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If it's just the home-page, it might be easier safer to put a canonical tag on it. A canonical on the home-page can help sweep up weird variants (which are coming). If you got the htaccess route, just test it thoroughly. It can be really tough to write rewrites for other people's sites (without knowing specifics or testing). That said, I think @webfeatseo is on the right track.

Yes and no. The number of outbound links on a page is an important factor, but it can be outweighed by a huge number of other factors, such as the position of the link on a page, how "editorial" it is, and other considerations. My favorite article on the subject. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links Even though OSE doesn't report these, they are still important considerations to look at. For the most part, you'll have to use your best human judgement when evaluating link targets and ask questions like: Am I likely to get a link high on the page? Is the link likely to last, or get pushed to the archives of another URL? Will relevant text surrond the link, or will it appear simply as an item in a long list of links? Etc, etc. MozRank, PageAuthority, DomainAuthority and MozTrust are all great metrics for determining the value of a link, but they are not the final word. In aggregate, I would say they are more important than looking at the number of outbound links, but in the end each link target must be judged on its own merits.

As Axel and Acorn  I also think that you should leave the URL the shortest possible in terms of SEO. Also if you change the URL structure, the external links pointing to the old pages wont be updated automatically and will be kind of wasted.

Thanks very much for your he Cyrus. I'll give the tools you mention a go. Have a great Christmas

Media queries don't redirect, but instead, display CSS stylesheets to fit different devices. 1 page to rule them all, so to say. Which means less work on your end in the long run.

Outbound Links can be beneficial to pages if they are linking out to authoritative sites.  You have to analyze the number of outbound links, as well as the nature and quality of the links.  If they have 1 link going out, but it's to something completely unrelated, it was probably bought or an affiliate.  If they have 15 links going out, but they are citing additional high quality resources, then go after that link!

That's great - thank you both very much for your responses!