@digitaldave01 - That's the thing, though - they've been doing this multiple-location SEO strategy for 2+ years. Not a blip in rankings. Their doorway pages just keep performing better.
@marketingtyson - Their DR is actually lower than mine (28 vs my 32). That's what's killing me. And yeah, definitely something fishy with their backlinks. Shows only 50 in ahrefs but they rank everywhere.
@lawseopro - I actually did check traffic... that's the most frustrating part. Used Semrush - they're pulling serious numbers on those auto-generated pages. Like 300-500 visitors per city page monthly. Even their smallest city pages (populations < 10k) get 50+ visitors.
My questions keeping me up at night:
1. Is this actually "doorway pages" if they're providing a real service in those areas? They do have legit GMB profiles in 5 main cities.
2. For multiple location SEO, what's the real line between scale and spam? Like if I service an area, why shouldn't I have pages for each city?
3. Their pages all follow exact same template:
City name in title/h1
Same content but city swapped
Generic city info pulled from Wikipedia
Same images across all pages
Same service content word for word
HOW is this working in 2025? I have unique content, real location info, actual customer testimonials from each city... and I'm getting crushed.
My traffic in January is down 40% while they keep climbing. At what point do I just say screw it and copy their approach? Because right now my "white hat" strategy is killing my business.