The advice is everywhere: build a page for every town you serve. It works, sometimes. It also produces some of the worst pages on the internet, and Google has been unimpressed by them for over a decade.
The difference is entirely in whether the page says anything.
What a bad location page looks like
You have seen hundreds. Same 400 words, same three headings, town name swapped in six times, a paragraph about the town’s history copied from an encyclopedia, and a map embed.
They do not rank, they make your site look bigger and worse, and any customer who lands on two of them can tell immediately.
The test: cover the town name with your thumb. Could this page be about anywhere? If yes, it should not exist.
What a good one looks like
A page for a town you actually work in, written by someone who has worked there. It knows things.
What genuinely differs by town:
- What people search for. A coastal town searches for storm damage and salt corrosion. An inland county searches for well pumps. Same trade, different queries.
- The building stock. Housing built in one decade has different problems than housing built in another. Tradespeople know this cold and rarely write it down.
- Seasonality. Tourist towns have a season. College towns have a calendar. Both change when the work is and who is asking.
- The competition. In some towns you are up against three national franchises. In others, two guys and a truck.
- Access and logistics. Bridges, one road in, a base with gate procedures, a historic district with rules about what you can change.
- The work you have actually done there. The most convincing thing on the page.
If you can write four honest paragraphs from that list, the page is worth building. If you cannot, it is not.
How many is too many
There is no number, but there is a good rule: build a page for a town when you would be genuinely pleased to get a call from it tomorrow, and you have something specific to say.
Three strong pages beat fifteen thin ones every time. Fifteen thin pages actively hurt, because they teach anyone evaluating your site that most of it is filler.
Start with the two or three markets you most want more of. Write them properly. See what happens over three months. Add more only if the first ones earned their place.
What each page needs
A heading with the service and the place, in the words a customer would use.
An opening that proves you know the town. Not “Welcome to our Enterprise page.” Something only someone who works there would write.
The specific version of your service for that place. What is different about doing this job here.
Evidence. Photos of work in the area, reviews that mention it, projects you can describe without breaching anyone’s privacy.
A clear next step, with the same phone number as everywhere else.
Honest coverage. If you charge a travel fee past a certain point, say so. It saves both sides a call.
What they do not need
- A copied history of the town.
- A list of every neighborhood as a keyword dump.
- An embedded map of a place the reader is already standing in.
- A paragraph about how proud you are to serve the community.
- The same testimonial as every other page.
Where they live on the site
Give them a real home. A locations index that lists your markets, linked from the main navigation, with each page linked from the index. Not a stack of links in the footer, which is where thin pages are traditionally hidden and is a pattern anyone can recognize.
Link them from related service pages where it makes sense, and link back from the location page to the services it covers.
Give it time
Location pages are slow. They are competing against businesses physically located in that town, and proximity is a genuine factor you cannot write your way around. Expect months, not weeks, and expect to rank for longer and more specific searches first.
That is fine. “Emergency plumber Fort Walton Beach” is contested. “Storm damage plumbing repair Okaloosa County” is winnable, and the person typing it is closer to hiring someone.
Before you write one
- Name the towns where you would take work tomorrow.
- For each, write four sentences you could not write about anywhere else. Do it now, on paper.
- The ones where you managed four sentences get a page.
- The ones where you managed one sentence get a mention on your main service page instead.
- Revisit in six months, once you know which pages people actually land on.
