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Thanks David! That definitely makes sense. We claimed photos.tagible.com in GSC, so hopefully that does it. And yes, they are, but in an unusual way: http://tagible.com/project/denver-colorado/

We are just optimizing our business with different local branches and are going to add according json-ld schema markup for that shortly, so we are facing similar questions... Honestly I think that this particular setting will have a minor impact. I would go for Denver instead of USA. By the way the could also come from outside the USA... People will search for "hotel Denver" or just "hotel" if they are already in Denver. To do Google My Business the right way, i.e. clean up all unclean NAP citations if there are some is probably more effective. Maybe you could add Denver also in Google My Business company name... I know its not 100% clean and not adhering to their terms but I always got away with it. Moreover different people at Google's My Business support who noticed that during calls regarding other thinks mentioned it but said that it was OK like this. Its a rather strong signal and works very well actually...

The point of a sitemap is to tell Google what is on your site so it can index it easier. There is no way, nor any reason why you would want to put external urls onto your sitemap.

I tend to agree with Federico's concerns. If the 301 transfers a penalty, the impact could be long-term, and it could be harder to rescue site B. The short-term ranking gains may not be worth it. Google hasn't been clear on how this operates with 301 redirects. John's suggestion to disavow on both sites seems safe. Worst case, it's wasted effort, but it's not much effort (once you've built one file, building two is easy). Still, you've got to wait for that to process, and if the algorithmic penalty is something like Penguin, then you'd have to wait for a data refresh. This could take months, so I'd be really hesitant to risk site B until you've cleaned up the mess. Once you disavow to site A, the 301-redirect should be fairly safe, but it does depend on the extent of the penalty. The risk/reward trade-off is definitely a "devil is in the details" sort of situation.

Yes, that should work.

John is correct. Cannonical tags aren't necessary as it helps consolidate signals. Therefore to answer your question, implementing HREF lang tags will result the current page ultimately replaced with the appropriate country level page. However this does not mean you shouldn't stop to optimise and bring a local flavour to your content, because you are still competing against other websites and keyword research trends might vary also. Your effort wouldn't be as great, but I still suggest you do on-page. Finally make sure that the HREF lang tag is consistently and in the same manner on all sites and includes all country level pages. A mistake I have made in the past is just putting it on the AU for example, however the global site still existed in the AU SERP's. Hope this helps and good luck with your efforts. Regards, Vahe