Some great ideas: Content Creation Strategy for Businesses with Multiple Location Pages

Yeah it seems like the best logical answer is that each location page needs unique content developed for it. Even though it still kinda feels a little forced.

Goes to show you that Google has really pushed SEO firms to think differently about content and when you have to do something just for SEO purposes it now feels icky.

Yes creating unique content for that page for that location can be seen as useful to the users but it feels a little icky because the user would probably be satisfied with the core content. But we're creating unique location specific content mostly to please Google... not the user.

For example what if Walmart came to this same conclusion. Wouldn't it be a little forced if Walmart developed pages for every location that had that locations weather, facts about the city, etc?

Due to it's brand it's able to get away with the thin content version of location pages: http://www.walmart.com/store/2300/details they don't even use the markup... but any SEO knows you can't really follow what is working for giant brand like Walmart.

Google has this page on location pages. It's very useful but it doesn't say anything about handling the duplicate content a location page might have. Seeing as the loctions may have very similar services.

Lets say they have example.com/location/boston, example.com/location/chicago, or maybe boston.example.com or chicago.example.com etc.

They are landing pages for each location, housing that locations contact information as well as serving as a landing page for that location. Showing the same services/products as every other location. This information may also live on the main domains homepage or services page as well.

My initial reaction agrees with this article: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - but I'm really asking what does Google expect? Does this location pages guide from Google tell us we don't really have to make sure each of those location pages are unique? Sometimes creating "unique" location pages feels like you're creating **doorway pages - **"Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names".

In a nutshell, Google's Guidelines seem to have a conflict on this topic:

Location Pages: "Have each location's or branch's information accessible on separate webpages"
Doorway Pages: "Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names"
Duplicate Content: "If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one."

Now you could avoid making it a doorway page or a duplicate content page if you just put the location information on a page. Each page would then have a unique address, phone number, email, contact name, etc. But then the page would technically be in violation of this page:

Thin Pages: "One of the most important steps in improving your site's ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content."

...starting to feel like I'm in a Google Guidelines Paradox!

Do you think this guide from Google means that duplicate content on these pages is acceptable as long as you use that markup? Or do you have another opinion?