Moving Blog to Knowledge Base - Effect on SEO

[steve907]

Hey all,

I have a blog with about 80 articles on it. It is five years old and the topics are a bit scattered like buckshot.
I want to start a Knowledge Base (KB). This would include authoritative high-value content about specific topics. Some of the KB topics would be redundant because the topics are partially covered in previous blog posts.

OK. HERE IS MY PLAN
•   I plan to create 24 authoritative articles for the knowledge base.
•   In the sidebar of each KB article I will include links “for more info” to previous blog posts about the topic.
•   On each blog post, I will add a link to the “master” KB article.
•   I will also use canonical urls on each blog post to point back to the KB article.

WHY AM I DOING THIS
•   Instead of trying to rank never ending blog posts, I thought it would be smarted to create high quality KB articles, less frequently and try to rank that.
•   I think a KB is a better content “silo” than a blog.
•   Using the smaller blog posts, with canonical urls and links, should help boost the KB article SEO.
•   I think the UX will be a lot easier for visitors.

QUESTIONS
•   Should I be using canonical URLS this way? Technically they are for identical content, right?
•   Maybe I should just link the blog post to the KB article and skip the canonical? (I am admittedly confused and intiмidated by canonical).
•   Should the links from the KB to the blog posts be nofollow? (Why give the blog post any link juice)
•   If I use canonicals, is it worth sacrificing a mediocre blog post for a KB article?

Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated.