You actually have several questions rolled into one here, which is why you perhaps haven't gotten a response yet. I'll tackle a couple of them. You may want to break them out into separate Q&A questions.
First, there's a ton of information at http://moz.com/learn/seo. This can help answer a lot of your questions about SEO, Link Building, and more. Be sure to check out the Moz Academy, with videos from Rand and other leaders about specific SEO topics.
Regarding titles for the locations, do you have physical locations in each of those places? Is there unique content for each of those pages, or is it just search and replace with the place name being the only difference? There may be a larger concern to address than the title tags for locations.
For many of these questions, keep the user in mind. Do they want to see a lot of repetition and unnatural looking text in all of these areas, or do they want to see real content that answers their questions?