City pages for silos

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Richard Hearne: The first thing to reassess here is: "before learning that Google doesn’t really like ‘doorway’ pages and the preferred was is to have 1 target page for each service you offer, 1 location page for city you work in and then link the relevant services to locations."
  
  I`m not sure that I fully agree with this. Google dislikes cookie-cutter approaches. If you have high-quality unique content for each service+location page there should be no problem with this. If you looks at many home services websites (esp. bigger national franchises) you`ll find that they don`t have a single service page, but one for each location. Without knowing your target service/locations it`s hard to advise, but I`d step back and validate the above quote before making any further decisions.
  
  
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  Lee Moloney: Richard Hearne hi Richard thanks for your feedback. I’m a heating engineer and my service area is south London.
  
  Does cookie cutter mean copy and paste?
  
  I get that if you can make each page unique then it won’t matter so much, the problem I have is there is only so much you can write about a boiler service or a boiler repair before you start getting repetitive.
  
  At the moment I have about 15 locations in south London I want to target, on each page the bulk of the content is similar, to try and make them different I’ve added FAQs and things to check before you call. I’ve got 3 of each and I’m trying to make these different across each page, but even still there are only so many FAQs you can have about a boiler service.
  
  So I thought that by trying to make lots of unique pages I’ll end up being repetitive but more importantly, diluting the value of each page by spreading the information too thin.
  
  If I add all of it to one service page packed full of great useful content, backed up by relevant blogs that link to and reference high authority pages and then link to individual city pages I’d have a better overall package?
  
  I’m obviously very limited SEO knowledge so your advice would be greatly appreciated
  
  Ps. I have also checked the companies who are ranking for my keywords in my targets and like you said, they just have service + location pages. But a few of them rank in multiple areas and literally the only word that’s changed is the location? I thought that is the exact thing that Google are trying to get rid off?
  
  I’m not sure if I should do what they’re doing because it obviously works for them or, do what another article I read advised and view them as weak competition , follow the guidelines and hopefully out rank them?
  
  By rank I mean top 3, I’ve got a few of my pages in the top 10 but I think top 3 is where the action is?
  
  
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  Lee Moloney: Richard Hearne Hi Richard, sorry I had another question if thats ok please? If I have multiple service + location pages, when I write blogs about for instance a boiler repair, do I link the blog back to the main service page or do I link it to all of the service + location pages?
  
  
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  Ammon Johns: Consider if part of the `Relevant Content` was an actual case study from City A, and another page with an actual case study from city B, each of which naturally mentioned the location...
  
  What Google don`t want is what Richard Hearne termed as `cookie cutter` content (meaning substantially the same stuff, nothing especially unique in value), which is also often termed as `boiler plate` or `duplicate content`. There is no penalty for it, so it won`t hurt you in that way, but Google will largely treat the pages as duplicates, and filter whichever is slightly less relevant to a query out. It can lower the quality scoring of a site as a whole if there is a lot of such content.
  
  So one thing to do with the location pages is to pick out some of the unique service challenges or demands of that locality where possible.
  
  So, for a boiler installer in say Tower Hamlets, you might specifically mention that your engineers are perfectly used to and happy to install into flats in high-rise properties, perhaps. Just so you have a way to mention the services in a way that is *specific* to the area, or to mention the area in a way that is specific to the service. Not only does this make sure you don`t have boiler-plate content, it can also raise conversions, by showing that you really do understand some of the specific issues, common building materials, or whatever else gives a local an advantage in terms of their knowledge and experience.