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This is not an extensive list but here are a couple.

http://moz.com/blog/perfecting-onpage-optimization-for-ecommerce-websites

http://searchengineland.com/best-practices-in-e-commerce-seo-176921

Depending on the client the convention can change. Here are two traditionally used ways to deal with titles

Keywords and phrases - Brand ( seems to be better because the keywords are first)

Brand - Keywords and phrases

or

Keywords - Location - Brand (adding more than one location would probably not work well)

Make the home page you primary location and deeper pages covering other locations. The example you provided does look a bit spammy due to the keyword being present multiple times and different locations being there.

Obviously there isn't a perfect way to do this. So do what makes sense and is considered best practices and then record the results and tweak it as necessary.

Because it is a local branded result you can try to contact the Google local business team, https://support.google.com/places/answer/173102?hl=en&ref_topic=1656742# and ask them to fix it. We had a problem where an employee face, instead of our company logo was showing up, which we're still working on getting removed.

Adding the words to the URL doesn't have as much weight as doing the bigger stuff which is the titles, metas, img alts etc. The convention I'm used to is using human friendly URL paths so, www.yoursite.com/carpet-cleaning-st-louis, that way it looks clean and matches your KW/phrases you're tracking. I think the more important item to consider is you creating "value" on your pages so that they aren't considered "thin", which is what Google's panda update was/is targeting.

Hope that helps.

You can use OSE (opensiteexplorer) or Majestic SEO to see any recent sites that have linked to your site.

The money spent on rent can be applied to build a killer site that has content catered to the areas he really focuses on. So create pages for specific cities and have some job details specific to that city. The business details aren't in the question so its hard to say but I'm guessing if there isn't a need to open a new office your client is just trying to get local  'seven pack" rankings which require a physical place and a local number.

Hope that helps.

Yes. If you think your new strategy is the way to go why wouldn't you go through and fix older stuff. By applying your new strategy you should be able to see if it is a better one by comparing historic data. Make sure you're careful with changing URLs which can lead to losing links and structure issues.

I say play with it. If your hunch is true then you'll pay more and get the same results. If your hunch is not then you'll pay the same or slightly more and get better results. PPC campaigns are all about testing, analyzing and improving. Maybe this is one of the ways for that to happen.

Some domains are generic, .com .net .org and others are geo targeted.  So by geo targeting by TLD is only half the battle. Google states "we'll rely on several signals, including IP address, location information on the page, links to the page, and any relevant information from Google Places". Having an exact replica doesn't make sense but tweaking it to suit the country does.

So in the example provided above I think that they have all those "signals" Google is talking about there so it's two different sites targeting different SERPs. You'll notice that their home page titles are different just for starters, I'm sure they don't have exactly the same sites placed on two different domains.

Read more about this here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

You can try to focus two KWs on that page, so the two you provided. It might take some trial and error to make it work but I know that it's doable.

You can use schema (http://schema.org/), html tags to try and get some rich snippets. There really is no guarantee as to what will actually work as Google treats each industry with a different set of rules. What you're referring to is definitely mostly an Adwords thing, except for stuff like your address that can be pulled for your google local page and listed under a SERP for your business name.

Hope that helps

Yes use open graph tags, which is meta data just like a title tag or meta tag for a site

Read more here.

http://davidwalsh.name/facebook-meta-tags

So we have a WA construction client that we're working on doing some local SEO stuff. This month all the keywords that we're tracking but one is on the first page. It's easy to say "yay, we're so damn good at what we do", but it seems like there must have been a shift in the way google is ranking local results. Anyone else experiencing this??

Your thoughts are correct. Using a third party number won't help with NAP and citation building. Because Google and every other data aggregator knows that the number being used isn't the actual business number you're basically creating confusion. Plus verifications with a third party phone number are impossible.

Having a local number helps all the aggregators geo locate the business in a sense, which helps with local seo.

Read more here: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/?s=third+party+phone

Our personal experience with overlays/popups have been that they create massive bounce rates and people run because these methods have been associated in the minds of consumers as spam.

Think about the customer, will a pop up enhance their experience with the site? If not why do it? Also from a organic perspective having "handcrafted" in your text might be a benefit?!

You can run your landing pages URLs in adwords tools>keyword planner>Search for new keyword and ad group ideas>Your landing page. This approach will show you what google's crawler thinks are the terms on the page. This won't give you a quality score per se but it will let you know how google adwords sees the page.

Even if there were a quality score tool it would only be as good as the creator and Google doesn't have a tool like that.

Each back link checker has it's own crawlers and therefore they will show different results. Majestic Seo shows 0 links for the site, another example of everyone having their own link index database.

Google webmaster tools usually only shows a sample of actual links.

Meta descriptions are NOT a must, however they have been correlated with higher CTR. Here's a way to check if you should add meta descriptions.

Do the search site:(insert your site).com or site:www.(insert your site).com, if the metas that are being shown make your happy then Google is delivering a good description.

Many times what Google comes up with is crap. Also meta descriptions are great for you marketing message.

The real question is how "local" your business is. If it is truly a local business getting your NAP (name address and phone number) consistent is a must. Also getting your listings cleaned up allows you to have a consistent marketing message across all channels.

Read more about what should be done at the bare minimum here:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/

You need to set up reporting for it to archive. This can be done by going to the reports tab and setting up exactly the reporting you want.