Dealing with similar keyword phrases

that are services and locations, not product details

[Wilma]

I run a service business. What I offer is a faster and much more effective alternative to several standard services, but most people have never heard of it. People who would like to find my service (but don't know about it) are searching for

OtherService location
DifferentService location

Since I live in a metropolitan area comprised of many small cities and towns that grew together, "location" may be any of a number of local city names.

If I had a widget catalog, I could make many nearly identical pages for "big red widgets", "small red widgets", "furry blue widgets", etc. and not get penalized. However, in my case the pages would be "OtherService location X", "OtherService location Y", "DifferentService location X", etc.

The customer only wants to see a page "DifferentService location Z", and doesn't want to look at similar pages. A list of options for different locations will only confuse them, so I don't want to show those. Even if I make each page somewhat different to satisfy the SEs, how do I handle the navigation links so the SEs find them spidering the site, but the customers don't? Site navigation for customers will include only "OtherService", "DifferentService," and "MyService", since the site header gives my location.

How do I handle this? I am stumped.

[troels nybo nielsen]

How about a link at the very botton of your navigation menu to "Same service in other locations" or something? A link that would be discrete but at the same time easy to find for spiders. And for human visitors that might indeed be interested in finding that service in another location.