If you've ever built a site for a local business, you've probably been asked for "a page for every city." The lazy version — one template with the city name swapped — is exactly what Google calls a doorway page, and it tends to get ignored or demoted.

I recently built city pages for an AI receptionist product in Canada, and tried to make each one genuinely useful. Here's the approach, with Next.js (App Router) code.

1. Model the local facts , not just the city name

The difference between a doorway page and a useful local page is information a visitor in that city actually needs.…