If it is like that, google will catch them and drop them far away from the ranking.
I recommend you to do this:
Google your most important keywords.
Grab all the top 10 pages in the ranking.
Check the balance of the traffic using semrush.com, if you can see any big drop from traffic could be they have been penalised. In this case avoid them. If they have normal balance, go to https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ and check their backlinks.
Download your csv report.
Now choose the most important ones (with DA &PA) and try to replicate them.
Remind has to look natural, so you must go slowly.
This way you dont have to wait the results of the first site.
Good luck.