who do the work, which is why we send a location questionnaire before writing a word. The full version has 12 questions. Here are seven of them, and what each one adds:
| We ask | What it gives the page |
|---|---|
| Roughly how many jobs have you done in this town, and what kind? | Evidence you actually work there, and which services matter locally |
| What's different about the homes, buildings or sites here? | Specific problems, like older wiring or hard water, that change the job |
| Are there local permits or inspections that affect the work? | Practical help a template can't include |
| Any seasonal patterns? | When to book, what tends to fail in winter, which weeks get busy |
| How far is it from your base, and how does that affect scheduling or fees? | Honest expectations on response time and cost |
| Which neighborhoods or landmarks do customers mention? | Natural local references instead of a list of place names stuffed into a footer |
| What do customers here ask that customers elsewhere don't? | An FAQ that wasn't copied from page 1 |
If most of the answers come back as "same as everywhere else," that's useful too. It tells you the page shouldn't exist on its own.
When two towns really are the same
Sometimes they are. Two suburbs ten minutes apart, same housing, same permit office, same crew. Forcing a difference into those pages means making things up, and invented local detail is worse than none. A customer who lives there will notice.
The options, in the order we'd consider them:
- One page for the area. "Plumbing in the north suburbs," naming the towns you cover and saying plainly that the service is the same across all of them. One solid page beats two thin ones.
- A service-area section on the service page itself, listing the towns, with a map or a radius.
- Separate pages only where something genuinely differs. Maybe 6 of your 14 towns earn their own page, and an area page covers the other 8.
Fourteen is a number from a keyword tool. Six good pages and a couple of area pages is a number from your business.
When not to make a page at all
- You've never done a job there and don't expect to soon.
- It's outside your real service radius and only made the list because of search volume.
- You'd have nothing to say beyond the name and the drive time.
- You'd need to invent reviews, projects or local details to fill it.
A thin page for a town you barely serve is also a promise you'll struggle to keep when someone from that town calls.
A sample outline
Sample, no client data. One location page for a hypothetical heating and cooling company serving a made-up town called Oak Hollow:
- H1: Furnace and AC repair in Oak Hollow
- Opening: how long the company has worked in Oak Hollow, and the kind of homes it mostly sees there
- Common problems here: older forced-air systems in the pre-1970 streets, undersized ductwork in the newer additions
- Permits: what the town requires for a system replacement, and who pulls the permit
- Scheduling: typical response times from the base, and whether a trip fee applies
- FAQ: three or four questions Oak Hollow customers actually ask
- Links: to the main furnace repair page and to the area page for nearby towns
- Schema suggestion: LocalBusiness or Service markup that matches what's on the page, with no review markup unless the reviews are real and shown
Swap "Oak Hollow" for another town and half that outline stops being true. That's the point.
How we price it
Our service and location page set is $1,600 for five pages: the questionnaire, five pages of up to 1,000 words each with different local detail, an FAQ, LocalBusiness/Service schema suggestions and an internal-link plan. It's delivered 10 business days after the questionnaire comes back. Inside a Cadence plan, a service or location page counts as half a slot.
If the questionnaire shows that a town doesn't deserve its own page, we'll say so before we write it, and talk through what to do instead. Copy-paste city pages are on our list of things we won't write. More on the approach on our local pages service page.
Pages that pass the swap test still can't guarantee a place in local results. That depends on competition, distance, your reputation and plenty more that no page controls. They do give the person reading page 9 a reason to call you instead of closing the tab.
