The Case for Fewer Landing Pages

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Jun 26, 2026 / by
The Case for Fewer Landing Pages

For a long time, one of the lazier pieces of SEO advice was also one of the most tempting (and frankly, one of the most reliable): “Just build a landing page for everything.”

Every service. Every town. Every customer type. Every microscopic keyword variation. It made a certain amount of sense in the old days, when Google was easier to impress and users were a little more forgiving. If people searched in slightly different ways, why not create slightly different pages? More pages meant more chances to rank. More rankings meant more traffic. More traffic meant more enquiries.

Lovely theory. Increasingly ropey practice.

The modern case for SEO is not “make as many landing pages as possible.” It’s “make as many useful landing pages as necessary, and not one more.”

When More Pages Become a Problem

Landing pages are not inherently bad. Let’s get that out of the way quickly before anyone starts deleting half their website in a moment of panic.

A well-written landing page can be incredibly useful. It can speak directly to a specific audience, service, product, location or problem. For paid search, especially, carefully matched landing pages can improve relevance and conversion rates. For SEO, they can help users find exactly what they need without wading through vague all-purpose content.

The problem begins when the page exists mainly because someone found a keyword. This is where many landing page strategies start to wobble.

If you have ten pages saying essentially the same thing with slightly different headings, Google has to decide which one, if any, is worth ranking. Users have to decide whether they’ve landed somewhere genuinely useful or on a page that feels generated by a spreadsheet. Neither experience is ideal.

The Doorway Page Danger

There’s also a more specific SEO risk: doorway pages.

Google has warned against pages created mainly to rank for specific search queries and funnel users to the same destination. In its doorway page guidance, Google asks whether pages are made for search engines rather than being an integral part of the user experience, and whether they duplicate existing useful pages simply to capture more search traffic.

This matters because a lot of overbuilt landing page strategies drift dangerously close to that territory.

The classic example is location pages. A local company creates separate pages for every surrounding town, but each page is almost identical apart from the place name. There’s no local proof, no specific case studies, no genuine service variation, no useful travel or availability information, no reason for that page to exist as a standalone resource.

That isn’t local SEO. It’s SEO cosplay.

A proper local landing page should earn its place. It might include local testimonials, area-specific service details, relevant project examples, delivery limitations, local imagery, parking information, staff coverage or genuinely useful local context. Without that, it’s probably just clutter.

Keyword Cannibalisation Is Often Self-Inflicted

Too many landing pages can also create keyword cannibalisation, which is the slightly dramatic term for when multiple pages on the same site compete for the same or similar keywords.  In plain English: your website starts arguing with itself.

Instead of building one strong page with clear relevance, useful content, internal links and external authority, you spread the value across several weaker pages. Google may rank the wrong one. Rankings may fluctuate. Analytics become messy. Users land on a page that only half answers their question.

The solution is not always to merge everything. Sometimes two pages ranking for similar terms can serve different intents perfectly well. But if the pages are basically doing the same job, consolidation is often the cleaner answer.

Fewer Pages Can Mean Stronger Pages

The argument for fewer landing pages is really an argument for better ones.

A stronger landing page can cover a topic properly. It can answer the obvious questions, handle objections, include examples, explain pricing or process, show proof, link to related services, and give the visitor a clear next step. It can become a genuinely useful destination rather than a thin doorway.

That tends to be better for users and better for search engines.

It also makes the website easier to manage. Every page on a site is a responsibility. It needs to be reviewed, updated, internally linked, monitored and kept accurate. When a business creates dozens of near-duplicate pages, the content estate quickly becomes untidy. Old claims linger. Services change. Internal links break. Thin pages gather dust.

A smaller, sharper set of landing pages is usually easier to keep fresh, especially for small businesses without a full-time marketing department.

The Future Is Leaner, Not Thinner

The future of landing pages is not minimalism for its own sake. It’s not about having fewer pages because fewer pages somehow look tidier. It’s about removing the dead weight so the important pages can work harder.

Google is getting better at understanding topics, intent and entities. Users are getting better at spotting lazy content. AI-generated sameness is flooding the web with pages that sound competent but say very little. In that environment, another thin landing page is rarely the answer.

The better move is often to build fewer pages with more substance.

That means more clarity, more evidence, more useful detail and more confidence about what each page is actually there to do.

Because the question is no longer “Can we make a landing page for this?”

Of course you can.

The better question is: “Would anyone be glad we did?”

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