Rel=Canonical Vs. 301 for blog articles

[mfcb]

Over the last few years, my company has acquired numerous different companies -- some of which were acquired before that. Some of the products acquired were living on their previous company's parent site vs. having their own site dedicated to the product. The decision has been made that each product will have their own site moving forward.

Since the product pages, blog articles and resource center landing pages (ex. whitepapers LPs) were living on the parent site, I'm struggling with the decision to 301 vs. rel=canonical those pages (with the new site being self canonicaled). I'm leaning toward take-down and 301 since rel=canonicals are simply suggestions to Google and a new domain can get all the help it can to start ranking. Are there any cons to doing so?

[Chris.Menke]

Isn't the key factor that "The decision has been made that e_ach product will have their own site moving forward_. "?

It seems like the Suits have spoken on this and that your job is to get the products onto their own sites in the best way possible.  But if you rel-canonical Page A-->Page B,  people will still be able to visit both URLs and that's not what they're directing.

To me, it sounds like 301's across the board and then move on, no?

[GFD_Chris]

If the current plan is to create new product sites, then 301 redirect is probably the way to go. You're right that canonical tags can technically be ignored and 301 redirects will send stronger consolidation signals. The biggest con would be that the information can't exist in two places. So if the parent sites would benefit from having that content as well, then canonical tags should be looked into.