Do You Really Need a Page for Every Town? The Truth About Doorway Pages

"I need a page for every town we serve."

I hear this all the time. Sometimes it's 20 towns. Sometimes it's 150. And I get it, because it sounds like pure logic: people search "[service] in [town]," so you should have a page for "[service] in [town]." More pages, more doors, more customers.

If you believe that, you're in good company. For a long time, it was true. Plenty of smart SEOs built exactly those pages, and they worked.

But the rules changed, and most business owners were never told. Google now has a name for pages built that way: doorway pages. Their spam policy calls it "doorway abuse."

This post covers where the idea came from, why it stopped working, what Google has actually said, a real example of it going wrong, and very specifically what I'd build instead. If you still want the 150 pages at the end, I'll also tell you how to do it without getting burned.

First: what is a doorway page?

Here's Google's own definition, from its spam policies:

"Doorway abuse is when sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries. They lead users to intermediate pages that aren't as useful as the final destination."

And here's the example that matters most for local businesses, in Google's words:

"Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page."

Source: Google Search Central — Spam policies for Google web search.

In plain English: if you have 150 pages that say the same thing with the town name swapped, and every one just pushes people to the same "call us" button, Google sees 150 doors into the same room.

Why everyone thinks you need city pages (and why they used to be right)

This belief didn't come out of nowhere. Here's the short history.

The early days (late 1990s–2000s). Early search engines leaned heavily on matching the words on a page. If your page said "plumber Cherry Hill" enough times, you had a shot at ranking for "plumber Cherry Hill." So people built pages for every keyword and every town, sometimes by the thousand. They were called doorway pages, gateway pages, bridge pages or jump pages. Same idea every time.

Google starts fighting back. In February 2006, Google famously removed BMW's German website from its index for using doorway pages that showed search engines keyword-stuffed text and sent human visitors somewhere else. BMW cleaned it up and was back within days, but the message to the industry was loud: even a giant brand can get pulled. (Computerworld coverage)

The 2010s: city pages everywhere. Local SEO grew up, and "service + city" pages became the standard agency package. You'd see a competitor with a page for every town and assume that's why they ranked. Often they did rank, because Google's systems weren't great at telling a real local page from a template.

So if someone told you "you need a page for every town," they weren't making it up. They were describing a playbook that genuinely worked for about 15 years.

What changed

2015: Google ships a doorway page update

On March 16, 2015, Google announced a ranking adjustment aimed specifically at doorway pages. Google's Brian White explained why:

"Over time, we've seen sites try to maximize their 'search footprint' without adding clear, unique value."

Google also warned that sites with large, well-established doorway campaigns "might see broad impact." (Search Engine Land coverage; Google's original post)

2019: 1,300 city pages? "That sounds like doorway pages."

In December 2019, someone told Google's John Mueller they planned to build about 1,300 keyword-plus-city landing pages. His answer:

"That sounds like doorway pages, not something I'd recommend."

(Search Engine Roundtable)

2021: "They lead all to the same house."

In an October 2021 office-hours session, Mueller described the test Google uses:

"We would call things doorway pages if they essentially lead to the same funnel afterwards, where essentially, you're taking a lot of different keywords, and you're guiding people to exactly the same content in the end."

He used local city pages as his example, describing them as "creating all of these small doorways, but they lead all to the same house." (iloveseo.com coverage)

That's the heart of it. The problem isn't that the page mentions a town. The problem is a page that exists only to catch a search and has nothing for that town that the other 149 pages don't also have.

2024: "Whether automation, humans or a combination"

In March 2024, Google rolled out a major update and a new spam policy called scaled content abuse: making lots of pages mainly to manipulate rankings instead of helping people. Google made a point of saying the method doesn't matter. It targets content produced at scale to boost rankings "whether automation, humans or a combination are involved."

By April 2024, Google reported 45% less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results. (Google — New updates to address spam and low-quality results)

That's the part I want every business owner to hear. "We'll have a human write them" is not a loophole. Neither is "we'll have AI reword each one."

What it looks like when it goes wrong

Businesses almost never announce that they got penalized, so named public examples are rare. But one of the most respected local SEO agencies in North America published a very clear one.

In 2023, Joy Hawkins at Sterling Sky wrote about a business with over 3,000 location pages that received a Google manual action for "thin content with little or no added value." The painful part: the owner had paid humans to write different content for each page. It didn't matter. Joy's summary is the best one-liner on this whole topic:

"Unique is not the same thing as 'not-thin.'"

Rewording "red" as "maroon" on page 2,417 doesn't give anyone a reason to read it. (Sterling Sky — Google Can Issue Manual Penalties for Service Area Pages)

Google's own help page for manual actions lists "Doorways" as a named type of thin content. If you get one of these actions, you have to remove or fix the pages and ask Google to review your site before those pages can recover. (Google — Manual Actions report)

The honest other side

I don't want to scare you with only half the story. The same agency also published a case where a service business had 35 service area pages that were about 84% similar, and in aggregate those pages drove "a lot of traffic, and more importantly, conversions." Their advice: this works at modest scale, but "once you get up into the 100's and 1000's of pages, you increase the odds of Google taking notice and giving out a penalty." (Sterling Sky — Can service area pages with similar content increase traffic?; Sterling Sky — Stop spending 1000's of hours on service area pages)

So the truth isn't "city pages are illegal." The truth is:

• A small number of solid town pages can absolutely help.
• Risk climbs with scale and sameness. Hundreds of near-identical pages is exactly the pattern Google's policies describe.

Why you don't need 150 pages

Here's the part nobody explains to business owners.

1. City pages don't move your pin on the map. Google says local results are based on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is "how far each business is from the customer who's searching." A web page about a town 40 minutes away doesn't change where your business is. (Google Business Profile Help — How Google determines local ranking)

2. Your Google Business Profile already tells Google where you work. You can list up to 20 service areas, and Google says the whole area generally shouldn't be more than about 2 hours of driving time from your base. (Google Business Profile Help — Manage your service areas)

3. Most towns don't have enough searches to justify a page. In a lot of small towns, "[service] in [town]" gets searched a handful of times a month, if at all. You'd be paying to write and maintain a page for searches that barely exist.

4. Every page has a cost. Somebody has to write it, update it when your prices or services change, and keep it from going stale. 150 pages is 150 things to maintain.

5. Thin pages are the pattern Google is explicitly hunting. Google's own warning signs for "search engine-first" content include: "Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?" and "Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?" (Google — Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content)

The rule: every page needs a purpose

Here's the test I use. Before a page gets built, it has to answer "yes" to this:

If a customer from this town landed here, would they learn something they couldn't learn on any other page of my site?

Getting found in a specific town can be a real purpose. But only if the page actually gives people from that town something specific: proof you've worked there, details that are different there, answers to questions people there actually ask.

If the only thing that changes from page to page is the town name, the page doesn't have a purpose. It's a doorway.

What to build instead (the explicit version)

This is what I recommend to a local service business that serves a lot of towns. In this order.

Step 1: Nail your Google Business Profile

• Pick the most accurate primary category, then add secondary categories for your other real services.
• Set your service areas (up to 20). Choose the towns and counties that matter most.
• Get a steady flow of reviews. When happy customers mention their town in their own words, that's natural local proof.
• Post real photos from real jobs.

This is where the map pack is won. Not on 150 web pages.

Step 2: Build one great page per service

If you do five things, you need five strong service pages before you need a single town page. Each should explain the service, show pricing or what affects price, show photos of real work, answer the common questions, and make it easy to call or book.

These pages do most of the heavy lifting in organic search, and they're what your town pages will link to.

Step 3: Build one strong "Areas we serve" hub page

Instead of 150 thin pages, build one page that proudly lists every town you serve and is genuinely useful:

• A map of your service area.
• Your towns, grouped by county or region.
• The details that change by distance: how fast you can get there, minimums, trip or delivery fees, scheduling windows.
• Links to your service pages, and to the town pages you do build in Step 4.

This page tells Google and customers exactly where you work, with zero doorway risk.

Step 4: Build real town pages only where you've earned them

Pick roughly 5–15 towns to start (Whitespark's guide recommends starting with your hub city, then your major towns, then smaller communities). Choose the ones that:

• Bring you the most revenue today,
• Have meaningful search demand,
• Or are where you most want to grow.

Then give each one something no other page has. A real town page should include most of these:

• Real jobs you did there, with photos (before/after is gold).
• Reviews from customers in that town.
• What's different there: local permits or rules, common property types, terrain or access issues, HOA quirks, typical project sizes.
• Logistics: how quickly you can get there, which crew or yard serves it, any town-specific fees or minimums.
• Local FAQs people there actually ask you.
• Community ties: teams you sponsor, local suppliers, partners.
• Links to the relevant service pages and back to your hub page.

Useful checklists: Whitespark's guide to the perfect service area landing page and Sterling Sky's guide to unique, helpful service area pages.

Step 5: Keep adding proof with project posts

Every time you finish a notable job, publish a short project post: what the customer needed, what you did, a few photos, the town it was in. Over a year that's dozens of real, local, dated pages, and every one has a genuine purpose.

When a town builds up enough project posts and reviews, that's when it earns its own town page.

"I still want all 150 pages." Here's how I'd do it

It's your business and your call. If you want wide coverage, here's how to do it without walking into a penalty.

Tier it. Not every town gets the same treatment.

• Tier 1 (10–15 towns): Full, rich town pages as described above.
• Tier 2 (regions or counties): One solid page per county or region that covers the smaller towns inside it, with real details for each.
• Tier 3 (everything else): Listed on your "Areas we serve" hub. No separate page until it earns one.

Set a publishing rule. A new town page doesn't go live until you have at least one real job, real photos and one review from that town. That rule alone keeps you out of doorway territory.

Roll out in batches. Publish 10 pages, then wait and watch. In Google Search Console, check whether those pages get indexed and start earning impressions. If they sit in "Crawled – currently not indexed," Google is telling you it doesn't see the value yet. Improve those pages before you add more.

Don't spin. No swapping town names. No AI rewording the same page 150 times. Google has said the method doesn't matter; the pattern does.

The trade-off, side by side

Approach	Cost	Risk	Upside
150 templated town pages	Low up front, high to maintain	High. This is the pattern Google calls doorway abuse	Short-term, if it works at all
150 genuinely unique town pages	Very high. Real jobs, photos and reviews for every town	Low, if every page truly earns its spot	Real, but most small towns have little search demand
GBP + service pages + hub + 5–15 earned town pages	Moderate	Low	Covers the searches that matter, and grows as you earn more towns

For almost every local business I talk to, the third row wins.

The bottom line

If you've been told you need a page for every town, you weren't wrong to believe it. That advice worked for a long time. Google has simply gotten much better at spotting pages that exist only to catch a search.

Today the winning move isn't more doors. It's better rooms: a strong Business Profile, great service pages, one honest service area hub, and real town pages you've earned with real work.

Every page needs a purpose. If a page can't tell a customer something new, it isn't helping you. It's a liability waiting for the next update.

Want a second opinion on which towns actually deserve a page? Book a call with me.