You’re based in Ballina, but half your work is in Lennox Head, Alstonville and Byron. When someone in Byron searches “plumber Byron Bay”, Google mostly shows businesses that are close by or that clearly say they work there. A page on your site about your work in Byron gives you a fighting chance.
The catch is that most tradie location pages are rubbish. Same 400 words, town name swapped out, nothing a local would recognise. Google has a name for that, and it isn’t a compliment. A town page only works when it carries what a local would recognise: real jobs, photos and reviews from that town, the conditions you deal with there, and how often you’re around.
What Google says, plainly
Google’s spam policies describe “doorway abuse” and give, as an example, multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. The same document describes scaled content abuse: mass-producing pages mainly to manipulate rankings, including using AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.
So the question for every town page is simple. If a customer in that town landed on it, would they learn something they couldn’t get from your home page? If the answer is no, don’t publish it.
Do you even need them?
Not every tradie does. Location pages are worth it when:
- You work in several towns regularly, not once a year.
- Those towns are big enough that people search for them by name.
- You have something specific to say about each one: jobs done there, local conditions, how often you’re there.
- Your main site already has the basics right (service pages, contact details, reviews).
If you work within 15 minutes of home and everyone searches “electrician near me”, a good home page and a well-set-up Google Business Profile will probably do more for you. Our guide on whether a one-page website is enough for a tradie helps with that call.
What goes on a good town page
The structure below uses an electrician based in Ballina writing a page for Alstonville as the example.
A specific opening
Not “Looking for a reliable electrician in Alstonville? You’ve come to the right place!” Something a local would read and nod at.
We’ve been doing electrical work in Alstonville and Wollongbar since 2014. It’s 15 minutes from our base in Ballina, so we’re there most weeks, and we can usually fit in urgent jobs the same day.
That’s travel time, frequency and response time, which are the three things a customer in Alstonville wants to know.
The work you do there
Different towns bring different work, and this is where a page earns its place. Think about what’s genuinely different:
- Housing stock. An older town full of 1970s and 1980s homes brings switchboard upgrades and old wiring. A new estate brings fit-offs, EV chargers and solar.
- Conditions. Coastal towns like Lennox Head and East Ballina mean salt air, which is hard on outdoor fittings, hot water units and metal roofing. Say how you deal with it.
- History. If you’ve done a lot of post-flood work in Lismore since the 2022 floods, that’s specific, relevant and something a Lismore customer cares about.
- Customer types. Byron Bay has a lot of holiday rentals and hospitality businesses. If you do after-hours work for venues or quick turnarounds between guests, say so.
Only write what’s true for your business. If you can’t think of anything specific to say about a town, that’s a sign the page shouldn’t exist yet.
Real jobs from that town
This is the part that makes a page impossible to copy. Two or three short examples with photos:
Switchboard upgrade, Alstonville. A 1970s brick home with ceramic fuses and no safety switches. We replaced the board and added RCD protection on every circuit, done in a day.
Use the suburb, never the street address, and get the customer’s permission for the photos.
Reviews from that town
If you have Google reviews from customers in that town, quote one or two (word for word, with their first name) or embed them. A review from someone down the road is more convincing than one from 50 km away.
Practical details
- Which services you offer in that town (all of them, or only some)
- Typical response times
- Whether there’s a travel charge for outlying areas
- Your phone number and a quote button
Links
Link the page from your main service area list, and link from each town page back to the relevant service pages. A customer reading about your Lismore work who needs a switchboard upgrade should be one tap from your switchboard page.
Thin page vs useful page
| Thin page | Useful page |
|---|---|
| “We are the leading electrician in Lismore.” | “We’re in Lismore three or four days a week, mostly in Girards Hill, Goonellabah and East Lismore.” |
| Generic list of services copied from the home page | The services Lismore customers book, with a line on each |
| Stock photo of a sunset | Photos from three jobs in Lismore |
| Town name repeated ten times | Town name used naturally, along with neighbouring suburbs |
| No reviews | Two reviews from Lismore customers |
| 400 words, identical structure to every other town page | As long as it needs to be, with its own content |
How many town pages?
Start with three to five: the towns where you most want work and can write the most. Write them properly. Add more only when you have jobs, photos and something to say.
Ten good pages beat 50 thin ones, every time. And never create pages for towns you don’t service. You’ll get calls you have to decline, and it’s exactly the pattern Google’s policy describes.
For a Ballina-based tradie, a sensible first round might be Ballina, Lennox Head, Alstonville and Lismore, with Byron Bay added once there’s enough work there to write about. A Lismore-based tradie might start with Lismore, Goonellabah, Casino and Kyogle.
Writing them without going mad
Writing five properly different pages is real work. The trick is to collect the material as you go:
- Keep a note on your phone for each town.
- Every time you do a job there, add a line and a photo.
- When a customer from that town leaves a review, copy it in.
- After a few months, you’ll have enough for a page that writes itself.
AI tools can help tidy the writing, but the raw material has to come from your jobs. A page generated from nothing is the scaled content Google warns about, and customers can tell.
For more on location pages beyond trades, including multi-location businesses, see location pages that aren’t spam.
The decision
Pick the three towns you most want more work in. For each, ask: can I name real jobs I’ve done there and something specific about working there? If yes, write the page. If not, focus on getting more work there first, then write it.
Town and service pages are the core of the Local SEO Build package at tradie.agency, and if you’d rather keep adding and improving them over time, that’s part of our ongoing local SEO work. The sites we build through websites for tradies are set up so you can add them as the jobs come in.