Hi guys, 1st post, i need some SEO advice.... I have a domain example. com that I want to forward to example. com/folder for ease. I understand if I use a 302 this will keep my domain as example.com in the search engines eyes as its a temporary redirect. However, its not a temporary thing, it will be its permanent location and I don't want to lose any PR juice that might be going through to example.com... If I 301 redirect example.com to example.com/folder will Google replace example.com domain in its index with example.com/folder? As it would with a url 301 redirect? OR does it treat domain to inner folder 301 redirects differently? Obviously I would prefer domain.com to appear rather than domain.com/folder in the index. Dont ask me why I cant redirect it the other way around.... Thanks.
Yes, it will. It's permanent redirect. main page out, folder in. use normal redirect (with no specified code), google will index both, however, since the main page is only redirect it has no content in google's index and may get very low rank. If you want google to index the main page but with the content from the folder, then you need to redirect using .htaccess
Yes its 301 redirect (Permanent redirect). Don worry about Page Rank..it will retain itself within a span of 4-8 weeks hence.