Is this a valid SEO technique?

[Guest]

Hi All! I have just taken over the SEO for a new client, and I wanted to get everyone's opinion on a method the previous SEO firm used.

When targeting specific suburbs for the Client, a Lawyer.

They have created separate landing pages that aren't linked anywhere on the website, and the only details that are different on each page are the suburb, which is in the Title, Meta Description and mentioned a couple of times in the paragraph text on the page. Is this a valid SEO technique, or would Google see this as doubled-up information and penalise the domain for it?

Thanks.

[Chris]

It's frowned upon, but it's been standard practice for attracting local/long tail phrases for years.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the practice. Yes, it takes time to research and create unique content for each landing page, but it's worth it in the long run, because who know if/when Google decides enough is enough.

But (at the moment), the worst that can happen is that a certain number of those pages* will be either de-indexed or simply not shown in the SERPs, rendering them useless.

*no one knows how many.

[William]

I had Google suspend my business on Google business for having duplicated pages a SEO had done. Be careful

[Christy]

I have a client who had a similar situation, we created a parent landing page to link them all, and monthly expand each ones copy, by order of priority. Its taken us a few months but the pages are solid and unique, and ranking incredibly well.

[Mike]

It works and has for over a decade that I'm aware of. Google claims to be against it, but I have never seen them take action against a site for it either.

Only thing I would do differently is create a locations page or some sort of HTML sitemap page (not an XML sitemap) to get some links to them and push them up higher in the rankings.