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They used to have some swag on their site but maybe with their revamp it's gone. I was going to share the link, but I can't find it. (They are good at giving stuff away. I have a lovely Rogerbot memory stick.)

It looks like the only content on the pages you shared that's different is the basic job info in the grey box, which is why it'd be flagged as duplicate; the majority of the page info is all the same.

It's not a surprise and it's not that uncommon. I wouldn't see it as a huge performance problem; most every site has an issue similar to this - it's clearly not black hat.

I generally like Spyfu and SEMRush. Spyfu has some good graphical layout that I like and you can repurpose for reports.

Moz does have some great tools but they are better for longer term watch than quick one offs. It does take days for the campaign to be "processed" and there isn't a way to speed things up, it's the design of the tool.

If you want to use Moz tools, then you'll still have to do some manual work - you can run some on-page reports to get an idea of their keywords and optimization. And the link tool could be helpful to get an idea of their link profile.

I suppose it depends on what aspects of their site performance you want to focus on for this initial report and you can map the Moz tools that perform those functions immediately.

I have the same problem with lots of links - it's the way our site is structured and our products show on a page. Plus all the links at the top and bottom (keep in mind the mega menus at the top of the page, when you hover over them, the drop down links appear).

While it's not ideal, which is why it's something that gets flagged, you aren't alone in this and the chances of it being impactful in rankings is slim. I've managed to do quite well for many pages and I got more links going on.

I think engagement is harder for many than they always admit. I'm in an old school manufacturing field where there's a lot of assumptions on our user's online behavior. Even with the growth of sharing tools and whatnot, the 90/9/1 rule still seems to hold true.

I try to not leave content along for "never" as it's good to watch page performance. Since search engines change their algos and keywords can grow more competitive, I don't feel the need to constantly update my content for "freshness," but I do look at performance and change if I'm not getting the results I want. I'm not a news site, it's not a blog and we aren't always adding or changing products, so I take freshness with some grain of salt.

Because a page works well at a certain place in time doesn't mean it always will and being proactive can help keep it steady.

I have issues with duplicate content due to the way our system works and the CMS feeds. It bothers me, but I've also realized we can OK in spite of it. So, to your point of seeing sites rank anyway, it helps to have a quality domain and be credible

I partly suspect duplicate content is a hold over from the old days of spammy sites who intentionally created a lot of duplicate content in an attempt to appear to have depth of content. I think Google has figured out that businesses that sell similar products, but maybe are only different via color or size, will have duplication. And that it's not misleading to try to fool the search engines.

Be skeptical of paths that involve buying links - usually a sign that it's not a good route.

I agree; prioritizing based on the importance of the keywords can be more important than trying to move the needle for lesser important keywords.

Can't stress enough how much I agree about it being a bad investment and that just because there's people in the circles it doesn't mean any of them will stick around once it changes hands.

Great recommendations, Brad.

I'd add in searchengineland.com as well and look into presentations from the SMX conferences as sources.

Well, even without stuffing, there can be an impact. 800 is a lot, lot of content. And I'm assuming that there's a lot of similarities in the posts (I assume there's a central theme of the blog) which could be a contributing factor. Yes, other sites do this, and yes, that can also feel the impact if there's a chance that the search engine sees it as not Panda-friendly.

Now, when you say one or two keywords per post, are you referring to you targeting one or two different keywords per post (acme, acme products - for example) or only using the keyword once or twice on a page? The way your answer reads, I could interpret it that you were only targeting one or two keywords, however if you used them too many times in the post  that would cause the over optimization....

First, if the pages are already indexed then a robots.txt won't make them go away. A meta tag no index on the pages is the better solution. This allows search engines to "read" you page, see the no index tag and then work to remove the pages from index. A robots.txt doesn't necessarily accomplish the same result.

Great questions - and although you ask several, I'm going to focus on one in particular. Keep your blog on your domain. It's the best SEO value you're going to get. Other structures just don't offer quite as much benefit.

It can get tricky as far as balancing keywords and optimization, however the domain authority, link juice and everything else is worth it.

Now, to your other questions - starting with over optimization. I'm hesitant to make that conclusion without any information. The basic-ness of your statement doesn't give quite enough info to be able to make a solid determination (IMHO) as many posts with keywords isn't in-and-of-itself a bad thing. If every post had a cramming of keywords so they were too loaded, then maybe but there's not enough info to really identify (is it over optimization or bad links? Or did the ranking drop in time to map to an algo change?).

The best and most efficient solution with any question regarding Moz crawls or tools is to go directly to them with questions (sometimes there's enough unique behind the scenes stuff going on that forum people don't have access to). Their team is great and has helped me a handful of times, quickly and politely.

Putting the same thing all over the place isn't a solid strategy. You risk confusing search engines and ultimately working against yourself.

I think you answered your own question - there's confusion for the search engine. Similar keywords can do that- even though you say it's clear to you what page is optimized there's some data to prove that the search engines aren't in agreement. (I have a lot of pages and run into the same issue.)

Have you run the competing pages through the Moz optimization tool to see what feedback it gives you? If you see each page is an "A" for the same term, there's some information you can work with to start reworking your content to "un" optimize the pages you don't want to rank.

I like this article Rand wrote that addresses how to correct this issue: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

It's not going to get them deindexed and it's unlikely it could be the root cause why they wouldn't rank high.

There's honestly not much content on each page, nor it is easy to tell what keywords you are targeting since they kind of cannibalize each other, and that makes it harder to rank well.

A few things - too many links on a page happens all the time. I know it's a message I get, but because of the way my site is built, it's the way it is. It looks like the way your menus and such are set up that it could be just part of what you have to accept about your design. It's not going to kill you - but unless you want to make deeper levels to your site so people have fewer links to click through at the main page, then that's how the "issue" will render itself. You are not alone in having this happen to you.

As for duplicate content, something to think about: your point of it being two different songs is how you as a person look at it and you need to look at it as a crawler. Most everything else on those two pages is the same, except for the song featured in the center and maybe some of the songs listed to the right. Even the page titles are similar. I'm taking a random stab, but that means only about 15% of the content between the two is different  - most noticeably the featured song. Again, this is part of the outcome of your site design; you aren't alone in having this problem. Either you need to redo your site design  or add more differentiated content (change the page titles, change what data feeds into the "more songs" section, etc.).