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I've just started tracking all these "doorway pages" that are currently 1-3 and hopefully in the near future, we can see them slowly disappear.

That my friend, has made my day. As SEO's, our strategies must be in line with Googles. Your link has given me the perfect defence for not following our "competitors".

Thanks again

We're currently building a similar strategy. I would go for the towns that have the highest population and are most likely to want your services.

I would avoid using this kind of strategy on a national level, because you'd obviously end up with thousands of duplicate pages and likely be deindexed.

I also agree with the above points, don't just have a bunch of duplicate pages with different titles, keyword replacement, it's likely to work in the short-term but result in penalties later on.

Good morning Mozzers!

I've just started working in-house for a local company who want to go national. I want to build a long-term strategy but the competitors all appear to be building short term strategies and I fear this is pushing the company towards following a similar approach.

The competitor companies and even my company at present are trying to target "Green Widgets in TownX" and then duplicating the page and switching out TownX with TownY. Naturally there are competitors having success with this, but for how long? I really don't want to go down this route.

My aim for a long term strategy would be going after "Green Widgets" and then rank naturally for "Green Widgets in TownX" with our generic green widgets page.

Now if I'm told I have to go with the competitor strategy regardless of my concerns, are there any good examples of companies that have done this, without the need for being a huge brand first?

I know I can obviously try to create unique content on each page and that will help prevent penalties, but it still seems a short-term strategy?

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.