Which index page should I canonical to?

[Ryan_Phillips]

Hello!

I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag.

On the index page, I have the following:

I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use.

http://www.example.com

http://www.example.com/

http://www.example.com/index.php

Could someone shed some light on this for me?  Does it make a difference?

Thanks!

Ryan

[SharewarePros]

Your canonical is correct, (this is your root domain), also is a good practice, all the links from deeper pages pointing to your home page should be pointed to http://www.example.com/.

Additionally is a good practice to use the 301 redirect (avoid duplicates on the home page):
http://example.com/ redirect to http://www.example.com/
http://example.com/index.php redirect to http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/index.php redirect to http://www.example.com/

Hope it helps

[Francisco_Meza]

Make sure to backup your files before 301 and that you have FTP access just in case something happens.

I agree with Claudio's answer.