Does 301 redirect on homepage impact seo strongness of this page

[Samuraiz]

Hi,

we are running a multilingual website with this structure :

http://www.website.com/en
http://www.website.com/fr
http://www.website.com/de
http://www.website.com/lang (etc.)

with then all onsite URLs this way:
http://www.website.com/en/hello
http://www.website.com/fr/bonjour
http://www.website.com/it/ciao

We have a 301 redirect on http://www.website.com going to http://www.website.com/en - except if a user already went on the website and chose a specific language.

My question is :

Do you think the english homepage will have more seo power if it goes directly to http://www.website.com/

I wonder if we lose some linkjuice with the 301 redirection, as many backlink goes directly to http://www.website.com

[lethal0r]

my two cents. I think it very well could lose some linkjuice, but certainly not much.

is it worth testing? how much effort will you need to put in for potentially a minor improvement in rankings?

if its a lot of effort I personally wouldn't bother.

[jenmcardle]

Do you think the english homepage will have more seo power if it goes directly tohttp://www.website.com/

In short, yes. When you redirect any URL you will lose between 1-10% of the link juice from your backlinks. That does not sound like much but since it does affect every link it's something to consider.

Are the overwhelming majority of your visitors English readers? If so, having the site default to the English version makes sense.

Depending on the nature of your site, you may wish to offer pages for the various types of English such as EN-UK, EN-US, etc.