301 Redirect / Canonical loop on home page?

[FPD_NYC]

Hi there,

My client just launched a new site and the CMS requires that the home page goes to a subfolder - clientsite.com/store. Currently there is a redirect in place such that clientsite.com -> clientsite.com/store. However, I want clientsite.com to be the canonical version of the URL. What should I do in this case, given that there is now a loop between the redirected page and the canonical page?

[ThompsonPaul]

You can't set clientsite.com as the canonical home page, because it's not, FPD. The very definition of "canonical" means it is the actual URL that displays the page content. A URL cannot be canonical if it redirects, is no-indexed, etc.

In your case, using clientsite.com as the canonical would badly damage your ranking capability, because you'd essentially be telling the search engines to rank a page that has no content and essentially doesn't even exist. Clientsite.com/store is the canonical homepage for your site, and should be set as such.

The only way to change this would be to use a system that doesn't require the redirecting of the domain to the subdirectory. (And if you're sticking with the current system, make certain that the redirect being used is a 301, not a 302.)

Hope that helps?

Paul