The canonical option would be the route I went with in this scenario.

If you are going to noindex them, make sure that you audit the pages to see what links are pointing to the pages. If there is value them, canonicalization would be a better approach.

I agree with david, this may have been a more effective approach when exact match keywords in domains were weighted heavily, but that is not the case anymore.

You would risk, and probably lose more value than you would gain from this transition

Most importantly, follow all of the suggestions in the site crawl report, and tackle as many of these as you can. Here are some of the free tools I use regularly that can help you take your efforts further.

• Use the free dashboards and custom reports from the google analytics gallery to get more insight into your traffic and to identify any errors (outside of what you see in moz).
• Google Data Studio (Free) also has reports you can use for keeping track of different metrics and it connects directly to google analytics and search console.
• Google Sheets has a free addon for google analytics and search console data that allows you to schedule automatic reports, once you have identified errors you want to monitor.

Aside from metrics, content is king, and you will benefit greatly from researching your target keywords, and posting articles that include links to the related pages.

Is it a permission issue, or are you not comfortable editing any of the technical aspects?

What platform is your website running on?

Most importantly, follow all of the suggestions in the site crawl report, and tackle as many of these as you can. Here are some of the free tools I use regularly that can help you take your efforts further.

• Use the free dashboards and custom reports from the google analytics gallery to get more insight into your traffic and to identify any errors (outside of what you see in moz).
• Google Data Studio (Free) also has reports you can use for keeping track of different metrics and it connects directly to google analytics and search console.
• Google Sheets has a free addon for google analytics and search console data that allows you to schedule automatic reports, once you have identified errors you want to monitor.

Aside from metrics, content is king, and you will benefit greatly from researching your target keywords, and posting articles that include links to the related pages.

Is it a permission issue, or are you not comfortable editing any of the technical aspects?

What platform is your website running on?

The canonical option would be the route I went with in this scenario.

If you are going to noindex them, make sure that you audit the pages to see what links are pointing to the pages. If there is value them, canonicalization would be a better approach.