A city page carries information that is true only of that place and useful to someone there. A doorway page repeats the same content with the place name swapped, built to catch searches and funnel them elsewhere. Google's spam policies target the second kind. The test is whether the page would deserve to exist if search engines did not.
For Tamou Law Group, a Phoenix criminal defense firm, we built 25 courthouse pages. Each one has real, distinct information about a single court. Then we looked at the rest of the state. There were 41 more courts we could have generated pages for from the same template.
We declined to build them. This post explains why, and gives the test we now apply to every location page before it is written.
What is a doorway page?
A doorway page is a page created to rank for a specific search, usually a place name plus a service, that offers nothing the site's other pages do not. Sites build them in bulk, changing only the city, so that many near-identical pages all lead visitors to the same destination.
Google lists doorways in its spam policies. The examples it gives include multiple pages targeting specific regions that funnel users to one page, and pages generated to rank for similar queries without being distinct. The policy is about intent and usefulness. It does not ban pages about places.
What makes a city page legitimate?
A city page is legitimate when a person from that city would learn something on it that the next city's page does not contain. That means facts specific to the place: the court or office that serves it, how the service works there, proof of work done there, and questions local people ask.
Layout is not the issue. Every page on a well-built site shares a design, and that is fine. What cannot be shared is the substance. If the only difference between two pages is the word after "in", one of them should not exist.
How do you tell a real city page from a doorway page?
You tell a real city page from a doorway page by asking what would be left if the city name were removed. A real page still contains local facts that identify the place. A doorway page becomes identical to its siblings. The table shows the differences we check for.
| Real city page | Doorway page | |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Facts true only of this place | Same paragraphs, name swapped |
| Reason to exist | The business works there regularly | The keyword has search volume |
| Questions answered | Ones local people ask | The same FAQ on every page |
| Proof | Jobs, cases, or photos from that place | None, or generic |
| Where it leads | Stands on its own, links to neighbors | Funnels to one sales page |
| If search engines vanished | Still useful to a customer | Nobody would miss it |
Why did we build 25 courthouse pages and not 66?
We built 25 courthouse pages because we had something specific and true to say about each of those courts. For the other 41 courts across the state we did not, and the firm does not regularly serve them, so those pages would have been the same template with a different name.
The 25 pages are useful to someone with a hearing next week. They are about one court each, and a reader who lands on the wrong one learns nothing. That is the mark of a real page.
The 41 we left out would have added a large batch of thin pages to a site whose strength is depth. We judged that the risk to the good pages outweighed whatever traffic the extra ones might have caught. More pages is not the goal. More useful pages is.
What test should a location page pass before you build it?
A location page should pass four checks before it is built: the business really serves the place, there is at least one fact unique to it, the page can answer a question the others cannot, and a visitor arriving from that place would not feel misled. A page failing any one is not built.
- Do you work there? Regularly, not in theory.
- What is true only here? Name the court, the jail, the permit office, the neighborhood, the drive time.
- What would a local ask? If the questions are the same as everywhere else, the page is a copy.
- Would the visitor feel tricked? If they call and you say you do not go there, the page was a doorway.
We covered the generating side of this in programmatic SEO for local service businesses. The generator is the easy part. The discipline is in the list of places you feed it.
How do you keep a generator from building pages it should not?
Keep a generator honest by putting the exclusions in the data, not in someone's memory. The build should read a list of places the business must never be marketed in, and refuse to produce those pages, however the templates change later.
Gayer Law is the clearest example we have. It is a Kansas criminal defense practice with 170 city and offense pages. The attorney also prosecutes in three counties, so the build knows never to market defense work there. Nobody has to remember the rule on a busy day, because the rule is code.
The same idea works for any business. A contractor who will not drive past a certain highway, a firm that does not practice in a neighboring state: write it down once, where the build reads it.
Frequently asked questions
Will a few thin city pages hurt my whole site?
We cannot tell you a threshold, and nobody outside Google can. Its policies say doorway pages may rank lower or not appear at all. Our working assumption is that weak pages are a cost to the site that carries them, so we remove or improve them.
Can every city page use the same layout?
Yes. A shared design, header, and section order are normal and help visitors. The policy concerns content that is not distinct. Keep the structure, and make sure the facts, questions, and proof inside it change from page to page.
How different does the text on each page need to be?
There is no percentage to hit. Rewording the same sentences is not the point. The page needs information that belongs to that place. If you have that, the wording differs on its own. If you do not, no amount of rewording fixes it.
Should I delete city pages I already have?
Check each one against the four questions above. Improve the ones for places you serve. Remove or redirect the rest to the closest useful page.
If you have a set of location pages and are not sure which side of the line they fall on, send us the site. We will tell you which pages we would keep, improve, or drop. The reasoning also applies to how you write service pages.