How can you tell if the wrong page is ranking?
The purpose of deoptimization is to remove a page driving the wrong type of traffic to your site. Sometimes you might benefit from removing a page from SERPs entirely. Other times, you might want to replace the page that ranks with a more suitable page.
In the de-SEOing episode, Sassman shares an anecdote where site visitors landing on a particular document, listed on Page 1, were not the right types of traffic.