The short answer: your home base, up to five towns you’ve earned, and one page for everywhere else
A contractor website needs fewer town pages than you might think. Your homepage covers the town you’re based in. Up to five other towns get pages of their own, and each has to earn it: either two of your last ten jobs were there, or it’s one of up to three towns you’ve decided to grow into. The rest of your area shares a single service-area page. That’s a handful of pages, not fifty.
Those are the rules the free Website Blueprint planner uses to lay out a site, and they suit location pages for any service-area business. One exception up front: if nearly all your work is in one town, you may not need any town pages.
Swapped-name city pages are what Google calls doorways
Google's spam policies define doorway abuse as pages made to catch clusters of near-identical searches, standing between the searcher and the page that would help. One of Google's examples is “pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page.”
That's the classic contractor template: a page per suburb, the same few hundred words, the town's name dropped in. An AI tool writing a page per ZIP code is no different; Google's scaled content policy covers mass-produced pages made to rank rather than help. Breaking these policies, Google says, can push a site down in results or out of them.
Customers catch it sooner: a Mint Hill homeowner who lands on your Matthews page with the name swapped learns you don't really work there. Google publishes no safe number of town pages, so the limits below are mine, set in the planner around one question: how many towns can a small crew back up with real jobs, photos, and reviews?
How a town earns its own page
Two questions decide it: has the work already happened there, and have you decided to go after it? A yes to either can earn a page; two caps keep the list short.
- 01
Proof: two of your last ten jobs
Recent jobs, not lifetime ones, because a town page is built from what you can show today: photos from those jobs, a review from one of those customers. One job can be a fluke. Two of your last ten means the town is a steady part of your work.
- 02
A plan: up to three towns you’ve chosen to grow into
A town can get its page before the jobs arrive if the decision is real: you’ll take those calls and make that drive. Until the work comes, the page says why you’re taking jobs there and how soon you can arrive. The cap keeps a wish list from becoming twenty pages.
- 03
A ceiling: five town pages besides your home base
Each town page is a promise to keep adding jobs and reviews. Past five, most small crews run out of fresh material, and newer pages start borrowing paragraphs from older ones. When more towns qualify, the busiest win, growth towns get a head start, and the rest go on the service-area page.
- 04
Everywhere else: one service-area page
Towns that don’t earn a page each get a line on one shared page. It answers the only question those visitors bring: will you come out to me?
What goes on a town page that deserves to exist
A good town page is mostly evidence. The planner asks for five things:
- Recent jobs there, each with a photo and a line on what you did. Name the subdivision or the road, never the house number.
- The neighborhoods and subdivisions you’ve worked in.
- Anything local that changes the job: the permit office, HOA rules, older homes, storm damage.
- A review from a customer in that town.
- Your top services, with the town’s name in their headings, linked to their service pages.
What doesn't count: population, founding date, parks, ZIP code lists, and “proudly serving” lines, which are true of every business in town. The test: cover the town's name. If the page could be about anywhere, it isn't a town page yet.
Write those facts as plain text, not inside images. That's what people skim and what AI assistants quote; getting recommended by ChatGPT goes further.
A Matthews plumber weighs Mint Hill, Indian Trail, and Fort Mill
Take a made-up plumber based in Matthews. Of the last ten jobs, six were at home, three in Mint Hill, and one in Indian Trail. There are none yet in Fort Mill, across the state line, but the plan is to grow there. The planner sorts them like this:
| Town | Of last ten jobs | Growth town | Miles away | What it gets | Written for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthews, NC | 6 | Home base | — | The homepage | plumber matthews nc |
| Mint Hill, NC | 3 | No | 6 | Its own page | plumber mint hill nc |
| Fort Mill, SC | 0 | Yes | 15 | Its own page | plumber fort mill sc |
| Indian Trail, NC | 1 | No | 4 | A line on the service-area page | — |
Miles are straight-line. “Written for” is the search a page targets, not a promised ranking.
Mint Hill: a page on proof
Three of the last ten jobs clears the bar. Paperwork won't set this page apart: Mecklenburg County issues Mint Hill's building permits, as it does in Matthews. So the page leans on the work: those jobs with a photo each, the subdivisions, and a review from one of those customers.
Indian Trail: the service-area page, for now
One job is a start, not a pattern. If Indian Trail reaches two of the last ten, or the plumber decides to grow there, its page gets a local fact to state: the town is in Union County, so permits there come from Union County's building code office, not Mecklenburg's.
Fort Mill: a page before the first job
Fort Mill is in York County, South Carolina, about 15 miles away as the crow flies. Its permit FAQ says anyone working in town needs a Town of Fort Mill business license, plus a South Carolina credential for plumbing; over $5,000, that's the state mechanical contractor's license. Both belong on the page. If the plumber doesn't hold them, Fort Mill isn't a growth town yet.
Three towns within 15 miles, three different stories. Around Charlotte that’s ordinary, and it’s the kind of detail a Charlotte contractor website should spell out.
Don't multiply your services by your towns
Service pages say what you do; town pages show where you've done it. The usual advice, a page per service and per town you work in, holds up. The planner adds an order: your top three services get the deepest pages, and town pages carry them locally instead of a page for every pairing.
Pairings add up fast. The planner’s plumbing list has six services; across a home base and five town pages, a page per pairing would be 36 pages, most of them identical but for two words. That’s the doorway pattern again.
So each top service gets a full page with job photos, reviews that mention it, and answers to what people ask before booking. A town page names your top services in its headings, which is how “water heater replacement mint hill” gets an answer without its own page. Build a service-in-town page only when the pairing has something real behind it, like a run of the same repair in one subdivision.
One page for the rest, and links that make it a site
The service-area page is for the visitor who wants a yes or no. List every town you'll take work in, grouped the way locals think (north, south, across the state line), add a simple map, and link each town that has a page. When a town earns a page, its line becomes a link.
| Page | Links to |
|---|---|
| Homepage | Your top three service pages and every town page |
| Service page | The town pages where you’ve done that work |
| Town page | The service pages for the jobs it shows, and the service-area page |
| Service-area page | Every town page |
| Footer, on every page | The service-area page |
Linked like this, every town page sits inside a site a visitor can browse, not off to the side as a door from search.
What to do with the thin city pages you already have
Check each one's numbers first (steps at the end), then sort them into three piles.
- 01
Towns that pass the rules
Keep the page and its address, and rebuild it with jobs, photos, and a review from that town. One already bringing in calls has proved itself; start there.
- 02
Towns you work in that haven’t earned a page
Fold each one into the service-area page, and set a permanent (301) redirect from the old address to it.
- 03
Towns you don’t actually serve
Delete the page. There’s nothing true to send that visitor to.
Google's advice for a page that moves is a permanent, server-side redirect where you can, which it reads as a sign to show the new page in results instead of the old. Point each old page at the page that now names that town, not your homepage: someone who searched for a plumber in Indian Trail should land where Indian Trail is mentioned.
Your profile's service areas and your town pages should agree
Your Google Business Profile has a service-area setting of its own, with room for up to 20 areas by city, postal code, or another type of area. The profile tells customers where you'll go; the town pages show that you already do.
In the blueprint, the profile's list comes from the same plan as the site: your home base plus every town with a page. Whether that list affects where you show up on the map is a separate question, and the guide to ranking on Google Maps in Charlotte covers it.
How to tell if a town page is working
Google Search Console's Performance report shows the searches each page appeared for. To look at one town page:
- 01Open the Performance report for Search results. It opens on the past three months.
- 02Click “+ Add filter,” choose “Pages,” then “URLs containing,” and enter the page’s address, like /mint-hill-nc.
- 03Open the Queries tab. Searches pairing the town with your trade or a service are what the page was written for.
- 04Watch Impressions and Clicks. For a trend, click the date filter, choose “Compare,” and set the last three months against the three before.
Google hides some searches for privacy, so the queries won't sum to the page's total. Search Console also can't hear your phone. Ask callers which town they're in and keep a monthly tally. A few months in, that town's calls are the number to judge the page by.