The shortcut that backfires
A common move in this industry: build a page for every city in a 50-mile radius, swap the city name, and call it local SEO. Google calls this a doorway page — a page built to rank, not to help a real visitor — and it's been named directly in Google's spam policy since 2022.
What we changed on our own site
Our own septic company, SepticWorkz, had this exact problem: town pages that were thin, repetitive, and did nothing but swap a name. We rebuilt it around one real rule — a page for every town we actually serve, with real content about that town, not a template. See the current build on the Work page.
What a real town page needs
- Real, specific content about that town — not a swapped name in a template
- A reason it exists: you actually drive trucks there
- Your real reviews, your real phone number, your real service area
The trade-off that matters
Fewer, real pages beat dozens of thin ones. We'd rather build five town pages that rank than fifty that get the whole site flagged. See how we build it on the Services page, or what this looks like for a tree service company.