Local SEO

Okay so here's the deal:

- Service based site
- "Local Area + Service" keyword combos

I am currently having 2-3 pages per week written for different states/cities.

Shall I just template it, make a few tweaks i.e changing city names / locations and then churn out 300+ pages asap? Will google frown on this type of thing?

p.s - I've seen a competitor do this with their local pages, literally just template + change city locations. And their ranking.

Thanks!

Using the same content on multiple pages and just changing the location name can work by chance for low scale and by mistake but if you do it on a large scale and your pages do not give additional value for users then google might skip indexing such pages and the pages might go under "Crawled but not indexed" section of "Index Coverage" Report. So if you are planning a long-term strategy then it would be recommended to write good user-oriented content for your pages.

Agree with above. Just having the Service +location page is similar to ghost pages. If it doesn't add value, it will get downgraded sometimes. Check if your competitor has been adding backlinks as well.