Canonicalization of index.html - please help

[TBKO]

I've read up on the subject but am new at this so I thought I would just put forth a simple question.  We want our home page to be referred to as www.domain.com. We want the search engines to find and return this URl in search results.  But the page has to have a name and the actual name is NOT to www.domain.com/index.html. This, I believe is what can cause duplicate cotnent issues (not really duplicate but perceived by the serach engines as duplicate content).  Is it best to insert http://www.domain.com/" /> in the HEAD section of the index.html page or am I totally misunderstanding this concept?

[Unity]

When you do your 301 redirects as outlined by John don't forget to 301 redirect your non-www URL version to your www URL version (or visa-versa).

Here is an example of all the URLs that could be on your website.

http://www.domain.com
http://www.domain.com/index.html
http://domain.com
http://domain.com/index.html

[Bryan_Loconto]

Hi Tag,

As John is suggesting, you could do a straight 301 but the problem is this will lead to an infinite loop and a page error. Your best bet is to use the technique here:http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/redirect-index-blog-root.html to avoid that. Happy hunting.

Hope this helps.

[john4math]

Yes, this does create a duplicate content issue.  The best solution is to have /index.html 301 redirect to /.  However, the canonical as you outlined above should also to fix the issue if you don't have access to your server configuration for redirects.