Should a plumber have a page for every town they cover?
No. Plumbing has a tighter radius than most trades because response time is part of the product, so a page for a town you'd take an hour to reach wins you work you can't service well. Build pages for problems instead, and set honest service areas.
Distance is part of the service here
A roofer will happily drive an hour for a re-roof. A plumber driving an hour to an emergency arrives to an angry customer and a bad review, because in this trade the response time is part of what was bought.
That changes the calculation. Town pages don't just risk being thin, they risk winning you enquiries you'd be better off not getting. Ranking in a town you can't reach quickly is a liability rather than an asset.
Build these instead
| Instead of | Build |
|---|---|
| 30 town pages | A page per problem: no hot water, boiler repair, leak detection, bathroom |
| Town names in every heading | Honest service areas on your Google Business Profile |
| Vague areas-we-cover lists | One coverage page saying where you'll take emergencies and where you won't |
| Pages for anywhere you'd drive | 2 or 3 for the places you actually want to dominate |
What most people get wrong
Believing a town page is how you rank in a town. It isn't. Proximity, your profile's service areas and your overall relevance do most of that, which is why plenty of plumbers rank across a whole area with no location pages at all.
The other error is treating coverage as a marketing claim rather than an operational one. Advertising a radius you can't service produces exactly the reviews that then stop you ranking anywhere.
Related questions
What if I do planned work further out than emergencies?
Say so. A coverage page explaining that you take emergencies within one radius and installations within a wider one is honest, useful, and rare.
My competitor has forty town pages.
Check whether they're indexed and ranking, or whether they rank for other reasons entirely. It's easy to credit the visible tactic rather than the actual cause.
Should I remove town pages I already have?
If they're thin and not ranking, consolidating them into stronger service pages usually helps more than leaving them.
Already built a pile of town pages?
We'll check which are actually indexed and earning anything. Usually most aren't, and tidying them up does more than adding more.