Hi Peter.

2 options but I prefer the 2nd.

Option 1. Add the names of all the towns you want to show up for in your Home Page with the heading text of "Service Areas Covered" then list the towns below with maybe a little extra text about your services for the specific area.

Example for Electrician:

Service Areas Covered

Market Harborough: I also offer my electrical services in Market Harborough for businesses and residential properties.

Melton Mowbray: If you live in Melton Mowberry I'm only a stone's throw away to assist in ALL electrical emergencies.

Etc, etc...

Option 2. This is what you already touched on which is to make separate pages for each town you want to show up in for search engines.

You can add the name of the service and town to the Header and description Tags of each separate page. (So each page represents one specific area). And then add information to the page including data on the services you offer ensuring you add some text about the town.

I've done this for a couple of my sites and works well. They are semi-duplicate pages but rank well for other towns (depending on the other website competition for the area).

Example site: www.thetahealth.co.za

See my service areas page: www.thetahealth.co.za/health-shops.html

Warning

If you do option 2 make sure the pages have some relatively significant information on so they're not just duplicated pages of each other. Google won't like that so much.

There are other things you can do to rank better but that's another story.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Nigel