// case study / vehicle scrapping / united kingdom
Scrap a Vehicle: a programmatic SEO case study for vehicle scrapping
From roughly 10 clicks a day in June to roughly 70 a day in September.
What does Search Console show for Scrap a Vehicle?
Can programmatic location pages rank without being thin content?
Programmatic SEO has a bad name because most of it is a town name swapped into the same three paragraphs. Google calls that doorway pages and it doesn't rank them for long.
Each of these has its own title and heading. The Elgin page, picked at random, carries 1,224 words written around collecting scrap cars in that area. That's the start, not the finish: measured on 27 September 2026, Elgin's main text still shares more than half its 8-word runs with the Luton, Stoke-on-Trent and Edinburgh pages. Scale only works when each page is worth landing on in its own right, and that's the test the 487 still have to pass. It's the same shared text check I describe in how I test location pages for doorway risk.
How were 487 location pages built with Lpagery?
- i.
Start from the towns people search
A sheet of UK towns and regions where the business collects, with the fields that change between them.
- ii.
One template, real variables
Lpagery fills a single WordPress template from that sheet, so every page gets its own title, H1, meta description and body copy for its town.
- iii.
Publish in batches
Pages went live in groups so each batch could be checked in Search Console before the next one was added.
- iv.
Submit through the sitemap
On 15 September 2026 the pages sat in 11 page sitemaps of up to 50 URLs each, which keeps every file small and quick for Google to process.
Which pages bring Scrap a Vehicle the most clicks?
The top ten is a mix of three page types: towns, car makes and articles. That mix is what a healthy programmatic site should look like.
| Page | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /scrap-my-car-stoke-on-trent/ | 185 | 12,551 | 1.47% | 8.6 |
| /scrap-my-car-birmingham/ | 160 | 13,539 | 1.18% | 25.2 |
| /scrap-car-valuation/ | 129 | 21,942 | 0.59% | 25.7 |
| /scrap-my-vauxhall/ | 113 | 13,915 | 0.81% | 7.0 |
| /unmarked-police-cars/ | 110 | 13,436 | 0.82% | 6.1 |
| /scrap-my-volkswagen-car/ | 96 | 10,304 | 0.93% | 6.7 |
| /scrap-my-ford-car/ | 81 | 15,888 | 0.51% | 7.7 |
| /when-is-a-car-not-worth-repairing/ | 75 | 4,024 | 1.86% | 6.0 |
Why do car make pages rank higher than big city pages?
Birmingham is a big city, and 'scrap my car birmingham' is contested by every national scrap buyer. The Birmingham page draws 13,539 impressions and sits at 25.2.
'Scrap my Vauxhall' is a narrower search with fewer pages built for it. That page ranks at 7.0 on 13,915 impressions, Volkswagen at 6.7 and Ford at 7.7. Pages built around what someone owns can outrank pages built around where they live.
What do 'same day' scrap car searches tell you about intent?
They're the most valuable searches the site gets. Someone typing 'scrap my car same day collection' has a car to get rid of today. Across the eight 'same day' queries, 880 impressions produced 40 clicks, a 4.5% click rate against the site's 0.80%. 'Scrap my car same day payment' ranks at 4.9 and clicks at 11%.
| 'Same day' query | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| scrap my car same day collection | 12 | 344 | 3.49% | 7.1 |
| same day scrap car collection | 9 | 301 | 2.99% | 12.7 |
| same day car scrap | 6 | 110 | 5.45% | 13.1 |
| scrap my car same day payment | 4 | 36 | 11.11% | 4.9 |
| same day scrap car collection near me | 3 | 30 | 10.00% | 3.4 |
| scrap my car same day | 3 | 27 | 11.11% | 4.3 |
Why does an article about unmarked police cars rank at 6.1?
It's one of the site's biggest pages, 13,436 impressions and 110 clicks, and it has almost nothing to do with scrapping a car. That's worth being straight about. Curiosity articles bring reach and help Google see the site as an authority on cars, but the person reading about police cars isn't about to book a collection.
The article that does fit is 'when is a car not worth repairing', ranking at 6.0 with a 1.86% click rate. That reader is one bad garage quote away from being a customer.
Which programmatic SEO mistakes are still live on the site?
A template page published by accident
/region_name/ is live and indexable with the literal title {seo_title} and heading {h1_heading}. It needs removing, with a 404 or a 410.
A duplicate Edinburgh page
/scrap-my-car-edinburgh-2/ exists, which usually means Edinburgh was generated twice. Two pages for one town compete with each other.
Homepage images that say nothing
35 of the homepage's 36 images had no alt text at the audit. By 27 September 2026 all 36 carried an empty alt, so the attribute's there but none of them describes anything.
The valuation page underperforms
/scrap-car-valuation/ draws 21,942 impressions at position 25.7 and clicks at 0.59%, for a search that should convert.
How much of the scrap car market searches on a phone?
Two thirds of it. 277,781 of the 420,988 impressions were mobile, ranking at 15.6 against desktop's 19.1, and mobile clicked at more than twice the desktop rate.
| Device | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | 2,708 | 277,781 | 0.97% | 15.6 |
| Desktop | 570 | 135,365 | 0.42% | 19.1 |
| Tablet | 86 | 7,842 | 1.10% | 18.1 |
Why is 'scrap my car' still stuck on page three?
Because it's the national head term and the big comparison sites own it. 'Scrap my car' drew 17,850 impressions at position 28.9 and 271 clicks, which is still the site's biggest single query by clicks.
The local pages are how the site gets around that. 'Scrap my car luton' ranks at 9.0, Stoke-on-Trent at 8.5, Reading at 8.1. Winning a hundred town searches at the bottom of page one beats losing the one national search every time.
Which searches bring Scrap a Vehicle its clicks?
| Query | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| scrap my car | 271 | 17,850 | 1.52% | 28.9 |
| scrap car | 44 | 1,924 | 2.29% | 15.5 |
| scrap my car near me | 28 | 1,222 | 2.29% | 13.2 |
| scrap my car coventry | 15 | 1,459 | 1.03% | 10.5 |
| scrap my car luton | 15 | 1,148 | 1.31% | 9.0 |
| scrap my car same day collection | 12 | 344 | 3.49% | 7.1 |
| scrap my car edinburgh | 11 | 832 | 1.32% | 10.9 |
| scrap my car stoke on trent | 10 | 1,014 | 0.99% | 8.5 |
What does the Scrap a Vehicle case study teach?
Three things this project shows that apply well beyond this one site, each backed by a number above.
Scale needs a quality bar on every page
The Elgin page carries 1,224 words, yet more than half its 8-word runs repeat on other town pages, and the one page published with placeholder text is the page that has to come down.
Build around what people own, not only where they live
Car make pages rank between 6.7 and 7.7, while the Birmingham page sits at 25.2.
Intent beats volume
The 'same day' searches click at 4.5% against a site average of 0.80%, so they're the landing pages worth improving first.
Which services did the Scrap a Vehicle project use?
Each one below is backed by the evidence on this page. Open the one that matches your own problem.
What won't this case study claim?
Average position 17.1 and a 0.80% click rate. Almost all of those 420,988 impressions are page two placements nobody clicks. The growth's real and the ceiling hasn't been reached, but it's a footprint that still has to be turned into positions.
What do people ask about vehicle scrapping SEO?
What is programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO builds many pages from one template and a data set, such as a page per town. It works when each page has useful, specific content. The one Scrap a Vehicle page I sampled, Elgin, carries 1,224 words, but more than half its 8-word runs repeat on other town pages, so these pages still have to prove they aren't doorways.
Is Lpagery good for creating location pages in WordPress?
It can be, if the data behind each page is real. Lpagery fills a WordPress template from a spreadsheet. The risk is publishing mistakes at scale, like Scrap a Vehicle's /region_name/ template page that went live with placeholder text.
Do location pages count as doorway pages?
They do if they're near-identical with only the town name changed. Pages with specific content for each area are legitimate. Google's concern is thin duplicates, not the number of pages.
Why do city pages rank lower than product pages?
Big city searches are heavily contested. Scrap a Vehicle's Birmingham page ranks at 25.2 while its Vauxhall, Volkswagen and Ford pages rank between 6.7 and 7.7, because fewer competitors build pages around specific car makes.
How long does programmatic SEO take to show results?
Scrap a Vehicle took about three months to go from roughly 10 clicks a day in June 2026 to roughly 70 in September, with most of its reach still on page two.
Where do these numbers come from?
Every figure on this page was pulled from https://scrapavehicle.co.uk/ through the Google Search Console API, over 12 June to 10 September 2026. The tables weren't typed off the screenshot. Where the picture shows a slightly different number, it's because it was captured at a different time from the API pull, so its date range doesn't line up exactly with the window.
The technical details, the schema types, sitemap size, image alt text and redirects, were read off the live site on 15 September 2026. Nothing here is modelled, estimated or averaged across clients, and there's no percentage without the number it's a percentage of.
That's the same technical SEO audit your site would get. You'd see the number that's working and the one that isn't, with the window stated, so you can check it in your own Search Console.
This site's location pages are the example in how I test location pages for doorway risk, and the same site shows up in fixing Excluded by noindex tag and taking a page out of Google. For pages that sit unindexed, the reference is why Google leaves pages discovered but not indexed, and explaining technical SEO in plain English uses its accidental placeholder page as an example.
Planning hundreds of location pages?
Scrap a Vehicle runs 487 of them. Send me your URL on Upwork, and I'll check your template, data and sitemap before scale turns one small mistake into hundreds.
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