I wanna create 100 articles, each for a city. Their content is similar, only the name of the city and the information about the city is different in them. Each has its own URL.
Is it bad for SEO?
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If the content is similar for all pages, you will get duplicate content issues with Google; therefore bad for SEO. – Zistoloen Sep 21 '16 at 8:51
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@Zistoloen not only that... even if the pages are complete unique you run a risk of having your rankings reduced because of low value pages. Purposely creating hundreds of pages purely for search engine rankings is not future proofing your site against Google's penalties, never mind it will absolutely destroy the user experience offered by the site. Google will never favour such practices because it wants businesses to use their Adword services, that allows businesses to GEO target based city keywords. – Simon Hayter♦ Sep 21 '16 at 12:18
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You might get away with using dozen, or half dozen, but hundreds? no chance, don't do... a good site standing site is one that is future proof against Google's forever improvements to punish low quality sites (100 similar pages with targetting different counties, cities and so on, is considered low quality) – Simon Hayter♦ Sep 21 '16 at 12:24
Google would call those doorway pages. The Google webmaster guidelines prohibit the creation of doorway pages. They even call out what you are wanting to do in the examples:
Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
You are welcome to create a page for each city, but each has to have:
- Unique content
- A reason that users would want to visit that page
- Multiple actions or links from which the user can proceed (not just a single link for "contact us now" or "click here to visit our home page")
answered Sep 21 '16 at 12:43
I have been using this method for many years and have yet to see any website suffer and normally the sites average 200-500 pages.
Here is what I do.
Unique:
- URL
- Title
- H1 heading
- H2/3 headings
- Description
- Keyword ( though people say they are not needed)
- Anchor text (usually about 5)
- NO Html sitemap. You do not want to show a user 100 links that are essentially the same.
Some may not agree but I am just going by my personal experience.
