We serve 20 cities and have a landing page for each. The audit flagged them as near-duplicate because, honestly, they are — same service, city name swapped in. Google seems to only rank two or three of them. How do I make 20 location pages that aren't just spam-templated?
This is the number one local SEO trap. Twenty pages that differ only by a swapped city name read as doorway pages, and Google will pick a couple and ignore the rest — exactly what you're seeing.
Make each page genuinely local:
Rule of thumb: if you could swap the city name and the page would still be 90% true, it's too thin. If a page can't support real unique content, consider consolidating into a strong regional hub instead of forcing 20 weak pages. Re-run the audit once you've reworked a few and watch the duplicate flag clear.
We had 40 of these and cut to 12 real ones with actual local content. Traffic went UP even with fewer pages. Fewer, better beats more, thinner every time.
The swap-the-city-name test is brutally clarifying. Most of mine fail it. Consolidating and rewriting the survivors properly. Thank you Marco.
