Should I use rel=canonical in this case

[ParisChildress]

Hi SEO pros,

I am working on a website competing on the keyword "USA maps" and would appreciate your advice and comments on the issue below.

The site has one major page for USA maps and like 5-6 smaller pages under different categories, e.g. US travel maps (under Travel Maps category), US travel guides (under Travel Guides), US atlases (under Atlases), etc.

The smaller pages do not rank in search results and are not optimized well for any keyword.

Here are my questions:

#1. Do you think that if I add rel=canonical to the main USA maps page from all small pages that will help get higher ranking of the main page?

#2 Or should I better try to optimize these small pages for the keywords they target (e.g. "US travel maps") and try to send link juice to the main page from text link within the content?

Thank you,

[Unity]

Provided the content on your lower level pages is unique by going for option 2 you can widen your reach on search engine result pages; leading to more traffic for your website. Rel=canonical will make lower level pages pretty much redundant for gaining ranking, so if the content is valuable (to a user and search engine) wouldn't you want to optimize that opportunity? I vote option 2

[Dr-Pete]

GIven that you're talking about 5-6 pages, I'd tend to agree with Davinia. It sounds like these pages have a shot at having unique value, and you could probably beef them up with solid content relatively easily. If you were spinning out 100s or 1000s of thin, geo-targeted pages, that would be different (and that can cause Panda problems), but for half a dozen pages, the canonical would have very little impact here. If they're valuable to users, let them work for you and make them valuable to search.

[ParisChildress]

Thanks Davinia and Peter,

That's what I intend to do.

I was considering adding rel=canonical, but then, as I wrote the question here, it occurred to me there's a better solution. Thanks for making the choice easier.