Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?

[Cutopia]

I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content.

Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page.

Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links.

As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B.

For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?

[GastonRiera]

Hi Cutopia,

For passing Linkjuice, 301 is the recommended method.
To mantaining the rankings, it has worked for us to set a canonical and wait some time (a few weeks), then redirect 301. Tha what has worked for us in a XXL ecommerce, in order to let Google recognize the new site then a redirection.

Hope it helps!
Best Luck!
GR.

[Cutopia]

As our "B" page has no rankings, we will just go with a 301 redirect immediately.

Thanks again for you help!