Location and service pages

One page per service

Take the services listed on the profile in the profile chapter. Each gets a page. The page says what the service is, who it is for, what it involves, what it costs or how it is priced, how long it takes, and what happens when someone gets in touch. It answers the questions a customer asks on the phone, in the words they use. A title that says what the page is, a heading that says it again plainly, and a way to contact you on the page itself.

A single “Services” page with a paragraph per service is not this. It gives Google one page to match to a dozen queries, and it matches none of them well.

District pages, only when real

A business that serves several districts is tempted to make a page per district by copying the service page and changing the place name. Google's guidance on helpful content treats near-duplicate pages made for search engines as the thing it is designed not to reward, and a customer who lands on one recognises it at once.

A district page is justified when there is something true to say about the district: work done there, with photographs and permission; the parts of the district covered and the ones not; local particulars that affect the work, parking, building types, access; a customer from there quoted with consent. If a district has none of that yet, do not make the page yet. One honest district page beats eight hollow ones.

The contact page

Name, address and phone in text, not only in an image, matching the reference values exactly. A map. Hours. The Eircode. The structured data chapter marks the same facts up for machines.

The homepage

For a single-location business, the homepage is the page the profile links to and the one that should say, in its first screen, what the business does and where. It links to every service page. It is not the place for the company history; that goes on an about page.

Writing for the reader

Every page in this handbook's own network opens with a short paragraph that answers the question, and it is the same advice here. Say the answer, then explain. Use the vocabulary of the trade because the customer does, not because a tool suggested it. Do not repeat the target query; a page that answers “how much does a boiler service cost in Dublin” will contain those words without being made to.

Illustrative example. A cleaning company with six services and four districts writes six service pages and one district page, for the district where it has done the most work and has photographs and two quoted customers. It adds district pages as the other three earn them. That describes an editorial decision, not a result.

Output

A service page for every service, district pages where justified, a contact page carrying the NAP in text, and a homepage that says what and where. Then mark the facts up for machines: structured data.