Insights · 2026-11-08
Why we replaced 4,000 city pages with fewer, deeper ones
Short answer: thousands of templated "service + city" pages used to rank. They don't any more. One complete page per city, with a section for each service people there actually search for, now does the same job with far less risk.
What we used to do
From 2011 this site carried more than four thousand local pages: one for nearly every town in every state, each targeting "SEO" plus a city name. It worked for a while, because search engines rewarded exact-match pages. Over time they learned to spot pages that differ only by the city name, and that kind of footprint started to hold sites back rather than help them.
What we do now
- One page per city. Each city page covers the whole topic for that place.
- A tab per in-demand service. Each service gets its own heading, local search volume and a clear next step, all in the page's HTML so search engines and AI tools can read it.
- Real local detail. County, nearby communities, landmarks and local rules, taken from public sources. Never invented.
- Demand first. We only build a city page when keyword data shows people there are searching. Today that is 78 cities, not four thousand.
You can see the pattern on Speedy's Cash For Cars, where each city page lets people sell a car for cash and covers junk cars, damaged cars and free towing as tabs on one page.
Consolidating old domains
The same lesson applies to domains. For years we ran a large network of small city domains. Spreading authority across hundreds of sites made each one weak, so we now consolidate onto one strong domain per business, where every city page strengthens the whole site.
In short
Templated keyword-plus-city pages have stopped working. Build one complete page per city, give each in-demand service its own section, add verifiable local facts, and only build where data shows real search demand.
Disclosure: Integrity Marketing SEO owns and operates the sites linked in this article.