In short and in plain language
This article explains when a page for a single town is worth it. It is for firms that work in several towns.
A town page helps when it shows something that is true only for that town. That can be a job done there, the route or a named contact.
If you just swap the town name, that is bad. The rules of the search engine call this abuse.
Your area is often smaller than you think. A good town page can show that you match the search. It does not change the distance.
We go through the list of towns with you first.
Eight towns, eight pages – or one page for all of them? Every business with a catchment area faces this question as soon as the website is live. In practice the answer rarely matches what the guides say. A location page brings enquiries when it contains something that is true only for that town: a reference from there, the route, a named contact, the services that are actually in demand. The same page with the town name swapped out is a different thing entirely – Google describes it in its own documentation as doorway page abuse (Google Search Central). This article draws the line between the two, names the minimum content that carries a location page, and uses figures from official statistics to show how far a catchment area realistically reaches.
Key takeaways
- A location page works when it contains content that exists only for that town. If the town name is the only thing that changes, Google describes exactly that case in its spam policies as doorway page abuse (Google Search Central).
- As an example, the documentation explicitly names pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one and the same page (Google Search Central). The number of pages is not the problem; the missing difference is.
- The catchment area is usually smaller than assumed: in 2012 the journey to work was under five kilometres for 29.1 percent (Destatis, 2012 microcensus) of employed people, and in sparsely populated rural districts even for 33.3 percent.
- A Google Business Profile allows a maximum of 20 service areas (Google Business Profile Help), whose outer limits should be no more than about two hours' drive away. That is also a workable frame for the number of location pages.
- According to Google, local search results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help). A good location page works on relevance – it does not work on distance.
When a location page really works
The difference between a location page that brings enquiries and one that merely takes up space is not its length, and not the town name in the heading. It lies in whether someone from that town finds anything on the page that is not on the home page. That could be a finished job in the next street, the drive time from the town centre, a contact who looks after that area, or a note about which weekdays you are out there anyway. Without that difference, it is not only the search engine that notices – the visitor notices too, and faster, because they read the home page a minute earlier.
References of its own
At least one project from the town or its immediate surroundings, with the year and a short description. No invented names and no figures nobody can substantiate.
Route and drive time
How long you need from your premises to the town and along which route. That answers the first question a caller asks anyway.
A named contact
Who looks after this area, with a way to reach them that actually leads there. A location page without a named contact reads like a template.
Times on site
Which days you are in the area anyway, or how quickly an appointment there is typically possible.
Services with local relevance
Not the full list, but the two or three services that are genuinely asked for in this town.
Local knowledge, shown
Building periods, streets, industrial estates, market day: whatever shows local knowledge instead of claiming it. One sentence is often enough.
If you cannot fill these six points for a town, what you have for that town is not a page but a statement of intent. That is not a moral judgement but a practical observation: the page will not be maintained after launch, because there is nothing to maintain, and a year later it still carries the same text. For the towns you actually serve, it is better to concentrate the effort there. How many pages a site needs at all follows directly from this – which is why the number of location pages also sets the scope and with it the fixed price of the package.
What Google says about pages per town
Google describes a case in its own spam policies that belongs exactly here. Under the heading on doorway page abuse it states that sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries, and that users are then sent to intermediate pages that are less useful than the final destination (Google Search Central). As an example of this abuse, the documentation explicitly names multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one and the same page (Google Search Central). The second half of that sentence is the important one. It is not the location page as such that is criticised, but the location page without a purpose of its own and without content of its own.
- Content of its own on each page: references, route, contact and services differ visibly from the other location pages, not just in the town name.
- A purpose of its own on each page: the page does not redirect anywhere; it answers the local question and leads to the contact route on that same page.
- An address of its own for each page: one readable, permanent address per town, without parameters and without duplicates under several spellings.
- Its own title and description: both carry the town and the benefit. How your entry in search results is built helps decide whether anyone clicks the location page at all.
- Its own upkeep: when a job in that town is finished, it goes onto that page. Otherwise it ages faster than the home page, because nobody has a reason to open it.
A second section of the spam policies concerns businesses that treat the town name as a text placeholder. On scaled content abuse, Google writes that it generally involves creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little or no value to users, no matter how it is created (Google Search Central). The clause about how it is created is the decisive part: whether forty location pages were written by hand or produced from a spreadsheet makes no difference to the assessment. What is assessed is the result, not the route to it. The same holds for the middle form you often see in practice: a shared body of text into which two sentences are inserted per town. That too produces pages that are substantially similar to each other, and that exact wording appears in the documentation as an example (Google Search Central).
The check that takes one minute
How far your catchment area actually reaches
Before the number of location pages is settled, the catchment area belongs on the table, with figures rather than gut feeling. Official statistics on journeys to work provide a usable approximation. They do not measure the trip to a tradesperson or a driving school, but they show which distances people cover in everyday life – and everyday distances are the yardstick that choosing a supplier follows too. For the question of whether a town forty kilometres away carries its own page, that is a workable reference point. Just how tight a regional catchment area can be is also shown in the article on the farm shop website.
What the figures show
More recent, though measured in time rather than distance, is the labour force survey. According to it, 69.8 percent (Destatis) of working people commuted less than 30 minutes to work in 2024, 22.7 percent needed between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5.7 percent were on the road for more than an hour. Applied to a business with a catchment area, that means the core lies closer than the wish list of location pages usually assumes. Anyone who creates eight pages but works in only three of those towns is spreading their upkeep across areas without demand. The table below sums up how distance affects the decision.
| Distance to the town | What argues for its own page | What argues against it |
|---|---|---|
| Your own town | Premises, address and opening hours are there anyway; the home page already covers the town | An extra location page alongside the home page creates two very similar pages on the same subject |
| Up to about ten kilometres | This is where the core of demand sits; references and a short journey can usually be substantiated | Without a finished job there, the page stays empty of content until the first order |
| Ten to 25 kilometres | Around a quarter of journeys to work fall in this band, namely 26.5 percent (Destatis, 2012 microcensus); route and drive time are genuine information here | Without a named contact and without appointments on site, the page reads like a statement of intent |
| 25 to 50 kilometres | Worthwhile for services customers typically travel further for, such as specialist work with few providers | For everyday services demand is thin; the page is rarely maintained and goes out of date |
| Over 50 kilometres | Only with a connection you can substantiate: a second site, a partner business, an ongoing project | Only 4.4 percent of journeys to work reach that far (Destatis, 2012 microcensus); without a connection, the town name stays a claim |
The minimum content per location page
Once the number of towns is settled, the content is next. The minimum content is not a template that makes every page the same, but a list of fields filled differently for each town. The order matters: whatever concerns the town belongs at the top, the general service description at the bottom. Do it the other way round and you force every visitor through three paragraphs that read identically on every location page – and the paragraphs that make the difference then sit below the visible area.
- A heading with the town and the service, without listing further towns in the same line.
- One paragraph on location: distance, drive time, the usual route from your premises.
- At least one reference from the town or its immediate surroundings, with the year and a short description.
- The contact for this area, with a way to reach them that genuinely leads there.
- Two or three services that are asked for in this town, rather than the complete list.
- A close with the next step: a call, a form or an appointment, on this page and not only on the home page.
These fields are named quickly and filled slowly. The most common reason location pages stall is not the technology but the text. If you want to write it yourself, the approach is in writing good website copy yourself; if you would rather hand the text over, website copywriting sets out the frame for that. Both follow the better order: content first, page second. Eight pages waiting for their first paragraph are harder to repair than three finished ones.
What location pages cannot do
Structure, addresses and internal links
Location pages are a structural subject before they are a text subject. They need an overview page from which each one is reachable, otherwise they hang off the navigation and nobody finds them. On this domain the regions overview does that job, linking the city pages from Hildesheim to Alfeld; an individual page such as affordable website in Hildesheim then carries the local connection. The overview page is also where it becomes visible whether the list is honest: eight entries that differ only in the name stand out immediately when they sit side by side.
One link in each direction
From the overview to each location page and from each location page back. Cross-links between the location pages typically achieve little and make upkeep harder.
Keep addresses permanent
If a location page is renamed or merged into another, the old address stays in place with a permanent redirect.
Include it in the sitemap
New location pages belong in the sitemap. For deciding which of two similar pages counts, however, it is only a weak signal.
The last point deserves an explanation, because it is often misread. Google ranks the ways of declaring a canonical address by their strength: redirects count as a strong signal that the redirect target should be canonical, while inclusion in sitemaps appears in the same list as a weak signal (Google Search Central). Anyone with two very similar location pages who hopes the sitemap will settle the matter is hoping for the weakest of the means listed. The clean route is the other way round: give up one of the two pages, move its content into the one that remains, and redirect the old address permanently. That costs an afternoon and ends the competition between two of your own pages.
Two location pages competing for the same query are not a double presence but half a one. Giving one of them up costs nothing – it only means you decide yourself which one stays.
The Business Profile alongside your location pages
Location pages and the Google Business Profile are often lumped together, although they do different jobs. The profile drives the map view and the local block above the search results; the location pages drive what a visitor reads once they arrive. The two work together, but neither replaces the other. How the profile is set up and maintained is covered in Google Business Profile: better local visibility.
- One profile per business, not per town. Google states that only one profile should be created per business, because otherwise problems with how it is shown can arise (Google Business Profile Help). A second profile for the neighbouring town is not growth but a source of errors.
- No more than 20 service areas. A profile permits a maximum of 20 service areas (Google Business Profile Help). That is also a workable upper limit for the number of location pages – anyone listing more towns usually lists them without content of their own.
- About two hours' drive as the frame. The outer limits of the whole service area should be no more than about two hours' drive from your location (Google Business Profile Help). Carrying that frame over to the website makes a first selection without long debate.
- Prominence works separately. According to Google, well-known places are more likely to appear in search results (Google Business Profile Help); reviews and links from other websites feed that, not the number of subpages you have.
- Changes take time. After adjusting a service area, it can take up to 48 hours before the change shows in the profile (Google Business Profile Help). Expecting a result the same afternoon means measuring too early.
The frame from the profile carries over directly to the website. If a town does not fit into the 20 service areas because others are closer and more urgent, then as a rule it does not fit into the list of location pages either. And if an enquiry comes from a town with no page of its own, nothing is lost: the route via the home page and the contact page still works. Whether it genuinely works is something only measurement shows – how to do that without much effort is in does your website bring enquiries?.
How to decide for your own business
The decision can be made in an afternoon. Take the list of towns you actually worked in over the past year – not the list of towns you would like to work in. Strike out every town for which you can name neither a reference nor a contact nor a journey you can substantiate. What remains gets a page of its own. Everything else stays on the overview page as a mention, without an address of its own. That is not modesty but the difference between pages that say something and pages that are merely there. Every page with a clear purpose makes the same cut: on a driving school website, the sign-up decides the structure, not the list of services.
For the launch, the same order applies as for any website: first the pages every visitor needs, then the location pages. Which those are is set out in the 5 most important pages of any business website. And once the location pages are live, they need patience: it takes time before a new page appears in search, and the ranges for that are in how long until Google finds your website?. For ads aimed at a single town, a dedicated landing page is often the faster route than another location page, because it pursues one goal only and does not have to be fitted into the site structure.
The next step
Sources and studies
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