Short answer: Location pages can extend your reach beyond your immediate area, but only if each one contains genuinely different, locally specific content. Pages built by swapping a town name into identical text are thin content, are increasingly filtered by Google, and can drag down the rest of your site.
Why businesses build them
Proximity dominates local rankings. A business in one town struggles to appear in the map pack for a town twenty miles away, however good its profile is.
Location pages are the legitimate route to organic visibility in those neighbouring areas — not in the map pack, which remains proximity-bound, but in the standard organic results below it, which are not.
Done properly they work. Done lazily they are worse than nothing.
The doorway page problem
Google’s guidelines specifically target doorway pages — multiple similar pages created to capture searches for different locations, funnelling users to the same destination without offering distinct value.
The classic failure looks like this: one template, fifty towns, the only difference being the place name. Google recognises it easily, and successive local search updates have become better at filtering it out.
| Doorway page | Genuine location page |
|---|---|
| Template with town name swapped | Written specifically for that area |
| No local detail | Named neighbourhoods, landmarks, local context |
| No local proof | Real projects and reviews from that town |
| Fifty pages, no substance | Five pages, real substance each |
| Created for search engines | Useful to a person in that town |
What a real location page contains
The test is simple: could this page exist for any other town without changing? If yes, it is thin.
Things that make a page genuinely local:
- Actual completed work in that area, with photographs and specifics
- Reviews from customers there, quoted with attribution
- Local knowledge that demonstrates familiarity — housing stock, common problems, planning quirks, parking, access constraints
- Named neighbourhoods and areas you actually cover within that town
- Response times or travel realities specific to that location
- Local team members if relevant
A plumber’s page about one town might discuss the prevalence of Victorian terraces and the pipework problems they bring; a different town’s page might discuss a 1960s estate with a different set of issues. That is the level of difference required.
How many pages to build
Far fewer than most businesses attempt. Five substantial location pages will outperform fifty thin ones comprehensively.
A sensible approach: build one, properly, for your most valuable neighbouring town. Give it real depth. See whether it performs over two or three months. Then build the next.
If you cannot write eight hundred genuinely different words about your work in a town, you probably should not have a page for it yet.
Structure that works
- Heading naming the service and the place — clear, not stuffed
- Opening that answers directly — what you do, where, how quickly
- Local proof — projects, photos, reviews from that area
- Locally relevant detail — the section that could not be copied elsewhere
- Areas covered within that town
- FAQs specific to that location where genuine
- Clear contact route
Common mistakes
- Keyword stuffing the town name. Repeating it thirty times reads badly and is not rewarded
- Building pages for towns you do not serve. You will get enquiries you must turn down, which wastes everyone’s time and generates poor engagement signals
- Duplicating your homepage content with a town name inserted
- Creating them all at once. Fifty pages appearing overnight is a pattern Google recognises
- Leaving them static. A location page should gain new projects and reviews over time
The honest expectation
Location pages will rarely get you into the map pack for a distant town — that block is proximity-driven and largely closed to you if you are not physically nearby.
What they can do is win organic positions below the map pack, which still carry meaningful traffic, particularly for higher-value services where people research rather than just tapping the first number.
Set expectations accordingly. Anyone promising map pack dominance across a county through location pages is describing something that does not work.
Frequently asked questions
How many location pages should I have?
As many as you can make genuinely different and useful. For most small businesses that is a handful, not dozens.
Will location pages get me into the map pack?
Generally no. Map pack results are proximity-weighted. Location pages target organic results instead.
Can I use AI to write them?
You can use it to draft, but the local specifics — real projects, real reviews, real local knowledge — have to come from you. AI cannot invent your completed work, and pages without it are exactly the thin content that gets filtered.
Should I build a page for every postcode?
No. That is the doorway pattern and it will not end well.
Local landing page strategy is included in our higher-tier plans, built around genuine local proof rather than templates. See what is included or book a free audit.
Related reading: Service area business setup · Google Maps ranking factors