Question

I have a website and in my website I have, for example, a list of Audi models. I saw, using google webmaster tools, that my website appears in the google search by the word audi, but the target page was the 22nd page from my result set, not the first. I need my first page to appead, not my last (or middle), but I cannot tell google that this is a parameter, because my URLs are rewritten using mod rewrite. Any ideas?
BTW, I have read in a SEO forum, that it’s a bad idea to use a cannonical tag. So is it really a bad idea in my case?

Answer 1

You can’t force Google to do anything, however, they have made it easier to deal with pagination issues with a recent post on rel="next" and rel="prev".

But the primary problem you face is signalling to Google that your first (main) page is the starting point – this is achieved using internal link and back-link “juice” focussed on that page. You need to ensure that the first page of results is linked to properly from higher-value pages (like the home-page).