Local SEO in several cities: city pages without a penalty from Google

Take an example construction company from Giżycko that also does renovations and terraces in Ełk, Mrągowo and Pisz. The natural idea: make pages called “renovations Ełk”, “renovations Mrągowo” and “renovations Pisz” and wait for inquiries. The idea is good, but the execution is often bad, because it often ends in dozens of almost identical pages.

In this guide I show when a city page makes sense and when Google may treat it as spam. You get a 5-question test and a skeleton of a page you can deploy on your own site. This makes it easier to make sure that local SEO in several cities doesn’t end in a drop in visibility for the whole website. I describe Google’s rules as of 23 October 2026.

Why copies with a swapped city are risky

In its spam policies, Google describes doorway abuse (in the Polish version of the policy: “nadużycie stron doorway”). These are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar queries that lead the user to intermediate pages, less useful than the actual destination. Among the examples Google lists pages targeted at particular regions or cities that funnel users to a single page, and very similar pages that look more like search results than a clear site structure. Ten pages with the same content in which only the city name changes easily fall under this description.

The second rule is scaled content abuse, that is, generating many pages mainly to influence rankings in search results rather than to help the reader. It doesn’t matter whether the texts are written by a person, a template or AI. What counts is whether the page adds something new.

According to Google, pages that violate these rules may rank lower or not appear in results at all. If Google applies a manual action (you will see information about it in Search Console), it can cover some pages or the whole site. I’m not writing this to scare you, just to make clear what the test below is for.

When a city page makes sense

A page makes sense when a reader from a given city will find something on it that they won’t find on any other page of your business. Most often these are:

• projects from that city, with a description and photos,
• customer reviews from that town,
• local information: travel time, pricing rules, the specifics of local buildings,
• specific contact details and service area.

A company from Giżycko that serves Masuria can have a good page “Terraces in Mrągowo” if it built three terraces there and has photos of them. It shouldn’t have a page “Terraces in Suwałki” if it has never worked there.

Test: does this page have the right to exist (5 questions)

Go through each city page and answer honestly. If the answer to any question is “no”, the page needs improvement.

1. Do I have projects from this city? At least two, with a description and real photos.
2. Do I have a review or reference from a customer there? It can be from Google or from a customer with their consent.
3. Does the text differ from other pages by more than the city name? If, after swapping the city name, the text fits another page, it is a copy.
4. Do I actually serve this city? I travel there, quote, do the work, and can say so to a customer outright.
5. Will a person from this city find an answer here that isn’t on the home page? For example a travel fee list, a completion time, local restrictions.

Result: 5 answers of “yes” means the page is good. 3–4 is a sign it needs to be filled out. Below 3, it is better to merge it into a general service-area page.

A skeleton of a good city page

You can copy the layout below and fill it in with your own data. Every point should be about that city, not about your business in general.

1. Heading: the service and the city, e.g. “Stone terraces in Mrągowo”.
2. Introduction (2–3 sentences): what you do in this city and where you travel from.
3. Projects from the city: 2–6 photos with a short description: what, when, what scope.
4. A customer review from that town, with the source.
5. What quoting and travel look like: whether the quote is free, how long it takes to arrange a visit.
6. Local details: something you know only from working there, e.g. typical substrates or building managers’ requirements.
7. Customer questions from this city (2–4).
8. Contact: a click-to-call phone number and a form.

A sketch of the heading and introduction can look like this (put your own data in the square brackets):

<h1>Stone terraces in Mrągowo</h1>
<p>Since [year] we have been building terraces in Mrągowo and the surrounding area. We travel here from Giżycko for a free quote within [number] days.</p>
<h2>Our projects in Mrągowo</h2>

Add a separate page title and description to each page. Don’t duplicate them from other cities.

What about cities where you have no projects

If you are only starting to work in a new city, don’t create a page right away. Make one “Service area” page with a list of towns, travel time and examples of projects from the region. When the first project and review from a given city appear, split off a separate page.

This is more honest toward customers and safer with respect to Google. It also helps your workflow: you collect photos and reviews right after a job, because you know you will use them on the website soon.

Google Business Profile and several cities

City pages are only part of local SEO. The other part is the Google Business Profile. In its Business Profile help, Google requires the address to correspond to the place where the business actually operates. So don’t add fake addresses in other cities to appear on the map.

If you travel to customers, you can specify a service area in the profile. According to Google’s guidelines, a business that doesn’t serve customers at its address hides it, and the service area should generally not extend beyond about 2 hours’ drive from the base. The rules for businesses without a premises and with one differ, so before making changes check them in Google’s guidelines for Business Profile. Reviews from customers in different cities strengthen both the profile and the city pages. I describe how to get them in the guide on Google reviews.

How to check whether it works

A few weeks after publishing, look into Google Search Console:

• whether the city pages are indexed (the Page indexing report),
• how many impressions and clicks they have for queries that include the city name (the search results performance report),
• which ones get nothing.

Pages with no traffic after a few months are candidates for expansion or merging. To see how you compare with the competition, use my free competitor audit: you enter a service and a city, and you see the ranking in Google Maps, the number of reviews and the profiles of the businesses that win in that city.

I write more about how to lay out a whole construction company website in the guide on a website for a construction company.

The most common mistakes

• One template for 20 cities. The fastest road to pages with no traffic.
• Mass-generated text without your own data. AI doesn’t know your projects. Without them you get generalities.
• Stock photos instead of your own projects.
• Made-up addresses and “offices” in cities where you have none.
• Pages with no links from the menu or other pages, which nobody reaches.
• Listing 50 towns in the footer instead of a few real pages. Blocks of text listing cities and regions that a site wants to rank for are given by Google as an example of keyword stuffing.

Summary

Local SEO in several cities works when every page has its own projects, reviews and specific information. Go through the 5-question test, fix or merge the weak pages and only then add more.

If you would like me to review your pages and put together a plan, see the SEO and search rankings service or a turnkey business website with space for projects from each city. Write to me, I reply within 24 hours, and new clients get 20% off their first order.