Duplicate Content For Hundreds Of Cities

[Anthony17]

Hello, I have several websites targeting hundreds of cities throughout the US for customers wanting to hire entertainment. Customers hire us for birthday/bachelor/bachelorette parties. The content is duplicated. In the real world a customer in Dallas, Tx looking at the Dallas page does not care if the content is the same as the Chicago page. All they care about is making sure grandma has a great time on her 80th birthday.

I have read about this for 17 years and never knew what to do. AI says they are looked at as doorway pages with thin content. I can rewrite them with AI, but then I read Google frowns up that. They think it is a way to manipulate the search. If I had one page that told me we service hundreds/thousands of cities it will not show up in the search and if it did they would get confused. People want to know you can help them in their city.

I have spoken to many SEO'S about this through the years. From what I see there is not a duplicate content penalty. It seems that Google makes it harder to rank for the competitive cities if you do not have unique content for that city.

Would love to hear opinions and thoughts on this.

Thank you,

Anthony

 

[tazarbm]

I'd just put a message at the top of the most relevant page, saying "we operate nationwide"... or "we are servicing all major US cities..."

Problem solved

 

[proxygo]

you could run adds / banners referencing your nation wide availability

 

[Anthony17]

If you create a separate website for each city, I think you should produce different content for each one. While using similar content might help with brand recognition, if your goal is SEO, it’s better to make the content unique. This way, your websites have a better chance of ranking simultaneously for the same keywords.

I am sorry I did not clarify. I have pages for each city. One site has 1500 pages and the other 2500. I do like the idea of making smaller sites, but they have been out there for many years already. From my understanding, Google does not push down the website or treat it like spam if it's the same content because they understand it targets different cities. However, if I want to rank well for big cities they will want some original content for those cities.

Thank you,

Anthony

 

[ThrowRaPest]

You’re basically describing doorway pages, and Google is definitely more sensitive to that now. You can still have city pages, but they need to offer something unique

 

[adsyncer]

Duplicate content isn’t penalized, but it can hurt rankings for competitive cities. Try adding unique local details for each city, like services or events. AI can help rewrite, but keep it natural. Another option is to group similar cities into regional pages to avoid thin content. Just make sure it's useful to users.

 

[KiahCuran]

Google will absolutely filter out those repetitive pages if they don't offer unique local value. Just use AI to spice up the details for each city so you're actually giving users a reason to click

 

[Thunder Digitals]

From what I see there is not a duplicate content penalty. It seems that Google makes it harder to rank for the competitive cities if you do not have unique content for that city.

Exactly. And with the same content, you can easily rank for low competition cities.

I know a guy who has been doing the same thing for years. Just duplicate content with just the title changed, and there are thousands of pages on his website. And he is still getting 200-300 clicks per day.