Businesses that drive to their customers instead of receiving them in a shop want to be found in the neighbouring towns as well. The obvious route looks like this: one page for Sarstedt, one for Harsum, one for Giesen, each with the same text and a swapped town name. After a while there are so many of these pages in the menu that nobody knows which one is still correct. The spam policies for Google web search list exactly this pattern as an example of doorway pages, and prospective customers find nothing on them that they did not already know. This article shows what a service area page with substance looks like, when a separate town page really carries weight and how to merge existing town pages so that old links keep arriving.
Why stacked town pages rarely bring enquiries
The pattern shows up in many trades that drive to their customers: roofers, electricians, commercial cleaning, removal firms, mobile care services. It usually starts with a good idea.
Someone in Algermissen looking for a business should find one that comes to Algermissen. So Algermissen gets a page. The problem is not the idea but the execution: the page for Algermissen differs from the page for Nordstemmen only in the town name, the heading and the page title. Services, photos, process and contact route are identical. Practices that offer home visits face the same question of how far they travel and how to show it; how a practice website explains its home visit area alongside prescriptions and co-payments is covered in the article on the physiotherapy practice website with prescriptions and co-payments.
The spam policies for Google web search describe such pages under the heading of doorway abuse. Among the examples they list are “Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” and “Creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy”. A town page that differs only in its name and sends every visitor to the same contact form fits both descriptions. Whether a particular website is disadvantaged because of this cannot be judged from the outside. What is certain is that such pages give no reason to show them in preference to others, and that they create maintenance work that leads nowhere.
The second variant is the town list block in the footer or at the end of every service page: a long line with every town in the area, often extended with districts and neighbouring counties. In the section on keyword stuffing, the spam policies explicitly list “Blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for”. A list of towns is therefore not forbidden in itself. A list of the places where the business actually works helps prospective customers when it sits in the right place and explains something. It becomes a problem when it exists only for the search engine: without context, repeated on every page and longer than the actual text.
The second reason is more down to earth: town pages do not answer the question prospective customers actually ask. According to a representative survey by the digital association Bitkom among 1,004 people aged 16 and over, 83 percent (Bitkom) ask friends, family or colleagues for advice in personal conversation when choosing a trade business. 41 percent (Bitkom) look for information on site, 26 percent (Bitkom) click through the websites of possible businesses. Anyone who arrives via a recommendation already knows the name and mainly wants the website to confirm one thing: does this business come to me, and on what terms? That the website still has a say is shown by another figure from the same survey: for 40 percent (Bitkom), the lack of a website is even a reason to rule a business out.
The question behind the search
One service area page with substance
The foundation is a single page that describes the area the way customers picture it: in towns, districts and counties, not in kilometres around a point on the map.
A radius around the company premises tells prospective customers little, because nobody knows whether their own district is still inside it. The business profile also works with names rather than circles. Its help page states that it is not possible to specify a radius around your business as a service area. Instead, you can enter the cities, postcodes or other regions in which you operate. Using the same names on the website means speaking the same language on both channels. What belongs on the page can be put as a checklist:
- Towns, districts and counties in words, grouped by proximity rather than alphabetically
- Travel per zone: included in the price, a flat fee per visit or on request
- A typical response time, phrased as “usually” rather than as a promise
- The boundary of the area and what applies beyond it
- Services offered only in part of the area, such as an emergency service
- References with a town, so that the local connection is shown rather than claimed
- A contact route that asks for the postcode at the same time
Zones instead of a radius
Most businesses charge travel in steps anyway. These steps belong on the page, as named zones: a core area where travel is included in the price, an extended area with a flat fee per visit and everything beyond that on request. Anyone who states amounts states them in full and with a date; how to do this for prices in general is covered in the article on showing prices on your website. For the business profile, Google's help names three factors: local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. No town page changes the distance between the business and the person searching. What a website can contribute is honest relevance: clear information about what the business does where and on what terms.
Service area [business name]
Core area: travel included in the price
[Town A], [Town B], [Town C] including all districts
[County] county: [Municipality D], [Municipality E]
Extended area: travel fee of [amount] euros per visit
[Town F], [Town G], [Town H]
Beyond that: on request
Larger jobs further away by arrangement.
Response time
Appointments usually within [period]
Emergency service in the core area only: [hours]
Recently completed
[Service] in [Town A], [month and year] · View reference
[Service] in [Town F], [month and year] · View reference
Information as of: [date]Phrase the response time honestly
The local connection comes not from town names in the body text but from completed jobs. A reference labelled “Roof renovation in Harsum” with two photos shows prospective customers from Harsum more than any town page: the business has been there, and the result is visible. How project photos turn into enquiries is covered in the article on project photos and references that bring enquiries. Before publishing, the client's consent is needed; more on this under job site photos: consent and release. The location stays at the level of the town or district; street and house number do not belong in a public reference.
Town pages: keep, expand or merge
Existing town pages do not all have to go. For each one the question is: is there something to say about this town that is not on any other page?
A separate page carries weight when the business has several documented jobs there, when there are local particularities, such as a design statute for the old town or access rules in narrow lanes, or when a separate contact person is based there. If a business actually has a branch with an address in a town, that is a location, not a service area; the article on multiple locations on your website applies there. All other town pages are absorbed into the service area page. The following table sorts the most common cases:
Scroll table sideways
| Finding on the town page | Decision | What happens to the address |
|---|---|---|
| Only the town name is swapped, the text is the same | Merge | Permanent redirect to the service area page |
| Several references from the town exist | Expand | Stays, gets its own content and links the references |
| Local particularity, such as a design statute | Expand | Stays, the particularity is in the first paragraph |
| The town lies outside the area served | Remove | Redirect to the service area page that explains the boundary |
| Page about a service, town only in the title | Move into the service page | Redirect to the matching service page |
| Actual branch with an address | Keep as a location page | Stays, with address, opening hours and directions |
Merging does not mean deleting. An old town page may have links from club websites, from business directories or in regular customers' bookmarks. Without a redirect, these visitors land on an error page. Google Search's documentation describes the permanent kind: the status codes 301 and 308 mean that a page has permanently moved to a new location. It also advises using permanent redirects when you are sure that the redirect will not be reversed. When merging, that is the case. Anyone rebuilding the whole website right now will find the procedure for many addresses at once in the article on a website relaunch without ranking loss. The difference from what the spam policies object to matters: there, many town pages stay in the index and send all visitors to the same page. Here, the old page disappears and its address points permanently to the content that replaces it.
- Collect all town pages with their addresses in a table and note for each whether it has content of its own
- Decide for each page according to the table above: expand, move or merge
- Finish writing the service area page before the first town page disappears
- Create references with a town and link them from the service area page
- Enter the old addresses as permanent redirects to the respective target page
- Switch the menu, footer and internal links to the new targets
- Open every old address once in the browser and check that it arrives on the right page
Do not send everything to the home page
Profile and website show the same area
The service area page and the business profile should describe the same area. For businesses without a shop, the profile help states that service-area businesses can create only one profile for the whole area in which they operate.
That fits the one service area page on the website. As a frame, the help names two limits: at most 20 service areas (Google help) and an outer boundary that should be no more than about a two-hour drive from the business location. After a change has been approved, it can take up to 48 hours (Google help) until it appears in the profile. How to set up and maintain the profile itself is covered in the article on Google Business Profile setup and upkeep.
The help also advises entering the service area as precisely as possible. For the website, this means that the towns in the profile appear again on the service area page, under the same names. If the profile lists a county, the website names the towns within it where the business works regularly. If the website names a town that is missing from the profile, either the profile is incomplete or the website promises too much. Which other building blocks belong to local visibility is summed up in the article on local visibility for local businesses. A short comparison before each season is worthwhile:
- Towns named the same in the profile and on the service area page, without abbreviations
- Zones and flat fees on the website up to date, with the same amounts in quotes
- Response time phrased so that it still holds in the busy season
- References with a town show services the business still offers today
- Outdated statements, such as an emergency service that no longer exists, are removed; how to find such passages is shown in declutter your website copy
How to do this with XICflow
In XICflow, references are created as a collection. According to the documentation, a collection is a set of records of the same kind: you define once which fields a record has and then fill in as many entries as you like.
For references, fields such as project photo, title, town, service and a short description work well. If the setting for generating detail pages per entry is active, XICflow creates a separate subpage for each entry when publishing, and the cards in lists link to it. The title and description of that page are created automatically: the title from the title field, the description from the first longer text field, shortened to about 155 characters (XICflow documentation). Putting the town in the title, for example “Roof renovation in Harsum”, gives each job a page with a real local connection. The setup is described in the documentation under content, media library and blog.
On the service area page, the CMS list block shows the references as a grid or a list. The card shows the first image field as the preview image, the first text field as the title and the remaining fields below it, including the town. New and changed entries appear on the live website the next time you publish. For the area itself there is the service area block: a display of the service area with a list of towns, without an external map service. It takes a town at the centre, a heading, a note below the area, for example about travel costs, and the list of towns; each town can be entered as a name or with a link, for example to an expanded town page or a matching reference. Because the block does not draw a real map, no data is sent to a map service. All settings are listed under blocks: media and showcase.
For merging old town pages, the page settings have the “Previous paths” field. It takes old addresses that redirect permanently to the current page, at most 10 (XICflow documentation) per page. You find it in the “SEO & meta” panel, which you open from the page's three-dot menu. The panel does not save automatically; only clicking Save applies the entries. When renaming a page, XICflow adds the old address itself. If the slots on the service area page are not enough, spread the old addresses across the pages that match in content: service town pages to the service page, pure town pages to the service area page, towns with many jobs to their expanded town page. The details are under editor and pages.
One area, one page
Towns and counties in words, zones with travel terms and a clear boundary sit on one page that can be maintained in one place.
References as a collection
Every job is an entry with a town field. The detail page is created on publishing, title and description come from the fields.
Cards with the town
The CMS list shows image, title and town per reference as a grid or list and links to the detail page of the job.
Service area without a map service
List of towns with a note on travel as a display of its own, without an embedded map and without sending data to a map service.
Previous paths
Old town addresses redirect permanently to the new target page, so that existing links and bookmarks keep arriving.
Renaming without a gap
When the address of a page changes, XICflow adds the old path to the redirects itself.
The rebuild is manageable: write one page, create references, enter old addresses. How pages, collections and publishing work together in XICflow is shown under how XICflow works. If you bring existing town pages and want to know which of them carry weight, write to us via the contact page. With the list of old addresses, we can sort out together which pages stay and which are merged.
Doorway abuse is when sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries.