Location pages are pages on a website that each cover one location or branch of a business. They give address, services and local details and are meant to be found for searches with a place reference.
What belongs on a location page?
Practice guides list the address with directions, opening hours, phone number, services offered at that site, staff or contacts, photos of the location and a map. The details can also be marked up with LocalBusiness structured data. Google asks to define each local business location as a LocalBusiness and to use the most specific subtype available. Practice guides also advise that name, address and phone number match the Google Business Profile.
Risk: doorway pages
Google’s spam policy describes doorway abuse as sites or pages created to rank for similar queries that lead users to intermediate pages less useful than the final destination. One example it names is multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. Location pages therefore belong to real locations and need their own content. Copying one text and swapping the place name resembles the pattern Google describes (assessment).
Example
A chain with three stores gives each its own page with address, hours, team and local services. A page for every nearby town without a store, all with the same text, would be a problem. The example is invented.
Sources
- Spam policies for Google web search (doorway abuse) - Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- LocalBusiness structured data - Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Optimising location pages for both users and search - Screaming Frogscreamingfrog.co.uk
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