Best Way to Create City Pages Without Looking Spammy?

[VicolasSEO]

Hi all,
Many local businesses create separate pages for different cities they serve. But sometimes these pages end up looking very similar and repetitive.
What’s the best way to create city pages that actually provide value and don’t look like duplicate or thin content?
Would love to hear how others structure these pages.

 

[Glass]

The first question is do these businesses have locations in each one of these cities? Or are they service area businesses that are trying to get more organic traffic in the towns around them?

For the second situation I have had good luck doing the following:

Make a page with a unique photo that someone in that town would recognize. The town sign, a well-known landmark, etc.

Write up some unique content for the service that they provide. This gets to be hard to two or three dozen times, but it’s possible. Talk about different types of services that you performed in that town. Maybe a photo or two of the work.

Put some information about the town itself, usually information could be found on Wikipedia, write it over in your own way. You could also put information that could directly be helpful to your customer. If it’s some type of home service like plumber or HVAC, you can put the address and phone number for the building department in that town and explain the permitting process.

Some testimonials from people in that town.

The page name (URL), title, and description all containing the town name.

Maybe an outbound link to that town’s webpage.

An embedded YouTube video of work performed in that town.

Some people still think that these are doorway pages that Google will penalize you for. I don’t think that’s true. As long as you’re not making hundreds of pages with the same content only changing a few words, I think this is perfectly fine. The worst that would happen is the pages don’t rank, but as long as you have unique content on each one they should help. For those of us who have service areas which consist of 50 different suburban towns, this is one of the few things you could do in order to get exposure in those towns.

 

[VicolasSEO]

The first question is do these businesses have locations in each one of these cities? Or are they service area businesses that are trying to get more organic traffic in the towns around them?

For the second situation I have had good luck doing the following:

Make a page with a unique photo that someone in that town would recognize. The town sign, a well-known landmark, etc.

Write up some unique content for the service that they provide. This gets to be hard to two or three dozen times, but it’s possible. Talk about different types of services that you performed in that town. Maybe a photo or two of the work.

Put some information about the town itself, usually information could be found on Wikipedia, write it over in your own way. You could also put information that could directly be helpful to your customer. If it’s some type of home service like plumber or HVAC, you can put the address and phone number for the building department in that town and explain the permitting process.

Some testimonials from people in that town.

The page name (URL), title, and description all containing the town name.

Maybe an outbound link to that town’s webpage.

An embedded YouTube video of work performed in that town.

Some people still think that these are doorway pages that Google will penalize you for. I don’t think that’s true. As long as you’re not making hundreds of pages with the same content only changing a few words, I think this is perfectly fine. The worst that would happen is the pages don’t rank, but as long as you have unique content on each one they should help. For those of us who have service areas which consist of 50 different suburban towns, this is one of the few things you could do in order to get exposure in those towns.

Thanks so much for the detailed explanation! This really helps clarify how to make city pages valuable without them feeling like duplicate content. I especially like the idea of adding unique photos and useful local information, it makes a lot of sense.

 

[fisicx]

An alternative is to post about the work you do in those cities and categorise. Google really likes project pages - especially if you tell a story and include pictures. Properly catrgorised you will rank for locations and services.

 

[Glass]

An alternative is to post about the work you do in those cities and categorise. Google really likes project pages - especially if you tell a story and include pictures. Properly catrgorised you will rank for locations and services.

That’s a great idea. What a mixture of both lead to the best outcome?

I’m curious, let’s say someone was searching for a plumber. Would a town based landing page (that is interlinked with project pages like you mentioned) be more likely to come up in the results of a local search than the project page itself?

 

[fisicx]

That’s a great idea. What a mixture of both lead to the best outcome?

I’m curious, let’s say someone was searching for a plumber. Would a town based landing page (that is interlinked with project pages like you mentioned) be more likely to come up in the results of a local search than the project page itself?

Google offers the 'near me' option when searching. This means you will get geographic results - businesses in your locale. It's unlikely people will get much past the maps listings. But if are looking for a particular service (such as a water filter installation) then the project pages can do very well.

City pages can rank well but as soon as prospective clients look at the site and see your address isn't in the city they are likely to return to search. Unless of course the two locations are comparable.

Also worth noting that 'city' has very different meaning to different people. Here in the UK we have cities, towns, villages, parishes, conurbations, counties and any other weird combination. And of course Post Codes (ZIP codes) which people also use for search. So in the US you may also need to categorise by zip.

There is no single answer to the question - each business will be slightly different.

 

[Conor Treacy]

We actually just wrote an article on this last month, as we have been getting a few new clients that had really spammy tactics on their site that needed to be cleaned up.

If you search Google for "doorway pages vs landing pages," you'll see the article (or click my signature and go to blogs).

Anyway, one of the key sections from the article is this: "A doorway-style location page usually looks like someone copied the same page 25 times and swapped the city name. If you can place two city pages side by side and 90 percent of the content is identical, that is a red flag."

If it's not unique content, it's not worth having. If you create the page solely for ranking, it's not worth having. Let's say you did make the page for ranking, and it ranks high, and now a potential customer lands on the page - are you presenting them with generic gibberish, or are you providing them with anything useful that will convert them to a customer?

For us, we usually suggest clients have information about their service, relatable city info (just like @fisicx mentioned), and a testimonial from someone in that city/region. We work with a pest control company, and one of the things we encouraged them to do was take a picture of their truck near landmarks, or "welcome to XXX town" signs. If they work with recognized local businesses, then a picture outside those too.

The crazy thing is, you likely don't need dozens of pages for each service in each city.

Another good test is to think of it this way;
If you replaced your Service Page in your navigation with one of your city-targeted pages, would it still make sense to the user? If so, then keep it; if not, dump it.

 

[Glass]

The crazy thing is, you likely don't need dozens of pages for each service in each city.

Another good test is to think of it this way;
If you replaced your Service Page in your navigation with one of your city-targeted pages, would it still make sense to the user? If so, then keep it; if not, dump it.

I have a question jumping off of what you said here. You’re saying that it’s good to have a separate landing page for multiple services in each one of those extra towns or cities?

So, for example, if an HVAC contractor wants to advertise to 15 towns around him, instead of making 15 town based landing pages that list all of the services they provide… they could make 45 pages in total- each town having three different pages devoted to a particular service they provide in that town?

This is of course under the premise that all of those pages are uniquely written and engaging.