Best way to do a 301 redirect when the incorrect page has rank and FB likes

[foodsleuth]

Due to a site structural problem with our CMS we have alot of duplicate content pages (1 page, with multiple urls).  We are in the process of setting up 301 redirects to correct the problem.  Meanwhile; one of the pages with the "incorrect" URL happens to be the page google favors and also has about 100 FB "likes".

The question is:  Are we better off keeping the "incorrect" URL for that particular page and redirect the other url to it? Both have a page rank of 3.

Thanks

[Adam.Whittles]

First I have to ask what you mean by "incorrect" url? Do you mean the url has been spelt incorrectly? Or do you mean that the url does not have the correct keyword included? Or.... etc.

Without understanding what you mean by "incorrect" url I can only advise based on what you've said. If you have multiple urls with the same content and you would like to keep one then I would suggest you keep the page with the most value. In this case it is obviously the page with FB likes and higher Google ranking.

[foodsleuth]

We have a "planned" link structure like:

/Articles/Category/article_name.aspx

but Google has (not sure how yet) indexed that url like this:

/Articles/article_name.aspx  (missing the category name)

So by incorrect I mean they are indexing the both urls, and 1st format is correct and the 2nd format is incorrect.

[Adam.Whittles]

It would appear that you are creating duplicates of your articles/posts which is why Google is indexing the two urls. Your question should therefore by how are you creating duplicates of your articles/posts?

I suspect the problem lies with your CMS. Either a setting somewhere or a conflicting plugin could be the cause but without knowing what CMS you are using I can only speculate.

[foodsleuth]

There is only one article, but 2 unique links to it.  In most cases we do know how they are created, but don't have a solution for it.  In the meantime, we need to redirect those urls to the correct url.