On This Page
What Are Service-Area Pages?
A service-area page is a dedicated page about a specific location that a business services, but does not have a physical office in.
For example, if you are a local business you should have a dedicated page for each service-area that you travel to for work. This gives the site the opportunity to rank for all the locations that they provide services in.
Example: An HVAC company would have separate pages for each service-area:
- Tampa, FL
- St. Pete, FL
- Clearwater, FL
Here’s an example of a service-area page that includes location-specific topics.
Why Are They Needed for Local SEO?
If you’re a business without physical locations, I recommend creating service-area pages for each location you want to rank in.
Service-area pages give the site the opportunity to rank in all the cities or areas that they do not have locations in.
There is no other way to do this if you want to rank organically for local terms and don’t have a physically location in said location. You can always run digital ads that target your service-areas but we are talking about SEO in this article.
Examples of Service-Area Business
- Plumbers that keep their work vehicle at their home
- HVAC contractors who rent a garage but don’t service customers at that location, they drive out to their home to do the work
- Digital marketers who work from home but are targeting a local area
Are Service-Area Pages Considered Doorway Pages?
I suggest using unique copy on each service-area page. The reason for this is to prevent Google and other search engines from considering them “doorway pages” or “low-quality pages”. Otherwise, they may not rank well at all.
This is Google’s statement regarding Doorway Pages:
Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.
Here are some examples of doorways:
Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)
Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311?hl=en
A Google employee has also publicly warned that city pages could be considered doorway pages.
Reference: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-city-landing-pages-doorway-pages-28670.html
In my opinion, it’s alright to have multiple pages with similar content as long as they are not basically copies of each other with the city name swapped out. That’s why I recommend that each service-area page be unique and not have content duplicated on other service-area pages (within reason).
Must-Have Elements on SerVice-Area Pages
There are quite a few things you can add to service-area pages to make them unique.
If you have time, you should read Phil Rozek’s article “Template for Creating Knockout City-Page Content for Local SEO“.
Service-Area Page Checklist
I’ve created my own checklist here below that you can use in addition to his.
Each service-area page can include:
- Business name, address and phone number (even if it’s not the same city as the service-area page you want to give users a way to contact you).
- Embed a map of the service-area
- Describe the overall business
- Describe the service-area
- Discuss what services are offered in this service-area
- Mention your favorite places in the service-area
- List partners and / or complimentary businesses in the service-area
- Insert reviews or testimonials from customers in the service-area
- Add photos from employees or jobs in the the service-area
- Use this awesome questionnaire from Phil Rozek to come up with ideas for other city-specific topics you can write about on each service-area page
Examples of Great Service-Area Pages
Here’s an example of a pest control company that’s targeting Seattle with a service-area page because they don’t have an office in Seattle.
And here’s an example of a tree service targeting a local city.
Other Service-Area Page Examples
- https://www.ontimehomeservices.com/service-areas/
- https://icedamremovalguys.com/ice-dam-guy-services/service-areas/
- https://advancedcardetailing.com/service-areas.php
- https://southshoredigitalmarketing.com/service-areas/
Service-Area Page Experts
In conclusion, if you’re a business without physical locations, I recommend creating service-area pages for each location you want to rank in so that you can grow your organic traffic!
At CONTENTAMIGO our focus is creating stellar local SEO content. If you need assistance finding the right keywords to target on a local level or need service-area pages created, we’d love to help! Just place an order!