If you work in ten towns but your website only mentions the one your shop is in, Google mostly shows you to people in that one town. A town page is a page on your website about the work you do in one specific town, and they're one of the biggest reasons some local businesses show up everywhere they work while others only show up at home.
Why does Google need town pages?
When someone types "plumber in" their town, Google is looking for plumbers that clearly serve that town. Your Google profile helps, but your website is where Google looks for proof. If the only town your site ever mentions is your home base, Google has nothing telling it you work anywhere else, even if half your jobs are twenty minutes away.
A page for each town gives Google that proof. It also gives the person searching a page that's about their town instead of somebody else's.
Why most town pages don't work
This is where a lot of owners get burned. Somebody builds twenty town pages that are the same page with the town name swapped out, and Google sees right through it. Pages like that usually don't get shown at all, and a site full of them can look worse to Google than a site with none.
A town page that works has to actually be about that town. It has to be built properly and then kept up, because a page nobody touches for two years slowly stops pulling its weight.
Who needs them?
If you only work in your own town, you probably don't need them. But if you drive to five, ten or fifteen towns for work, every town without a page is a town where you're mostly invisible.
One thing to try this week
Count the towns you're missing.
- Write down every town you've done a job in over the last year.
- Open your website and count how many of those towns it actually mentions.
- Search your trade plus three of the towns it doesn't mention, and see whether you show up.
How many of the towns you work in would a stranger know you serve?
Common questions
- What is a town page?
- A page on your website about your work in one specific town. It tells Google and the customer that you serve that town.
- Do town pages still work for local SEO?
- Yes, when each page is really about that town. Copy and paste pages with only the town name changed usually get ignored.
- How many town pages should a contractor have?
- One for each town you actually want work in. A page for a town you'd never drive to doesn't help.