Service area pages: how trades rank in every town they cover

Can you rank in towns where you don’t have an office?

Yes, in the normal search results. Location pages on your website can rank in towns you cover even if you have no address there.

The Google Maps results are harder. Google says local ranking depends on relevance, distance and prominence, so the map pack leans towards businesses close to the searcher. Your website’s location pages are how you reach the towns further out.

If you work from home or a yard, set your Google Business Profile up as a service-area business. Google’s service area guidance says you should hide your address if customers do not visit it, and you can list up to 20 service areas. It also suggests your overall area should not go much beyond about two hours’ drive from your base.

How many location pages should a tradesman have?

Build pages only for the towns you genuinely serve and want more work in. For most local trades that means a handful of main towns, not every village on the map.

A simple way to decide:

1. List the towns where you already get work, or want to.
2. Check which ones people actually search for with your trade, for example “roofer Oxford” or “electrician Coventry”.
3. Start with the three to six that matter most.
4. Only add more once you have real jobs, photos and details to put on each one.
5. Cover smaller villages on the nearest town page, rather than giving each its own page.

For example, a roofer based near Oxford might start with pages for Oxford, Abingdon, Witney and Bicester, then mention nearby villages inside each one. Ten strong pages beat a hundred thin ones.

Will Google penalise duplicate town pages?

Google may treat them as spam. Pages that are near copies of each other, with just the town name swapped, fit Google’s description of doorway abuse.

Google’s spam policies describe doorway abuse as pages made to rank for similar searches that lead users to intermediate pages that are less useful than the final destination. One example given is pages targeted at specific cities that funnel users to one page. The same policies also cover scaled content abuse, such as generating lots of pages without adding value.

In practice, thin town pages often just do not rank, or Google picks one and ignores the rest. Either way, they waste your time.

What should you write on a location page?

Write what a customer in that town would want to know before they call you. Real local detail is what makes the page different from your other pages.

• A clear heading such as “Emergency plumber in Derby”.
• Areas and postcodes covered around that town.
• Two or three recent jobs there, with a short note on the problem and the fix.
• Your own photos from those jobs.
• Reviews from customers in that area, if you have them.
• Local factors such as common house types, older properties or hard water, where they are true.
• Typical response times to that town.
• A short FAQ with questions local customers actually ask.
• A clear call to action with your phone number and form.

For example, a plumber’s Brighton page might mention jobs in Hove and Kemptown, the older Victorian terraces and the questions they get about them. That is far more useful than a paragraph you could paste onto any town.

You can also add LocalBusiness schema that lists your service areas. See our schema guide for small businesses.

How should you link your location pages together?

Link each town page from a main “areas we cover” page, and link each one to the services you offer there. That helps Google and customers find every page.

• Have one hub page that lists every town you cover, and link it from your main menu or footer.
• Link each service page to the relevant town pages, and back again.
• Link nearby towns to each other, for example Portsmouth to Southampton.
• Use plain link text such as “electrician in Luton”, not “click here”.

You can see how this works on our own site. Our locations page links to city pages such as SEO in Coventry and web design in Derby.

How long do location pages take to work?

Expect a few months, not a few weeks. New pages need time to be found, indexed and trusted, especially in busy towns.

You can speed things up by keeping your Google Business Profile active, getting genuine reviews and adding new jobs to each town page as you complete them. Our guide on how to ask for Google reviews can help with that part. Track enquiries by town so you know which pages are pulling their weight.

FAQs

Can I rank in towns where I don’t have an office?

Yes, in Google’s normal search results. Useful location pages on your website can rank in towns you serve without an address there. The Google Maps results lean towards businesses near the searcher, so location pages are the main way to reach towns further from your base.

How many location pages should a tradesman have?

Build pages only for towns you genuinely serve and want work in. For most local trades, three to six main towns is a sensible start. Add more only when you have real jobs, photos and details for each. Cover small villages on the nearest town page.

Will Google penalise duplicate town pages?

Near-identical pages that only swap the town name fit Google’s description of doorway abuse in its spam policies. At best they tend not to rank, and at worst they can be treated as spam. Give every location page its own real local content instead.

What should I write on a location page?

Include the areas and postcodes you cover, two or three recent jobs in that town with your own photos, local reviews, response times, a short local FAQ and a clear call to action. Write what a customer in that town would want to know before they call.