I'm having a bit of a problem with Wordpress and Google. Basically, Google is indexing the homepage rather than the permalink for some stories. In one case the permalink was #1 in the SERPS for a minor phrase; then after traffic dried up I checked the SERPS and the permalink has disappeared, but the homepage is listed on page 3. I've switched the Wordpress setting over to only list 3 articles on the homepage instead of the previous 10. Maybe this will help? Anything else to try?
Are you displaying the entirety of your posts on your main page? You might want to do excerpts instead, assuming you're not already doing so. Crystite
Write custom excerpts for each post to display on the home, category, and archives pages... At the end of excerpt add a link to the post with slightly different link text than the name of the post like, "Read the full article about varied link text for topic of post." This will get you an extra backlink from the home, category, and archives pages with varied link text AND prevent any of the content of your post from being duplicated on those pages.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I have been listing the entire text on the homepage. Will try the custom excerpt business. On a question like, this how can you not take the advice of a guy named "Canonical"?