The advice sounds simple: if you work in several towns, give each town its own page. In practice it almost always turns into the same shortcut — one text is written, duplicated, and the town name is swapped. The result is fifty pages in the menu that differ in exactly one word. To the business it feels like diligent work; to the reader it feels like a machine. Germany has roughly 10,700 (Federal Statistical Office) municipalities, so the temptation to cover as many as possible is considerable. This article describes what a landscaping location page actually has to carry to be credible for a prospect and for a search engine: local projects, the particulars of soil and building stock, an honest statement about travel, and a named contact. And it answers the question that comes first — how many location pages a firm should have at all. How location pages fit into the wider local picture is covered in the article on local SEO for landscaping firms.
Key takeaways
- Location pages work through content that exists only in that town — completed projects, soil conditions, building stock, drive time and a named contact — not through the town name in the title.
- Fifty copied pages with a swapped town name deliver little visibility, tie up maintenance effort and drag down the assessment of the whole website, because thin pages sit next to the good ones.
- Most firms are well served with eight to twelve location pages (project experience): the home base, the neighbouring towns with real order volume, and the municipalities where work actually happened last year.
- A location page without at least one verifiable project from that town should not go live yet — it is written once the proof exists, not stockpiled for an area you would still like to open up.
- Location pages age quickly: updating them once a year with new projects, current photos and changed responsibilities keeps them useful, while neglected ones lose relevance faster than the home page.
Why fifty identical location pages hurt
The thinking behind the copy strategy is understandable. If a page works for your own town, the same page ought to work for the neighbouring one. In practice the opposite happens. Search engines have long stopped rewarding the number of pages and instead look at how distinct each one is. Fifty near-identical pages get merged, downgraded or never fully indexed. The firm has invested effort and gained nothing in return — except a menu that has become hard to navigate.
The second kind of damage is more immediate and more often overlooked: people notice. A homeowner from a neighbouring municipality who reads that you are “the reliable partner for gardens and outdoor spaces in his region as well”, with nothing on the page referring to his town, draws a conclusion about the firm as a whole. Someone who serves boilerplate at first contact will probably serve boilerplate in the quotation too. In landscaping, where contracts often run into five figures and the decision rests on trust, that is an expensive impression.
Third, thin pages cost substance elsewhere. A website carries a limited amount of weight that is distributed across its pages. If forty of them say nothing, the weight is spread across forty non-statements. Firms that cut their location pages from fifty to ten and fill the remainder with real content regularly report that those ten then perform better than the fifty did before (project experience). That is not a guarantee, but it is the expected direction.
A two-minute self-test
What a location page is supposed to prove
A location page is not a keyword page, it is a proof page. On opening it, the reader silently asks three questions: does this firm really work where I live, does it know the conditions here, and who will I get on the phone? Answer those three and you have written a good location page, regardless of how often the town name appears. Fail to answer them and you have written a page that could apply to any other town — and therefore to none.
The distinction from a service page matters. A service page explains what paving work is and how you carry it out; it applies everywhere in the same way. A location page explains how that service looks in this specific place: which streets are typically built there, which subsoils occur, how long your crew is on the road, which sites have already been completed nearby. The two page types need each other. The location page links out for the technical detail and keeps for itself what only applies here.
Local projects
At least one, better two or three completed projects from the town or an adjacent district — with year, trade and scope. This is the strongest proof a location page can carry.
Soil and subsoil
What is underneath: clay, sand, gravel, made ground, a high water table? One sentence on this shows that you know the place from more than a map.
Building stock and gardens
Terraced housing from the seventies, a new development with small plots, village centres with old farmsteads — the building stock determines which jobs come up at all.
Travel and radius
Drive time from the yard, whether a crew commutes daily or stays on site, and from which contract size the journey pays off. Honesty saves time on both sides.
Named contact
A name, a face, a direct line. Whoever looks after the area belongs on the page made for that area — not just the central switchboard.
Your own images
Photos of sites in the region, dated and not purchased. An average photo of your own works better than a perfect one from a stock library.
Block 1: projects that exist only here
The most important content on a location page is the evidence that you have worked there. It does not have to be a glossy reference. Three sentences about a terrace from last summer, two photos and a note on the scope are entirely sufficient. What matters is that the details are accurate and recognisable: someone living in that town should know which corner is meant without you naming a house number. “A sloping plot above the railway line” is precise enough and reveals nothing the client would object to.
These project notes are also the hardest piece of work, because they do not come into being at a desk. They come into being on site, ideally while the work is running. A site manager who drops three photos and five keywords into a shared folder for every project has, after one season, material for every location page. Anyone who starts only when the website is being built has to reconstruct from memory — and that is exactly when interchangeable phrasing appears. How to collect and prepare image material systematically is covered in the article on photos for your website.
One of our actual clients, Viktor Waldbauer Garten- und Landschaftsbau from Nordstemmen, works with sand arenas, terraces, cisterns and complete garden installations. That list alone shows why location pages have to differ: a cistern is a topic for new developments with rainwater management requirements, a sand arena a topic for plots with horses on the edge of a village. Packing both into the same boilerplate and spreading it across ten towns would devalue both statements.
- Name the town or district so locals can place it — without giving an address
- State the year of completion so currency remains verifiable
- Give the trade and rough scope, such as square metres or duration
- Mention one particularity: slope, access, retained tree, soil exchange
- Include at least two of your own photos, ideally one work-in-progress shot
- Record the client's written consent for photos and description
- Link to the matching service page instead of explaining the trade again
Block 2: soil, building stock and terrain
Nothing makes a location page credible as quickly as a technical remark about local conditions. A firm that writes that a particular new development regularly contains made ground from the construction phase, and that paved areas there therefore require a larger soil exchange, has demonstrated more competence in two sentences than three paragraphs of promotional copy ever could. The reader does not even need to understand the technical term; they recognise that someone who has dug there is speaking.
Such details can be collected without reading survey reports. Your site managers know where the excavators struggle and where the work runs smoothly. They know which towns require rainwater to soak away on the plot, where slopes force retaining walls, and where narrow village lanes rule out larger machines. Spend an hour in winter asking the team what is particular about each town and you will have the technical basis for all your location pages.
Building stock is the second filter. A terraced estate from the seventies produces different jobs than a new development or a grown village centre: smaller areas, access often only through the house, existing trees that are to be retained. Naming that on the location page speaks directly to the people who live there and pre-filters enquiries at the same time. That is a double benefit no general service page can deliver.
| Feature | Boilerplate location page | Location page with substance |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | “Your partner for gardens and landscaping in [town]” | Concrete reference to setting, building stock or soil |
| Evidence | None, or a generic reference list | Two or three local projects with year and scope |
| Images | Stock images without local reference | Own dated site photos from the surrounding area |
| Technical depth | Service list, identical everywhere | Local particularity named, service page linked |
| Travel | “We work throughout the region” | Drive time from the yard and minimum contract size |
| Contact | Central form and nothing else | Responsible person with name, photo and direct line |
| Maintenance | Unchanged since launch | Annual update with newly completed projects |
Block 3: state travel and radius honestly
“We work throughout the region” is the sentence that makes most location pages implausible. It says nothing and nobody believes it, because everyone knows a crew with an excavator and a trailer does not drive eighty kilometres every day. The honest version is, paradoxically, the stronger one: state the drive time from the yard, say whether you work there regularly or on a project basis, and name the contract size from which the journey makes sense for both sides.
This openness brings a commercial benefit beyond the website. Enquiries for a twelve square metre terrace in a town forty minutes away cost office time, lead to a quotation nobody accepts and leave a disappointed prospect behind. Describing the radius clearly on the location page produces fewer but better-matched enquiries. How an enquiry form supports that pre-selection technically is shown on the page about the enquiry form for landscaping firms.
Fringe areas belong on the overview, not on a page of their own
Block 4: a contact with a name
In firms from around fifteen employees upwards there is usually a split of the territory: one site manager covers the north, another the south. That split exists internally but rarely appears on the website. Yet it is the simplest way to make a location page personal. A photo, a name, a direct line and one sentence about how long that person has looked after the area — that is enough, and it distinguishes the page from any copy immediately.
For smaller firms without a territorial split the same applies in simpler form: the owner appears on every location page, but with one sentence that fits the town. What matters is direct reachability. People who call a landscaping firm usually already have an idea and want to discuss it; a contact form without an alternative slows that impulse. A visible phone number on every location page costs nothing and is the shortest route to an enquiry.
A location page is finished when someone who lives there nods while reading it — not when the town name appears often enough.
How many location pages make sense
The usable answer comes from your order list, not from the map. Take the completed projects of the last two or three years and sort them by town. In most firms a very clear picture emerges: a home base and three to five neighbouring towns carry most of the revenue, followed by a long tail of municipalities with one or two jobs. Every town for which you have at least one presentable project, and in which you intend to keep working, deserves a page of its own. The others do not.
In practice most firms end up with eight to twelve location pages (project experience). Firms with a tightly drawn radius manage with four to six; tree care or winter service specialists working over a wider area can justify more, because their journeys are calculated differently. The number matters less than the criterion behind it: for every location page there must be material that applies only there. If the material is missing, the page is not yet due.
The order of work matters too. It pays to start with two or three location pages, do them properly and watch for half a year which enquiries come from them. Only then does the next wave follow. This stepwise approach avoids the classic mistake of creating twenty pages in one weekend that then all remain equally unfinished. An overview of the towns we build pages for can be found under regions.
Evaluate the order list
Sort all completed projects of the last two or three years by town, with contract value and trade. That list already exists in your accounts and only needs grouping. It shows in black and white where the firm really works — usually somewhere other than gut feeling suggests.
Select the towns
Every town with at least one presentable project and a strategic intent goes on the list. Towns without a reference or without interest in further work stay off it and are mentioned, at most, on the service area overview page.
Collect material per town
For each selected town: two or three projects with year and scope, two photos each, one or two sentences on soil and building stock, the drive time from the yard and the responsible contact. Writing starts only once that folder is full.
Build two pages and test them
Start with the two most important towns. Read the finished pages aloud to someone who lives there and watch for follow-up questions. Questions are a good sign; polite nodding without any reaction usually is not.
Extend in waves
After six months, review which enquiries came in through the location pages, then add the next two or three towns. That way the structure grows with the actual business rather than with a wish map.
Structure, addresses and internal links
Location pages need a clear, readable address and a fixed place in the navigation. A dedicated branch in the menu, for example under “Service area”, with an overview page and the individual location pages beneath it, has proven itself. The address should contain the town and manage without additions. Avoid combining service and town in the address if you plan to add further trades later — otherwise three trades and ten towns produce thirty pages you cannot maintain.
Linking in both directions is equally important. Each location page links to the service pages that are relevant there and to the portfolio; the overview page links to all location pages. In return, projects in the portfolio gallery should point back to the matching location page. That creates a network visitors and search engines can move through, instead of a collection of dead ends.
/service-area/ Overview with map and radius
/service-area/hildesheim/ Home base, strongest page
/service-area/sarstedt/
/service-area/nordstemmen/
/service-area/bad-salzdetfurth/
/service-area/alfeld/
/service-area/elze/
/service-area/algermissen/
/service-area/harsum/
/service-area/holle/
NOT like this:
/paving-hildesheim/
/paving-sarstedt/
/terraces-hildesheim/ -> grows beyond maintainabilityLegal care with project details
Project details on location pages touch on two points worth attention. First, consent: photos of private gardens and descriptions of individual plots should only be published with the written agreement of the clients, ideally as a short clause in the contract. Second, accuracy: statements about areas, years or scope must be correct, because inaccurate claims about your own services are open to challenge under competition law. Both are easy to satisfy with a little order, but should be checked case by case; this article does not replace legal advice.
In practice that means recording, for every published project, when consent was given and by whom. Avoid phrasing that could amount to an assurance, such as claims about durability or lead times you cannot generally meet. And name awards, memberships or certifications only while they are still valid at the time of publication — expired claims stand out particularly on location pages, because they are repeated tenfold.
Maintaining location pages: the winter slot
Location pages are the pages of a landscaping website that age fastest. Projects are added, contacts change, an area is dropped or a new one taken on. Without follow-up you end up, after three years, with a collection of pages that were once good but now name responsibilities that no longer exist. The most effective remedy is a fixed slot in the annual rhythm, sensibly placed in the quiet weeks between January and February.
That slot does not need three days. Ten location pages take roughly two to three hours if the material was collected through the season: add new projects, remove or push down the oldest project on each page, swap photos, check contacts, verify drive times. After that the structure holds for another year. Firms that tie this slot to their season preparation tend to keep it (project experience).
One last note on expectations: location pages work slowly. It takes months for a new page to find its position, and enquiries rarely arrive in the week after publication. Anyone who sees no effect after four weeks and deletes the pages again loses exactly the substance that would have made the difference. Plan in seasons, not in weeks — that fits the rhythm of landscaping work anyway.
Especially important during a relaunch