Service area pages backed by real local detail

What this service is

Planning and writing area pages for a contractor website: up to five pages for the towns, suburbs or districts where you want more work, built into your existing site. It starts at NZD 2,000, plus GST where applicable. Larger regions are quoted on the number of pages that pass the planning step below.

The problem with copied town pages

One approach to area pages is a set that is identical apart from the town name: builders in Hamilton, builders in Cambridge, builders in Te Awamutu, with the same three paragraphs on each. Google's starter guide asks site owners to create content that is helpful, reliable and original. Pages that repeat each other with one word swapped do not meet that description, and a homeowner who lands on one learns nothing about whether you actually work there.

They can also mislead. If a page implies an office or a team in a town you only visit occasionally, the Fair Trading Act's rules on misleading conduct apply to your website as much as to an advert.

How we decide which pages to write

Before writing anything, we go through each area with you and ask what is genuinely different about working there:

• Finished jobs. Do you have projects in the area you can show with the owners' agreement?
• Local conditions. Is there something specific you deal with there, such as coastal exposure, steep sections or older housing stock you know well?
• How you work there. Do you have set days in the area, a longer lead time or a minimum job size because of travel?
• People. Is there a team member based there?

An area with two or more of those gets its own page. Areas with less are grouped onto a regional page that lists them honestly. The service area planner runs the same test and gives you a spreadsheet you can bring to the first conversation.

What each area page contains

• a short opening that says what you do in that area and from where
• finished projects there, linked to their full project pages
• the local details from the planning step, written plainly
• your coverage in that area: which towns and how far out
• how to ask for a quote, with the same form as the rest of the site

Each page gets its own title and description written for that area, not a template with the name swapped.

Keeping coverage consistent

Google's Business Profile guidelines ask service-area businesses to hide a home address from customers and keep the service area within about two hours' drive of the business base, with some exceptions. Your area pages should agree with your Business Profile and with the coverage statement elsewhere on your site. A page for a town you do not list on your profile, or the reverse, is confusing for people and for search engines.

The LocalBusiness structured data Google documents describes one business at one address. We add it once for the business, not repeated on every area page with invented addresses.

What is included

• an area-by-area planning session using the test above
• up to five area pages, written with you
• a regional page grouping the remaining areas, if needed
• links from each area page to the relevant projects and services
• titles, descriptions and internal links for each page
• a check that coverage matches across the site

Your local knowledge

• the list of areas you want to work in, and any you would rather avoid
• finished projects in each, with photos and permission to publish
• any local details you know well
• your current Business Profile service areas

What we leave alone

We do not create Business Profiles, buy listings or build pages for areas where you do not work. If an area has nothing specific to say, we recommend not writing a page for it, and we will say so before quoting.