Video content and audio content can be indexed and made SEO friendly  which can improve the search visibility on varied search options of the search engines.

One of the ways is to add the video and audio content using microdata as per the schema.org.

Usually when we add video we embed the code generated via YouTube for that video if it is on YouTube or for that matter any other video broadcasting site like vimeo, Ted, etc.

For example:

<iframe width="”560″" height="”315″" src="”http://www.youtube.com/embed/7xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?list=UU0LI2nnnSO6lP8ZFj9FIdyA&hl=en_US”" frameborder="”0″" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

But using the microdata format as per schema.org the same code can be written as :

Video: SEO xxxxxxxxxx

<iframe src="”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xxxxxxxxxxxxk”" frameborder="”0″" width="”640″" height="”390″"></iframe>

Description, keywords and markup here .

More information here: http://schema.org/VideoObject

While not appealing, you should rewrite all the content to be 100% unique, if it is privacy policy, tos, etc, you can no index those to reduce duplication. Otherwise, your options are limited. I realize that the products/ services will be similar in nature, but writing them in a different way to reduce the significantly similar content.

Alternatively, you can do a cross domain canonical tag, this tells Google that this content is duplicated intentionally on the other URL.

Here are a few articles about that:

https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/

http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/56326/canonical-urls-with-multiple-domains

Next, focus on building local links to the individual city pages, to further differentiate the cities and the intent. Also, using the schema.org for 'local business' on each versions of the URL's. And, again I will say this is not an ideal situation and the best case scenario would be to add that content on ONE domain just with different location pages, within a subdirectory format.

No automated software for linking is beneficial for your search engine rankings, and it's a good way to do more damage than good.

Create great, unique - query friendly copy and attract incoming / viral links from that. There is no shortcut to SEO.

Many factors could contribute to this:

1. Did the content change?

2. The on page optimization ( meta data etc,) change?

3. Were these previously orphaned?

4. Did these internal links add schematic and logical value to the theme of the website?

Did you use fetch as Google once these links were updated and /or were canonical URL's changed by this structure? More than likely this is just a boost because Google followed the new links, yet found the same page. The 'new' information needs to be reevaluated and ranked by Google. I'd give it 7-9 days and if no further movement, look to significantly improve the schematic structure of the website. Next, update the sitemap and resubmit the canonicalized URL's to Google through Google Search Console.

Yes, we are doing everything correctly, aside from waiting for IT department to create a sitemap.