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ask them what their website is and then check their rankings. if they can't get their own site ranked how are they going to get yours?

Hello! Google+ Local is Google's new interface for their local index and is their attempt to increase the social aspects of Local. However, Google Places still exists in that it is the dashboard via which the listings are still being controlled by many business owners. So both things still exist. If you'd like to read more from the period of time when Google+ Local was first rolled out, here's a good post that also links to a ton of other announcement-style posts from that time: http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-plus-local-google-places.html You should not create a second listing for your second website. If you have 1 business, you are entitled to just one listing. See: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528 I recommend that you study those guidelines and be sure you are complying with them to the letter. This rule specifically applies to your situation: Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large. Regarding your EMD sites, I just want to check in to be sure that you are aware of the recent, large penalties affecting those types of websites. If not, here's some good reading on this topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-exact-match-domain-playbook-a-guide-and-best-practices-for-emds Hope these resources will be just what you need!

the pipe or hyphen practice is just for aesthetic purposes and does not have an SEO value associated with it. You are ok to use the brand name in multiple titles along with unique keywords associated with them. Should not have any downside to it. Here's a link to a post discussing this practice.

What's important with your meta descriptions is to make them appealing enough to get your user to click on your listing. Meta descriptions no longer add any ranking value, but they do add marketing value. Put your meta description keywords in your first sentence, as they will be bolded if they are part of the search query. Put your action or power words, (Words that would motivate your searcher to click your listing) also towards the top of your meta description. Towards the end of the description they will get cut off.