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This title tag violates many of SEO best practices.

1- There are 5 dashes separating the keywords.
I was taught that using the same word, symbol, or phrase more than 3 times is a no no.

2- It is too long: Keep it under 70 characters so the entire title tag displays on SERPs. The way you have it now, the title tag will get the ellipse treatment and will be cut off.

3- You use the word Barcelo 7 times in the title tag.
Red flag! Warning! Be careful. This is definitely keyword stuffing and not necessary to get Google's attention. Unless of course your going for negative attention.

4- You do not have a meta description at all:
Write a brief sentence that explains the page. This will show directly under your title tag and is also incredibly important for rank factors as well as conveying the message of the page. Your description should include the keywords in your title tag.

Think of your title tag as an advertisement. Sure, it is used by Google to determine the focus of the page, but it is also the first thing a potential customer will see when your result comes up.

Here is how I would change this title tag and the meta description i would used for this page.

Title Tag: Barcelo Hotel Reviews | Barcelo Resorts | Mexico, Dominican Republic
Meta Description: Read our reviews or get more information on Barcelo Hotels and Resorts in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers. So a little info that might help the discussion.

• This is for an assisted living community where residents a large monthly bill
• it is normally the son or daughter who calls to discuss the service.
• The phones will be manned by industry professional, not salespeople. Although they are instructed to put on a very soft sell, the initial call is not a true sales call. It is more for the caller looking to learn more by speaking with the community liaison.
• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.
• They will be available 24/7.

Again, I appreciate all the feedback and will update this post after our campaigns run and tests are over to see what worked and what didn't. Hmmm, could this have the makings of my first YouMoz post? Stay tuned....

Matthew's response is spot on. I just helped a client get a virtual office where he can receive mail and hold meetings when he needs to. Some may disagree, but legitimately using a virtual office space will work in the local space. My client's home is in a small town near a few larger cities - not ideal for local search because no one would search his industry with his town name. So we picked the largest city, which is only a few miles away, and for $75/mo he has an office in a major business hub that he can attach to his business. Along with home address, I am also apprehensive about using personal cell phone numbers for your NAP. To circumvent that, I secured a Google Voice number that is tied to his cell phone. So now his mobile number and home address (where he lives with his two young children) is hidden from public consumption.

Have you thought about turning the footer into a javascript footer that expands if someone clicks it? In essence, you would be removing the static footer to boost the UI and replace it with a dynamic footer that would continue to provide SEO (and occasional user) benefit.

I am interested in hearing the effects this removal has.

• The community is convinced they can sell anyone on the community if they talk to them.

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant by that statement was that the community believes that if they can talk to someone on the phone, they can get them to come to the community for a visit.

Luckily for my client, their facility is top notch and they have a very solid reputation. They are booked on some floors but have openings for people with more serious issues and they are always actively looking for new residents. In this particular industry, you are constantly "losing" customers.

I must say that just because the facility is great does not mean potential customer visits shouldn't be met by someone trying to extol the virtues of the facility. I think the word "salesperson" is throwing us all off here. It is a very soft sell on their part because the community understands that location, smell, cleanliness and quality of food are huge. And they are not worried about that.

All they want to do is talk to someone on the phone and schedule a visit, the rest will take care of itself.

Great article on this. Although it does not discuss your duplicate content question. http://www.technshare.com/discover-eliminate-and-avoid-stolen-content/

There is also this from the DCMA
http://www.dmca.com/takedowns.aspx

Google's Matt Cutts has said that their algorithm makes every effort to identify the original content and rank it higher than the scraped content. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

I know this is a year and half later, but I wanted to chime in as I found this thread while trying to learn about this topic. I was asked to vet this vendor for a client of mine, specifically around the Pay-Per-Call Advertising program with CBS Local and what I am finding is a tad disconcerting.

I just got off the phone with two reps and they explained that the places page is geared toward driving calls. According to them, they create a page that is optimized to rank in search engines. I found that very hard to believe seeing as the competition for the first page is intense for my client and I don't know how they would show up organically in the major search engines. THis leads me to believe that the calls are coming from other, less qualified sources...

They white label the software from Marchex. For the auto industry they are charging $36 per call. And they are asking for a 6 month contract where we determine how many calls we are willing to pay for. They charge the client if the call lasts longer than 10 seconds.

I was instantly skeptical when the rep said they bid on organic placement. Huh? I called him on it and said, you can't pay the search engine to be no. 1. Then he went on to explain that he was originally a radio and broadcast rep and is new to the digital world and he might have misstated how it all works. He just kept using the words "back-end developers" and "optimization", but I don't think he understood what he was saying.

The reps also discussed where "bid on links" to the local page. Places like citysearch and citymedia - pretty much ghost towns. They said they work with Google, Yahoo and Bing as well, but pretty much blew them off as not the only place to get leads.

Basically, this is an ad program that guarantees a certain number of calls regardless of their quality.