I have a unusual set up with a website. Unfortunately I cannot serve the website source from the root domain i.e.

http://www.example.com

I've been forced to redirect to a subdirectory to display the website content when the root URL is requested e.g.

http://www.example.com

Has a 301 redirect to:

http://www.example.com/subdirectory/index.html

Would it have an adverse affect on SEO to have this at the root domain?

I have a unusual set up with a website. Unfortunately I cannot serve the website source from the root domain i.e.

http://www.example.com

I've been forced to redirect to a subdirectory to display the website content when the root URL is requested e.g.

http://www.example.com

Has a 301 redirect to:

http://www.example.com/subdirectory/index.html

Would it have an adverse affect on SEO to have this at the root domain?

Update:

After reading the below posts and studying the recommended links I used a 302 redirect. I chose this option since it appears that the Google recommendation is to use a 302 if it is a redirect from the root domain. To counter measure any possible duplication issues I made use of the rel="canonical" tag on the destination of the redirect.