Anyone searching for SEO for multiple cities usually has a service business that does well in one place and wants to be found in the other places it covers as well: plumbers, cleaning companies, repair shops, security firms. The first idea is usually the same: a page for every city in the country, with the same text and the place name swapped.
That very pattern is described in Google’s spam policies, under the name of doorway pages. The right route starts from an awkward question: what do you have to say that is different about each city?
What a local page that deserves to exist looks like
The test is simple: if you delete the city’s name from the page, is there anything left that sets it apart from the others? A good local page answers the questions that someone in that city has and someone elsewhere does not.
If all you have to write about a city is “we also offer services in Sibiu”, the city does not need a page. You put it in the list of areas covered and leave it at that. A page worth making includes:
- The team there: who comes, where they set off from, how quickly they usually arrive.
- Coverage: districts and nearby towns and villages, with any travel charges explained.
- Services and opening hours: these can differ from one city to another.
- Local proof: your own photos from the area and real reviews from people there.
Why carbon-copy doorway pages are a problem
Doorway pages are pages created to catch similar searches, which take the visitor to the same place without each offering anything of its own. One of the examples in Google’s policies is exactly this: near-identical city pages that all point to the same offer.
As a rule, Google recognises them, indexes a few and ignores the rest. At scale they can attract a manual action (a penalty decided by a person on Google’s team, not by the algorithm) or the demotion of the whole site. Rewording the same text with an AI assistant changes nothing.
If the site already has pages like these, we do not delete them blindly. We check in Google Search Console, using the search data for each page, which ones get visits. We enrich the ones for cities where you really do work, and merge the rest into a coverage page, redirecting the old URLs.
Google profiles only for real premises
Google Business Profile is the listing on the map, with address, opening hours, phone number and reviews. It is created for a place where the business receives its customers or from which its own staff set out. Virtual offices and borrowed addresses, where the business does not actually operate, do not qualify under Google’s rules; judging by what happens in practice, profiles set up on them often end up suspended.
We link each profile to the corresponding local page, not to the homepage. The contact details are the same, letter for letter, in the profile, on the website and in business directories. You ask for reviews in the same way from everyone you have worked for, without picking and choosing and without offering anything in return.
Service areas where you have no base
A business that travels to the customer can hide the address in its profile and declare a service area. That tells Google where you work, but it does not move you on the map: in local results, the distance between the searcher and the place where you are verified carries a lot of weight.
Far from your base, what remains are the ordinary results below the map, where a good local page can appear with no office in the city at all, and paid ads, which can be targeted by town or city. We say from the outset which channel makes sense for each area.
- City with premises: a profile on the map, a full local page, reviews of its own.
- Nearby city, no base: included in the service area and, if you have something to say, given a local page.
- Distant city you rarely get to: mentioned on the coverage page, possibly backed up with ads.
- City where you do not work: no page, however much the service is searched for there.
SEO for multiple cities, measured area by area
We do not start with every city at once. We first choose the areas where you have a team and capacity, because a page that brings in calls you cannot answer damages your reputation. We gather the local information from the teams in the field, then build the service pages and the local ones, linked to each other.
On the pages for cities where you have premises we add structured data: code in a standard format that describes the premises (address, opening hours, phone number) in a way search engines understand. We measure by city, not in total: forms with the town or city selected, a phone number for each location, clicks on each local page. On the map, results change from one district to the next, so we track enquiries, not positions.
Frequently asked questions
How many city pages can I create without taking a risk?
There is no number. The limit is how many cities have true information of their own: team, coverage, services, jobs done.
Can I use a virtual office address for the map profile?
No. Google’s rules require a place where the business has its own staff during the stated opening hours. Judging by what happens in practice, profiles on fictitious addresses are often reported by competitors and can be suspended.
What does the cost depend on?
On the number of cities with pages of their own, on how many premises need a profile and on how quickly the local information can be gathered. If there are already many carbon-copy pages, cleaning them up is an extra stage.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.