Location pages for secondary towns without physical offices - best approach?

[Desnr]

I have an interior design business in a small resort town, and there are 4 other towns I serve in the wider area (the furthest is a little less than an hour away). I have optimized my home page and GBP for the Main Town and planning to build out location pages for the other towns. A couple of questions on the best approach:

1. Since my home page is optimized for the keyword "Interior Designer Main Town", should I have a separate location page for Main Town or will this cannibalize traffic to the home page? i.e. should I only build location pages for the secondary towns I serve and keep the home page as the "location page" for Main Town?
2. If the above is the right approach, is it ok to click through to the home page from the Services Areas page listing for Main Town? The Service Areas page would list all 5 towns and click through to unique location pages + home page. It feels like I need to list Main Town on the Service Areas page for user experience. Or do I not need an overarching Service Areas page, just the individual location pages?
3. I am going into a physical office soon (from SAB) as I believe this will boost my GBP rankings for Main Town. Should I wait until this is done and GBP reverified before I add location pages for secondary towns? I'm not sure if making too many changes to address/locations in a short space of time is risky. I was planning to change GBP to hybrid business with Main Town as physical location and secondary towns as service areas.

Many thanks in advance for your answers!

 

[ElizabethRule]

Since my home page is optimized for the keyword "Interior Designer Main Town", should I have a separate location page for Main Town or will this cannibalize traffic to the home page? i.e. should I only build location pages for the secondary towns I serve and keep the home page as the "location page" for Main Town?

If the homepage ranks for "Interior Designer Main Town," then you do not need a separate location page for SEO. You may want one for UX purposes. Even if you create a dedicated location page, it should not cannibalize the homepage the same way an interior page would. If anything, the homepage would just keep ranking, and the dedicated page wouldn't show much, if at all, on the SERPs.

If the above is the right approach, is it ok to click through to the home page from the Services Areas page listing for Main Town? The Service Areas page would list all 5 towns and click through to unique location pages + home page. It feels like I need to list Main Town on the Service Areas page for user experience. Or do I not need an overarching Service Areas page, just the individual location pages?

This is a UX issue and a reason to have a dedicated location page to improve the user experience. I would also recommend a service area hub page, like /service-area/ (helps SEO and UX)

I am going into a physical office soon (from SAB) as I believe this will boost my GBP rankings for Main Town. Should I wait until this is done and GBP reverified before I add location pages for secondary towns? I'm not sure if making too many changes to address/locations in a short space of time is risky. I was planning to change GBP to hybrid business with Main Town as physical location and secondary towns as service areas.

I would start adding location pages for secondary towns as soon as possible. This won't impact the transition from an SAB to a physical office. I highly recommend you take a look at this article before you go through with adding an address to your service area business Google listing: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/move-your-sab-without-destroying-rankings/