Index.html and home.html same content, what to do?

I just revamped my index.html page to optimize for a less competitive keyword starting out. Then I clicked on my home page and being a beginner in web design I realized that my home.html and index.html had the same content on them until I just changed my index page around. (obvious to most people, I know!) So i want to change my index page to be the same as my home page (thats not the problem). That is how it has been all along BUT now could I be running into duplicate content issues with google? (I would go ahead and answer yest to that) Would I need to 301 my home page to my index? My index is what gets most of the traffic. Or should I delete one of them? Sorry for my ignorance but I believe some advice on this will really help my rankings now that I see I have had duplicate content all this time!!!

If the pages are identical 301 redirect the old one to the new one.

If the pages are identical there is always the arguement - why have two?

If they are not identical then you do not need to 301 redirect them.

A 301 redirect means page moved permantnely so if you are targeting two different keywords you should not do a 301 redirect or have duplicate content.

You need to be careful here with 301 redirect's because of something called the "directoy index". Most web servers default to index.html so having a recireting pages to the directory index could be a problem.

There is always the option to make home.html into new-keyword.html - 301 redirect home.html to new-keyword.html and change the links from home.html to index.html.

The index.html is effectively what your home.html should be anyway si that is probably the best solution here.

Ok well since I have posted my first post i jumped from 13 to 5 after making the index and the home page different?

Do you think that may be a coincidence? Yesterday I was #38???? I'm scared to touch it until Google settles down.

I kind of want you to see what I'm talking about. My site is pretty messed up right now because it is ranking #6 for the home.html page and not my index.html page.

My site is www.oxfordtopagent.com I have a pointer domain of oxfordvip.com (because its easier to remember). You can look and see on the site that my home pae is different than the index page which i just changed the index page today but freaked out when I checked my listing and saw that my home page is ranking well so I decided to just stay put.

Any help would be great guys. It seems like I was so focused on content on my home page that I wasn't looking at red flags.

If you have optimised your index.html and home.html for different keywords then it is no suprise that they rank differently for different keywords.

Check that your redirect is working correctly by checking the server response code. Some methods of redirecting are not search engine friendly and may be causing you a problem.

Also, do not assume because your rankings change suddenly that something is going wrong. You need to check which Google data center the results are coming from.
If you have made recent changes it is quite conceivable that different data centers will have different versions of your site and will this rank it differently.

NEVER - jump to a comclusion and make a change on impluse. RELAX, analyse and determine, only then do you change something.

Yeah, thats what I'm saying. I don't have any redirects on my page. Quite honestly I have never done one before. I just have it to where if you enter my site, you are on index.html and if you click my link with the keyphrase in there it goes to my home.html and they are two different pages because I just changed them. I am going to sit on it for a week and analyze it daily to see what is going on. its kind of cool to be honest with you!