Services Website in 2018 - Need Advice to Rank

[NovaflareFX]

Hey Guys,

I have an old website from 2016 that used to do really well back then, it offered a variety of services to local people all around the country, you know the kind:
Dentist in Alabama
Dentist in (Town Name)
Electrician in (Area)

In 2017, I lost nearly all of my traffic to Google Local. My pages don't rank aswell either.
I have over 75 services in 50 different areas, so almost 3,750 pages, all of which are indexed and rank.

However, they are all position #3 - #25. My question:
1) Is this kind of website dead now with Local about?
2) Should I even bother trying to rank the pages or will Google ignore this kind of site now?
3) If I should build links, how should I do it? Build to the services page itself or the area/ services page?

Structure:
Home > Services List > Area List
(All pages have the same generic content with minor variations)
url.com/services/dentist/alabama

 

[Array Experts]

First of all if this is genuine business it can't be dead ever.

If I should build links, how should I do it? Build to the services page itself or the area/ services page?

Build link to service as well service areas

url.com/services/dentist/alabama
If Build link For This Than The Link Juice Will Pass Only This Page Not Other Service Areas. More Powerful For dentist in alabama

url.com/services/dentist
If Build link For This Than The Link Juice Will Pass To All Services As Areas. Less Powerful For dentist in alabama But It Will Boost Other Service Areas

 

[IamKing]

Along with link building for inner pages also plan some links regularly to your home page URL to look natural and increase your overall DA that helps in quick rankings for inner pages.

 

[ProxiesHTTP]

I think Google has changed their ranking algorithm so many times that these could be affecting your page altogether. It used to work well when you have a page that targets a specific area, but somehow, they have noticed this instance being abused, thus prompting them to tweak their settings respectively.
If you are targeting UK traffic, perhaps you should register a .co.uk , as these domains appear to have the ranking power for locally searched traffic, which should be appropriate to your niche.