We get this question from almost every new client: "Should I build a page for every town I service?" The honest answer is: it depends on whether you can rank there, and whether you can write something real about that place.
Most plumbing companies in Miami have built 40-page service area sections. Miami, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Brickell, Wynwood — every neighborhood gets its own page. Most of those pages are thin, nearly identical, and rank for nothing. Google reads them as the same page copied 40 times and treats them accordingly.
The rule we use
One page per geography where you want to appear in the map pack. Not the organic results — the map pack. That's the three-business box that appears above the regular search results. For a local service business, it's where 60–70% of the calls come from.
The map pack shows you for searches near your physical location or your Google Business Profile's service area. You can't fake your way into the map pack for a city you don't actually serve. But you can rank organically for that city if you have a good service area page — and that's worth something.
How to decide where to build
- 01List every zip code you've done a job in the last 12 months. These are real service areas, not aspirational ones.
- 02Rank them by job volume. Where do most of your jobs happen? Start there.
- 03Check search volume. "Plumber [city]" in a city of 8,000 people might get 30 searches a month. In a city of 80,000, it's 300. Build where there are people searching.
- 04Can you say something real about the area? Mention a landmark, a neighborhood characteristic, a common job type there. If you can't, the page will be thin.
What goes on the page
A real service area page has five things. Not ten. Five.
First, a headline that says what you do and where: "Plumbing services in Coral Gables." Not creative, but Google needs to understand the geography in the first 100 characters.
Second, a paragraph about the specific area — what neighborhoods you cover within it, how quickly you can respond, what types of jobs you do there most often.
Third, a list of your actual services, not copied from your main page. A Coral Gables home is often older than a Doral condo. The job types differ. Write to that.
Fourth, two or three real reviews from customers in that area. If you have them. If you don't, skip this — fake reviews are worse than none.
Fifth, your contact information with a local signal: the service area by zip code, response time, and a clear way to reach you.
A page about Coral Gables that reads like you've been there beats a page about Wynwood written from a template.
How many is right
For a two-to-five truck operation, usually four to eight pages. One for your main city, one for two or three adjacent cities with real job history, and one or two for high-volume neighborhoods within your city. That's it. Build them well before you build more.
One new page per month is a sustainable pace. It gives Google time to index and rank each page before you flood the site with new ones. It also keeps the quality high — a page that takes a week to write is a better page than a page that takes an hour.