Lots of SEOs believe that putting a bunch of pages (especially your money pages) on a subdomain is not a good idea - because if they were in a folder they would rank better because their linkjuice is part of the main site.

Having a duplicate set of product pages that have noindex links into them is a crazy idea for many reasons (SEO, maintenance, linkjuice waste, plain irrationality).

Your company, IMO, is a good target for take-over or buy-out.  A new owner could streamline this stuff and make a lot more money.    If a new company buys for this reason, they will probably fire all of the SEOs and use their own.

Opinions on this may differ.   As a manager who is paid in the basis of performance, I have told you where my bets would be placed.

It is not the keyword collection that matters and it is not the publishing platform that matters.

What matters is...

• *  the knowledge and writing skill of the author

**  the reputation of the author

** the substativeness, comprehensiveness, usefullness, or entertainiment value of the content

** and, the level of importance that this "blog" holds in the author's mind

If I started a new website, and gave to it the four things that matter above, I think that it would take a few years to get it producing traffic at a level that would provide a good return for my time.  I am better off expanding and improving another website that I have been working on for a long time, which already has traffic and a tribe.

Our website currently gets approximately 1 million page views per month with 200,000 unique visitors would there be a way to leverage this to (ask or obtain) back links from sources?

If you   A) have  that kind of traffic;  B) have fantastic content;  and,  C) promote your best content to your visitors,   then you should have the ability to get spontaneous links from your tribe.

When our sites were new, we built a few links.    Once we got traffic like yours we almost stopped.  Now, we might send a dozen link request emails per year.  These mostly go to webmasters who have a resource page and our resorce is 10x better than anything they are already linking to.

Another method....  Sometimes they have kickass content and we, while writing a great article on a parallel topic, include a couple of paragraphs about their work and cite them as a reference.   We write to let them know and we wind up with a link on their "In the Media" page.

If someone would write to us and say.....   "If we create this, will you link to it?"

My reply would be, create it and you will have a very small chance that we will link to it.

Why would that be the reply (actually, I would probably delete that type of message).

Because...

A) we might already have the best content on the web for that topic

B) what you think is good, might not be what we think is good

C) we might not be interested in linking out to a site about that topic

D) if you create something and show it to us, and we want to link out to a site about that topic, we will go straight to the SERPs and find the best piece of content about that topic that we can locate, and yours will unlikely measure up

We link out for a reason, not because someone suggests something.  When we link out, we know that our visitors are interested in something and we want the target of that link to be the best thing on the internet for that topic.  We don't want to send our visitors to the third best content or the fifth.  We want to link to something that makes our visitors to shout WOW!

When you see links on a website, those links were probably built  while an author was writing the article on that page... and they want to create an attribution link to an expert's website because they are using what she wrote as  a reference.

We link out to lots of websites and lots of people contact us wanting to get a link.

Fact is, we rarely link out to the people who contact us, mainly because the content that they suggest is crap.

The really good sites that link out, are not linking out just to link out.  Instead they are linking out to content that is much better than what they are able to produce for specific topics.

So, if you are looking for links on top quality websites make sure that the content that you recommend will make them say WOW!.   Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

From an SEO stand point?

-- Google might consider the links in this article to be paid links.  If they are marked as nofollow or as sponsored then they should not have a bad SEO impact.  But if they are not marked nofollow of sponsored then they might be a problem.

-- You got an article because you want to increase brand visibility.  So, what is the DailyMail doing to deliver traffic into your article?  Are they shouting it on on their home page and on every relevant page across the site?  An article on an orphan page is worth nothing.  An article on a heavily promoted page is worth a lot more.

-- How long is the article going to be there, and how long will strong promotion of it persist?

-- It's a thin content article.   It would be best to give them a very high quality article if lots of people are going to see it.   That will produce a positive impression for your brand.  The high quality article will also rank better in the SERPs, if the Daily Mail is allowing it to be indexed.   If it is going to be used on the DM for a limited amount of time, it could then be used on another website or your own.,

-- How would I spend my next block of money and time?   I would make a kickass 10x article and post it on my own website.

"Ultimately, you should be trying to come up with ways to make your website naturally link worthy so that you end up getting links which you didn't ask for."

Paddy is absolutely right.

You say that you have rakings for 15,000 keywords.   Let's say that is done by 500 articles.   If your content is superb enough for each of those 500 articles that the pull in  just one natural link per year for each.  That is a nice number of links.

If you spend the next year improving that content enough that each article pulls 2 links per year, that is almost like having a full time person doing link building.

Let's consider two goals...

First:   Try to improve rankings where a modicum ranking improvement in position will best move the needle of your business.  Very often these are pages on your site that rank at #4, #5, #6, or so for money keywords at the present time.  Getting a ranking boost there will result in a major improvement in your revenue.   Improving the content on that page and making other improvements that might facilitate conversions can make big paybacks.

Second:  Often, people try to improve the rankings of sales pages, but, it is often easier to improve the rankings of article pages - especially if they are fantastic.  So, I would suggest, after picking some pages for your first goal, write comprehensive articles that thoroughly explain that topic.  These articles might attract links, they might be better targets when asking for links, these pages might rank better than your sales page.  You will link them to your product pages and make every visitor to the article page know that you have the items for sale.

Took a quick look at your site... you are not on the first page of Google because you have not earned it.

If you want to earn it, write some real content about the subject.

What is it?  Who cares?  Why is it important? Now go deeper on all of those.  Start writing a library about this.  Having it sprinkled in the titles of a few articles and in the title tag of your homepage doesn't earn anything.

#1 positions, even #10 positions are earned by becoming the global school for something.

If this is where you want to be seen, then when a visitor lands on the homepage  of your site they will realize that they have arrived at the right place.

When that happens here, we improve both (or all) of those pages, then go out for beers. 

Onpage optimization can get you rankings when competition is low, especially in local SERPs in sleepy little towns.

When things get competitive, then onpage optimization has much less of an impact.   Then, great content and great links are much more important.

There are many ways to hide things and Google's response to them can be different.    If you want to learn if Google is viewing and indexing, then place some unique text in the hidden area and search to see if it is findable.

Also, if content is hidden, google might decrease its value in search.  We had visible content that was placed behind a hidden... Google still indexed it but it was almost worthless for pulling in longtail traffic.  We brought it back out into the open and it (after many months) returned to its former SEO value.

We run "in house" websites.   That gives us knowledge of many other businesses in the industry.   For businesses that we don't know, we can easily check professional credentials of individuals and companies.

Google is able to check professional credentials of individuals that include:  government issued licenses, professional registrations and memberships, college degrees, wikipedia articles, awarded patents, registered copyright. and publication history in professional journals and on industry websites.

For companies, Google can aggregate the professional credentials of its staff, company certifications such is ISO (and similar), stock exchange listings, wikipedia articles, awarded patents, registered copyright.

DA is a very primitive tool in comparison.

I my opinion, DA earns zero and position on the page earns zero.

The respect of the organization represented by the website and the relevance of the linking page to the target page are more important.

In some instances, not using unique

and unique <title>is a huge opportunity loss.</p> <p>Let's say you have a fantastic article about Widgets and you break it up over several pages.  The sections of your article are:</p> <ul> <li>wooden widgets</li> <li>metal widgets</li> <li>plastic widgets</li> <li>stone widgets</li> </ul> <p>... if you make custom <h1> and <title> tags for these pages (and post them on unique URLs) you are going to get your article into a lot more SERPs and haul in a lot more traffic.</p></title>

We use  a copyright mark and our domain name in a light gray font, positioned in the bottom corner of most images.  The copyright mark and domain are scaled to be readable after Google shrinks/crops them down to the large featured snippet image size.  These large featured snippet images are usually about 200x150, so we do some testing to be sure that the font size used and the placement will be legible and not cropped off.

If they are taking your original content it can be illegal if...

1. they do not have a case for fair use

2. you have not done something to make your content available for other use (such as make it public domain, creative commons, etc.)

Copyright infringement is covered by Federal statute in the United States.  If your content is registered you might have a case to sue, even if no financial damage is suffered.  It can be considered criminal if the infringer is knowing and willful.

I am not an attorney.  I recommend consulting with one if you have copyright problems.

I have done my due diligence and regularly file DMCA's, send informal take down notices, and have my attorney handle situations that might be complex or are against an infringer of note.

Verbatim articles on a website can often outrank the original source, especially if the original source website is not very strong.

If they do it with my content, I will probably file a DMCA with Google and perhaps with their host.

"Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings? "

Maybe yes.   Maybe no.

The answer depends upon the strength of your authors' bios and their relevance to the content area of your website.

And, here is something to think about...  If your authors are using their real names, that is likely more valuable for SEO than if they are using a nickname.   Why?  Because Google can use a person's real name to confirm professional registrations, college degrees, work history, licenses, and many other signals that will be valuable for determining E-A-T.

If a person has a website about SEO and uses his/her real name on the articles there, then it is probably a good idea for that person to use their real name when posting in an SEO forum.    IF a person is posting in Moz Q&A and receiving lots of "good answers" and "endorsed answers" that might be valuable for a person's authorship credibility on the SEO site.      If your website is not about SEO then the reputation earned in this form is probably of much lower value.

We have been running multiple sites, all for over a decade and the authors have degrees that either exactly or closely match the topic areas of the websites.  Until two years ago we considered that all articles were written by "our staff".  However, we then added author bios with degrees, certifications, years of experience, Google scholar, relevant employment history spanning decades.  Within a few months after that these sites received a rankings boost that was surprising.

Now, you ask about "the importance of bios".   Adding bios for the sake of adding bios is probably not going to do much for you.  Instead, it is the quality of the authors that is important.

If you have authors who have substantive, long-term, quality education, experience, and work history, then that, I believe will do something for you.   If your authors have a publication history on important sites, with lots of links and citations for their work from government agencies, academic publications, professional societies - all of this that you can link to, then you have built a gold mine. Very hard to fake, easy for Google to confirm, will attract links like bugs to a Georgia porch light.

It will be really hard to fake a publication  history over three or four decades with links from loc.gov and important websites across your discipline and professional registrations on government websites.

For the past year, Google is having a very hard time forgetting pages.   You can use a 301 redirect, take the files off of the server, and Google will still list the old URL -  but click to the 301 destination.

This isn't an answer to your question.  It is just an old man's way of looking at tabbed content and other things that Google treats differently today than they treated it in the past....

When search engines treat something like tabbed content poorly, and then they treat it a little better, you never know if their current treatment is the same as it would  be if tabs were not used at all.

Also, if they treated something poorly in the past, you will never know if or when they will they will start treating it poorly in the future... even if they might degrade it by degrees.

Google does some stuff for good reason, some stuff because they have a mad hat on that day, and some stuff because they think it is cool that day.   All of that can change instantly and without notice if they wear a different hat or think something else is cooler, or if a different guy is put in charge.

The above is part of the reason that Google says that they make changes to their ranking methods every day.

I used to have a couple pages in tabbed content, they performed very poorly - even after a long wait.  So, now I am not using tabbed content.     And, honestly, when I took that content out of tabs my visitors engaged it more vigorously.   Two reasons not to use tabbed content in my book.

When you syndicate content, you give one of your articles to another website.  They publish it on a page and their page begins to rank in the SERPs for the keywords of the article.  If their website is more powerful than your website they are most likely going to rank above you in the SERPs for the root, short tail and long tail keywords.  Even if they give you a link in the article, their page is going to rank above your page in the SERPs.

If you give one of your articles to several other websites and they publish it, the result will be several pages in the SERPs with your article.  What happens then, is Google sees all of these identical articles.  They don't like that and they will filter most of those articles and send them to the supplemental index - where they will get almost no traffic.

Some people will argure....  "I published my copy of the article first and Google will rank me better or they will not filter my page."   From my experience, those people are wrong much of the time at best and most of the time at worst.   I know this for a fact because I have published articles given to me by other people and my site almost always outranks their site in the SERPs after I publish.  I warn them that this will happen, and let them know if I publish their article I will not remove it.  After that, they don't offer me any more articles.

Syndication should be done for one reason.   You have a message and you want to get it out everywhere.   For that purpose you can give your article to a lot of other websites and they will display it to their audience.

However, if you are trying to monetize a website, syndicating articles will most likely be damaging to your rankings for these reasons.  1) your articles on other websites will outrank you, 2) sometimes your article on your website will be filtered,  3) if Google sees that you are trying to build links from article syndication they might turn off the value of those links or even use them as part of a penalty, and 4) if you give lots of the articles on your website to other websites Google might see your site as "having nothing unique" and demote your entire site in the rankings.

All of that syndicated content is putting competition in your SERPs and wasting your time.  Stop it and build your own website.

On a lot of my pages, I have an

title at the top, often with

below it.   Below them, spanning the entire width of the page, I will have a wide format image with a relevant caption.  I think that it is important for the visitors to have an interesting image at the top.  If I don't have one spanning the entire width of the page, then I have my best image at top of the right column.  We often spend good amounts of money on these article-opening images.  We also use these images on category pages and recommended readings lists to advertise the articles to all visitors of the site.

I would not use an image as a replacement for a title line on any of my websites.

I want the

at the top in text rather than in the alt attribute of an image.

If I had a designer who insisted on this, that designer would not be working for me for another minute.  In my opinion, the

text is that important.

how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?

There are many causes of poor indexing....

-- if your site does not have very many links, it is possible that Google does not crawl it deeply and completely, and might even forget many of your pages between crawls

-- poor indexing can  be caused by a poor site structure, where you have category pages that link to subcategory pages which link to deep pages.... AND, you have lots of internal and external links hitting these category pages to force crawlers deep into your site - where they must chew their way out through a lot of pages

-- also, consider your content... is it unique, substantive, not copy-pasted from other websites... with such problems, Google can choose to ignore your pages

is it recommended to have so many links

That is a lot of links.  I would consider two site maps, each with half of our pages, that will get more crawling deep into your site.

I believe that Google uses information about the expertise, authority and trustworthyness of a website's authors.  To make this happen, you must display it obviously.  One way is to have author pages that present information about the author such as education, work experience, publishing history and more.  Link to these from each article on the website that the author writes.

We were not doing this well, but then we spent time on it.   Shortly thereafter, a Google update occurred and our pages rose nicely in the SERPs.   Not a little increase, it was a surprising increase.

Are there sites with lesser credentials and lower quality content ranking above us.   Yes, in many places, but we are also above them in many places.  These things are not silver bullets.  There are still many factors used in the rankings - and it can take time  for Google to find and appreciate all elements of a website.

But, we spend zero time looking at our links, zero time looking at the links of our competitors, zero time looking at DA.  I can't tell you the last time I looked at DA and have no intentions of looking at it anytime soon.   I am too busy working on new content, improving old content, and trying to make the site operate better.   I am spending my energy where it makes an impact that my visitors can see and use and share and link to.

You are the igniterman.  Get busy.

Hi John,

You are placing way too much importance on DA.  Google does not use DA in its rankings.  Google most likely has never looked at the DA of the websites you are talking about.    Your post uses "DA" or "Domain Authority" in almost every sentence, sometimes two or three times.

I suggest stop looking at DA and work to make the best website possible.    Don't allow DA to be a decoy that takes you away from doing the work needed to win on the web.

So, get some coffee, and make a map of what it will take for you to have the best possible website in your niche.  Then start working on it every day.  Make sure you have the credentials needed to be taken seriously and valued by both your visitors and Google.  If you don't have them, get them.  Education is the key to writing the credible content that is needed to win on the web.

E

If a thorough job of using 301s to redirect the site is done, as Joe Viveiros suggested, and those 301s remain in place forever, then all content can be safely moved and all link equity should follow.  It will take a while for Google to figure this out, and possibly a lot longer for Google to appreciate the original author credit, but everything should be fine in a few to several months.

For a retail site, fewer things are more killer than.... "help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy".

Questions received from customers by email and phone are the most important driver of the content plan.   At the same time, you must know the products well enough that you can identify the things that the customer needs to know, but is not asking.

We pay no attention to content length, other than telling enough to convey the information.  I bet we don't have a single 3000 word article on our retail sites.

I would step away from the idea of blogs and blog posts and 3k articles.

Instead decide how you can build a website designed to help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy.  This requires authors who have deep product knowledge and experience, and who also understand the customer.   Targeting keywords is natural if you have the knowledge and experience to do the above.

An effective way for a small business to succeed in search is to build an ecommerce site with an extensive content library or build a large information site with a store.  This should be done without concern for which type of page gets the top ranking, and with a plan to direct content-consuming visitors to sales pages.  Most businesses do not take this route because they  fear of paying two rain-makers for each order-packer.

We have informational and retail websites where we put a LOT of effort into our content.   We are trying to produce the best-on-the-web.   All of this content is created and edited by people who have both formal education and deep experience in the content area.

There is no way that we would allow user-generated content on these websites - even though we are not in a YMYL (your money, your life) type of industry.   User-generated content can be excellent, but a high percentage of it is deeply flawed and far, far below our editorial standards.   We have experience people in our own industry who want to submit content but we reject it because it is below our quality standards.

The above is why we don't allow user-generated content based upon editorial standards.

I have read information published by Google where they say that a vigorous comment section can be a sign of a quality website.  But, I believe that applies to content types where opinion, kibitzing  and prattle are acceptable.  However, medical sites (and other types of websites) are an entirely different matter.   Low quality content can result in problems for the reader - even if it is in a comments section.  Nobody knows exactly how Google views this, but I am going to protect my visitors from BS and poor-quality information.

Magdalena's example shows that you understand the problem.   Implementation might significantly improve your situation.  And just as important... implementation will enable your visitors to see Magdalena's credentials.   Do it for your visitors even if Google is not a concern.  Your authors also deserve to have this work done.

I absolutely agree that "the quality of the copy is more important than the number of times that the keyword is used."   I don't believe that I have ever calculated my keyword density because I believe that the quality of the copy is (almost) EVERYTHING.   Some people will scoff at this, but I know for a fact that if the quality of the copy is high enough that linkbuilding is not necessary... it enables you to spend all of your time on the copy.

You should write in natural language.  That might produce a very different keyword density - especially if the article is really long.  Google can tell when you are stuffing in the keywords.  Readers think that you don't know how to write.

If a person considers his business and the industry where he will compete, the keywords that are most profitable or most precious are usually obvious.   Having identified them, the work is then to build one very high quality page for each of those keywords and then forming that page into a finely-crafted arrow with characteristics that will defeat all opponents.

When in difficult contests, multiple subpages are then built, each to attack a subkeyword and these are prepared so that they might provide deep content resources, backlinks to the page attacking the root, and demonstrating to Google and all visitors that yours is the world's best resource.

The attack might be short but if the prize is worthy, years might be required.  And, for this deep knowledge and strong writing skills will be required of you, and possibly assistance from allies.

The tracking most valuable for all of the above is the ranking position of your root and primary subkeywords.  As time progresses you will hopefully see increases in the rankings as you put your work forth.  Those ranking increases will be the fuel that  keeps you moving forward and keeps your mental energies high.   Nothing is more valuable than mental energy when in this type of competition.

The difference between a 301 and a canonical...

With a 301, you set it up and it immediately moves the visitor and the link juice to a new URL.  Guaranteed - as long as you hold the 301 in place (mine will be up until I am a dead man - and beyond if instructions in my business continuity plan are obeyed).

With a canonical, the visitor is not moved to the target URL, thus lost traffic.  You also must trust google to obey the canonical (and they often do not, especially if the old and the target URL have differing content.

Comments....

"Developer says old site can go away, but people searching for it are still prevalent in search."   If this was my business, the developer would be ordered to set up the 301s.

"We attempted to use 301 redirects to redirect to the new url and prevent the draining of link juice. In the end, according to the developer, it just isn't going to be possible without losing all the existing link juice."    I am not an expert on this... but I do know that when "developer says that it just isn't going to be possible" often means... "I don't know how to do it"... "I don't wanna think hard to figure it out"...   and that a better developer can often get the job done.   If this was my business, I would be looking for a highly skilled developer to help the current developer with this problem.   The current developer might learn something, or I might look like a dumb biz owner to him.  I'll take the risk with my ego but I will not risk my biz to avoid taking a risk with the developer's ego.    It's all about ego and I risk mine all of the time to get things done using best practice.

You will place the same canonical tag on both pages...

The page at www.domainintheserps.com/product-a/ will appear in the SERPs.

The page at www.othersite.com/product-a/ will not appear in the SERPs (if google finds and obeys your canonical tag)

The value of all links (including internal links) that point to www.othersite.com/product-a/ will be transferred to www.domainintheserps.com/product-a/       All of those links will show in your Google search console backlinks.

If your pages are not identical or if Google doesn't like one of your sites or one of your pages, it is possible that Google will ignore you instructions.  Canonical tags are suggestions not commands.   Also, Google can be very slow to find and obey canonical tags.  It can take months.

Your page at www.othersite.com/product-a/ will sometimes appear in the SERPs for any of the following queries

site:othersite.com

site:domainintheserps.com

site:othersite.com product-a

site:domainintheserps.com product-a

So, your competitors can figure out if you are doing this stuff.

I forgot to answer one of your questions... "Does it still index"?       Maybe.  It will likely be indexed upon discovery.  Then, at a later time, the canonical will be obeyed and it will drop from the SERPs.

There is something called "link rot"... that every site experiences.  You earn some links a long time ago and most of those links will eventually disappear for reasons described by effectdigital.    If your new content production pace is not as fast as in the past, then you can be losing more links than you are earning.   Link rot hits sites that are slacking on their content production.

And, as Mr Whippy said...  "The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now."    Sometimes competitors will see your content, produce something much better, then solicit the linking websites to link to their content that is now much better than yours.   We receive lots of emails suggesting better destinations for links in existing articles.   These email messages can be valuable to a webmaster, but if we look at their suggested content and it is crap, we filter their email address to trash.

You received a great reply from Alex.

We have lots of problems with content theft and go after much of it.  Our response depends on WHO has grabbed the content and republished it.  If our content is used on a dirtbag spammer site we go straight to the DMCA form that  Alex linked to.  Google responds to them, often the same day, and almost always within three or four days.  They remove the infringing content from Google search. We have done this hundreds of times.   (If you have many to file, you can use the back button of the DMCA form, edit what is different and send it in again).

If the content is on a large blogging site like WordPress or on a large forum, Google often tells us to go there and have the page taken down.  These sites usually respond promptly.

Before you go cranking out  DMCA at scale, if is a good idea to consult with a copyright attorney to learn about fair use or similar concepts in your country.  There are many ways that someone can use your content without breaking copyright law.  If you have someone taken down where fair use applies or where your claim to copyright can not be documented, they you could be on the receiving end of civil legal action.

Sometimes, more frequently than you think, we find our content on sites that should damn well know better than take our content.  These have included law firms of all sizes,  police departments, district attorneys, government regulatory agencies, government law enforcement, or simply the website of an honest and respectable company.  In these cases we don't go to DMCA.  These folks need education. So our attorney gets in touch with firm but friendly greetings.   The culprit is often someone at their office who works on the website and took some shortcuts in content development.  Also, their SEO or web developer grabbed our content, added it to the website and charged them for the content.   These cases of content theft piss you off, but watching what happens can be entertaining.

ADDED:  I forgot to address your main question.  Can content theft and republication hurt your rankings?   YES IT CAN.  Some of the sites who steal content are powerful and can outrank you.  In addition, you can lose long-tail traffic because your words on their page combine with other words on their page and outrank you in the long tail.

If a lot of websites steal the same piece of content, Google can have trouble deciding who owns it - even if you have a reasonably powerful site and the content has been on your website for a decade.  Google says that they are "good" at identifying the owner, but I don't agree.  We had important pieces of content descend into supplemental search results after a lot of other sites had stolen it.  It only emerged after we spent a lot of energy on DMCAs and direct legal notices.

.... each of your pages/articles would still be focussing on a single keyword (or keyword cluster) while bearing in mind the overall goals.

You are 100% correct.  They are all about the same long tail keyword with even longer long tail keywords as variants.

You wouldn't have two pages competing for "Stihl Chainsaw MS170 Maintenance" for example, but you might have multiple pages that are talking about "Stihl Chainsaw MS170" in various ways, all probably linking to the page where the customer could buy the actual product or parts, etc.

You are right.  And, those pages linking to one another will support the attack on "Stihl Chainsaw MS170"... and all of them plus all of the pages for other models will support the attack on "Stihl Chainsaws".

1. You should avoid having multiple pages focus on the same keyword because you will lose some control of which result will show.

First, disclosure.   Most people will consider me to be a heretic when it comes to keyword cannibalization.   I embrace it, I advocate it, I practice it, I attack it.... and it makes me a lot of money.

Let's say that I want to sell Stihl chainsaws.  I would write multiple articles about each one.   I would write an article about the features of each model, an article about maintenance for each model, article about the replacement parts for each model (and how to replace them), an article that show the advantages of each model.  There would also be a lot of articles that compare the various models.   We are talking about dozens total, a few articles for each model, and many articles about how to select, ideas for use, accessories, chains, sharpening etc.   When I was done with these articles my site would be the go-to place for these products and would be 10x better than what the manufacturer has prepared.  When you search for one of these saws, you would find two, three or four of my pages at the top of the SERPs.

Lose control over what  content will show???   HELL YEAH!!!  Because all of my content is gonna show up in the SERPs.   People will see that dominance and know that I am The Man for these products and that my site is the go-to-place for the.  All of those pages at the top of the SERPs will push the competitors down and people will come to my site instead of my competitors site.

This is not cannibalization.  This is deep expertise, deep helpfulness, and deep moneymaking.   It's a deep investment of money and time too.   And you really gotta be The Man to be able to produce this kind of site.

2. You should identify your core keywords and weave these keywords multiple times (naturally) throughout your site.

Stop thinking about this.  Just stop it.   Instead, write naturally, paying no regard to how keywords are woven into your website.  You will waste less time chasing the myths of SEO and more time writing great content.

While I am dissing "best practices"....

If you build the chainsaw website described above....  you will not have to go begging for links.  The links will come to you.

The problem with that, is very few people have the knowledge and the willingness to actually buy all of those saws and use them for enough hours to know them.   This experience is what separates the people who really have the content knowledge from those who are faking it.

The "Radios by Industry" column has so many links in it that it extends off the bottom of the page and is at least 50% unseeable and unusable in both Chrome and Firefox.

'nuff said.

The canonical tag is meant to tell Google....   "These two pages are the same"

It was not meant to prioritize pages in the rankings.

Because your pages are very different from one another Google is probably ignoring the canonical tag.

"should we just appreciate the fact that Google ranks us twice on the first page for this important keyword? "

Yes.  You got two pages in the top ten of Google.  When that happens to me, I give thanks.

The true answer to reinstating the old site depends upon the quality of work done on the many parts of the job by the PR agency.   If this was my site, and it was performing kickass before these PR guys got their hands on it, I would toss the old version back up and do a deeper assessment - because the results thus far suggest that the PR agency doesn't know much about SEO.

<kibitz>In the past few years a lot of PR agencies have become spammers who wear suits to work.</kibitz>