Effort to optimize a potential ranking page

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Steve Wiideman: I`d go with #1
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  Webado C Webada: 3. Yes, a robots noindex meta tag will eventually result in that url dropping ut of the index on its own, but you can speed that up by url removal form GWT. 2. If the category page has ONLY links to posts or links and post snippets, it`s best to use noindex for it. If it has substantial descriptive content of its own, let it be indexed. 1. I`d not redirect the original category page, let it drop out by virtue of having a robots noindex meta tag or by url removal. Even if indexed now, that category page would not have much value on its own anyway. Now instead of making a new stand-alone page to replace that category page and add extra content, could you have added that extra content as part of the category description? If you did that, at least that category page would not need to be noindexed, you`d not need a new page, nor worry about redirection.
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  Alan Bleiweiss: By creating a different page that is supposed to achieve the same purpose as a category page, it is an illusionary trick and not based on sustainable best practices.
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  Alan Bleiweiss: Proper SEO dictates that category pages NEED to be indexed. They are meant to be the jumping off point for site visitors in a logical information retrieval model, and thus need to be treated that way for SEO.
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  Neil Cheesman: Matt Cutts noindexed Categories... https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/android/
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  Neil Cheesman: The thing is with Categories on Wordpress and doubtless other platforms is that they get automatically generated.... and they generally are `lists` or snippets of titles and snippets from posts... generally they don`t need to be indexed as if someone searches for a term then a single page should in theory rank for that term. A potential issue for a webmaster (imho) is when a category page ranks higher in the SERPS than a single page... IF the category pages are indexed. However, that said, the main point of the question in this post which is not to deceive or to create an illusion - it is simply to create a landing page that has relevant content in mind for the end user - and a collection of related content category links/snippets. The benefit (again imho) is that the url can be cleaner than the usual extended category url... this does of course depend on how the permalink structure is setup in the first place - but can be hard to change IF on an existing website with hundreds/thousands of many posts.
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  Webado C Webada: I think WP now has some plugin that can noindex pages of blog posts like that. Haven`t bothered with this yet.
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  Neil Cheesman: Surely, whether a category is indexed or not is likely to have very little impact on the end user? (if the category pages are not displayed in a navigation menu etc) - having them indexed might, however, impact the webmaster in having their preferred page/url displayed for any given search term. Surely all webmasters look to have the most appropriate url/page being displayed for any given search term? The bottom line is - what is best for the end user... ALL that has been sought to achieve with this post is to a) have a page with relevant content to a search term - and b) that page to also have a cleaner url. Given that in this scenario the theme structure has influenced how the category pages are displayed AND what content (in addition to a list of posts) is displayed on them.
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  Alan Bleiweiss: If category pages shouldn`t be indexed, because they`re duplicate content, and if you`re using Matt Cutt`s own site as proof that "well he should know", then explain why he has 175 pages indexed in Google that are the paginated blog listing pages. That`s 175 pages of nothing but duplicate content, not unlike how category pages are. (remember - my position here is that just because you see some other site doing some thing, you can`t jump to assuming what you are seeing is proper SEO, or proper for your unique situation)
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  Webado C Webada: Cannot explain that except by saying that fixing pagination in WP was difficult and may still be. I don`t know any better, I`m not a power user of WP. Did I say I hate it? I mostly use it for pages not posts, as a quick way to get something going where one can update it externally. Not my choice of website builder anyway, but clients feel they have control with a CMS ... and then don`t upkeep them either.
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  Webado C Webada: The more you tinker and take express actions to optimize stuff the worse it`s likely to get. Use the simplest method, it`s healthiest IMO.
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  Webado C Webada: I have a bunch of those myself. No time to cater to them all.
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  Neil Cheesman: One of my problems is a website that has evolved over time.. I wish I could start from scratch again...
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  Alan Bleiweiss: It really does come down to what you want to be indexed for. If you prefer to only or almost exclusively be found for long tail, then sure, don`t index the category pages. However, if you want the broader, unifying phrases that the category page is focused on, to also have proper visibility, then those do need to be indexed. And if you don`t index them, they are only pass-through SEO value for their target pages. Whereas, by allowing them to be indexed, not only do they pass through SEO value from the home page, they have their own, additional SEO value, and the weight of that is added to the pass-through value. Which in turn further boosts the value of the individual posts they link to. So there is no one absolute proper answer in that regard. And I routinely help clients not only have individual posts ranked, but also their broader category pages, and the cumulative increased visibility brings more quality / relevant visits. So that`s why I believe in allowing category pages to be indexed. If there`s too many posts assigned to multiple categories, and if you pollute it with tag page indexation, yeah, that`s where it becomes more of a mess. In the narrow context of your original post question, I would put a meta robots noindex on the category pages, and canonicalize them to the alternate page you described, if you feel strong enough that you need or want to deindex the category pages. Just understand that doing so is not enough, by itself, to ensure the posts get the ranking visibility. It`s also possible that all of a sudden, the home page will get that ranking instead of the category page. Because that`s the complexity of SEO. And barring enough other signals, like internal links and external links pointing to those individual posts, the higher level page is going to have an advantage.