Frank's Web Studio
Service area pages: how to write town pages that get calls.
If you work in a dozen suburbs but your website only says "Chicagoland," you're leaving those town searches to someone else. A few good service area pages fix that. Twenty copied ones can make it worse.
Most of the people I build websites for don't have a storefront. They drive to the customer. An electrician in Naperville works in Aurora, Plainfield and Bolingbrook too. A cleaning company in Oak Park covers Forest Park, River Forest and half the West Side. Their customers search with the town name: "electrician Plainfield," "house cleaning River Forest." A service area page is a page on your site built for one of those towns. Done right, it gives Google and the customer a clear answer. Done wrong, it's a pile of near-identical pages that help nobody.
What Google says not to do
Google's spam policies describe something called doorway abuse: pages made to rank for a bunch of similar searches that just funnel people somewhere else. One of the examples Google lists is pages "targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page." Another is "substantially similar pages" that read more like search results than a real part of your site.
In plain English: if you make 30 pages that say "We're the best plumber in [TOWN]" and only the town name changes, you're building exactly what Google tells you not to. Those pages rarely rank, and a customer who lands on one can tell it was written for a robot.
The fix isn't to skip town pages. It's to only make the ones you can fill with something real.
Start with your best three to five towns
You don't need a page for every suburb within 40 miles. Pick the towns that matter most to your business:
- Where most of your jobs already come from (look at your last year of invoices).
- Where the jobs are bigger or more profitable.
- Where you want more work and can actually get there fast.
Everything else can be listed in plain text on one main service area page. A list of every town you cover, written out, is useful on its own. Then add town pages one at a time, as you have real material for them.
What goes on a good town page
Here's the checklist I use. If you can't fill at least four of these for a town, that town isn't ready for its own page yet.
- A clear headline with the service and the town. "Furnace repair in Oak Lawn," not "Welcome to our Oak Lawn page."
- Real jobs you've done there. Photos and a sentence or two about each one. "Replaced a 20-year-old furnace in a brick bungalow near 95th Street" says more than any slogan.
- Local details that change the work. Older housing stock, alley garages, flood-prone basements, HOA rules, village permit requirements. Only include what's true and what you know.
- How fast you get there. If you're 15 minutes away and can usually come same day, say it. That's the reason someone picks a local company.
- Reviews from customers in that town. Only real ones, quoted as written, with permission if you name the person.
- Answers to the questions people in that town ask you. If Evanston customers keep asking about permits, answer that on the Evanston page.
- A tap-to-call button and a short form. Same as every page on your site. The phone number should be one tap at the top.
Notice what's not on the list: a paragraph about the town's history, its population, or its famous restaurants. Customers didn't search for that. Write about your work in that town, not a travel guide.
Picture this
Picture a small remodeling company based in Arlington Heights. They get most of their work from Arlington Heights, Palatine, Mount Prospect and Des Plaines. Right now the site has one services page and a footer that says "Serving the Northwest Suburbs."
Here's what I'd do. A main service area page that lists every town they cover, by name. Then four town pages. The Mount Prospect page shows two kitchen remodels from last year, mentions that a lot of their work there is in 1950s and 60s ranch homes, and answers the permit question they hear most. The Palatine page shows different jobs and answers different questions. Each page could stand on its own if you printed it out. That's the test.
How to connect the pages
- Link every town page from your main service area page, in plain text links people can click.
- Link back from each town page to your main services, so people can see everything you do.
- Keep your address, phone and business name exactly the same on every page.
- If you have a Google Business Profile, make sure its service area matches the towns on your site. They should tell the same story.
Don't hide town pages from your menu and only link them in the footer as a wall of 50 links. If a page is good enough to exist, it's good enough to be easy to find.
How many pages, and what it costs
For most local service businesses, three to five strong town pages beat twenty thin ones. On my plans, Starter covers 1 to 3 pages, Local Growth up to 5, and Premium up to 8, so most people start with a homepage, services, a main service area page and a couple of town pages. The Local SEO Plan at $299/mo adds one new local service or town page every month, written from your real jobs, so the list grows without turning into copy-and-paste. You can see the full breakdown on my website cost page.
If you're a contractor, my contractor websites page shows the rest of what a trade site needs. And if your Google profile is getting views but not calls, read why your Google Business Profile isn't getting calls next, since the two work together.
Not sure which towns deserve their own page? Book a free call and I'll look at where your work comes from and tell you where I'd start.
Common questions
How many service area pages should a small business have?
Start with three to five, for the towns where most of your work comes from. List every other town you serve in plain text on one main service area page, and add more town pages only when you have real jobs, photos or local details to put on them.
Can I use the same text on each town page and just change the city name?
No. Google's spam policies call out pages targeted at specific cities that are substantially similar to each other. Each town page should have its own jobs, photos, reviews and answers, or it shouldn't exist yet.
Do service area pages help me show up in the Google map results?
The map listings are your Google Business Profile, so town pages are not a shortcut onto the map. They help you show up in the regular results for town searches and give people who click through from your profile a page that matches where they live.
Want me to check your site?
Book a free call and I'll look at your website on a phone with you and tell you what I'd fix first. No pressure, no long contracts.
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Frank's Web Studio · Serving Chicagoland and the Midwest · (773) 474-4780 · [email protected]
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