Redirecting to a default (or last visited) subdirectory. Does Google like this?

Question

i have a site that has 3 web applications, lets use this example:

• example.com/nicy
• example.com/mash
• example.com/zoken

The main application is nicy, so if the user comes for the first time (or if Google indexes my site) that will be the default choice. This is the code placed inside example.com/index.php

<?
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://example.com/nicy');
die();
?>

Is this solution SEO friendly for Google to index the nicy subdirectory as the main entrance page for the domain? (because of the 301 redirect).

Answer 1

This is SEO friendly and won't cause you any problems with the search engines. Lots of websites don't have their root web directory as their home page. By doing the 301 redirect you are making it clear that http://example.com/nicy is your homepage and any links pointing to http://example.com/ should be associated with http://example.com/nicy (although with a slight dampening factor applied but that isn't really a big deal).