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:
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.
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.
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