Getting rid of city based landing pages

[Wirenut]

So I have a website for my local service.  On that website are 35 town based landing pages.  At this point I don't want to work in all of those towns anymore, I would rather focus on the 10 towns closest to me and just keep those 10 landing pages.

What would happen if I just delete those 25 extra landing pages for the towns I don't want to work in anymore?  Would it hurt my website as a whole?  Would it help my website due to being less spammy with not as many landing pages?  Or would it make no difference?

Second, what would be the best option for 301 redirect?  To the homepage?  To the closes city landing page?  To the service area page?

[Guest]

Web sites aren't ranked - pages are, so that won't be a problem

Personally, I'd redirect any traffic to the closest city landing page...eventually it will dry up anyways and once you're out of the system you can remove them (unless you think they're bookmarked). 

As far as being less spammy, without seeing the pages I can't say one way or another. Since you're providing a service, I really don't see how individual, city-based pages are a problem, whether you've got hundreds or a few. I'm making a few assumptions of course, but generally it's not an issue unless you think your visitors are perceiving it as spammy. 

[Wirenut]

I am going to be taking the plunge soon and getting rid of 25 of the town based landing pages and just leaving 10 of the most local.  If anyone thinks this is a bad idea, let me know!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have set Google My Business to those same 10 towns as well so it will match up.  

[yukon]

Do you get traffic from the towns you don't want to service?

Are the towns you don't want to service geographically surrounded by towns you do want to service? If so I'd leave the pages alone as far as SEO (relevancy).

Something else to keep in mind, you could leave all the pages alone and simply overcharge on towns you don't want to service, assuming you don't advertise rates to the public. This way, you'll either get a "No thanks" or get paid more to service unwanted towns. Basically make it worth your time. Also assumes you can give a quote over the phone.

[Wirenut]

That's good advice.  The problem is that a lot of the jobs are things I need to go out and look at.  And while I was ok with the 30 minute drive each way when things were slower, I now don't have the extra time to do that.  

Free estimates are a standard around here, and I am fine with that when the job is relatively close.  And I am getting enough close work that I can go without the farther towns.

To answer your first questions, I do get some calls from the farther towns, but not as many as the closer towns.  As for the location, the 25 towns I don't want to service anymore are surrounding the 10 towns that I do.  The 10 towns are clumped together around me in a 10 or so mile radius while the 25 I want to stop servicing are in the donut shape from that 20 mile circle to a 30 mile radius.

What set this off was that I told someone that I don't service their town and they immediately replied that it said I did on my website and how that's false advertisement.  I'm surprised I didn't get a bad review.

[yukon]

Ok.

I'd 301 all the unwanted pages/URLs to whichever town/page is your ideal location.

Google will eventually clean up the SERPs for any unwanted towns/pages when they try to reindex those pages. You can speed up the process by first doing the 301 redirect/s and then second by submitting the old unwanted URLs to Google Search Console and/or update/submit a fresh xml sitemap.

Don't forget to clean up your site and remove any internal links pointing at the unwanted towns/pages. You can run Screaming Frog to find those links/URLs faster.

 

[Wirenut]

Sounds like a plan, thanks!

[Mike Friedman]

One other solution is to contract the jobs out to other people in those areas. 

Are there people you can hand those jobs off to and if it turns into anything they pay you a $50 finder's fee or something?