How many location pages should you build?

The honest answer is a method, not a number: build the pages you can defend, in the order the evidence suggests, and stop where your knowledge stops.

Why the volume question is the wrong question

Fifty pages is not an SEO strategy, it is a liability, unless you can say fifty true and useful things. One strong page for a town where you work every week beats ten pages for towns you have driven through. Google’s scaled-content policy does not count your pages; it weighs them.

The defensibility test

For each candidate area, ask: have we done jobs there we can mention or show? Do we know the travel time, the parking, the local building stock, the conservation rules? Could we answer a resident’s question about working in their street? If the answers are no, the page would be written from nothing, and it will read like it.

Prioritise with evidence, not a map radius

• Where do enquiries already come from? Your inbox is keyword research.
• Which areas show up in your Google Business Profile insights?
• Where have you completed jobs in the last two years?
• Which neighbouring towns have weak competition for your service?

Rank the candidates, take the top handful, and write those pages properly, including the local part that template text cannot supply.

Build in tranches and watch

Five defensible pages now, measured for a month or two, will teach you more than thirty pages published blind. If the first tranche earns impressions and enquiries, extend to the next five areas on the list. If a page stays invisible, the fix is usually more local substance, not more pages.

A worked example

A plumber in Uckfield serves perhaps twelve towns. Jobs cluster in Uckfield, Heathfield, Crowborough and Lewes; the rest are occasional. The first build is four service-area pages plus the home town, each with real jobs and travel times written in. Eight “maybe” towns wait until there is something true to say about them.

Where Townsmith fits

This method is why the free plugin covers one service across five areas rather than unlimited everything: five defensible pages is a real first tranche, not a crippled demo. Every page is scored before it publishes, so a page built ahead of your knowledge announces itself instead of quietly shipping.