Service and location pages without doorway pages

The temptation, and the risk

Many businesses try to rank everywhere by publishing one page per town: "Electrician in Camden", "Electrician in Islington", and so on, each identical except for the name. Google's spam policies describe exactly this. Doorway abuse is when pages are created to rank for specific, similar searches and lead users to pages that are less useful than the final destination, including multiple pages targeted at regions or cities that funnel users to one page. Its policy on scaled content abuse also covers generating many pages, including with AI, without adding value for users.

The result can be the opposite of what you wanted: pages that never rank, or a site that loses trust as a whole.

The structure that works

Start with excellent service pages. Add location pages only when you can make each one genuinely different and useful.

What makes a location page legitimate

A useful test: if you removed the town name, would the page still say something specific? If not, it is a doorway.

Examples of genuinely local substance: building types common in the area, local regulations or council schemes, typical problems you see there, parking or access details, case studies from nearby clients, and the people who cover it.

How many location pages?

As many as you can make genuinely useful, and no more. For most service businesses that means a handful of strong area pages for the places that bring the most work, not hundreds. Ten good pages beat two hundred thin ones.

Internal linking

• Service pages link to the relevant area pages and back.
• The area hub links to every area page.
• Every location page links to the main service pages and the enquiry path.
• No page should exist that nothing links to.

Checklist

• One strong page per service, before any location pages.
• A location page only where you have local proof and local content.
• Each location page passes the "remove the town name" test.
• Real photos, projects and reviews from that area.
• No auto-generated pages, and no AI-written pages published without real local input and review.
• Pages linked into a clear, browsable structure.

Our local SEO service builds service and area pages this way, and our guide to local SEO for multiple locations covers businesses with several branches.