City name spam

Hello friends, I am the leader of a company that is learning how to have more visibility on the internet. I must say that I enjoy learning everything myself. Earlier today I was looking at how I was ranking in my small town for a certain keyword and I'm number one so I looked at the town right next door. It turns out that a company that connects prospects with people in my profession reaches the top result by spamming the city name over 20 times on its home page, then you can click on another nearby city name and the same step is displayed with the name of that city 20 times. Is this the way to do local SEO? The pages are really horrible to read, plus the person featured seems to live in every city. Should I make articles with city names 21 times? /S