Help with category pages - should I create custom category pages? Or redirect existing category archive pages?

Hi - I am working on restructuring my website/blog, currently stuck and probably overthinking it, would love some advice.

It is a hyperlocal website for parents covering topics like Spring/Summer/Fall Activities, Education, Classes & Activities, Things to Do, Health Care, Food & Drink, etc in the city where I live.

I already have 200+ articles in these categories but have done a horrible job at creating any kind of silos or internal linking structure other than using post categories. I am restructuring and trying to create more of a silo website using internal links.

My end goal is to have a page for each of the main categories that allow me to spotlight the most important/popular content in those categories instead of just a list of chronological posts.

For example, if someone ends up on the Education Page, I want their first 3 choices to be the Public School Guide, Private School Guide, and After School Programs.

Where I'm getting stuck is figuring out the right way to do this for SEO purposes. Do I:

1. Use Elementor Pro to customize the existing category pages? (These pages already rank on Google, but they are boring and only show blog posts in that category.) (Also if it matters - I currently only use Astra Pro and Gutenberg, but I am not really a developer and feel like Elementor Pro would make a lot of things easier, including custom category pages.)
2. Create a brand new page for each main topic, style it to include the most important content within that topic, and then redirect the corresponding category page?
3. Do #2 but don't redirect the category page? I don't love this option because I think it creates keyword cannibalization AND if someone clicks on a certain category from post meta, I want to be sure they end up on an impressive page showing relevant content, not the page showing a list of recent blog posts in that category.

I appreciate any and all advice. I've got to make a decision and move on to the actual work!

Submitted September 22, 2020 at 03:03PM by AprilMarie98 https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/iy0e5g/help_with_category_pages_should_i_create_custom/?utm_source=ifttt