The importance of the home page and subdirectories

[blinkybill]

I am getting myself quite confused.

My home page and target for one of my main sets of keywords is actually located at: www.domain.net.au/keywords/default.aspx

BUT I have loads of external links resolving to: www.domain.net.au/ I had assumed that the best practice for getting the best ranking for the keyword would be to Canoniclise the page to:www.domain.net.au/keywords/

Is that a good assumption ? Or will it only work if I can change all the inbound, external links as well ?

Thanks

-Mark

[Dr-Pete]

It's tricky for home pages. Google really tends to prefer the root URL, and it's best if you can target that. Unfortunately, .Net has a bad way of forcing you to use a deeper page.

If you can't resolve to the root, then you need to be consistent with your internal links before you set the canonical. If you're resolving and linking internally to:

/keywords/default.aspx

...then canonical to that page. It's not quite as good as the root, but by setting the canonical to "/keywords" you could actually be creating a third URL that isn't represented in either your inbound or internal links.

In other words, the first step to a good canonical implementation is to actual use ONE URL, no matter what it is. The canonical tag itself is a bit of a band-aid. It's effective, but fixing the on-page structure is the first, best step.

[Vizergy]

Hey Mark,

Read this:

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content

The bit that will interest you is "The rel=canonical passes the same amount of link juice (ranking power) as a 301 redirect, and often takes up much less development time to implement."  I think that is the answer you are looking for.  However, if it is possible I would suggest the 301...

Cheers

[Inyankara]

I don't know for sure, I'm no expert. But I would keep it real simple and make sure you have your best keyword or phrase in title tag assuming you haven't already.