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Great question!

I think that leaving the category in place makes sense, but not at the beginning of the page title. Having the category can help further specify what the page is about, especially if there are links on that page back to that category. Here is an example:

{Product} Reviews | Best {Category}

In this format, you are stating the keyword or phrases you want to rank as the highest priority, and having the category be secondary. If you don't want to include it, you could also use the site name at the end as an alternative:

{Product} Reviews | Product review worded differently - YOURDOMAIN.com

In this format, you have a higher density of your keyword in the page title, while not overstuffing it. If you have a lot of reviews that rank, this can also help with brand or site recognition.

Hope this helps! Keep in mind, optimise around the user, and what your best guess is that they will type. Check in your analytics account to see what phrases users are typing, and structure your titles around that format. The structures above are just best guesses, but the analytics data will give you a much clearer picture.

As long as the url is accessible, it doesnt matter. You can redirect from a subfolder, or using root domain.

One thing to remember, make sure you redirect both www, and non-www versions. Are you using cpanel? It makes this a super easy process. If not, let me know, and I can supply you with some htaccess rules to get you started.

*Keep in mind, all link juice is not always transferred. Generally most will be passed through, but I just wanted to make you aware.

Since this focuses more on usability rather than search engine optimization, just block the pages in robots, and set them to no index. If you want on page to be able to be found, then leave one as index, follow. Generally, Google will index the page that was created last, as an attempt to index the newest, freshest content.

Also, check your site map and see if all the urls exist in there. If they do, remove all but one. This should take care of getting the pages unindexed and not affecting any seo efforts.

Hope this helps!

If you are looking for a more permanent option, use this tool:
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/

This rank checker allows you to enter in your own keywords that you want to display the rank of. Better yet, it uses proxy servers so the results dont count against you. Only thing I would mention is to not run the report more often then once every two weeks, as this will make your impression count go way up.

Here is a link to a site we set up a long time ago: 
http://www.woodlandwindows.com/awr/

All the keyword choices showing up were ones that we chose. The front page listings show up in bold, so it's easy to see what is ranking, and what isn't. You don't have to have that large of a list.

Also, if you are trying to use a free platform to help, Google analytics can show you your top visited pages, which more than likely has a direct effect on your topp ranking pages. When you link your webmaster account and analytics accounts together, you can view search query and keyword ranking info.

I agree with Tom. Using Advanced Web ranking is probably the answer you are looking for. AWR  allows you to set up your own keyword lists, based upon what is important to you, schedule out when the reports run, export a csv, and check rankings when you want.

One thing to remember about AWR. Use the advanced proxy server option. This will have proxy servers ping the results for ranking results. I would highly advise against running the report consistantly more than once every two weeks. Why? Running the report daily will make your impressions (impressions are the times your site appears after a user does a search query, but does not click) soar. This is not a good thing, as high impressions with no clicks looks suspicious.

We have used AWR before. Works very well, but does not have a free option.

I'm not sure what you mean by backlinks are not getting indexed.

From your description, it sounds like you added new pages to the site, and they are not showing up in results or as being indexed? 
"I Made few backlinks with my keyword but they are not getting index and it has been for 15 days."

1. What tools are you using to see if the backlink source is indexed?
2. Where did you get the backlinks from? Were they natural or paid? If they were a paid link, I'm not sure that is the best approach.
3. Depending on the importance of the source linking to you, it can be a lot longer than 15 days for Google to crawl the linking domian. They may have their sitemap set to a monthly crawl, in which case you will not see results for a while.
4. Backlinks dont get indexed based off of your site. This is a factor you cannot control. If the source is valid, and authoritive, you can link out the the page your site is linked from, and try and speed up the process.

I have seen a few different results where they did show a local result, such as when searching for something like "web design in city"

It seems like the word "in" makes a difference of when local listings pop up, as compared to doing a search like "web design city". Did MOZ ever do a study on this? I'd like to see results if so.

There are so many ways to achieve what you want, I understand how it can be confusing. Dont feel bad! lol

Since you already have the other sites in place, take your time and optimize them all a bit at a time. You can use the smaller sites to optimize around individual locations, and then link back to your main site. Have the sites feed each other, and make them all come up at once. On the big site, create a page of basic info about the local site, and have a few links pointing out so the search engines find them. Keep it very specific, but dont over-optimize anything. We dont want this strategy to have the opposite effect, lol.

Make sure there is enough info on the local sites to support a link. If they are landing pages, I'm not sure if I would bother. If they are full sites, 10+ pages of good info, then go for it. Make sure to mark up the locations with schema rich snippets, so it is hyper-relevant to the location.

On the main site, look at a way that users can easily find the local pages. Having visitors spend longer amounts of time on all the sites can only help you. The end goal would be to get all sites seen as an authority.

If you want to combine all the sites under one roof, you can do that too, just move the sites into a subfolder under your main domain, and set up proper linking and structure. I'm only leaning towards the separate way because its already in place, and can help the local effort.

As the the amazon reference, I'm not sure that applies here. They have over a billion pages, and high brand recognition.

The best way to have this done effectively is to have multiple listings for businesses on one page, such as in a category, and then have those linked to an individual business page. On that individual business page you can then have organizational markup, review markup, and anything else that may be useful.

I have never seen something that had multiple business organisation markup on one page and to be honest I'm not sure how Google would display that information if they would display it at all.

"Each site has about the same authority including the group site."

Since they are already setup and working/ranking, why do you want to get rid of them? I'm curious as to how that will help you save money. If the main site links out the the sub sites in a natural fashion, and helps the user find a location closer to them, I would leave it alone, especially if it is a driving factor of business.

Having the sub sites I think will work to your advantage, as you will be able to specifially optimize around that location and geographical area, including all sub towns and local areas.

I am guessing you are trying to increase the authority of the main site by combining them all into one? Perhaps the solution is to leave the sub sites as they are, begin to expand the main site, and link out to the others where it makes the most sense. There is nothing stopping you from expanding the main site just because the mini sites exist.

Another think to think of is the local factor of the mini sites. Each one can have its own LBL (local business listing) tied to it, and linking out or embedding that info on that site. Might help the mini sites have a bit more authority that you might lose be combining them all into one mega site.

The text replacement for using cufon is done by Javascript. The bots don't run scripts on a page so they will see the original text and not the Cufon modified version. So, Cufon should not affect SEO.

The text is still the text, no matter what it looks like to the end user. Great question tho!

If you would like to see an example where someone tested this, please check out this article:
http://www.aerodigital.co.uk/blog/negative-seo-effects-of-cufon/

I would specify all your main services on the listing that allow you that ability. Most will only have select categories you can fit under, so on those use your main service you want to rank for / provide.

On the citation listings that allow descriptions, this is where you can get a bit more creative. Since I'm sure you spent a lot of time on it ;), use some of your page meta descriptions, and content from the site to make your descriptions. This will keep all your content and listings closely related to your subject matter, and keywords.

I would not set up different listings for different keywords, as this somewhat dillutes the purpose of the listing, which is to verify what you do, who you are, and where you are. Having a separate listing for each service will not only be harder to keep track of and take longer to set up, it can get looked at as spammy, and further dillute the "what you do" portion of info since each one will say something different.

You should be able to fit under digital marketing and web design under most listing categories. Google might even see them as similar services after Hummingbird, who knows?

I agree. Use robots to filter out bad urls, and set your url parameters in webmaster tools. Careful if you dont know how to use this, as you can potentially get rid of urls you want. Read up on it first.

For what you are trying to do, it seems like the aggregate review type would be a much better fit. With the standard review type, Google will only recognise the first review, and display that one in results.

http://schema.org/AggregateRating

"If a category/results page has multiple businesses listed and shows their ratings, is marking the businesses up as you would on their individual page okay?"

I would only markup the code for the business' on their individual page, not have them all marked up on one page. I highly doubt it would get picked up and display properly in the SERP.

"Is the itemReviewed tag necessary?"

I assume you are trying to get rid of this due to the display? On some schema markup, you can replace the "meta" with a "span" tag to remove text you dont want to display. This will remove it from being seen, but still allow the snippet to be indexed correctly.

A few things:

1. Are there any links pointing at the page(s) you want to rank, rather than the root domain?
2. How many links are indexed? Do a site search to view this: (site:www.yourdomain.com, and also site:yourdomain.com to check for non-www versions)
3. Have you submitted the main URLs in webmaster tools using the "fetch as Google" option
4. Run the site in SEO-browser to see how the pages render out. Your seo efforts might look good on-page, but render out strange in the eyes of the search engines. (h3's before h1's, etc)
5. Check analytics for referring URL's, and set up an account in moz to check backlinks of you, and your competition.

Should be a good start

I would use either Joomla or WordPress in a subfolder of your main site. Easyblog for Joomla is great, some work has to be done to get rid of ugly URLs. WordPress would proably be your best bet if you are looking to use it for blogging only.

I also noticed you were still using Joomla 1.5. I would think about upgrading that platform, due to security and it being unsupported by most modern plugins. If you like Joomla, and want to stick with it, upgrade to 3.2 and install easyblog. Their site has a ton of info on setting the URL structure to "simple" mode, which gets rid of the stuff you typically see in poorly planned out sites (/component/easyblog/YOURBLOGHERE/post/etc)

We have used both in the past, it really depends what you are familiar with and what platform you like the best.

This is to target a language specifically. A better explanation of how to utilize this feature is at the link at the bottom of this post. But first, a few snippets:

"your ads can appear for customers who use Google products and third-party websites in the languages that your campaign targets. This helps ensure that your ads will appear on sites that are written in the language of the customers you'd like to reach."

"Let's say you sell coffee beans online, and you want to target Spanish-speaking customers. You set up an AdWords campaign targeted to the Spanish language, with Spanish ads and keywords. As long as your customers' Google interface language settings are set to Spanish, your coffee ads can show when your Spanish language customers search for your keywords."

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722078?hl=en

No, not as long as it doesn't get overused. What Google doesn't want you doing is "Cane Beds | Cane Beds for sale | Buy Cane Beds"

If you are refering to character count, Keep it as compact as possible, while still being readable. Looks like you have already done the research on what is popular and ranking, now you just need to implement in a SEF and user friendly format. Think of it this way; what would you click on if you were looking for a cane bed? If you arent sure, draft a few examples, and show them to someone else for a few opinions.

You can use either. Google looks at hyphens like a space. I think it makes more sense to use piping (|) for your page titles, as that is more common, although I don't think there is a penalty for either. Below is a link to Matt Cutts blog for using different punctuation in URLs, I would imagine the same applys to page titles.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
and from the webmaster tools blog:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/cBikmAXlXXo

Hope this helps! I would worry more about the structure and keywords than the separator characters.

I have seen a lot of sites that tie in main keywords closer together not rank as well as ones that use them in a more natural fashion.

We have done our own tests with this, and while it can take a while to find the right combination, the payoff is well worth it. When you construct the title, make sure the content, description and keyword list are all consistent.

On of the formats we have found to be successful for titles is to use the main keyword as the leader, and then be more descriptive in the secondary part of the title.

Example: Cane Beds | Boogie Beds Shopping Online Store

Keep in mind this is only an example, and could be polished better than this. If possible, use subpages to rank for additional terms or keywords rather than packing them all into one page and hoping for the best.