Small Town, medium City, or Large Area & duplicate content!

[linton]

Hi,
I have a site advertising my holiday home and it is in the top 15 for "rent apartment in small town". Presumably, Google and Yahoo think my site is fairly relevant?
My question is, what problems would I face if I just copy the text on this page but just replace the 'small town' with 'medium City' and then another page with 'large area'.
I realise that the competition would be more if it is a larger area but would the SEs penalise me for duplicate content?

[rcjordan]

Probably not, but my experience says it's not likely worth the effort in terms of what you're trying to do -rent the place out. I'd focus more on the likely deep phases that serious apartment hunters would be using like "apartment within commuting distance to [medium city]," or "summer apartment for [resort name]."

[jimbeetle]

Whether the SEs penalize you or not, of what use are those pages going to be to anybody?

Why not just develop new pages with more information about the medium city and more information about the large area?

This approach would make it much easier for you to weave in different keyphrase combinations, make it much easier to incorporate the pages in a natural navigation scheme, have two more pages to support your main 'rent apartment in small town' page, give your visitors more content, give you jumping off points to develop more content and -- save you the worry of "would the SEs penalise me for duplicate content?"

[linton]

You see, my research suggests that potential clients are searching for 'apartment to rent in small town' and I have received inquiries from them. But more are searching for 'apartment to rent in medium city' or 'apartment to rent in big area', maybe because they haven't heard of the small town or because they just want to holiday in the big area? I thought that I would be able to get some of the bigger traffic by creating a dup;licate page with a change to the word 'small town'to'big area'? This page would be of use to people who are searching for accommodation in this area, and then they can look at the other pages of content that I am trying to build.
I feel that I need to catch quality surfers who are looking at the keywords "rent apartment in big area" and am not sure if I can create a good page with additional keywords? I am at the early stages of my learning curve with web building and SEO, but thanks to you guys, I am getting there much quicker. Can't wait until I can retire on my vast rental income!
Cheers,
Paul