A trade business that covers several towns faces a specific SEO problem. A single-location business never has to solve it: how to rank in each area without pages that look mass produced. Semrush's guide to multi-location SEO covers the general principles, and most of them apply directly to trade and construction businesses.
Why "one page, city name swapped" does not work
The quickest way to try to rank in five towns is to duplicate one page five times. Each copy just swaps in a different town name. Google recognises this pattern easily, and it is one of the clearest signals of a low-effort doorway page. It also reads as obviously thin to a real visitor comparing two or three local businesses before calling.
What to do instead
- Build one page per genuine service area, with specific local detail: recent jobs in that town, local landmarks or postcodes covered, and honest response times for that area
- Set up a separate Google Business Profile for each genuine business location, not just a listing per service area if you only operate from one base
- Use LocalBusiness schema correctly for each location, so Google can match the right address and service area to the right page
What this means for a growing trade business
If you are expanding into new towns, the temptation is to get a page live quickly for each one. It is worth resisting that until you can write something specific and genuine about that area. A handful of properly built location pages will usually outperform a dozen thin ones. They are also far less likely to be filtered out by Google for looking duplicated.
If you operate from a single base but cover a wider area, a different structure usually works better. Build one local SEO page describing your full service area, backed by consistent local citations. That is safer than inventing separate location pages for towns where you have no genuine local presence.