Google will soon demote doorway pages, the near-identical pages made for each town or keyword. Keep location pages that say something genuinely local, fold the others into a single page of service areas, and redirect them.

What Google announced yesterday

Yesterday Google said it will soon adjust its rankings to deal with doorway pages, adding that sites with large, well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad effect.

It gave no date beyond soon, and no figures. It did describe what it means, and offered questions for site owners to ask about their own pages.

For many service businesses, the description is uncomfortably familiar.

What a doorway page is

A doorway is a page made to rank for one particular search and then pass the visitor along, rather than to be useful in itself.

The classic version is a set of near-identical pages, one for each town or each wording of a service, with only the place name or keyword changed. Every one of them leads to the same contact form.

Searchers find them frustrating, because several results take them to essentially the same place. That is the problem Google says it is addressing.

The questions Google suggested

The last is the quickest test. Pages reachable only through a block of links in the footer, or not linked at all, exist for search engines rather than visitors, which is exactly what that question is getting at.

A page for every suburb

Service businesses are especially prone to this. A cleaner, a plumber or a mobile service covers a dozen towns and wants to appear when someone searches for the service in each.

So the site grows a page per town: the same three paragraphs, with the town's name swapped into the heading, the title and a sentence or two. A footer lists them all.

Some sites went further, with a page for every pairing of service and town: drain cleaning in one suburb, drain cleaning in the next, water heaters in both. Those multiply into hundreds.

That pattern matches Google's description almost exactly. The intent was reasonable; the pages themselves add nothing a single page could not.

What a location page needs

A page about a particular town should tell someone there something they could not learn from the main service page.

That might be an office they can visit, the travel charge for their area, the days you are usually there, local conditions that affect the work, or jobs you have actually done there, with photographs.

A genuine review from a customer in that town, used with permission, belongs there too.

If you cannot write two or three genuinely local paragraphs about a town, it does not need its own page. It needs a line on a page listing every area you serve.

A worked example

A mobile notary drives to clients across two dozen suburbs and towns, witnessing signatures and preparing documents such as wills and powers of attorney at kitchen tables, hospital bedsides and care homes.

Its site had twenty-four town pages, each a copy of the main service page with the town's name swapped in. Nothing linked to them except a block of town names in the footer.

After yesterday's announcement, the notary kept two town pages: one for the town with its small office, where clients can also come in, and one for the town whose hospital it visits most, with parking and visiting details.

The other twenty-two became a single page called Where We Travel, listing every town with its travel charge and usual days. Each old address now redirects there.

The site has fewer pages, and each of them says more.

Merging without losing visitors

Deleting the old pages outright leaves broken links and lost bookmarks. Redirect each one instead, with a permanent (301) redirect to the page that replaces it.

Name every town in plain text on the merged page, so someone searching for the service in any of them still finds a page that answers them.

Remove the footer block of town links, update the sitemap, and put the new service area page in the main menu, where people and search engines can both find it.

Then watch Webmaster Tools over the following weeks for crawl errors from addresses you missed.

Extra domains count too

Some businesses bought a domain for each town, each showing a copy of the site or passing visitors straight on. Google's description covers those as well.

Redirect each extra domain permanently to the main site. As separate copies they add nothing.

Keep the domains themselves registered, so the redirects go on working and nobody else can pick up the names.

What not to do this week

Do not rewrite twenty town pages with reshuffled sentences so that they look different. Pages reworded to say the same thing are still the same page.

Do not delete pages that genuinely help local customers just because they mention a town. The adjustment is aimed at pages that add nothing, not at pages that happen to be local.

And there is no need for haste. The change is coming soon rather than today, and a few hours of consolidation is the whole fix for most small sites.

The counter-case

A business with a real office or crew in each of several towns has good reason for a page per location, each with its own address, staff and hours. Those are not doorways.

Nor is one page that lists the towns you serve, with useful detail for each. The test is whether every page gives the visitor something the others do not.

Where it does not, merge. Fewer, better pages are what Google is asking for, and what customers wanted all along.

Before the adjustment arrives

  1. List every town or keyword page on the site.
  2. Compare them side by side for real differences.
  3. Keep the pages with genuinely local content.
  4. Fold the others into one page listing every area.
  5. Redirect each old address permanently.
  6. Remove the footer block of town links.
  7. Check Webmaster Tools for crawl errors afterwards.

Step five is what protects the work. Redirects keep every link and bookmark pointing somewhere useful, so merging the pages loses nothing a visitor or search engine already relied on.

The ranking change already scheduled for next month is covered in Google sets April 21 for mobile-friendly rankings.

Frequently asked questions

What did Google announce about doorway pages?

A coming change to its rankings that targets doorway pages, with a warning that sites running large, established doorway campaigns might see a broad effect. It gave no date.

What is a doorway page?

A page made to rank for one search and pass visitors along, typically one of many near-identical pages for different towns or keyword wordings that lead to the same place.

Are town pages for a service area doorways?

Copies with only the town name changed fit the description. A page with genuinely local content, such as an office, travel charges or local jobs, is different.

Should I delete my town pages?

Merge the ones with nothing local into one service area page and redirect each old address there permanently, rather than deleting them and leaving broken links.

Will rewording each town page help?

No. Pages reworded to look different while saying the same thing are still near-duplicates. The fix is fewer pages, each adding something real.

Do extra domains for each town count?

Separate domains showing copies of the site, or passing visitors straight on, fit the same description. Redirect them permanently to the main site instead.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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